David Mortimer writes poems to speak aloud and carry in the mind. Judith Beveridge calls Mortimer’s Magic Logic “a delightful book”, commending “the sense of wonder, the imaginative play, the strong yet mellifluous cadences, the poignant perceptions, the spirit of tenderness and lightness of touch, the vigour of the syntax” in Rochford Street Review (November 2013). Steve Evans talks of the “spacious and musical poems in this impressive collection” in Transnational Literature (May 2013), and Bronwyn Lovell describes the poetry as “linguistically arousing”, a type of “literary orgasm”, in Lip Verse (August 2013).
Magic Logic (Puncher & Wattmann 2012) follows Red in the Morning (Bookends 2005) and Fine Rain Straight Down, in Friendly Street New Poets Eight: Barker;Driver;Mortimer (Wakefield 2003).
Mortimer’s poems have been broadcast on PoeticA , Writers Radio, and A Way with Words, and published widely in newspapers, journals, e-journals, collections and anthologies. His poetry has been awarded first prize in Salisbury Writing competition 2008 (“Salisbury Strangeness”), Poetry Unhinged 2005 (“Train to Noarlunga”) and Gawler Poetry Cup 2003 (“4 Months Old”). “Rainbow in Black” was shortlisted for the Blake Poetry Prize 2009, and a sequence including “Orbital” and “Not-being and Somethingness” for the Newcastle Poetry Prize 2010. “Leopold” was shortlisted for the inaugural Montreal International Poetry Prize 2011, before being included in the first Global Poetry Anthology (Véhicule Press 2012).
Holiday
the west coast of irish light
is inside everything and through everything
like the washing on the line, the pegs
the sky, the wind, this window, and your hands, your eyes
the yolk of daisies and the white
stone walls of cottages with slate roofs
clipped with strips of tin, and rooks and crows
gulls and blackbirds, sheep and cows all caught in the same spell
from before morning until after night
for eighteen hours a day the photons
scooped off the atlantic and smashed into peat bogs, earth, fence-wire, rust, paint
bushes, mountains, cars and roads and poems
to borrow a licence from wright
build for their own resurrection day
in a one-way experiment with wild geese, swans, the coil of air, and cold
and rain five minutes ago, and in five minutes’ time, rain
compacted with second sight
hedges and ditches, smoke, thought, clouds and mist compressed, compelled
annealed and overlaid, and overloaded with clarity, clamped down
into landscape already magnified with force, worn inward and set, against the horizon
steeped in a paradox of height
confined to mid-range, revealed at human scale, condensed, but unabridged, unabbreviated
the quality of illumination is absolute, intensified, unshielded, unchallenged, understated
quiet, like the moon lit from within, rock, bone, a candle, a teardrop, enamelled and sprung, sheer
and supersaturated deep bright
from Flying Kites: Friendly Street Poets 36 and Australian Book Review (May 2011) and Magic Logic
Crucible
when I was ill
and trapped in the back room
the colours of the rose you brought me
set the table alight
in a cut crystal vase
in the late afternoon
with a clawing of leaves
and rings of water and sky
the red and the yellow
forged and glowing
in two-tone petals
each brighter than each other
blazed with shape and strength
in a cold fusion
brighter than a Blake watercolour
uncovering the core
more than neon or halogen
ballooning etched or painted light
or through the last struck window
the deflating sun
from Catch Fire: Friendly Street Poets 33 and Magic Logic
Early train to town
There’s a woman dreaming at the end of the carriage
Eyes shut and a smile
Riding like an angel against the people in the next carriage
With one glass triptych behind
Another sometimes framed, sometimes hurled
Left or right, above below across
The lurch of uncertainty distance
The chain-swung swivelled between
Nervous half-curving held-apart
Bounce and recovery, limbo of coupling, uncoupling
A sudden card-board cut-out saint, deity, the Buddha
A magnetic chess piece interposed, photograph unstuck
Unglued and ouija’d across a scrapbook
Beatifically swirled
Against an unconcern of newspapers
Schoolbags, coats, faces pressed to background
Hands gripping, swinging handles
She is in the eternal
Present world, whirled inward
An index case of calmness, finger of God
Eyes shut and seeing the eternal
Living suburbs passing in a true city
Open in another world
from Friendly Street Poets Thirty and Best of Friends: the First Thirty Years of the Friendly Street Poets and Magic Logic