The Best Australian Poems 2011
Page 13
a concept defended by Erasmus of Rotterdam
in De Libero Arbitrio
who reasoned, to deny this
would make God responsible
for the sins of the world, which is
clearly inconsistent with his righteousness.
The finest minds of their age unquestioning
in their belief that God is the universal moral force
and man his moral creation,
yet reaching conclusions in contradiction.
How pleasing it was to realise
this great sunken Reformation controversy
had re-surfaced in my pool.
There remains, however, the question of the shark.
The Stations of the Stairs
Warrick Wynne
Beneath the new stairs
that rise from the beach,
the shallow cries or calls of children
and the floating lovers,
the old remain blurred
and bowed, instantly acquiring
an archaeological air.
These constructions
rise in stages like Apollo
with platforms for viewing
or resting, the salt
prickling at your back
arriving at last at a higher
if less sanctified place.
A Line from Paracelsus
Mark Young
They exchanged few
words. He: black sand,
sea turtles, salt. Moist
shady areas. She: the
tree potentially contains
the pear. Different
combinations of lights
informed the etiquette.
The sign outside is
small, in English & He-
brew. Closed Saturdays.
It’s an observant shop.
Publication Details
Robert Adamson’s ‘The Sibyl’s Avenue’ appeared in the Age, 21 August 2010.
Ali Alizadeh’s ‘Public Mourning’ appeared in the Age, 20 November 2010.
Chris Andrews’s ‘Function Centre’ appeared in Blast 12, Summer 2010.
Ken Bolton’s ‘The Funnies’ appeared in Steamer, August 2011.
Ken Bolton and John Jenkins’s ‘Volatile Condensate’ will appear in their collection Lucky For Some (Little Esther Books, 2011).
Kevin Brophy’s ‘The Sublime’ appeared in Australian Book Review, No. 332, June 2011.
Pam Brown’s ‘In my phone’ appeared as the title poem in the pamphlet ‘In my phone’, Wagtail 111, June 2011.
Joanne Burns’s ‘tick’ appeared in the Age, 23 October 2010.
Grant Caldwell’s ‘the lights are on’ appeared in the Age, 4 September 2010; and his collection glass clouds (Five Island Press, 2010).
John Carey’s ‘on empty’ appeared in Quadrant, July–August 2010.
Bonny Cassidy’s ‘Magma’ will appear in Young Poets: An Australian Anthology (John Leonard Press, 2011).
Julie Chevalier’s ‘ms marbig No. 26 16’ will appear in her collection linen tough as history (Puncher & Wattman, 2011).
Justin Clemens’s ‘We begin building that which cannot collapse because it will have to have been built as if it had already fallen’ appeared in his chapbook Me ’n’ me trumpet (Vagabond, 2011).
Sue Clennell’s ‘Picasso’ will appear in Indigo, Summer 2011.
Jennifer Compton’s ‘Four Lines by Ezra Pound’ appeared in Quadrant, September 2011.
Michael Crane’s ‘Metamorphosis’ appeared in Quadrant, June 2011.
Bruce Dawe’s ‘Mini-series’ appeared in the Weekend Australian Review, 5 March 2011.
Suzanne Edgar’s ‘Homage to Mapplethorpe’ will appear in Antipodes, December 2011.
Brook Emery’s ‘You know the way’ was published, in an earlier form, as part of the Blake Poetry Prize shortlist. (www.blakeprize.com.au)
Kate Fagan’s ‘Chrome Arrow’ will appear in ‘Fifty-one Contemporary Poets from Australia’, Jacket2 (online journal), October 2011. The source texts for ‘Chrome Arrow’ are Pam Brown, ‘Laminex Radio’, ‘Darkenings’, ‘Evening’, ‘Blue Again’, ‘Miracles’, ‘Out and About’, ‘Blues in A’, ‘About a Death’, ‘Every American Wins a Prize’, ‘Augury’, ‘City Fringe’, ‘Thread Drift’, ‘Fall to Float’ and ‘Worldly Goods’; Alice Notley, ‘It Would’, ‘Poem (“Why do I want to tell it”)’, ‘Iphigenia’, ‘Mid-80’s’, ‘Beginning with a stain, as the Universe did perhaps’, ‘At Night the States’, ‘Little Egypt’ and ‘How Spring Comes’; Emily Dickinson, Poems 1268, 321, 318 & 754; and Patti Smith, ‘Witt’, ‘Translators (tr.)’, ‘Precious Little’, ‘Notice 2’, ‘Music (A Woman)’ and ‘The Pedestal’.
