Poetry

In Memoriam Kate Jennings: poet, novelist, feminist (1948–2021)

The dilemma of writing a poem without light, / without the amenities of paper and ink / without the digital keyboard / but with memory correcting each verse / like a clock tired of telling the time, / a fallen rhythm into language / in the calm of the dawn.

Only then, re-reading it / from the blue caressing / the dew on the glass in my window.

Only printing it in the flight / of the last waking dream.

I know no culture, language or law can escape the quantum dream / of a world owned by night, turning us from partial light, full circle. / It is the way the day brightens yet summer birds dial out / their gentle, plaintive rituals across the valley. / Loyal and insistent, cicadas rouse, stuttering praise, hammering the point / all morning and all afternoon, / as everything falls apart.

mine and refine this float of molten
landscape              raw silica-sand and
limestone sites          sliced and stirred
and hot-shop forged               we
witness excavations of targets and
melts       a redaction of origins      of
lives  of lands                    
         see what a breath can do


flux and bubble           rise to fever-
point and sweat             hot flesh on
flesh      so carefully laid           rested
and hung                        body-broken
to sway          see their shadows cast
low in the sun      just what they
wanted            what a breath        what
breath              
         see what her sorrow can do

The house won’t stand without foundations of trust / and the town won’t work if people guard only their own. / The insomnia that racks your life is a strange greed of wakefulness / so difficult to shake in the lateness where body eats dark and light alike. / And children are the gift that is the tree of life, O Lord, / growing through wakefulness and sleep alike. /In laying down their weapons the once powerful become more powerful / in claiming no more than the rights of their own consciences, in not owning their offspring. / For the children are peacefully and strongly marching against the violence / and rapacity of those who rule over them, and they ask for a chance to be heard.

The poet and artist Bella Li says that if it weren’t for deadlines – and the inspiration provided by tennis players – she would never finish her work.

Xylophonic tinkles across the water these gentle chimes on bobbing boats what rivulets of fate led us here tonight? Awed quiet at this gentle symphony of dark air and music the panorama so finely curated it could be an exhibition of balance the liquid horizontal the solid vertical and later cold to warmth the body of water domesticated to a bathtub the faraway city lights now a flickering candle a contraction from all the vastness of the world…

You laugh at my speech./ Even my name is wrong. / My tongue will not bend. / I cannot read these titles; / I do not speak these words. / I wake myself in the dark, talking. / I stand in the garden, facing the sea. / The north wind tugs at the wet fabric / in my hands. I peg it firmly: / the shirt is a trapped, white flag.

It wasn’t the stars that frightened them. / It was the stairs. / You could climb to the height of the sky / but there were more than a thousand steps / and each one took a year off your life – / you would soon be lost in the time / of your great-great-grandparents / and before you knew it / no one would speak your language. / You would be shovelling snow off a hillside / and hunting for turnips, the unborn image of yourself / spitting curses and alone / in the fiery darkness.

From the trauma of a burning nation, to the desperation of Covid-19, to the united voices of the Black Lives Matter protests, this year called for resilience like few before it.