States of Poetry Tasmania
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'As You Left Home One Winter's Night' by Anne Kellas | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two
It’s dawn but it’s dark.
Winter. Your Winterreise
begins. But you don’t want to wake.
I tried to wake you but you wouldn’t, then you would.
If I knew then what I know now.
But there was the ticket, the passport.
Your father’s ready, names and numbers, labels on the luggage.
The car is idling outside.
It’s dawn but dark.
It’s wi ...
I’ll go that way, by sea,
in a ship that sails at night,
dropping life-boats,
like lifts down lift shafts,
onto storm seas below.
Anne Kellas
...'How To Get Rid Of The Layer Of Snow' by Anne Kellas | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two
‘Ah, that layer of snow of which you tell me! For a long
time I too had it! But I turned it into the tablecloth my
wife spread over our – pleasantly round – table in order
to host ... so many incarnation ...
A. E. Houseman memorably said: I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat. It’s not an easy matter to justify one’s decisions when faced with numerous poems from which to make a limited selection. There’s no programmatic guide to what makes a poem successful although the impact of a good poem is something we all know and recognise. ...
Anne Kellas’s third collection – The White Room Poems (Walleah Press, 2015) – was shortlisted for the Margaret Scott Prize in the 2017 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary awards. Written with the support of an Australia Council grant, it also received a Blue Giraffe Press poetry award. Isolated States, supported by an Arts ...
... (read more)Fellowships galore
(after Jordie Albiston’s ‘Cartography’) What is the space between this hut and that mountain her boys tighter, pull the mountain in, with their bold
Distance
but impenetrable black, and frosty cold.
She is writing this at a table in the cabin,
spinning thoughts like threads, as if they can hold
tents blooming like flowe ...
Flower
(Montignac)
She sees the flowers are red flags
like pennants hauled up, heralding danger,
hailing the world and its lovers
with admonitions:
watch out, watch out.
On long stalks they wobble
and wave, handkerchiefs flaring
long after the ship has left port,
their scarlet hue a constancy, ...
Voyaging
I Marie Antoinette, imprisoned in Paris in 1791,
to Marie Louise (Louis) Girardin,
departing from Brest on d’Entrecasteaux’s expedition
Your breasts, small ...
Bill And Gwen
In Swiftian mood, insisting that
The human race would never learn,
Was hopeless, doomed, Bill Harwood, pure
Logician and philosopher,
As well as spouse of poet Gwen,
Proposed a universal ban
On sex to end our sorry ways
And brought our threesome's talk on how
The world was going to a halt
Of the socially awkward kind.