I’ve got a three new poems in the August issue of Live Encounters, this was a special edition called A Dawn Chorus of Australian Poetry – edited by Audrey Molloy. It’s an incredible issue featuring poets like Judith Beveridge, Damen O’Brien, Tricia Dearborn, Judith Nangala Crispin, Mona Zahra Attamimi, Dimitra Harvey, Alison Gorman, Daragh Byrne, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Dimitra Harvey and I could go on, there are plenty more to mention!
Audrey has done a magnificent job curating the issue. Here’s what she had to say in the editorial: What I’ve tried to do is showcase just how rich the poetry scene is in Australia – rich in technique and subject matter, in voice and style, in aesthetic and perspective. I’ve selected a small but by no means narrow sample of this richness. There are easily another thirty names I could have added. I invited poets whose work has moved me, either on the page – in collections, journals and anthologies – or, when read aloud in the small back rooms of the vibrant local poetry scene. Here are poets just starting out on their journey; to quote a line from C.P. Cavafy’s ‘Ithaca’, Hope your road is a long one. [i] Here also are poets at the height of their considerable powers. And here is everything in between.
I manage to squeeze into the issue beside Judith Beveridge – which makes me pretty happy because she’s one of the most amazing poetry mentors I’ve ever had.
My three pieces are slightly otherworldly investigations of small town country life, people living and leaving small towns. I’ve put together a few of these types of poems over the years, these were new pieces I was playing with after a recent trip to see my grandmother.
My three poems are below, but really recommend have a look at the whole issue, there are some wonderful poems, Judith Nangala Crispin’s The Dingo Fence is particularly fantastic!
Dream of bitter seasons – Rico Craig
Bark with the dogs, help me
herd sheep toward the fence line. They were better
days, seasons that disappeared like lies flooding
for a fissure. Our arms were outspread, our noises
ancestral. We worked a flock through dust,
toward the abstraction
a gate submits to the mind.
I have woken from this dream before,
at different points, with sheep shorn to skin,
with the onset of metal ramps,
a truck in idle threat, the sharp tang of burnt
wool. Times when the air is alight
with a fury of buzzing flies, men speaking
in numbers over braying flesh.
On other nights the boat is pulling
away from shore, an industrial prison,
ballast of blood, hoofed life afloat
on salt water. In the dream we watch
what we know leave a wake,
grey water folding away from itself.
Leaving a summer – Rico Craig
a curse to the air / bodies surrounded by drouth / empty sky / doom’s eucalyptus smoulder /
memories provoke fire / she’s planning to bury her passport in a mound of new leaves / this is how
people relinquish their only home /
the brown roadside
helter-skelter beneath their feet
smoke
dull orange light
the laughter of planes leaving a small airport
rising from the earth
her father turning the ignition and pulling away
her plane lifting
each day she will rise into an eclipse / light smoked into new colours / she will breathe the burning
earth / the smoke will enter ears / nose / mouth / she will drift / until she becomes transparent / and
longer taints air / with the scent of what they have been /
Cinder in our chests – Rico Craig
If we are friends I have collapsed
in the crook of your arm,
we have crossed continents together,
you are free to filch coins
from my pockets, we have mocked
clouds as they wail against the dawn.
If we are friends every time we meet
we play
a game of three objects
paper
scissors
rock.
It will take us three tries
to break a tie. Even at the end
we will be creatures flashing hands
at each other — fist, flat, fork —
cinder in our chests.
We will clutch like newborns
blind to everything
the next day threatens to teach us.
If we are friends there will be trains
waiting in many cities. And, even strangers
will be able to see
I bear the vigour of your name
chiseled in code
on every heartbeat.
And, if you enjoyed these…just a reminder, my latest collection Nekhau is available through Recent Work Press.
Enjoy!
Rico Craig 