Diane Fahey’s ‘Terns’ appeared in the Canberra Times, 26 February 2011.
Liam Ferney’s ‘Gli Ultimi Zombi’ appeared in the Age, 26 March 2011.
Toby Fitch’s ‘Fluff’ appeared on The Red Room Company, 2011. (www.redroomcompany.org)
Andrew Galan’s ‘The Suns Fall at Zero’ appeared in The Delinquent (United Kingdom), Issue 14, April 2011.
Geoff Goodfellow’s ‘An Uncertain Future’ appeared in his collection Waltzing with Jack Dancer (Wakefield Press, 2011).
Lisa Gorton’s ‘Dreams and Artefacts’ appeared in Australian Book Review, No. 329, March 2011.
Robert Gray’s ‘Flying Foxes’ appeared in: That’s it, for now, HEAT 24 new series, ed. Ivor Indyk (Giramondo, 2011).
Jennifer Harrison’s ‘Busker and Chihuahua, Chapel Street’ appeared in the Age, 2 October 2010; and in her collection Colombine: New and Selected Poems (Black Pepper, 2010).
Jodie Hollander’s ‘The Humane Society’ appeared in Under the Radar, January 2011.
Duncan Hose’s ‘The Truffle Hunters’ appeared in One Under Bacchus (Inken Publisch, 2011).
D.J. Huppatz’s ‘FUTURE HAPPY BUDDHA vs Fake Kenny Rogers head’ appeared in VLAK – Contemporary poetics and the arts, No. 2, 2011.
Mark William Jackson’s ‘The Frequency of God’ appeared in Windmills, Fifth Edition, November 2010.
Evan Jones’s ‘Send in the Clowns’ appeared in the Age, 23 April 2011.
Jill Jones’s ‘Break on Through’ appeared in The Diamond and the Thief, June 2011.
Paul Kane’s ‘Triangulating the Tasman’ appeared in All Together Now: A Digital Bridge for Auckland and Sydney, New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre, 2010.
Cate Kennedy’s ‘Temporality’ appeared in her collection The Taste of River Water (Scribe, 2011).
Richard King’s ‘Expat’ appeared in the Weekend Australian Review, 11 September 2010.
Samuel Langer’s ‘into the index’ appeared in Otoliths 21, 1 May 2011.
Geoffrey Lehmann’s ‘Unlicensed (from Spring Forest)’ appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December 2010.
Kate Lilley’s ‘Crush’ appeared in the Sun-Herald, 12 June 2011.
Astrid Lorange’s ‘Lovetypes’ appeared in her collection Eating and Speaking (Tea Party Republicans Press, 2011).
Anthony Lynch’s ‘Sonnet’ appeared in the Age, 2 July 2011.
David McCooey’s ‘(Weldon Kees)’ appeared under a different title in the chapbook Graphic, 2010; and in the anthology Outside (Salt Publishing, 2011).
Jennifer Maiden’s ‘A Great Education’ appeared in the Age, 15 January 2011.
John Miles’s ‘Snake Lady’ appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, 26 November 2010.
Peter Minter’s ‘Claustrophilic Lavallière’ appeared in All Together Now: A Digital Bridge for Auckland and Sydney, New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre. The quote at the head of the poem is from the poem ‘Thoughts of a Young Girl’ by John Ashbery (T
he Tennis Court Oath, Wesleyan University Press, 1962) and is used with permission.
Les Murray’s ‘Going to the City, Karachi 2010’ appeared in The Chimaera, Issue 8, July 2011.
Nguyen Tien Hoang’s ‘Thursday April 21. Canberra’ appeared in the Age, 23 July 2011.
Jal Nicholl’s ‘Values Meeting’ appeared in the Age, 18 September 2010.
Mark O’Flynn’s ‘Our Lady of Coogee’ appeared in Page Seventeen, Issue 8, November 2010.
