Finnegan’s philosophy
I really enjoy the poems in the South Sydney Herald (SSH) each month. A favourite (from February SSH) is Catherine Skipper’s elegant evocation of her dog Finnegan’s thoughts in church on Epiphany Sunday. I love that Finnegan’s breed “had sniffed out / their revelation, how a nudge / with a wet brown nose // and bright, benevolent eyes / gave them dominion forever / over the furless race”. Brilliant! I reread it happily on #WorldPoetryDay (WPD).
You – Matter
I couldn’t make it to Sarah Rice’s Red Room Company poetry workshop where she encouraged participants to write creatively in response to the works in Obsessed: Compelled to Make (see page 11). Instead, on WPD, I read her poem You – Matter, also created in response to the exhibition. “Think through this thing / come out the other side / with dust on your clothes and eyebrows / peer into the fire / catch the smoke between your hands / melt the day’s thoughts and pour them into a new mould”.
Lucidity
Lucidity, by Northern Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey, is about the loss that comes with dementia, and it’s devastating. “There is an open sky, the kind you find / In desert in November. White clouds go over / At terrible speed. The sky // Is changing always. There are no ridges / On the land, no corners. At the end / Of everything, waving on the ledge // Of the world, pilots are stumbling to find / Their plane”.
Widow’s Necklace
Elaine Feinstein’s, The Clinic, Memory: New and Selected Poems was a welcome birthday present and Widow’s Necklace (one of its most moving poems) a great gift. Here’s a few lines from it: “Friends try my stories on their teeth or / with a match; are they plastic or amber? // My children say I must have forgotten / how I used to turn to them so very often // repeating words and begging reassurance. / Why should I now recall a loving presence?”
a tempo
Jen Crawford wrote a tempo surrounded by a ring of jungle that couldn’t encroach as fast as it was being thinned out. Feel it: “these two frayed silk birds. into the river diving and emerging. one such silk is a cracked river stone and this is the surface of its silk, the green surface of its time in that silk time, its water. you could cut your foot on that accurate division. if you weren’t aware.” (Reprinted in 20 Poets, which is free so download your copy from http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/20-poets/.)
