Lucy Dougan
Lucy Dougan’s books include White Clay (Giramondo, 2007), Meanderthals (Web del Sol), and The Guardians (Giramondo, 2015), which won the WA Premier's Book Award for Poetry in 2016. She holds a PhD from UWA on representations of Naples. She currently works as Program Director for the China–Australia Writing Centre at Curtin University.
In crisisI go to the local libraryand do not take outthe book I find,this one or that one first,what matter?Outside beside my carsits a strange chrome and vinyl seat,part of a vanity set,stranded, hieratic, ruined,like the beautiful straight-backedlow seated chair-peopleof Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche.I do the visual maths.Will it fit behind?– no, there, rightfully, is the seat for our grandson – ... (read more)
The old cat and dognow sleep in our roomin an uneasy trucebetween the floor and bed.It is as if they are not surethe house existsonce we no longer light itor move about it,once we lie downin agreement it is night.It’s come to sit on my chest,their Stilnox camaraderie,and when I wake in snatchesI have thought different things.Perhaps we are at seaand this is our cabinor perhaps without quite know ... (read more)
The girl on a rug with a catis an entirely decorative proposition.She curls, the cat curls, even the rugdisplays some notion of this movementwith its diverting curlicues.Life, too, is making a start inside the girlalthough she cannot know this right now.Some contract with another is being made,even as we speak, on the rug with the cat beside her.The striped ginger cat grows its hairs.It is not the ... (read more)
I lie on the couchlike a beaten dogas Philip Mould advanceson his latest art forensicsand there are these absolutelyfree and liberated daubsof greens and brownsin close-up on the screen.They are of the earthin a surprising and counter wayto all that sateen, country houses,rich people by the yard.And from my beaten dog poseI potentially fall in love with Gainsborough.How could I have not before?
P ... (read more)
I lie on the couchlike a beaten dogas Philip Mould advanceson his latest art forensicsand there are these absolutelyfree and liberated daubsof greens and brownsin close-up on the screen.They are of the earthin a surprising and counter wayto all that sateen, country houses,rich people by the yard.And from my beaten dog poseI potentially fall in love with Gainsborough.How could I have not before?
P ... (read more)
'Poetry is a necessity of life ... It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.' C.D. Wright
How does Western Australia look or sound to the rest of the country? In this selection, six poets are addressing you from the edge of the Indian Ocean, the edge of the Southern Ocean, one from Yamaji country, one from derelict, unlovely ... (read more)
More and more I live with your paintings or more precisely the moment you first saw them and chose them: the red bird sitting in the round of its glade; the woman who has become a train trip and a forest as if her memory were a strip of film containing both.
The man who helped you choose the paintings had a name that sounded like a small animal. He was the same man who persuaded you that instant ... (read more)