Petra White was born in Adelaide in 1975 and has lived since 1998 in Melbourne where she works as a public servant. Her first book, The Incoming Tide (John Leonard Press 2007),was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary awards and for the ACT Judith Wright award. Her second book The Simplified World (John Leonard Press … Continue reading
Stuart Cooke was born in 1980 and grew up in Sydney and Hobart. He has published poetry, translations, fiction and essays, and his books include George Dyuŋgayan’s Bulu Line: a West Kimberley song cycle (Puncher & Wattmann, 2014), Speaking the Earth’s Languages: a theory for Australian-Chilean postcolonial poetics (Rodopi, 2013) and Edge Music (IP, 2011). … Continue reading
Bottles in gutters, alley cats on the slink under streetlamps that crystallise in the corners of my eyes — shopping trolleys gliding by like giant legless ice skates — this brittle night taken out of the fridge — it’s spring but cold still, still as glass. Sobering up, a breeze … Continue reading
Apologising to unicorns is problematic. They rarely understand our purposes. Tenderness will often be seen as the manipulative gestures of a fear that seeks death – for itself and others. Unicorns sleep most comfortably in heavy traffic where the hum of self-absorbed commuters leaves them invisible. To find a unicorn in a forest is like … Continue reading
Laid out flat in the back of the station wagon my father borrowed I look up: the leaves are immense, green and golden with clear summer light breaking through – though I turn only my neck I can see all of them along this avenue that has no limits. What does it matter that I … Continue reading
Peter Boyle was born in Melbourne in 1951 and has lived most of his life in Sydney. He is a poet and translator of Spanish and French poetry. He has worked most of his life as a teacher, first in high schools and then with NSW TAFE. His sixth collection of poetry, Towns in the … Continue reading
In the abandoned hours, I can hear The boorish sibilance of garbage trucks On their rounds. The shy, nocturnal air Builds a brittle nest with strands of fear. Insomniac crickets tick, like manic clocks, In the unmown expanse of the vacant lot Where, last week, on the razor grass, A young woman was raped And … Continue reading
Your plumes are as black as the dresses and jackets we wear at the edges of burial plots. I’ve read stories of the storms you portend; how you are a cipher to an inch of rain. For weeks, I’ve watched you plane the sky’s bayberry vellum, seen falling light transpose your silhouettes into a straight-cut … Continue reading
There is no Poet of the Month for December. This month we shall indulge in new poems, for some of the wonderful poets that I featured as Poet of the Month in 2014. It has been an absolute pleasure for me to get to read and of course to share their poetry. You can find … Continue reading
She looked so pretty in her blue jacket and shoes. Colours make me happy, she said. And you make me happy, I said. Or I wish that’s what I had said. All the colours have passed out of her now, like blue leaves drifting down from the trees. © Richard James Allen “Explosively powerful … Continue reading
For Chee and Stephen Who I was in the past, Who I will be in the future – What distractions these are From who I am now. Who I am now, Here, with you. In this moment, You have rewritten my past. You are rewriting my future. What I don’t understand about Who I was … Continue reading
for Karen Your beauty cannot be translated, but I would fail not to try. It generates a weather no meteorology can describe. It is most like a flower, a flower with moods. An unstill life, in no need of arranging, it arranges itself. It is not fixed, so how can I fix it? It doesn’t … Continue reading
Mark Tredinnick is a celebrated poet, nature writer, writing teacher, and essayist. He lives and writes along the Wingecarribee River, southwest of Sydney, and he travels widely in Europe and America as a poet and teacher. The winner in 2011 of the Montreal Poetry Prize and in 2012 of the Cardiff Poetry Prize, Mark is … Continue reading
Two halters of rope around your neck, and two bodies jammed hard against your sides, is all it takes to hold you while he slips his blade beneath your eye. You hear the wet slide and suck as he scoops the eye out. He does the other, they roll together in the dirt. Does it … Continue reading
My father knew stone. He’d sit cross-legged at the hearth, felt cloth on knee, bent over with hammerstone, wooden punch, and bone tine, knapping at flint or chert, knapping it to knife point, sickle blade, arrowhead. I’d watch the stone give way beneath his deft blows: fine flakes splintering from face or rim. The curved … Continue reading
It’s dusk, and I’m listening to an old Indian devotional, the woman’s voice is a coil of plum honey. As the sun slips down the empty western sky, the tiles of houses are silvered in light. At some angles the sun is forked by newly budded branches. I’ve stared too long at its gold-lash pinwheel, … Continue reading
Do not judge me by my size I am almost invisible on a white page I could be mistaken for a spec of dust. Power is not in how big you are, power is in how big your actions are. Oh! The responsibilities I have Please, can’t you see my size! A barrage of words … Continue reading
Maybe she’s made a shelter from mulga branches and spinifex out on the plains somewhere. I imagine her walking from the west in grey light, barefooted, a walking stick in her right hand, a small lyre dangling at her waist. She must arrive as the clouds in the east begin to roil with the day’s … Continue reading
Dimitra Harvey has a Bachelor of Performance Studies from Theatre Nepean – University of Western Sydney, and a Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of Sydney. Her poetry has been published in Meanjin, Southerly, Mascara, and Cordite; her poetry has also appeared in Australian Poetry’s Members Anthology Metabolism, the 2013 Jean Cecily … Continue reading
Once on the old port of Sunda Kelapa, Betawi cradled the East Indies spices. When tropical rain poured over her plantations of mangosteen, hibiscus, guava, nutmeg and cloves, she would surrender to the heat under her banyan tree and sleep heavily. In her youth, she bathed in the sap of pomelo rind and her nipples … Continue reading
Poem and Dish 