Helen Hagemann

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Clip of the Day - A Wild Experience

Poem for the Day - Between Wheat Fields : a cinquain

Between wheat fields

river,
rich, belly-up,
dunks a wild duck at noon,
and tree shadows dissipate the
dive ring

Poem for the Day - A Perfect Perch : a cinquain

A Perfect Perch

July

with faint, bush sounds

like leaves crisping below,

a heron sits in winter's sun

seduced.

Two Poems published in French/English in mg2_68: Indian Ocean Voices

Just published by mgversion2 at ISSUU, Calaméo and Lulu.com. You can purchase mgv2_68: Indian Ocean Voices @ LULU
There are photographs and an article on Western Australia by moi. Page 103.
Here's the beginnings of "Paperbark Owl & No-Ghost Mountain" in French - ooh la la, mais oui, merci beaucoup to Walter Ruhlmann.

La chouette du paperbark - Paperbark Owl

Ta vision n'est qu'un ciel du soir cramoisi
après une journée de sommeil dans le creux d'un banksia des marais
Paisible obserateur sur fond de lune,
tu tournes la tête: un cadran cyclopéen.

----
Pas une montagne fantôme - No-Ghost Mountain

Blackwall, tu ne's plus un fantôme
mais un souvenir vert de jeunesse.
Montagne rusée! Quelle surprise.
Tu t'es cachée des promoteurs,
une seule route où des pneus brûlent passe à ta base.

Par écrit: poetry of the feminine - e-book by Helen Hagemann

Open publication - Free publishing - More from Evangelyne

Latest Westerly Journal 56.1 out now!

This issue is officially announced on Westerly's website. The cover is impressive - once again - so is the list of contributors. I find myself published alongside so many "ladies", poets I know, have met or been on poetry webs with. Congrats to Annamaria, Caitlin, Renee and Janet! Check out the latest journal here...

Poem for the Day - from the Mawson Poems

The Aurora

A Summer Visit to Caroline Cove
December 1911

Caroline Cove, and away from the strong westerly’s, the Aurora
anchored its length and breadth in a plateau-like interior. In a channel
no more than eighty yards wide, Captain Davis knew what to focus on.
He was a man who knew the reefs from earlier days. Although
anchorage quickly changes identity, we were circumspect, eager to
rendezvous with what we’d heard. We rowed towards the entrance,
leaving the ship’s masts, sails drawn, skeletal. The landscape painted
us in, thick tussock-grass, steep hillsides, rocky shores and a crowded
sunlight swirling with sea-birds. The land was a treasure trove of
primitive nature, rookeries of eggs, nests of giant petrels and
thousands of penguins. In mild weather we were a band of schoolboys
on excursion. Royal penguins called to us as slaves, they
pecked our legs, chattered at the highest pitch, and as if we were
marched to court, we followed their whirring flippers, their crested
eyebrows pointing us south. Massed in uniforms of long golden
feathers they filed into rank, lead us away in haste, not by
danger from waves, but with their own desire not to swim.

Clip of the Day: Russian Newsreader in Fits of Laughter

Acknowledgement: A big thank you to Carol Novak of Madhatter's Review http://www.madhattersreview.com/
http://carolnovack.blogspot.com/

Australian Poetry Library

Australian Poetry Library
A great resource for poets, students, teachers. Needs filling in some.
http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/ Poetry Library
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Andrew Burke at High Spirits

Helen Hagemann's new e-book "The Joyous Lake"

Open publication - Free publishing at ISSUU - More Australian

You can view my new e-book at
http://members.iinet.net.au/~helen.hagemann

and also at

http://issuu.com/evangelyne/docs/par_ecrit/

Poem for the Day - Good Wine is a Familiar Creature

Good Wine is a Familiar Creature

When the sun goes down we meet

for an evening meal.

We bring three bottles of wine, one champagne

their depth soon to be released absolutely

enjoyed on the tongue

Unsure of which

succulent dish arrives first,

we pop the champagne, froth in the glass

bringing us back to life.