Paul O’Loughlin’s ‘Reconfigured’ appeared in Zinewest, October 2010.
Ouyang Yu’s ‘I love’ appeared in Landfall (New Zealand), No. 221, 2011.
Louise Oxley’s ‘The Red Gurnard’ appeared in the Canberra Times, 4 June 2011.
Geoff Page’s ‘A Manual of Style’ appeared in Extempore, November 2010; and his collection A Sudden Sentence in the Air: Jazz Poems by Geoff Page (extempore, 2011).
Eddie Paterson’s ‘This is the only place’ will appear in Cordite as a ‘mixtape’, December 2011.
Felicity Plunkett’s ‘Cyclone Plotting’ appeared in VLAK – Contemporary poetics and the arts, No. 2, 2011.
Claire Potter’s ‘Misreading’ appeared in Jacket 40, 2010.
David Prater’s ‘Cute’ appeared in Blackbox Manifold, Issue 6, March 2011.
Peter Rose’s ‘Cicerone’ appeared in the Age, 2 April 2011.
Penni Russon’s ‘Quote’ appeared on her blog Eglantine’s Cake, 2011. (www.eglantinescake.blogspot.com)
Gig Ryan’s ‘Daphnis and Chloe’ appeared in her collection New and Selected Poems (Giramondo, 2011).
Andrew Sant’s ‘Mr Habitat Delivers a Speech to the Lapidarists’ appeared in the Age, 12 February 2011.
Jaya Savige’s ‘January’ appeared in Jacket2, September 2011.
Thomas Shapcott’s ‘Georges Perec in Brisbane’ appeared in the Weekend Australian, 14 August 2010.
Michael Sharkey’s ‘Heroes of Australia’ appeared in Quadrant, March 2011.
Alex Skovron’s ‘Humility’ appeared in Australian Book Review, No. 329, March 2011.
Melinda Smith’s ‘Murder at the Poetry Conference’ appeared in the Canberra Times, 26 February 2011.
Peter Steele’s ‘The Knowledge’ appeared in his collection The Gossip and the Wine (John Leonard Press, 2010).
Amanda Stewart’s ‘Bondi rock pool. 1963.’ was performed at the Australian Museum, Sydney, for the Sydney Consortium’s ‘Biodiversity and the Arts’ event, 11 September 2010; and it will appear in The Noise of Exchange, Association of Stories in Macao, China, ASM Poetry, December 2011.
Ann Vickery’s ‘Adventure at Sadies’ appeared in Rabbit 1, July 2011.
Corey Wakeling’s ‘View’ appeared in the Age, 4 December 2010.
Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s ‘The Piano Inkpot’ appeared in the Age, 5 February 2011.
Warrick Wynne’s ‘The Stations of the Stairs’ appeared in Eureka Street, Vol. 21, No. 14, July 2011.
Mark Young’s ‘A line from Paracelsus’ appeared in E·ratio 14, January 2011.
Notes on Contributors
The Editor
John Tranter is the author of more than twenty books. His 2006 poetry collection Urban Myths: 210 Poems: New and Selected won multiple awards, including the Victorian, NSW and South Australian Premiers’ Prizes. His latest book, Starlight: 150 Poems, in 2011 won the Age Book of the Year Award for Poetry and the Queensland Premier’s Prize. (johntranter.com)
Poets
Robert Adamson is the author of many poetry volumes including The Golden Bird (Black Inc., 2008; C.J. Dennis Prize for Poetry 2009), and the editor of The Best Australian Poems 2009 and 2010. In 1995 he received the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry.
Ali Alizadeh’s books include Ashes in the Air (UQP, 2011), Evental (Vagabond Press, 2011) and Iran: My Grandfather (Transit Lounge Publishing, 2010). He lives in Melbourne and teaches at Deakin University.
Richard James Allen is the author or editor of nine books. His work has been adapted for screen and has appeared widely in print and online. Dr Allen is an honorary associate to the University of Technology, Sydney in the creative practices area.
Chris Andrews has published a book of poems (Cut Lunch, Ginninderra Press, 2002) and translated books of fiction by Latin American authors, including César Aira’s Ghosts. He teaches at the University of Western Sydney.
