States of Poetry Tasmania
Christiane Conésa-Bostock was born in Lyon, France and has lived in Hobart since the 1970s. Christiane, along with The Grove Road Poets (Karen Knight, Liz Mc Quilkin, Liz Winfield, and Megan Schaffner), won First Prize in the Fellowship of Australian Writers competition in 2010 with their book Of Things being ...
'After, there are the birds' by Gina Mercer | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two
He sends me photos
of the singular crimson rosella
who observes him through the kitchen window
as he cooks dinner for one.
He sends me boxes of her best clothes:
designer jackets, silk shirts, tailored trousers.
Asks me to share them among family
even though she was the size of a wren
and we’re all currawongs.
He sends me photo after poignant ...
Forget
all you know about Canute,
the king who believed the waves under his dominion,
he could stop the tides by command.
Remember
to bet all you have
on the dead cert
that global warming is real
& ...
Me alongside that world-famous celebrity
The Atlantic Ocean ‒
complaining
I haven’t caught its best side.
...
La rivière Bow, Banff, Spring 2016
The light gets tired, he writes, and I wonder if water, too, can get weary with all that
flowing & sliding & washing away. In the hotel swimming pool the water looks
weary, constantly banging its soft body against concrete, making the effort to dimple
upwards when disturbed, entered, by our alien soft bodies. Unable ...
'Extracts from "The Dictionary Aquatic"' by Gina Mercer | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two
Extracts from The Dictionary Aquatic
Burble
Distinctive mating call of wild creeks. Rarely heard in cities where this species has been driven underground, incarcerated in lightless, concrete tunnels. Such conditions have proved unconducive to reproduction or generation.
Gina Mercer enjoys a three-stranded career as writer, teacher, and editor. She has taught creative writing and literature in universities and communities for thirty years. She was Managing Editor of Island magazine, 2006–10. She has published a novel, Parachute Silk (Spinifex Press, 2001) and two academic books (UQP, 1994 ...
... (read more)2016
Okay, I’m from the outside
You know this place that I’m at
The whitefella’s think-society
This outside place that got lost
A think-society claiming it made us
With their blood, their bible and law
So I think it’s just like the inside
To make us like them is the core
Some rules are okay for everyone
Other rules are ‘just-if- ...
one day I was drivin’ with Buck Brown along the coast
an’ we was talkin’ about white coes on our land
‘til the talk got real intense an’ I wouldn’t wanna boast
but we worked it all out from the start right to the end
now it’s easy enough to see, well it is to you an’ me
why white fellas do their thing wrong way ‘round
their old m ...
14 August 2016
Our Earth Mother cries when the nets are set adrift
They travel loosely and kill sea life as they go
Drifting in the moon-tides the grim reapers travel wide
Through tidal water homes of the all-life living free
To drift and pluck from the all-life every living thing
That shares the bloodlines of the all-life of our world
The nets drift on to ...