Skip to content

Content From Issue: Volume 8 Number 1

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Introduction to Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

by Sophie Finlay

What is generally understood by the term ‘lyric poetry’? The prominent lyric theorist Jonathan Culler (99), proposes that lyric poetry is seen as the expression of a single consciousness in figurative language and usually takes the form of a short poem voicing personal feeling. If that is the case, what might an ‘ecopoetic lyric’ look like? Tom Bristow (15) writing on the ecopoetic lyric, or as he terms the ‘Anthropocene lyric’, believes that ecopoetry should distance itself from anthropomorphic descriptions of nature and integrate conceptions of humanity’s impacts on the planet. 

Lyric poetry evokes a sense of musicality via the aural nature of language. Like a song, lyric poetry, particularly as it is housed within the contemporary poetic line, works with the breath. The line length denotes a pause in the performance of the lyric poem and holds the reader in an abeyance of breath. The qualities of voice, breath and sound, suggest that lyric has a relationship to the speaking, listening and feeling human body. 

With this edition, I seek to explore two perspectives: lyric poetry and ecopoetics, and to tease out what features of lyric can be reconciled with ecocritical theory. This edition asks: how can we draw upon the properties of lyricism to enact an ecocentric form of poetry? Can lyric poetry promote connection between human and more-than-human worlds in a form of networked and embodied belonging? And, in what ways can lyric poetry, a subjective form of poetic expression, raise awareness of anthropogenic devastations upon ecologies? The thirty-one writers collected here offer a broad range of poems that work towards ecopoetic lyricism. These include poems about the human body within nature, ideas about an ecologically-based subjectivity, the ecopoetics of everyday experiences, and poems that speak to the desolations of the Anthropocene. 

Many of the poems we received overwhelmingly address the theme of ‘embodied belonging’. Jenny Pollak’s ‘In the bright Parthenon of the heart’, poeticises the boundaries of the body dissolving into the space it inhabits and the possibility for interchangeability between human and insect consciousness. Stefanie Kirby’s ‘Body Reclamation’ realises the body as an imaginative site of transformation as the poet plants a seed in her mouth and becomes open to the metamorphosis that unfurls. ‘Space is Blue in Being’ by Jill Jones locates the phenomena of space inside and outside the human body via the ekphrastic form. Rose Lucas’ ‘Summer evening at the lake’, explores the intersection between poetry, the senses and external phenomena as every moment of the body entering into a lake is captured in lyric: 

and the gentle rise    a glide 
of skin     through coolness
sipping        at the sudden dark of night

Sara Ahmed’s (171) theoretical work on emotion reminds us that knowledge is bound up with the bodily world of feeling and sensation; ‘with what makes us sweat, shudder, tremble.’ The poems by Pollak, Kirby, Jones and Lucas are grounded in the corporeality of the feeling, sensing body. They demonstrate that an ecopoetic lyric that captures a bodily immersion in nature with the sensuality of language, has the potential to activate connection between the human and more-than-human worlds.

A number of submissions explore innovative approaches to the concept of subjectivity within lyric poetry. In Brenda Saunders’ ‘Understory’, the ‘lyric I’ is avoided and the poem focuses instead upon minute observations of life processes. Saunders’ attention to the insect life of moths and beetles, as opposed to the familiarity of our mammalian connections, is significant to an appreciation of biodiversity in all its forms. Gaele Sobott’s remarkable ‘Invasion Species,’ prompts awareness of the vulnerability of endemic species as the yellow-spotted goannas face the destruction of their nesting sites by the invasive cane toad. This poem also directly enters into an interspecies perspective as the repetitive action of a goanna digging a nest to lay her eggs is linguistically enacted:

down   backfill     dead end

across backfill     dead end

down   backfill     dead end

across backfill     dead end

down   backfill     dead end

This edition also asks: how do we understand the idea of the self, speaking through the lyric poem? The deep-ecologist thinker Arne Naess (5), discusses the possibility for an ecological self, one that is relational and open to ecological otherness. It was wonderful to receive the many poems that respond to this very question and open the boundaries of human consciousness to include environmental systems. In Stuart Cooke’s ‘Edge, Hold’, the poem’s speaker forms an intersubjective relationship to the geomorphology of the landscape. The speaker of Kristen Lang’s ‘The always and never returning’ is inclusive of eco-multitudes:

 all   i   feeding in the air of this place

                    all leaf and wing  all

                            bone      becoming rock

                and soil      lizard feet

                                         wattle seed

The poetry of Jake Goetz is equally embracive, his ‘i’ (lower case) taking in cliff, wind and whale. The idea of eco-subjectivity is further complicated in Goetz’s work, and in the work of Willo Drummond, by the intertexual use of George Oppen and Rainer Maria Rilke respectively. 

It was heartening to read the many submissions that locate ecopoetics in everyday environments. King Llanza finds the ecopoetic in the nimbus clouds that ‘cradle clotheslines.’ For Jax Bulstrode the ecopoetic is viewed from their kitchen window, and for Alicia Sometimes, it resides in the ecosystem of her back garden encompassing brushtail possums, slaters and satin bowerbird. 

