There are many fine war poets, and I particularly like reading those of the First World War. Curiously, in equal measure I enjoy reading both the war jingoists such as Rupert Brooke and Jessie Pope as well as the dark, stark realism of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves and Rudyard Kipling. Kipling was an […]

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I live, I still live, and I think many of us live inside the world Neruda discovered. —Ariel Dorfman The voice is perhaps the most lasting incarnation of any existence … It is in voices … that the dead continue to live. —Alastair Reid There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same […]

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Let Us Watch Richard Wilbur: A Biographical Study by Robert Bagg & Mary Bagg University of Massachusetts Press, 2017, 392 pages, US$32.95 ____________________________________________   You, whoever you are, If you want to walk with me you must step lively. —“Running”   What is an individual thing? —“An Event”   Once, sitting next to Richard Wilbur […]

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This year is the twentieth anniversary of the death of the Australian poet John Forbes. Perhaps, then, it’s opportune to revisit his legacy. This was done, to some extent, in 2002 with the publication of Ken Bolton’s homage to john forbes, which includes an essay by Ivor Indyk titled “The awkward grace of John Forbes”. […]

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Sister   When my sister slipped away her slippers fell downstairs slapping the sleeping dog’s nose. She patted him back to rest before silence sealed her closing of the sliding door behind her and I, in my nightgown, slept through it all, unstirred. So how could I know?   I am a slip of my […]

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Homework   In the darkness, a grey gaggle of teenage boys, joshing, jostling, explosions of cheap expletives, a fog of Lifebuoy soap and stale body odour, testosterone-topped. Grey school-uniforms dark in the cold evening, occasional sparks struck with fierce skill against the black from steel-tipped heels of heavy Clarks shoes.   Then the neon glare […]

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Jaguar Girl Her gaze is tipped with curare,   her face farouche from the kids’ asylum   where ice baths failed to tame her.   Her claws are crescent moons sharpened on lightning.   She swims through the star-splinters of a mirror   and emerges snarling— my were-mama.   She’s a rainforest in a straitjacket. […]

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Wheel Chair Vista The view is not good; no eye contact, except with other wheelies, or little children, ready to smile and respond.   But you confront bums, everything from double-wobble to pinched minuscule, guts blocking out the rest. Knees, fragile or sturdy, with or without props, skin seen through torn denim.   Above you […]

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Learning of the death of the Circus Girl   Your family had been Circus for generations.   When we were very young We dressed as toreadors in spangles, Rode ponies in the Grand Parade. So I was Circus, too. My young life’s proudest moments. The second proudest (What would Health and Safety say today?) Was […]

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The Great Male-versus-Female Guitar Contest of 1933 Little Lizzy Douglas (they called her the kid), was born in Louisiana, in a farmer’s shed. She didn’t like farming, she didn’t like her name, so she grabbed a guitar and hopped on a train. Little Lizzie Douglas stepped on board— but when she stepped off, Memphis Minnie […]

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