Gig Ryan
Gig Ryan has published six books of poetry and her New and Selected Poems was published in 2011. She was Poetry Editor of The Age from 1998 to 2016. Her next book of poetry will be released in late 2022. (Photograph by Mia Schoen)
(‘Idyll II’, Theocritus)
Where are my bay leaves and charms, my bowl with crimson flowerswhile he inexorablehas gone from my bed like a dressDistance: spells of fire wreathe you
Shine on this spin or graveas sight stunned me
leaves burnWheel of brass turning from my door
Now wave is still and wind is stillMy heart stopped in its foundry
As horses run, so we to itStarts love’s knife
who ... (read more)
John Tranter has published more than twenty books since 1970. They include long dramatic monologues, a type of verse novel (The Floor of Heaven, 1992), prose poems and traditional verse forms. Starlight, his new collection, continues his ‘evisceration’, as he calls it, of other poets. His first book, Parallax (1970), signalled an important theme in his work: parallax is ‘the effect whereby t ... (read more)
1.Two birds scoop white skyinto the lank pines behind your stoneas if to say we’re with you.In front the road crofts and peaks.You can’t pinpoint the sectorbut it was adamantinelike your knowing to pull outto sail through the lock, ink a renunciationinto an oiled bay.The monstrance twinkles ahead, a wheeled pizza,while catastrophe tourism tails them with its clothes.My friends in books clashbu ... (read more)
Jennifer Maiden’s first books, Tactics (1974) and The Problem of Evil (1975), introduced a fantastically complex and enquiring poetry, with strangely fragmentary assemblages of character wrought from conflict. Both books were partly inspired by television’s gory nightly footage of the Vietnam War. While much poetry in the 1970s was of seditiously unvarnished protest, Maiden’s was intricate a ... (read more)
There’s plenty to crack onto, he says, a laundered Valkyrie stomps the DIY:I reconstitute in the shed, my notes can hit the rafters,no-one’s selfing over it, like upstairson their asbestos balustrade,a tick-off at the slightest, though their kidchatters and bounces on the planks.At last summer rises on a blue cactus.Without, it’s crumpled outside of time and dead.I’m not the stonkered stud ... (read more)
As her to you, unhurried,pair formations addle a skyline,extrovert welcoming traffic, selfless despot on the inner.Even so, his pin-cushioned face glues to the backdrop’s nest of wombats.The city changes from one skyscraper and slateto the creek’s bag-junked ripple, decisive formaldehyde splitting a cloud’s anagram of discontent,replacing slouched velodrome with mouse-topped stove.The introd ... (read more)
(Idyll II, Theocritus)
Where are my bay leaves and charms, my bowl with crimson flowerswhile him inexorablehas gone from my bed like a dressDistance: spells of fire wreathe you
Shine on this spin or graveAs sight stunned me
leaves burnWheel of brass turning from my door
Now wave is still and wind is stillMy heart stopped in its foundry
As horses run, so we to itStarts love’s knife
... (read more)
You long for night to push away injunctions and sodalities,sky’s hexagon clouds,as veins lined with velvet straighten the road and undone casketand morning’s birds click through dream.
Rest your eyes on the road like an inn,bundled rubbish a corpse on the nature-strip.You take the waters.You embrace a door.Snaked fields welter through moleculesas you burrow a dynamic exit.Day tells you to cir ... (read more)
I remember you as you were, polished and dismissivenow sawdust and spangles lie on cedar.‘Insufficient funds’ responds to my favoured transactionat the checkout’s dystopia, a green-haired maenad slices the machine.You saw in the eyes the future going away.It carouses in the shadowsa watery silhouette of vengeance.
Mouth in ashes, words lie in air.They trot off to a knobbly paradigmwh ... (read more)