Lucy Dougan
States of Poetry WA Podcast | Two poems by Lucy Dougan
Thursday, 28 December 2017Lucy Dougan reads her poems 'Your bed' and 'The Throne' which feature in series two of the Western Australian States of Poetry anthology.
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 revisit
and some make cocoons on top.
In most cases
they are shaping up.
On kitchen raids
they all report sound sleep
and I wonder what it is
that breaches their dreams
as t ...
In crisis
I go to the local library
and do not take out
the book I find,
this one or that one first,
what matter?
Outside beside my car
sits a strange chrome and vinyl seat,
part of a vanity set,
stranded, hieratic, ruined,
like the beautiful straight-backed
low seated chair-people
of Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche.
I ...
'Old Cat and Dog' by Lucy Dougan | States of Poetry WA - Series Two
The old cat and dog
now sleep in our room
in an uneasy truce
between the floor and bed.
It is as if they are not sure
the house exists
once we no longer light it
or move about it,
once we lie down
in agreement it is night.
It’s come to sit on my chest,
their Stilnox camaraderie,
and when I wake in snatches
I have thought differe ...
'Girl on a Rug with a Cat' by Lucy Dougan | States of Poetry WA - Series Two
The girl on a rug with a cat
is an entirely decorative proposition.
She curls, the cat curls, even the rug
displays some notion of this movement
with its diverting curlicues.
Life, too, is making a start inside the girl
although 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.< ...
'Art Detective' by Lucy Dougan | States of Poetry WA - Series Two
I lie on the couch
like a beaten dog
as Philip Mould advances
on his latest art forensics
and there are these absolutely
free and liberated daubs
of greens and browns
in close-up on the screen.
They are of the earth
in a surprising and counter way
to all that sateen, country houses,
rich people by the yard.
And from my beaten dog pose< ...
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 ...
... (read more)I lie on the couch
like a beaten dog
as Philip Mould advances
on his latest art forensics
and there are these absolutely
free and liberated daubs
of greens and browns
in close-up on the screen.
They are of the earth
in a surprising and counter way
to all that sateen, country houses,
rich people by the yard.
And from my beaten dog pose< ...
States of Poetry 2016 Podcast | State editor Lucy Dougan introduces the Western Australian anthology
Monday, 16 May 2016In this episode of the Australian Book Review's States of Poetry Podcast, state editor Lucy Dougan introduces the 2016 Western Australian poets: Barbara Temperton, Charmaine Papertalk Green, Carolyn Abbs, Graham Kershaw, JP Quinton, and Kia Groom
... (read more)States of Poetry 2016 - Western Australia | State Editor's Introduction by Lucy Dougan
'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 ...