Kate’s first poetry collection, Travelling with Bligh, was published in New Poets Seven (Friendly Street Poets/Wakefield Press 2002) and can be purchased from the Wakefield Press website.
Kate also co-edited Another Universe: Friendly Street 28 with her husband, Steve Evans. Another Universe was launched at Writers’ Week 2004 by Clive James.
Lake George
Recent evidence suggests clouds are created not only
by evaporation from water but also by microscopic phytoplankton.
at lake’s edge
we crawl
from the slime
like protozoa
forms of life so primitive
there should be no wheels
only clouds
spinning above
the gift of creatures
tiny enough even sifting water
through baleen plates
would miss them
here the shadow of whales
lurk at the corner of sight
all of us
dreaming of escape
skins mere cell wrap
the ocean
trying to get in
From Beating Time in a Gothic Space: Friendly Street No. 23
New Washing on the Line
in the back yard
a mid-morning southerly
coloured flutterings like Tibetan prayers
garments so small
they should be dolly clothes
all have old-fashioned names
found in church fêtes and fiction
words from when grandma was a girl –
matinee jackets, shawls,
booties, bonnets and mittens
only the growsuits, flapping in the breeze
a more modern innovation
terrytowelling coveralls
press-studded for infants
cuffs to swaddle feet and fists
such flailing limbs:
these tiny flags
a semaphore
of what is to come
From Friendly Street No. 26
Travelling
within Aegina’s harbour
the last of winter
rattled the queued masts
our ferry berthed at the jetty
to a racket of children
only one articulate:
‘Lady, here, stay at my aunt’s room.
Cheap, clean, a good shower for you’
he did not say cold
nor that the house smelt
of salt, oil
– shade under the vine
I was fresh and raw
as the tiny island
and could enter the vast blue
sky and wind
blasting across sea-polished stones
rolling under my feet
From Travelling with Bligh: Friendly Street New Poets Seven