Judge’s Report
First
Glen Phillips, AGAIN
Second
David Terelink, Nostalgia
Highly commended
Suzi Mezei, Lazarus
Fable Goldsmith, Anna
Commended
Damen O’Brien, A Thousand Hammers from a Thousand Smiths
David Atkinson, Flute Notes
Judge’s Report
First
AGAIN by Glen Phillips (WA)
AGAIN is a rich tapestry, filled with imagery, movement and poetic devices. I feel exhilarated when I read it. Sorrow at the loss of life and land.
It is a poignant remembering. It is a place I would like to have seen.
At the end of the poem I sigh. The closing lines are perfect.
Second
Nostalgia by David Terelink (Qld)
True to the title of the poem. I felt like a passenger on this journey, to a place lost in time.
The eye for detail is beautifully expressed, creating an almost breathable atmosphere of this backwater pit stop.
The images linger long after the poem has been read.
Highly Commended
Lazarus by Suzi Mezei (Vic)
This poem is a gentle narrative of homelessness. A man and his dog. It brings identity to the faceless on the street. It engenders compassion and concern for our vulnerable. A tender exchange and the fragile thread that connects a small part of community.
Anna by Fable Goldsmith (WA)
Anna is very cleverly written and an unapologetic insight into a dangerous eating disorder. Anorexia is given an identity and she clearly expresses the intimacy between the illness and the body she steals.
It is a confronting portrait that demonstrates the insidious nature of Anna.
Commended
A Thousand Hammers from a Thousand Smiths Damen O’Brien (Qld)
This is a love poem with a difference. Not a red rose to be seen. It is filled with power and heat, strength and texture. It clearly demonstrates what an insipid little word ‘love’ is.
‘Love’ is an impotent word in the vastness of this majestic tribute.
Flute Notes by David Atkinson (NSW)
Flute Notes has a meditative quality to it. It is a poem I could readily relate to. The imagery is perfect and the mood, slightly bittersweet, is one I think many will relate to.
It demonstrates that riches are found in the little things of life.
I think it is important to observe that, especially in relation to life as it is now.
FIRST
AGAIN
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed … Allen Ginsberg
You had your howl, Allen,
but mine will last longer, into deepest night.
I am tired of reminding the world
that this is the most ancient land. And
when I howl in the midnight hours
across saltbush, samphire and wodjil
with despair, a certain ennui wraps me
in a most humorous sadness like the sloughed skin
of dugite or carpet python, hung on a floor joist.
Spiders have crawled here
out of their trap-doored sepulchres
among casuarina groves. And amidst
flaking stones on monadnock domes
the pseudo-scorpions shelter from heat,
light or rock-dragon runners. But venture out
on the odd cool day to brave the flight
overhead of kite or wedgetail wing.
Meanwhile the curlews circle, calling each to each;
triumphant to rise another day from a night of dingo
howls and the short sharp bark of prowling foxes.
And I howl here for lost years and worse years yet to come.
The figure lanky in black that strides over wheatfields
to the Needlings; and from Yenyenning Lakes to climb
Quajabin. Like a craning silo, he eyes these swales and hillocks
sensing devastations of monoculture and opportunist greed.
But in another chamber of his heart takes joy of flight
with bright green parrots that shriek in foreign accents
through yorkgum clump and grass tree trunks.
Howl my country, howl to every staring moon
above an overstuffed wheatbin at a local siding.
The leaves of grasses blown across bitumen
and against cyclone fences. I saw the young men
of my generation laughing and driving their cars
away on bush roads with a rifle wrapped
in a blanket in the back for rabbits, foxes or
’roos. Or anything that moved. Or roadsigns
that didn’t move. I saw them laughing with
bottles to their lips and chasing the ton
going into a long slide on gravel before
the victory roll into some stubborn whitegum.
Or even as the bridge railing came through
the windscreen, punching through bone and flesh.
Who were they then? My howling ghosts:
firing roman candles or catherine wheels
on the fifth of November in boy scout
uniforms; sweating in football jerseys
and sandshoes for a grudge match on weedy paddock
next to a weatherboard country hall;
heaving mallee roots up on to the tray
of a farmer’s truck idling over a ploughed field.
And where the wind blows in the sheoaks,
the granite tors take the sun’s heat day after day,
the chiddychiddy still darts here and there
purposefully; and the old wise bobtail skink
creeps through dry grass to moisten scaly lips
at the seral green brink of the gnamma’s
dwindling waters. More peaceful, yes,
I agree with you, that’s the exact ending I sought.
Glen Phillips
SECOND
Nostalgia
The CITY LIMITS sign is pimpled by buckshot
from the barrels of young guns
bored with the usual refusals
every Saturday night.
Houses, with tongues of flaking paint, have lost
the voice of civic pride; picket fence palings
are concertinaed beyond
the redemption
of whitewash & nails.
Hangdog homes give way to unkempt parks
& public buildings.
The Picture Palace boarded up
when VideoEzy rode into town.
Coasting past the courthouse, only open
second Tuesday of the month
(just long enough for a circuit judge
to right each civil wrong),
our car angles nose-to-kerb
in front of the general store.
Three rickety steps
lead from street to porch.
A brace of codgers,
in flannelette & denim,
nod to us as they whittle the hours
with talk of the flood of ’54.
A faded sign in the window spruiks the circus
(complete with elephant & lions)
that passed through town
twelve years ago last week.
Decades of gloom sit heavy
on rolls of checked gingham,
rows of dry-goods barrels,
hand-labelled jars of chutney,
floorboards milled from old-growth forest.
