November Poem of the Month: Lindy Warrell

The Tourist by Lindy Warrell

It's not my country… 
          this jeweled isle of caparisoned elephants
           and twirling dancers chanting and
            torch throwing in dazzling costumes 
             over pure white cloth 
              to a million torches and drums
               thrumming in veneration.
                                    Buddhist spectacle surround sound.
 
It's not my country…
          where obeisance to gods
           and vows are performed
            in coconut frond palaces
             woven for the divine when
              a priest trans vests to dance
               in silken sari and trance. He is the Goddess.
                                     Cries of joy and rupees adorn Her sacred hem.
 
It's not my country…
          where drunken tourists
           lounge near-naked in hotel luxury
            and palm-lined beaches
             wander unheeding in
              paddy fields people call home
               where buffalo graze and children play.
… Click for more

FSP December City Meeting and Open Mic

Monday, 2nd December, 2019
6:00 – 9:30pm.

The Box Factory
59 Regent Street, Adelaide.

Our last meeting for 2019!!

Bring along your poems to read or just come and listen to a diverse range of poetry. Remember, 3 minutes maximum mic time per reader to make sure everyone gets a go and has an audience.

Sign-in from 6:00pm for a start around 6:20pm. Second session starts around 7:30pm.

If you want your poem to be considered for this year’s anthology, you must be a member of FSP (you can join on the night). Bring along two printed copies of your poem with all your contact details on them for submission.… Click for more

FSP Featured Poets at Halifax Cafe in November: Peter Goldsworthy and Jessica Alice

Thursday, 28th November, 2019
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM

Halifax Cafe
187 Halifax St, Adelaide.

A stellar duo for our final Featured Poets session for 2019: Peter Goldsworthy and Jessica Alice.

Come early, stay late. The Cafe will be open for food and beverages.

$5 cash at the door to pay the poets.

Click here for the Facebook event.

Peter Goldsworthy‘s first collection of poetry won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1982, the SA Premier’s Prize, and the Anne Elder Award. His second won the Australian Bicentennial Literary Prize for poetry in 1988, jointly with Philip Hodgins. He wrote the libretti for the Richard Mills operas, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and Batavia, the latter winning Mills and Goldsworthy the 2002 Robert Helpmann Award for Best New Australian Work.… Click for more

September Poem of the Month by Rob Ferris

Guerillas by Rob Ferris

Still camouflaged from the air
the guerrillas are dead in a glade.
Birds and conservative creatures
diminish them.
In cocoons of dappled cloth
their bodies pupate backwards
while images crawl away
alive on a cameraman’s back.

In the forest
they fade by fragmentation
their flesh maintaining 
sun drenched birds
rehearsing siren 
trumpet calls:
the music of
historical necessity
that placed them
in this shade.

Ideas swarm and die like bees,
steel wobbles and rushes
through leaves.
Fruit of revolutionary change
falls and dries
in the sun.
In villages, men’s mothers
lie awake
and make them brothers.

October Poem of the Month by Elaine Barker

IN SUMMER’S HEAT by Elaine Barker

Blue Mountains, NSW

Who has taken up this azure veil,
casting it like a mantle
to float silently into the valleys,
to tangle with trees,
to drift over rugged peaks and cliffs,
escarpments and chasms
and then away, away into the distance
as far as the eye can see?
As the vivid mist rises, 
the colour of lapis lazuli,
its earthy opulence carries
the essence of the eucalypt.  
And who, enveloped in summer’s heat,
savouring the heady aroma 
and gazing over these mountains
has not stood, caught in awe,
and wondered at this infinite mystery?

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