Helen Hagemann

Monday, May 30, 2011

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.

Poetic Graphic for the Day - Poetry Slam

Poem for the Day - The Monroes

The Monroes

Back in the 50s I grew up
with the Monroes.
There were so many children
in the family you lost count.

I remember Billy, the eldest,
Bobby, Jane and Susy, then there were
two sets of twins. Later, more

babies, a boy, a girl, another girl
as in Cheaper by the Dozen.
Most of all, I remember Rex,
and their bare feet swinging

on the front gate. How different
they were in glamour to the buxom
lady in Some Like it Hot.

They didn't own shoes. During summer
their dresses holed, and their denim
overalls frayed and fringed
like water over sea anemones.

They hardly said a word. They didn't
laugh, or smile, or cry, but performed
tricks for us kids and the neighbours.

After several handstands, bodies piled
high like a pyramid they gobbled fairy
bread, or our grandmother's hot scones
bubbly hot from the oven.

Next, it was Rex who called for their
Saturday lunch. Back on all fours
and with a cue from the boys,

the dog would howl the rising octaves
of a Tarzan call. It was more a wild
jungle call, like the big man
pounding his chest amongst the vines,

and more memorable than Marilyn's
rippled skirt on a vent. We criticized
those scrawny, unkempt kids and never
did see the poverty above the laughter.

Ways to the Metaphor

Back in 2010, I conducted a workshop called "Ways to the Metaphor". I used a model by Patrick Lane, a Canadian Poet, (partner to Lorna Crozier).

The Metaphor Model by Patrick Lane

You want you to compare each member of your family. If you have five brothers and sisters of course that is too many, but make a choice & stick to your smaller family of mother, father and at least two siblings. eg.

My oldest brother is a wasp, cleaning his body on a bulrush above the pond’s still water. He is almost ready to take flight.

My sister is a small white stone in the clay pot by the kitchen fire. She is so still only the dark can find her.

My youngest brother is the first leaf on the wisteria vine in spring. Already he is thinking of winter the yellow he will become before he falls.

My father is the window box in winter. Everything is waiting for the first flowers to bloom in his wide hands, but where are the seeds, where are the spring rains?

Eventually you will have a poem, especially when you answer, in lines, what they think of you! Finally you write your own personal reply.

More to come...

Metaphors!

Poem for the Day - One Size Fits All

One Size Fits All

You know when you bring
your garment home
it isn't going to fit.
It fits your youngest daughter
of which you have one.
You take it back to the store.
Ask for a blouse, extra large.
They have one, in grey.
You want to write to China.
Tell them your measurements,
that you have never bathed
in the Yangtze, worked in
the paddy fields or
owned a rickshaw.