Musty air is spiced with a hint of autumn;
turnips & parsnips
apples & beets
carrots & kerosene.
We each buy a Coke, ask for directions.
Purchase a map – just in case.
We discuss the route that will take us
forward eighty years.
Across the road the bandstand
likely won’t withstand
a decent gust of wind. Tattered pennants
that long-ago gave up
their patriotic colors
flap like lines
of forgotten laundry.
We accelerate past the square
past the verdigris statue
of an obscure explorer
who has long outlasted anyone
that used to know his name.
David Terelinck
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Lazarus
Because the dog keeps him warm
he spoons the lumbering beast
and they smother together
under the flap of a faded donation.
The sleeping bag came compliments
of the Salvation Army,
it’s tainted by slicks of free coffee
spilled from steaming cups,
the obligatory caffeine face-slap,
delivered in holy paper vessels,
placed gently in his hands
like small prayers
by the Seven Eleven girl with braces.
Before urban life,
life on the pavement,
pity was foreign,
indifference extraneous,
but both well in the eyes of strangers now,
deep as Ningaloo reef.
Remember that holiday?
It was a package deal,
the kids with snorkels,
the bottomless green beneath them,
yet here in his alcove,
away from traffic,
Charlie says it’s the street
that’s cold,
like sitting on your own grave
but the sky’s no big deal,
it collapses constantly,
he’s used to it.
Mittens stiff with filth,
he grasps his mutt’s collar
as if it’s all he has left,
vapour pours from man and hound,
a visceral mix,
rain washes chalk words
scribbled on slate,
Can you spare a dollar?
Slowly, slowly they disappear.
Suzi Mezei
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Anna
The day I was born I was all full of teeth
Hands clenched in fists
Sweat raging at her reflection
The doctors tell her I’m no good
A sickness, a slow death she’s invited in.
I was born into the scars she holds under loose clothing
Born into the bruises she carries under soft skin
Born from a history that had her body turn freeway
A mass of twisted steel and gasoline.
She brakes, heavy against the bathroom scales
And we are in traffic
As if every headlight is calling my name, I whisper
“Sometimes you need to be empty to feel full’’
She thanks me.
I hold her as she crumbles over the content label
We memorise the value, count the calories, starve the feelings
We stand at the mirror
Her gaze catching ribs that drive shadows into her small frame
They just beyond her as if trying to escape
The ghost town she has become
She holds her hands over her waste
And she thanks me. I tell her
“If less is more, we have nothing left to lose’’
So we stand barefoot on the median
Dancing like nothing can stop us
She tells me she loves me
The Doctors tell her I’m no good
A manifestation of grief, of trauma
A car barrelling down the wrong side of the freeway
Just waiting to crash and burn.
Fable Goldsmith
COMMENDED
A Thousand Hammers from a Thousand Smiths
They have not yet made the word for you
have they, Love?
Stamped out of the burnished foil, the flicker
as of gold gleaned from a flame,
the crimped edge, the snubbed weal,
the milled round, moiled
as the swirl in an olive’s bushel of oil.
Have they ever scribed the knife of you?
As etched as the blacken of a brand,
the streamer of it, the silk,
the meditation before each stroke,
plush into teardrop and fang print,
the louche lick of a nib,
character, cross flow and phoneme.
They have not begun: they have not
considered the work ahead of them,
the application as the last march
before dawn, the heft
of the yoke,
the pulling and prod, the toil
that turns the gravity of the grain.
They have not begun
and I would plumb it for you, plumb
the blossom on my tongue, the stone
sweating in my mouth.
All promise and plashing, as the
splashing of rain.
Pull the plug up on all that imminent
articulation.
But there is so much to be done to make the word
we haven’t yet thought of
that is the seed that holds the star that burns the dream
that spoke the word for you.
So much to be done,
the first stroke, the new mint,
all that is heavy as the brokerage
of desire,
all that is flowered as the tessellation
of your body.
It is a large word, redolent and textured
as the yawning of a cat, but
they have not yet made the word for you
have they, Love?
Damen O’Brien
COMMENDED
Flute Notes
“I lean back, as the evening comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.”—James Wright
When I hear you whistle, your repeated king parrot
flute notes, I know that you have come to rest
in our feed tree.
When you tinkle like a glass wind chime,
the almost silent strain teased out by the breeze,
you devour the ripe seeds with quiet application,
leave the squabble to cacophonous lorikeets.
As I sit, you open me to my existence.
You launch, lift across the haze of the valley
the screech of steam train brakes, weekend excursion,
the distant pitch of an A380
on its destined descent to Mascot.
When you beat in, wayfarer on the wing,
slow and low motion, I see your meticulous scarlet splash
as you hang, acrobat not quite camouflaged in the massed greenery,
invisibly connected to your mild mate clinging, clinking nearby.
You discard used husks, dense leaves,
as you graze and scatter, polite wastrel.
I observe the variable greens of the lush bush,
the cumulus clouds drifting high beyond you,
you lead me into the shades of light.
When I inhale, concentrated detection,
the floating pollens of late spring
or the moist must of an autumn storm,
you reveal to me the frail balance of nature.
You draw my attention to dank leafiness,
to the rustle of unsettled fronds.
I am aware of the essences transported on
the long-awaited southerly at dusk,
the close of an extended January day.
When I sip the strong ochre tea steaming in the mug,
I watch your race against the light in the drooping foliage;
I taste regrets, you challenge me to consider the years spent
away from the hammock.
When the sun fades from my face,
or the misty drizzle fluffs your feathers
and I reach for a jacket as the daylight pales, I touch,
reflect upon my memories layered through the decades,
yearn for a release from what is not important.
David Atkinson