Curried chicken with rice has a status of its own

strikingly familiar

with the one at home.

The waitress brings the pork, then the fish. Something

spills on the table as minute as a bead.

It rolls under the carousel

and is gone.

White wine is the fruity kick of glass.

Three of us are very drunk.

The fourth, who drives us home, who doesn’t drink,

enjoys the evening just the same

and marbles

the glazed eye of a fish

through the wet space

of the coffee table

spilled with roiled droplets…

Poem for the Day - a haiku

at the Perth airport
a comfortable-trouser family
a row of tracky dacks

Acknowledgements to Joanna Preston for her prompt on "comfortable trousers".
http://jopre.wordpress.com/

Happy Mother's Day to all those mothers in control!

Poem for the Day - The Ship inside the Cavern

A glimpse of the Aurora
from within the cavern in the wall of the shelf-ice
of the Mertz Glacier Tongue,
Commonwealth Bay, Adelie Land,
Australasian Antarctic Expedition,
December 1913. Photo by Frank Hurley.

The Ship inside the Cavern

The Aurora is caught
in a clamped iced year,
an amphitheatre of walls,
a large cave that puddles
each time winter leaves.
The great opening of ice
looks out as if the ship
has been emptied into the sea.
A chiaroscuro of light and dark
shadows and dims the bridge,
the sail-less masts, the hull
buoyant above the water-line.
Accompanied by great clumps
of ice there is a scent of brine,
damp boots in circuitry
from anchorage to sled.
Beyond, distance looms like shallow
breath. Mawson and Hurley
catching up with the shuffle
of Adélie penguins.

Poetic Graphic for the Day

Poem for the Day - Penguins in Frost

Penguins in Frost

Ice cased Adelie penguins
after a blizzard at Cape Denison
photo by Frank Hurley,
National Library of Australia.

White glossed, unbearably chilled
these penguins are piqued in glare

nothing moves except shadows
the music of the ice as it drips on

fur and face. The north wind
sings, unbuttons their coats.

Their statuesque flippers defrost
as water leaks from their stance.

These pensive birds are used to the
frost, snow, the sudden flood

of blizzards. Look! flakes shimmy
and the buried one is no longer

a totem pole and moves ahead
from a stiff wall of ice.

Poem for the Day - Bon Voyage

Bon Voyage

The day we buried grandma
the day of five funerals

a day when fun hid itself
behind the trees

with the bees

yes, that day of dark cloud,
mounds and rounds

of soft grey earth
I wanted to say to the lowering,

to the box in the ground
to the white lilies going down

Where Gran? Where to now?

Poetic Graphic for the Day

Poem for the Day - The Green Wall

The Green Wall

From my window
I see a green wall.
A quiet space with only the sounds
of shoes passing by.
In Sendai, one thousand two hundred
people have lost their shoes.
They float by windows
like tiny boats sailing
on a splintered sea.

In the time I've been visiting
this grove
I've never noticed
the green wall
never known the faces
of the shoes
passing by.

I've never known so many people
losing their shoes
in one day's
drowning holocaust.

So many taken in a quake of 8.9

Poem for the Day - Sand Dunes

Sand Dunes

Close to the ocean
lying on a slope
we hugged towels into sand.
At the back, in the holiday house we rented,
my mother distributed fairy bread.
A tiny pebbled meal.
On the beach, we ran green
with salt and spray.
Half way up the dunes
under a sackful of clouds
we bombed our candied mouths
into the dune’s caress. Three kids stomping
to the tune of the grand old Duke of York
marched to the top of the hill.
We were neither up, nor down. Myself, and my
brother aged nine, his arm pulling the day
from my legs; pushed me forward to tumble
like Spinifex. I rolled with the custom,
down into the loft of a thousand grains,
sand in my hair and teeth.
My cousin stayed up there,
crumpling her skin into laughter.
Until she too was pushed, headlong
into the bug-eyed stare
of olive lovers.
We ran home,
gritty with shell-flint,
our bright grins, ready to spill.