Jude Aquilina is an Adelaide Hills writer whose latest poetry collection, WomanSpeak (Wakefield Press, 2009), was co-written with Louise Nicholas. She works at the SA Writers’ Centre, teaches creative writing at the Adelaide College of the Arts and is Chair of Adelaide PEN.
Louis Armand lives in Prague. His recent books include a collection of poetry, Letters from Ausland (Vagabond Press, 2011) and a novel Clair Obscur (Equus, 2011). He is an editor of VLAK magazine.
Peter Bakowski’s most recent poetry collection, Beneath Our Armour (Hunter Publishers, 2009), is comprised entirely of portrait poems of real and imagined people and is informed by two funded residencies in China.
Ken Bolton was born in Sydney in 1949. He works at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide and edits Little Esther Books. A Whistled Bit Of Bop (Vagabond Press, 2010) and Sly Mongoose (Puncher & Wattman, 2011) are recent collections.
Neil Boyack’s stories and poems have been published in the collections Black, Snakeskin-Vanilla, See Through and Transactions. Neil is the creator and director of the Newstead Short Story Tattoo. (neilboyack.com)
Peter Boyle has published five books of poetry and translated three books of French and Spanish poetry. His most recent book, Apocrypha (Vagabond Press, 2009), won the Queensland Premier’s Prize and the Arts ACT Judith Wright Prize and was shortlisted for the Australian Literary Society’s Gold Medal.
Kevin Brophy teaches creative writing at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of eleven books, including four books of poetry. His latest poetry book is Mr Wittgenstein’s Lion (Five Islands Press, 2007). He is patron of the Melbourne Poets Union and former editor of Going Down Swinging.
Pam Brown has published many books and chapbooks, and an ebook called The meh of z z z z. Her most recent title is Authentic Local (papertiger media, 2010). She lives in Alexandria, Sydney. (www.thedeletions.blogspot.com)
Joanne Burns is a Sydney poet. Her most recent book is amphora (Giramondo, 2011). She is currently working on a new collection, brush.
Michelle Cahill is a Goan-Anglo-Indian migrant writer who lives in Sydney. Her collections of poetry include Vishvarüpa (Five Islands Press, 2011), shortlisted for the 2011 Alec Bolton Prize. She received the 2010 Val Vallis Award and the Inverawe Nature Poetry Prize (minor).
Grant Caldwell’s latest collection of poetry is glass clouds (Five Islands Press, 2010). He is a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Melbourne.
John Carey is a Sydney poet, ex-teacher of French and Latin, and a former part-time actor. He has been published in Meanjin, Quadrant and Southerly, among others. His latest poetry collection is The Old Humanists (Puncher & Wattmann, 2008).
Bonny Cassidy is a Melbourne-based poet and writer. Her most recent collection is Certain Fathoms (Puncher & Wattmann, 2011). Bonny is currently undertaking the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship for poetry.
Julie Chevalier lives in Sydney. Two books of her poetry are forthcoming from Puncher & Wattman: linen tough as history, and Darger: his girls. A collection of short stories, Permission to Lie, was published by Spineless Wonders in 2011.
Justin Clemens’s books of poetry include Me ’n’ me trumpet (Vagabond Press, 2011). His latest book is a collection of art criticism, Minimal Domination (Surpllus, 2011); he is also co-editor of The Jacqueline Rose Reader (Duke, 2011) with Ben Naparstek. He teaches at the University of Melbourne.
Sue Clennel
l is the author of The Ink Drinkers and has recently released a poetry CD ‘The Van Gogh Cafe’. She was placed in the 2006 and 2007 Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize.
Jennifer Compton was born in New Zealand and now lives in Melbourne. Her book of poetry – This City (Otago University Press, 2011) – won the 2010 Kathleen Grattan Award in New Zealand. Her new play – The Third Age – was recently shortlisted for the Adam New Zealand Play Award.
Michael Crane’s poetry collections include A Dog Called Yesterday – Selected Poems and Prose (Ninderry Press, 2003) and a chapbook, Poems from the 29th Floor (Picaro Press, 2007). He runs the Poetry Idol series at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival and publishes the Paradise Anthology.