States of Poetry - Poems

'Scatomancer' by James Charlton | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

by James Charlton •

States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

States of Poetry - Poems

'Scatomancer' by James Charlton | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

by James Charlton •

States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

One who performs divination by dissecting faeces

We poke apart devil scats.
Clotted fur, bone fragments, gristle,
possible scraps of crushed mollusc.

Devils lope across roads less and less.
That which people called a growl
was possibly vernacular for ‘How?’

James Charlton

James Charlton

James Charlton graduated from the University of Tasmania, and from Flinders University and the University of Cambridge. He was Poetry Editor of Island magazine and Advisory Editor for Australasia of Chautauqua Literary Journal, published in upstate New York. Charlton earned his PhD from the University of Tasmania and his MA from the University of Cambridge. He is a poet and theological writer with an interest in transformative spiritual knowledge and experience, across traditions. His latest book, from Bloomsbury Publishing, is Non-dualism in Eckhart, Julian of Norwich and Traherne (2012).