Michael Farrell
Michael Farrell won the 2012 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. Recent books include Family Trees and I Love Poetry (both published by Giramondo), the scholarly Writing Australian Unsettlement: Modes of Poetic Invention 1796–1945 (Palgrave Macmillan), and, as editor, Ashbery Mode (TinFish), an Australian tribute to John Ashbery. Born in Bombala, NSW, in 1965, Michael has lived in Melbourne since 1990.
He went down to the shed to look for a chooka particular one he’d seen earlier that morningone he realised he’d never seen before, andthat seemed to have disappeared. It was brownwith white markings, distinctive, like wallpaper
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Walking the streets, reading his booksin the cafés and bars, this was his over-riding question: would he be liked inprison?
He was not particularly bad, or good, orgraceful, or skeptical. He reckoned hebelonged to the median when it came tothe smokers of Lwów: but would he beliked in prison?
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Like a teacup in a snowstorm IFind you and break you. A sentry reptile, I advise youTo return quietly to the campfire. You mistakenly tookMy interest in theology for a strategy
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Flip to a towel, flip toSheets of pasta in an emu's stomach. Sheep merely fluffing the Horizon
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Technology is increasingly feminine. The diction ofSayin ... (read more)
Strawberries: a mania of strawberries on a Turntable
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Drifting off in pineconesOf thought, feeling the wind refractYour backside. Eggs down a rabbit hole
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Voices like coconut milk in a car
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Writing the ball past the line. CloudsDrop on your face: noIt’s snow. The crane stopsAt ... (read more)
Who are you? You hear the song, theGood line along with the others in theHair salon. That place for standing in; for Politics
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The New Dr Williams with his tricks of Sadness
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Here is my bag: be sad. Here isMy bag left on the bannister. Yet letMe tell you that elevation’s just a sound
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I was riding a shark through Cork, just for the exercise of courseIt might seem quaint but rather it wasGorgeous, like an early morning courtyardImagine the dialogue. AC/DC confronts shark shark repeats shadow prime minister'sGaffeYou guys are the white Australian Uluru. Fancy, say theyIt became noon. An emuIn police uniform j ... (read more)
You feel this way, kind of free when you lie down
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I've seen it, the cocking head, the dipping branch, but nowI'm thinking of something else. The long drawnOut day. The novelty of peaches inA new form. Savour the bird's body language, you may needIt to recognise yourself later. Like water, your head empties slowlyOf melody (though not ... (read more)
Angels are made from banksia. They are grown in Prague, areExported in all directions, and turn grey in air. TheyOnly fly in places where the ground is hard. IfYou try to count them they turn into numbers. IfYou try to call them they turn into names. TheyAre not decorative at parties but illustrative, of Guernica, for example
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In their crucibles they attempt a new kind of teaevery day, usually through a combination ofMethods, such as the fox method, the hydrangeamethod and the sunlight method this is a colour-Determined method in effect, though efforts areMade to avoid repeating any method on consecutivedays another of their efforts has gone into producingA quietness spray to be used at peak noise timesOf the day they a ... (read more)