Kate Middleton
Kate Middleton is an Australian writer. She is the author of the poetry collections Fire Season (Giramondo, 2009), awarded the Western Australian Premier’s Award for Poetry in 2009 and Ephemeral Waters (Giramondo, 2013), shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s award in 2014. From September 2011-September 2012 she was the inaugural Sydney City Poet.
for Chris Wallace-Crabbe
... (read more)
Seven dresses. Of satin, for example, and
crêpe de Chine, tulle, shot-silk, that sort of thing.
Beading and ivory buttons. One with a rip in it.
(The tailor, in interview, remembers the incident –
a sleeve torn on the workfloor; as there were no needles
left to mend it this passes without comment.)
Made before birth for the seven balls
which would have been held in her honour
by the sev ... (read more)
So, little Ashenputtel & her groom sit up in their palace, growing fat and ruling badly. Not exactly role models for a new generation. I mean, sure – she had it rough (her father made us realis ... (read more)
So, little Ashenputtel & her groom sit up in their palace, growing fat and ruling badly. Not exactly role models for a new generation. I mean, sure – &n ... (read more)
for Anne Brumley
Amid crustless sandwichesthe talk is all of fat and fat- studies: at your conferenceyou’ll talk of Jonson, portly
and unfashionable, whowas painted fat, ridiculed fat, and, we might infer, ... (read more)
Sometime late morning it begins, a root of something that only as it grows do you recognise as pain. You have had coffee, as you do every morning, and now you feel the kind of heaviness that sends you to lie down. At home, the friend who is staying with you, whom you half invited and who may have misinterpreted your keenness for company, notes your early return and approves of your plan to retreat ... (read more)
At primary school we were shown a video warning children not to get into strangers’ cars. We were told to note the places with Safety House stickers on the way home. I remember wondering if, on being pursued, I’d be able to run all the way to the nearest one. Every so often, we heard about a kidnapping on the news, so we took these warnings seriously.
Sonya Hartnett’s novel Of a Boy, writte ... (read more)
In black chalk the beastbrusques forward Silence Rubenshas stopped his mouthwith a single line He is alreadyawed by the denhe will find himself in even nowas his mane curls into wispof emptiness A study on paper
But there in white chalk the grimpose brightensinto recognition smudged nosebent toward the scentof viewer &nb ... (read more)
Cut out a sixth of the heart.At a day old—furless,close-eyed, resembling nothingso much as an infant's thumb—he can survive it.The mouse can regrow that missing partin three short weeks.
Aesop knew it:to be mouse-heartedis as good as wearingthe swagger of lion.
His heartperhaps the size of a Lilliputian walnut.Barely a mouse, alreadyripped apart.He does not waitfor a Godhand to put him back ... (read more)