Anyway this was my first foray into Slam, and was a very enjoyable night seeing fellow Beeble Poets Cameron Hughes and Vuong Pham take out the quinella…Vuong proving that there IS a place also for haiku sequences at a Slam event!

all of this is important
For Chris

it is like the tiny way summer penetrates the frangipani
tree, a bundle of thumbs waiting behind my front fence

or the slow sound of a crow in the weight of mid morning
an arrowhead launch through the city’s heat blister

it is like the way changeling night comes of age, when peak
hour has crawled like a beaten dog into honeycomb shadow

or the way the tinfoil backed river winds through the places
we’ve mapped, intimacy clicking into the same viewfinder

it is like the way emptiness holds up the sky and how
the holes we look through are burned by the same stars

all of this is important, this day and all of its parts

not because it is important
but because you are not here

Vanessa Page, 2011

All photos courtesy of the Ipswich City Council

All the poems are now up at the following site:
http://www.ipswichpoetryfeast.com.au/2011/winners.htm

How wonderful also to see such a strong showing from my fellow City of Ipswich poets Brett Dionysius and Vuong Pham who took home a share of the prizes. Please check out their poems – in particular Brett’s dense and brilliant sequence ‘Heartland’ and Vuong’s beautiful shape poem ‘Petrichor’.

And now, the poems…

Second Prize
Final
by Vanessa Page
Rosewood, Qld

Coming over the seven mile bridge
the Bremer River was still kissing the road,
the contents of its belly hung like scarecrow
detritus, out on the fence posts to dry

You’d lain in state like a crumpled love note
for bleached hours after the waters receded
deep in a row of quiescent post-wars,
ants working round you like a bicycle chain

When I arrived there, you were softened
by the end of day’s orange-sherbet glow
your gaping nightgown flannel like a husk
and your hair as sudden as a final wing-beat

In the kitchen, birthright was already placing
its claim on your crystal set, cutting words
with bee-sting mouths and shaking out the
sum of you like an embroidered sampler

I pick up your hand like a beaten stone
and even now, broken and gone, you fix all this.

Judges Report:
2nd Place: Final by Vanessa Page
Final is a poem of aching loss. The opening images create a haunting atmosphere, which is skillfully maintained throughout the poem. As we reach the Seven Mile Bridge, the Bremer is ‘kissing the road, the contents of its belly hung like scarecrow detritus’. This image of a scarecrow’s spilled belly, prepares us for the image of the body that lies ‘like a crumpled love note’ inside its post-war home; ‘hair as sudden as a final wingbeat’; but nothing can prepare us for the ‘bee-sting mouths’ squabbling over crystal sets and other human possessions. It is an image that struck a chord with me on first reading and continues to startle. With grace, the poet delivers a final couplet that moves us on from these ‘cutting words’ of greed, taking the hand of their lost loved one in a healing gesture.

Open Age Winner

Limestone Park
by Vanessa Page
Rosewood, Qld

Night is pulling close, one lungful at a time
so cold and so clear, at the top of Limestone Park

a fist of glow worm streets show themselves to
June’s dead sherbet sky, and the gloaming answers

you can cut perfect words from this looking glass sheet
one hand cupping the world and another lost in stillness

as transitions are made on porches all over the city
and evening is an avalanche of opened doors and ears

up here, floodlights have turned the trees into spectators
over children scooping and tumbling like confetti flakes

all around, endings and beginnings are being marked
out in tail light parentheses and keyless exits

as darkness falls, thick and familiar
over a thousand tin-lidded anthologies

Highly Commended

Chrysalid
by Vanessa Page
Rosewood, Qld

This day is made for breaking.

I lie awake in myopic fug. Outside
my window, the agapanthus heads
are inviting deconstruction.

There are only incidental details left.

I inhabit the shadows like silk-sheen,
resting my fingertips on your objects.

Your pieces have grown into monuments.

There’s no fix for this.
No interventional gestalt. I feed each
hour by hand to a paper tiger.

I do not recognise the shape a week makes.

This day is made for breaking.

When I imagine my return, it will be by
increment. A thing of weight, measured out.

I’ll pour a litre of milk down the sink,
slide a curtain open
and the sky will shatter.

Judges Report:
Highly Commended: Chrysalid by Vanessa Page
On a day ‘made for breaking’, agapanthus heads invite destruction, milk is poured down the sink and the sky shatters as curtains are slid open. There is a sharp edge to this poem; many of the images cutting with the clarity of a diamond.

Lovers

Tonight I’m watching the
pregnant moon slow-dance
with a purple caped sky, and

thinking about how Neil Young
could fold love and desire
in the same corner of the night

When you come to me, it’s late
winter is talking in glass vowels
and the world is a fixed element

Tonight, I’ll love you in fiction
with hands to realise your face, and
a mouth to press you with diamonds

and the moon will hang like a
beautiful and radiant witness
over these limbs and breathless words

© Vanessa Page 2011

Beeble Poets is a new, irregular, bi-monthly open mic gig at Tirra Lirra, Ipswich’s sassiest coffee emporium. Poets, wordsmiths, friends and all Ipswichians and non-Ipswichians alike are welcome to come and read a few poems in and around the vocal musings of Miss Gertrude. No entry fee, lots of good words dipped in coffee.

You know you want to…

Where: Tirra Lirra Cafe, Bell St Ipswich
When: Sunday October 9 from 2pm
Entry: Free