Jill Jones
Jill Jones has published nine full-length books of poetry including Breaking the Days (2015), The Beautiful Anxiety (2014), which won the 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry, and Ash is Here, So are Stars (2012). Her work is represented in major anthologies including the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry. She is a member of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide. She was poet-in-residence at Stockholm University for five months in 2014-15.
Amongst discarded data, twigs,plastic containers, fingernails –'The unconscious, at all events,knows no time limit' –the shape of an ear, marginal factsblown about by a northerly,washed by stiffening rain – somethinglike symptoms, clues, bird spit,possum fur, leaf miner, blood and bone,a story or many of what passesthrough here daily – what the drift of oilor rice grains, the tea leaves (a ... (read more)
They say morning's temperbinds you to this worldof taking. As if the air said,all you need is to scramor laugh. If it's real payback,why try to earn it.There are better things to dowith your shoes.This is no mystery.Movement chafes expectancytill it hurts and hackles.It's a pissing contest,round that hewthe hours hand you.You can't whimper.This, also, isn't a mystery.It's half way day.The dog's at ... (read more)
I am history nowin the scales, the age of sounds
I make sense then drop itit gets dirty, it breaksthe ants carry it
I am bent at the switchmy tapes of the archivedecay, loops stutterglitch arias
I am bent at the floorfacts roll under the chairlittle dust songsor songs outsidethe parrots know
and I am still my speciesstruck, listening
Jill Jones
Recording ('Bent' begins at 6:21)
... (read more)