Thoroughly enjoyed being part of Poetry Author Month at Avid Reader. Was very honoured to be asked onto the bill. It was a wonderful Thursday night full of words courtesy of my fellow poets – Jonathan Hadwen, Fern Thompsett and John Koenig!! Many thanks to Avid Reader for supporting poetry and to Graham Nunn for asking me to participate.
Today I received notification that my entry in the 2010 Ipswich International Poetry Feast has been awarded a prize. Not sure which one it is yet, but the winners will be announced on 22 October in the ‘swich. This is very exciting as it will mean I have placed in this competition for the third consecutive year! More info at
I just received my copy of the 2010 Central Coast Poets Anthology in the mail. It’s always such a thrill to see your words in real print!
A son
For Harvey
You mash your face up
expose your meaty eye sockets
and lurch like a blinded animal
your laughter like glee tipped bullets.
God, I love you.
Later, when you’re asleep
I creep into your room
put my hand over your little hands
and sit for a while, watching you breathe.
© Vanessa Page 2010
I’m away for a few days in the Booie Ranges, enjoying the solitude, sleeping plenty, writing plenty, watching the birds outside the door, stoking up the fire and enjoying the fine wine of the area. This is a beautiful part of the world, relatively undiscovered. The quiet is bliss. Here’s a poem I wrote today:
The shirt
For D
You left your shirt hanging in my cupboard
the black one, with the fancy buttons
still smelling like you and me on that weekday night
in October, still holding on to your shape
If I sent it back to you now, over kilometres and ocean
it would be too final. I still need your arms, even like this.
© 2010 Vanessa Page
Today my poem “Christmas, 1982” won the 2010 USQ Poetry Prize…and I’m so happy for it. It is one of my favourites…a collection of snapshot moments and feelings and memories that work perfectly. To top off the day, my poem “Loss” won Commended as well. Here’s the link: http://www.usq.edu.au/library/atlibrary/activities/poetrycomp
This is the poem I read yesterday at SpeedPoets. I have to say, this was one of the best I’ve attended – great sets by Randall Stephens and Tiggy Johnson and Andy White AND a collection of some of the best, most diverse and entertaining voices Brisbane has to offer. A great event, that needs ongoing support! Now I need to get organised and whittle down a list of poems to read on Thursday 23 at Avid Reader – very nerve wracking reading so many of my pieces in one go. Shortlisting will be difficult but I have a feeling this poem will be in there somewhere…
Back to her
As end of day brews blood red
low and overlaid with paragraphs
he blows in from the straits
to place a claim on the chattels
fixing battens over the broken
pieces with a tongue hammer
remembering the pale moons
of her fingernails and folding
the sum of his worth into her
salt scored dampness
He’s come back to her
at an angle of 45 degrees,
beyond cyclone wire emptiness
and white midday, bearing the
smell of cut grass in his oyster tight
hands, and just like that
he’s made his announcement
pegging sugar words by new seams
soaked sweet in loaded fiction
using breath he’d chosen long
before this.
Deep in the suburbs
effort folds in on itself until it’s
her vulnerability, that’s cut hard
over collarbones, while his arrival
is all fistfuls of summer cotton,
and knuckles the colour of sand
a trail of moth breath blown cold
over what is left exposed; and
body parts to keep the cold war
from the urges.
© 2010 Vanessa Page
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