Category: 2014

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 Lake Okareka   Voices across Lake Okareka from waterskiers a kilometre away. I am half in love with this place already the boardwalk to myself, thick wooded hills steeply   down to the water’s edge, the constant burble and call of…

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 What a certain song on the radio brings   The ripe odour of plums in a round red bowl.   And living with Greeks in Sydney in the seventies. In the heat of the kitchen the women cook, smoke,…

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 Togo Chasm III   Delicate moon, a yellow thief that steals the night. Immense light waxing each leaf, each stone.   Claws scuttle and scrape and break the brittle bones of trees. Swarms descend in a mesh of sound…

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 Togo Chasm II   Alongside Brancusi spires I am heeled and scuffed in time names impressed upon me on the way to Togo chasm.   A tent maker in sandals threads his pearls in philosophic quatrains. Carl…

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 Togo Chasm I   I have come through hardwoods, from the road that circles the island.   Alone with a thousand jagged spires sharply grey against the sky and sea.   The vast empty sea, east to…

1 | 2 In Her Pants   an inkling a tickle a trickle   a smell in the jam black rosary                                                             keep going they tell him even when life has no blows no jobs and no   enlightenment even   when the best you’ll get is a lump of…

1 | 2 An Island   If a man was an island I’d walk his spine and pick his heart – a black black blackberry in a field. The trees would stitch his trousers. The rain would nibble at his skin all night and water would catch in his beard.…

Not seeing the lady from Spain   Lost is my quiet and the way through High Street to the Buffalo Hall where a travelling magician performs tricks, sixpence for children, one shilling for adults, at four this Thursday and will saw, as he does every time, his lady assistant from…

Writing of the lady from Spain   I keep at least one notebook by the bed. I try to write in one of these for a few minutes when I wake in the morning. So my first drafts are usually handwritten. When I look back through a notebook after a…

The Community Chef The last time I saw Thilake, a fire blazed between three hardy rocks that were shouldering the large cauldron of rice, kindled by Thilake’s funny Eslon tube. There were three other rocks soaking up heat from the glowing red-hot wood and dry coconut husks, ready for another…