then, where you visited together and felt less, notwithstanding
bloom of agapanthus and the groves of bottlebrush, because
it was the first time for some and not for you, and not being
the first time for you a kind of conservation-seeming
became the incorporated hamlets of satellite vocations
to serve a Shiva committee ruling.
Shiva says that this many arms moving will not look like
many arms moving, but like a turbine.
Quality of goodness purport. Ruling:
you are now the listless spinning of an introduced maple leaf.
Disinclined to speak during the visits they made to parade the diet
of the new committee, and they kept
rebuilding that red brick church you admired for the
squatters on its lawn who hated grass.
The public phone nearby especially, sometimes a family,
sometimes a protest,
struck with lingo in parasite engraving making liquor pursed
in. Forgetting sovereign statues clung to by the random,
the certain took in careless sure steps,
and now that you are the clung-to, people assume
that they might qualify the grip, but it must cling onwards
because it is now the snorkel in odium and mercury.
You are now vitreous with the sandstorm, better aqueous
among those stalemated. This is because it can in portions
be the solar and the platelet, and the conspiracies
are only fertile with the metamorphic table of elements,
like when a city dilettante, once a rustic, now ancient
but miniature tree,
says that with his acres of mucous he is more concerned
that the sponge hasn’t been emptied.
You delete all lines that refer to a sponge as a person,
except this one, which is an undestined life boat
carried suddenly to the breach of earth.
It thankfully never returns.
You have sent the question of a lifeboat forwards
and away to be again the livid humours of the one
who lives by the sponge, forgives but confirms that
the sponge hasn’t been emptied, and then go back towards
the richly tensile and stern corpus of transference.
I marinate. Grin lingo transit.
It’s better to care that we are stories in transit to become
transit than to believe that the dairy industry has a civic
terminus in a taller food circuit.
Precious grin, intransitive art, transference
like a conference as conference furnace farms. It’s better
to have seen sharply the goodness of recursion.
Assassin surprise, you and I.
We are assassins surprising assassins.
We perfect with the pace.
Kia Groom (b.1986)
Phantasmagoria
Dot by dot, the backs
of eyelids. Draw it slowly,
shape of sentimental spine.
You curve that way.
I breathe the countdown
& the world falls, air by air.
In the white room you cloud
over bedsheets,
unsettled weather, & no electric
light will dare illuminate.
Your skin tastes clean sky,
polished gray. That clarity,
sharp on the tongue.
I snap off the hallway,
let shadows nip like kittens.
You are so still you shimmer.
So still you gutter out.
My ribcage phantoms. The rain
pretends to know your name,
but at the window only nail taps.
I watch your eyelids lightning.
I watch the static gather.
My chest is a wet sheet tattered.
Your shape embossed in the folds &
at my center black mold.
The light cracks, depressed
switch of the thumb-pad &
I see the vacancy,
the pale stretch of my own skin.
You are gone so thoroughly.
I lie in the damp & listen
to my wanting thunder, thunder.
Siobhan Hodge (b.1988)
Apple
Οἶον τὸ γλυκύμαλον ἐρεύθεται ἄκρῳ ἐπ’ ὔσδῳ
ἄκρον ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτῳ· λελάθοντο δὲ μαλοδρόπηες,
οὐ μὰν ἐκλελάθοντ’, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐδύναντ’ ἐπίκεσθαι.
– Sappho, fr. 93
I watch you swing
from branches, flushed
sweet-apple red
in orchard peace,
he glimpses your
late-blooming skin
just out of reach;
not forgotten
only distanced,
he plucks, not I,
but my gaze will
swallow you whole.
References to Introduction
‘Advertising’, The Inquirer and Commercial News, 30 April 1856, p. 2,
Bennett, Bruce and Grono, William, eds, Wide Domain: Western Australian Themes & Images (Sydney: A&R, 1979).
Brandenstein, C.G. von and Thomas, A.P., Taruru: Aboriginal Song Poetry from the Pilbara (Adelaide: Rigby, 1973).
Brockman, Elizabeth Deborah, Poems (Perth: E.S. Wigg, 1915).
