Ross Clark

Ross Clark had his first poems published while he was an undergraduate at UQ in the early 70s; seven volumes and several chapbooks and two international tours later he is still writing poetry, haiku (translated into several languages, including Japanese), songs, the occasional story, and currently working on a trilogy of Young Adult Verse Novels. He also performs occasionally in a poetry band, a ukulele band, and a folken-country-blues band. In the meantime he continues to teach part-time at QUT and UQ, in both education and humanities. He has received a Johnno Award and a Centenary Medal for his contributions to Australian poetry, and some of his words may be found on plaques on the streets of his town (and in his most recent volume Salt Flung into the Sky, and in the rival anthologies The Best Australian Poems 2008 and The Best Australian Poetry 2008). He was the 2008 winner of the Peter Porter Poetry Prize.

'Danger: Lantana', a new poem by Ross Clark

March 2008, no. 299 • 01 March 2008

sampling Jeffrey Harrison’s ‘Danger: Tulip’, from Ploughshares, Winter 2006–07 Was I hoping to find my way to the creek, loud with unseasonal rain, and to see, perhaps, a few winter wattles, and catch a magpie or two warbling in a melaleuca, when I took a track I’d never taken before, through light scrub first and then a scrappy paddock, across a wet gully, then into another paddock? Be ... (read more)