Friendly Street Poets

#1 Category for all work published on this site

FSP February City Meeting and Open Mic – change of venue!

Monday, 3rd February, 2020
6:00 – 9:30pm.

Due to water damage to the Box Factory from the storm over the weekend, tonight’s FSP Meeting is moved to:

Minor Works Building
22 Stamford Court
Adelaide

Between Wright and Sturt Streets, access from Wright Street

Our first city meeting for 2020!!

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).… Click for more

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

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.

Erica Jolly‘s new blog site…

Long-time member of FSP Erica Jolly has set up her own blog. This is what she says about it:

“Poets cross boundaries all the time. I have set up a blog – Sciences and Humanities – on which I put items that, in one way or another, make the connections we need to have across disciplines. The times of the separation of the sciences from the humanities unfortunately are not over.

My blog, given my inadequacy with machinery, might not be the most effective and I’m told people won’t look at it if it goes beyond sound bites – and it does.  … Click for more

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