Choate, Alec and York Main, Barbara, eds, Summerland: A Western Australian Sesquicentenary Anthology of Poetry and Prose (Crawley: UWAP, 1979).
Clay, Henry Ebenezer, Two and Two: A Story of the Australian Forest by H.E.C., with Minor Poems of Colonial Interest (Perth: 1873).
Cormack, Craig, Memorial to Robert Walker, December 3, 1997:
Dibble, Brian, Grant, Don and Phillips, Glen, eds, Celebrations (Crawley: UWAP, 1988).
Everall, Gabrielle, Dona Juanita and the Love of Boys: a Verse Novel (Perth: Gabrielle Everall, 2007).
Grono, William, ed., Margins: A West Coast Selection 1829-1988 (Fremantle: FACP, 1988).
Haskell, Dennis, and Fraser, Hilary, eds, Wordhord: Contemporary Western Australian Poetry (Fremantle: FACP, 1989).
Hay, John, ‘Literature and Society’, in C.T. Stannage, ed., A New History of Western Australia (Perth: UWAP, 1981).
The Inquirer and Commercial News (Perth, WA: 1855−1901), 6 August 1856, p. 2,
The Inquirer and Commercial News (Perth, WA: 1855−1901), 15 June 1881, p. 2,
Jarrah Leaves, a literary journal (Perth: 1933)
Kinsella, John, Contrary Rhetoric (Fremantle: FACP, 2008).
‘Local and Domestic Intelligence’, Perth Gazette, 6 August 1856.
McCauley, Shane, Trickster (Tasmania: Walleah Press, 2015).
O’Reilly, John Boyle, Songs From the Southern Seas (Robert Bros., Boston, 1873),
Smith, Beverley, ‘Early Western Australian Literature: A Guide to Colonial Life and Goldfields Life’ (MA thesis, Department of History, UWA, 1961).
The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody: Timeline of Events and Aftermath, NITV News:
‘To the Editor’, The Perth Gazette and West Australian Times, 2 May 1873, p. 3:
Walker, Charles, Irene, A Tale, In Two Cantos: And Other Poems (London: Saunders & Otley of Conduit Street, 1853).
Western Australian Writing: An On-line Anthology, ed. John Kinsella:
Zwicky, Fay, ed. Quarry: A Selection of Contemporary Western
Australian Poetry (Fremantle: FACP, 1981).
For a fascinating article on the history of poetry in the goldfields, see
Biographical Notes
‘A’ Identity unknown.
Acaster Identity unknown.
Dick Alderson grew up on a small farm near Perth, WA. His poetry has appeared in various journals including Westerly, Blue Dog, Indigo Journal, Famous Reporter and Australian Poetry Journal. His first collection The Astronomer’s Wife was published by Sunline Press in 2014.
Alan Alexander left teaching in Belfast to move to WA in 1965. His work explores his adoptive home, with common themes of local history, multiculturalism, the inner-city and the beauty of natural landscape.
The singer of ‘Exile’s Lament’ was Baaburgurt (aka Bulyen, and George Elliot), from the Vasse region. Its lyrics were recorded and translated by Daisy Bates and reproduced in her article ‘Poems of Palaeolithic Man’ (The Australasian, 1926). Bates notes: ‘In the Exile’s Lament, an old man who had been taken away from his own ground and placed in strange surroundings showed his love of home in the improvised lament…. The “air” of this song was melancholy in the extreme, and expressed a high degree of passion and feeling, causing the ready tears to fall from the eyes of those who were also exiled from their own ground.’ This song is one of a number of versions in Bates’ original notes from her time at Welshpool reserve, Perth. Of this translation, Clint Bracknell has noted: ‘Bates represents its general meaning but her translations are inconsistent and not strictly literal’
Jeremy Balius was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1979, raised in Gießen, Germany, educated in Los Angeles, California, and resides in Fremantle, WA. He has studied for a Masters of Communications at Griffith University, Queensland.
