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States of Poetry Poems
The ABR Podcast
Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.
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Episode #191
‘Flies in the Nirvana’: An illuminating and sisterly correspondence
By Peter Rose
In this week’s ABR Podcast, Peter Rose reviews Hazzard and Harrower: The letters, edited by Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham. The correspondence between writers Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower ran from 1966 to 2008 and, in its unedited form, amounted to 400,000 words. Editors Susan Wyndham Brigitta Olubas have trimmed it down: ‘For the time being,’ says Peter Rose, ‘we must make do with this entertaining and not insubstantial entrée.’ Listen to Peter Rose’s ‘Flies in the Nirvana’: An illuminating and sisterly correspondence’, published in the June issue of ABR.
Recent episodes:
'Treecreeper' by Sarah Holland-Batt | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
Bebop sparkplug spurred in withershins,
loop-de-loop interloper, he hop-steps
ravines of bark, shirking faultlines,
going solo, headstrong, scion of impatience,
juddering like the stalled engine
of prop-plane on tundra runway, skirting
and skimming up, peeling out,
reeling in spiral, spy, scout, prematurely
thrusting into the unknown, Magellan
runnin ...
'Jealousy of the Undertow/Tombstone' by Lionel Fogarty | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
The need to recall the journey
Is her gift to her children?
They are the perfect journalists
To inscribe her tombstone
Outside my bedroom window
I see them walking the path to my door
Who understands the logic?
That they look so much like me
Meanwhile what a lousy deal
They will also in heart my life
This heat reminds me of a cert ...
'Love and Tradition' by Ellen van Neerven | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
for Aunty Nancy Bamaga
rising sea
takes and
breaks into backyards
to trouble families
we cannot live
with the seas in our bellies
we cannot rest
with the sea at our legs
the tide
is coming
to stroke
our dead
we want to know
who unplugged
our island
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island
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'Buffalo Milk' by Ellen van Neerven | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
Suck until you burn the room
and the heat numbs
reduced to a sound
wet
like the come and go
of the ocean
water enters
my hand in your hair
my hand
if you leave me childless
this will be yours alone
these marks you make
openings, persuasions
of the woman I will become
Ellen van Neerven
The ground felt like it did when it's about to storm. My feet were brown and my big toe blistered. My grandmother was talking to my grandfather. A wet patch on my grandmother's back. Her hands roping those tails along the fence.
She turned to me and I saw her. Grey. A little heavy. Everything I came here for. A magpie flew lower.
Ellen van Neer ...
The particulars of the evening being, whether consciously
evoked or – 'a great shemozzle'
as Kent said –
merely one day washing over and into the depths
& ...
The carpet could be cleaner –
so could the world.
There's too much cayenne
in the soup.
The grand abstraction
is one approach
to the poem, I guess –
so too the eye
of the flea.
I can't even taste
the vegetables.
And love?
Mosquitoes are circling
the light globe –
Norma, dead now
a month. And
after we cast the ...
'The gestures of delight are her delight.'
Notate October's last hurrah.
'Dear Cameron, You have an undigested
John Forbes influence,' wrote Gig, a decade past.
Digest, instead, the dusk –
2P –>
64
EASTERN
BEACH ...
Distance
(after Jordie Albiston’s ‘Cartography’)
What is the space between this hut and that mountain
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
her boys tighter, pull the mountain in, with their bold
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, ...