Poem of the month

Each month the two FSP editors select a poem, from those read throughout that month, as the poem of the month. A laminated copy of the poem is awarded to the poet at the next FSP City meeting. This is peer recognition of a poem of high quality.

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?

December Poem of the Month

The Poem of the Month for December is The Crow by Tess Driver. The Commended Poem is Fleas by Suzanne Verrall. Congratulations to both of them, and to all the poets who have had poems selected in 2018. 

The Crow by Tess Driver

Flames lash the sizzling bones of molten walls:
Crackling heat, a keening call of birds
As wild-eyed stallions crush against their stalls.

Her Monday wash hangs smouldering, then falls,
The cats run howling, roasting in their fur,
Flames lash the sizzling bones of molten walls.

The wind is singing fiercely as it mauls
And guzzling flames spew out their greedy words.… Click for more

November Poem of the Month

The November Poem of the Month is Sticky Notes by Maria Vouis and the Commended Poem is Ice-shelf by Jules Leigh Koch.

Sticky Notes by Maria Vouis

              Signs everywhere,
of your studies, 
                           like a litter trail 
                                           of sticky notes
                                                          bookmarking your passage.
 
                  Thumbprint punctuation 
                                                                     on wrists’ transparent skin,
ink-stains between clavicles,
                                                    fluoro highlights doodled on breast-cleft roads, 
                   sweat runnels blurring 
                                                                     intertextual references,
a slurry of metaphors 
                                                                      scribbled into my navel,
                                        cyanotypes where your lips loitered,
a palmist’s prophesy printed on a bare buttock,
                                                                      thighs propped open like chapters 
                                                                                                                               at the plot’s peak,
                                          your back-catalogue of luminous lines
                                          indexed and bound between my hip bones,
your name graffitied, 
                                                       with possessive apostrophe behind my knees,
                                    
and a tiny tick-tack pulse 
                                                                      on my throat
                             typed by your tongue.                                        
… Click for more

September Poem of the Month

September’s Poem of the Month is The Right Dog by Steve Evans. Commended poems are A Plague of Ologists by Peter J Meech and Big Red, Birdsville by Jacqui Merckenschlager. 

The Right Dog by Steve Evans

There’s craft in this, a gift,
An art to choosing
The right dog
In the pound.
My daughter can’t decide.
It’s finally the promised day but
It’s too much for her.

There’s music in them all,
Keen as they dance from paw to paw—
Except one dog that calmly raises its nose.
Who are you, my daughter asks?
That slow gaze returning says:
I am half of our future days.… Click for more

August Poem of the Month

The August Poem of the Month is lived unremarkably by Geoffrey Aitkin. Commended poems are foxnews dumbdown by rob walker and Faux Fur by David Harris.

lived unremarkably by Geoffrey Aitken

imagined precisely
authored biologically
managed medically
carried expectantly
raised exactly
schooled religiously
worshipped naively
dreamed unimaginatively
trained mechanically
loved inattentively
married prematurely
housed uniformly
reproduced expeditiously
urbanized routinely
worked tirelessly
aspired inappropriately
retired remorsefully
travelled reluctantly
aged tragically
died hypothetically
recycled metaphysically

in so many ways

foxnews dumbdown by rob walker

          freedom

                freedumb

                    freedamn

               freedim

          freedom

(Appears in gods for a new world, Rob Walker, Ginninderra Pocket Poets, 2018)

Faux Fur by David Harris

That Faux Fur stole looks good on you
so soft, so warm, so cuddly.… Click for more

July Poem of the Month

The Poem of the Month for July is Toy Boys by Elaine Barker. The Commended Poem is Not Much Left by Ivan Rehorek. The poems were selected by FSP 2018 Anthology editors Veronica Cookson and Lindy Warrell from poems read at the July Open Mic.

Toy Boys by Elaine Barker

The gnomes I chose are stop-at-homes.
This spot in my garden is the place
they gaudily claim. Though gnomes
do roam — you hear of them
disappearing months at a time.
They send cards from wherever
they’ve been, only to reappear
one morning tight-lipped, benign.

Yet no such trivial travel
would ever interest my gnomes.… Click for more

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