Peter Bibby is a poet, playwright and film scriptwriter whose radio verse feature Island Weekend was broadcast nationally in 1960. He has been published in various journals and anthologies. Awards include the 1979 Thomas Wardle Prize for Walkaway, with composer Frank Arndt; the Di Cranston Award (2012) for The Tale of Brother Tobias and In Tender Hands aka The Greek Divers of Broome (2013). Poetry awards include: the Tom Collins Prize (1977, 1981) and the Mazzucchelli Love Poetry Prize. He has twice won the Lyndall Hadow/Donald Stuart short story award (1983, 1985). He was editor at Magabala Books from 1987 to 1997.
Michael Youlin Birch was an Australian journalist. He died in a Viet Cong ambush in Saigon.
‘The Boulder Bard’ published several poems in 1899, sometimes under the pseudonym ‘Willy-Willy’. Identity unknown. According to the WA Post Office Directory, a William Williams lived in Hopkins Street, Boulder, in 1899.
John Philip Bourke (‘Bluebush’) was born at Peel River Diggings, NSW, in 1860. He was a schoolteacher, sacked for drinking in 1887, and joined the WA goldrush in 1894. He was a prospector, miner, and poet for the Kalgoorlie Sun. Heavy drinking caused his health to deteriorate in 1913; he died in Boulder, WA, in 1914. A volume of his poems entitled Off the Bluebush (Tyrells, 1915) was published posthumously.
Allan Boyd is based in Perth and has been delivering performance poetry and organising dynamic poetry, arts and music events since 1995. Whilst studying creative writing at Curtin University, he founded the popular Openmouth Poetry sessions at PICA Bar (1996–2001), and published a regular poetzine, Woodwork, as well as organised countless other poetry and music events in WA, NSW and Melbourne. Allan facilitates workshops on performance poetry, experimental writing, zine-making, stencil-making and web-publishing.
Elizabeth Deborah Brockman (née Slade) was born in Edinburgh and migrated with her family to WA when she was a child. She married Edmund R. Brockman in 1852 and lived in the York and Upper Swan region east of Perth. Some of Brockman’s poems appeared in the Western Australian Church of England Magazine. Shortly after her death, a collection of her poems was published by her family (1915).
David Brooks is a poet, novelist and essayist. He taught in the English department at UWA from 1982 until 1986, during which time he served on the editorial board of Westerly and published his first collections of poetry and short fiction. Brooks was the 2015/16 Australia Council Fellow, and is co-editor of Southerly. His latest collection is Open House (UQP, 2015).
Mar Bucknell has presented long cycles of poems as theatrical productions, including Without Weapons (1996), Unawares (2000) and The History of Glass (2008). Another cycle, Stolen Mirrors, is in pre-production.
Andrew Burke was born in Victoria, then moved to WA as a toddler. He was educated there, then hitchhiked to further his education at factories, etc., in Melbourne and Sydney. After work at radio stations in Perth, he went on to be a creative director in advertising agencies, all the time writing stories, plays and poems. In middle age he went into academia, studying and lecturing. Burke has published 12 poetry collections, one novel and a smattering of short stories.
‘C’ identity unknown. This poem was published in 1894.
Caroline Caddy lives on the south coast of WA. Her poetry ranges from Australia to Antarctica to China and is always linked to the human experience. She has published 9 books of poetry and is highly respected, having won major grants and prizes. Her time is spent between writing, growing olives, visiting China, and photographing small towns in the wheatbelt of WA.
Marion May Campbell is a novelist, poet and performance writer, whose most recent books, concerning the relation of language and revolution, are the novella konkretion (Crawley: UWAP 2013) and the critical work Poetic Revolutionaries: Intertextuality and Subversion (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014). She is finalising a poetry manuscript riding parallel and working on a memoir in fragments. Formerly of WA, she has lived and worked since 1999 in Melbourne, where she is currently Associate Professor in Writing and Literature at Deakin University.
Mary Maxine Champion (née Yarran) is a Noongar woman who lives in Kalgoorlie. She was born at Badgaling Mission, which is not far from Quairading town, where she went to school. Her family moved to Yoting, where her father worked for the farmers in that area. She and her siblings worked at land clearing, salt picking, fencing and many other farm jobs to help their dad. Mary studied at Kalgoorlie College, and ran a hostel in Kalgoorlie before her retirement.
