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Lucy Dougan

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.

'Your Bed' by Lucy Dougan | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two • 13 October 2017
For my mother The young men,friends of our middle one,camp nights in your bed.Some leave it with hospital corners,some leave it like a lair to revisitand some make cocoons on top.In most casesthey are shaping up.On kitchen raidsthey all report sound sleepand I wonder what it isthat breaches their dreamsas they lie downin this last contracted room of yours?Can they imagine your life?Is it the pati ... (read more)

'The Throne' by Lucy Dougan | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two • 13 October 2017
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)

'Old Cat and Dog' by Lucy Dougan | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two • 13 October 2017
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)

'Girl on a Rug with a Cat' by Lucy Dougan | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two • 13 October 2017
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)

'Art Detective' by Lucy Dougan | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two • 13 October 2017
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)

'Art Detective' by Lucy Dougan

September 2017, no. 394 • 30 August 2017
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)

States of Poetry 2016 - Western Australia | State Editor's Introduction by Lucy Dougan

States of Poetry Western Australia - Series One • 22 February 2016
'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)

'Your Paintings', a new poem by Lucy Dougan

December 2013–January 2014, no. 357 • 01 December 2013
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)