Alfred Chandler (‘Spinifex’) arrived in Coolgardie in 1894, as the WA gold rush began. He edited The Goldfields Courier, The Coolgardie Miner and later, The Sunday Times. He resigned from The Sunday Times in 1925 and became a prominent member of the Secession movement. He was an active member of Perth’s literary world. He assisted with a number of publishing ventures, including the literary magazine, The Leeuwin.
Jimmy Chi was born in Broome in 1948 to parents of Aboriginal, Scottish, Chinese and Japanese descent, and embodies his hometown’s cultural diversity. He is best known as the author and principal song writer for the stage musicals Corrugation Road and Bran Nue Dae, both of which toured Australia in the 1990s. Jimmy lives in Broome, WA, and is still writing songs.
Nandi Chinna has lived in Western Australia for 25 years. Her artistic and research interests include lost landscapes, wetlands, and the practice of walking as a creative act. Her latest poetry collection Swamp: Walking the Wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain was published by Fremantle Press in 2014.
Alec Choate was born in Hertfordshire, England in 1915, and arrived in WA in 1922, where he attended Hale School in Perth. He first wrote poetry as a teenager on the farm and when he managed a camp for prospectors in the goldfields. He took this passion with him into army service during the Second World War in the Middle East and South West Pacific. He worked also as a farmer and surveyor. Alec won the inaugural Tom Collins Poetry Prize in 1975. His award-winning poems have been widely anthologised. A Marking of Fire won the 1986 WA Literary Award for poetry. His collected war poems, The Wheels of Hama, won a 1997 WA Premier’s Book Award, and his collections Ashes to Water and My Days were Fauve were both shortlisted in the 2000 and 2002 WA Premier’s Book Awards respectively. He died in 2010.
> Liana Joy Christensen’s family has had the great privilege of living in Whadjuk country for three generations. She grew up in and around Fremantle and holds a deep love for the communities and ecosystems that characterise the south-west region of WA. Christensen was shortlisted for the Newcastle Prize in 2014 with a poem originally written for a Fremantle Festival Event.
Henry Ebenezer Clay arrived in WA at the age of 14 and worked as a government clerk. In 1873, he became apparently the first poet to publish a separate publication of poetry in WA (see Introduction).
Hal Colebatch has five degrees including a PhD in Political Science. He has published about 27 books, including 8 collections of poetry, three biographies, and much more. The collection The Light River (Connor Court Publishing, 2007) won the WA Premier’s prize for poetry. He was awarded an Australian Centenary Medal for services to writing, law, poetry and political commentary, the only award for this combination of activities. He has lived in WA all his life apart from two years in England.
Philip Collier has been tutoring and working in advertising since graduating from WA Institute of Technology (now Curtin University) with an English degree.
Shevaun Cooley is a WA poet, essayist, and climber. Her poetry has been published in Cordite, Island, Poetry Wales, Meanjin, Southerly, and more. Her poem ‘Expeditions with W.G. Sebald’ appeared in The Best Australian Poems 2009, and she has been shortlisted for both the Newcastle Poetry Prize, and the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. Shevaun is an Adjunct Lecturer at Edith Cowan University. Her debut collection of poems is Homing (Giramondo, 2016).
Coppin Dale (Garargeman or Yinbal) was born c.1908. He was founding chairman of the Ieramugadu Group. He recorded his song with Carl von Brandenstein and Tony Thomas, and it appeared in the volume Taruru: Aboriginal Song Poetry from the Pilbara (Rigby, 1973).
Toby Davidson grew up in Cottesloe and has been involved with WA poetry since 1995. Presently a senior lecturer at Macquarie University, his books are Francis Webb: Collected Poems (as editor; UWAP, 2011), his debut poetry collection Beast Language (Five Islands Press, 2012) and a critical study Christian Mysticism and Australian Poetry (Cambria Press, 2013). In 2015 he launched wordsinplace.net, a digital map of Australian literary commemoration.
The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry Page 24