The poetry of this edition includes many exceptional examples of lyric that capture the sound, flow, and musicality of language. Janet Jiahui Wu’s lyrical line ‘all moon, lichen, fern, stone, coal’ and Jane Frank’s ‘Lock liquid eyes. Swim in feathered crimson’ in the poem ‘Oracle’, are words to savour in the mouth. Rory Green provides the visual and linguistic ‘rhizome lyric’, while Scott-Patrick Mitchell offers the sibilant ‘Become scree, screaming as ice unsheathes’, capturing lyric’s ability to bind itself to the ecopoetic. In Leone Gabrielle’s ‘Touch’, a lyric of the sea is interjected with pollution:

Plastic toys, marine buoys,
gas cylinders butterfly rusted, broken 
bottles, cigarette lighters decay away. Today.

Sam Morely’s ‘Black Saturday’ reminds us that poets are still coming to terms with the devastations of the 2019/2020 bushfires, and Beth Spencer’s angel of the forest protests:

— as the lungs of the world cry out
— & the matter of the planet burns
— and the sponge of the ocean leaps 
in anger

This edition collects together a range of extraordinary responses to the complex operations of an ecopoetic lyric. The poetry draws upon the sensual and emotive effects of language, the act of reading and reception upon the senses and the body, and expansive ideas of subjectivity, while the insidious impacts of the Anthropocene weave a presence throughout. The edition presents poems that enlarge the concept of an inner consciousness to encompass an inclusive environmental consciousness: the voices of plants, animals and ecosystems in both local and global environments. And it presents works that contain poetic expressions of ecological being that elicit consciousness directed towards deep-ecological care and sustainability.

Works cited

Ahmed, Sara. ‘Feminist Attachments.’ The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014, 168-189.

Bristow, Tom. The Anthropocene Lyric. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Culler, Jonathan. ‘Reading Lyric.’ Yale French Studies: The Lesson of Paul de Man, Yale University Press, no. 69, 1985, 98-106.

Naess, Arnae. Self Realisation: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World. Murdoch, W.A.: Murdoch University, 1986.

Published: November 2021
Sophie Finlay

is a visual artist and poet based in Melbourne (Naarm). Her poetry is published in multiple journals including Meanjin, Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review and Shaping the Fractured Self, UWAP. She is a member of the editorial team at Plumwood Mountain journal and has also been a finalist in several art prizes including the prestigious John Leslie Art Prize.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Poem Digesting a Poem

by Rachael Mead
I face the mountain as if it is the north 
of my body’s compass and climb, walking 
my boots and jeans dry. A golden eagle 
circles in the light that slices its way 
to Lake Como and I taste yesterday’s storm 
on the air. The noxious and the delicious 
nod their heads as I pass but I still can’t 
tell one from another, like I’m travelling 
with a map of the wrong place. 
The cows hold their wisdom modestly. 

                                                                                                                                 we, the unseen
                                                                           
                                                                             know ourselves through other eyes		
                                                                                                                                           so much 
                                                       action in the dark						
the crystalline palaces
                                             of minerals				 
                                                                                                             bacteria’s fractal multiverse 
we are the subterranean					 
                                                                      the swing and tug of the moon
            the gut of a cow			 
                                                                                           her microbial oceans 
                       the vast clan of protozoa
                                                                    dark tides wash
                                                                                    from rumen to abomasum
you call us simple
                                                                                                 but when is energy artless? 
                                                      in the shadowed places 
           we know death 
                                   by its true name 
                                                                                                     part of becoming is unbecoming
we are all 
                                                                     fragments 
                                                                                                                                     of the whole


						                                                                 
I am utterly alone, yet completely surrounded, 
so warm in the suit of my skin the tiny lives 
in my sweat proliferate wildly. The sun is tilting 
towards the lake, the world swarming in every direction. 
An ermine gambols from the ferns and freezes. 
We meet eyes, its chestnut alertness 
allowing me no defence against
its scrutiny. It stands, vest gleaming, 
then without a backward glance, slips back 
into its day with a liquid grace, while the valley 
keeps glowing with the gentle smoulder of summer.  

Published: November 2021
Rachael Mead

is a South Australian poet, writer and arts reviewer. Her most recent poetry collection is The Flaw in the Pattern (UWA Publishing, 2018) and her debut novel The Application of Pressure was published by Affirm Press in 2020.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Field Notes on Rain

by Rachael Mead

I take my demons for a run.
Try to lose them in the grey air.
The road knows its way
between the trees.
The invisible world made solid
drums against my hood.

The fat patter brings back
that first night squatting inside
the ruin that would become home.
Windows just holes for wind,
the dark shot with volts. And company?
Those spiders weaving dreams above me.

By the waterfall, it eases.
A soft grey drift, like a good cry
in the morning leaves you
teetering on the brink all day.
The landscape draws itself
then erases into blank distance.

The green scent of decay
heavy as a fallen curtain.
Four subspecies of rain.
I keep on, hood-blinkered
through all these hills and roads
I carry along the dark bitumen.

Published: November 2021
Rachael Mead

is a South Australian poet, writer and arts reviewer. Her most recent poetry collection is The Flaw in the Pattern (UWA Publishing, 2018) and her debut novel The Application of Pressure was published by Affirm Press in 2020.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

In the bright Parthenon of the heart

by Jenny Pollak

The longer I stay the less I feel
the specific  

boundaries of flesh
The way the insects move

beside me is how compatible we are
The difference is the body

The edges of which
must finally dissolve    and leave me

my insect

soul
my conscience

of stone

It is enough

the heron skates over the pale platform of herself

For months I have been losing a large part
of what I thought it was

to be
in the world

The wings of the terns as they fly towards me
are eager as knives

My heart fills more easily
with many small things

It’s possible to say my heart is full
just seeing the still breasts of the gulls

drawn downwards into perpetual columns
on the wet sands

Published: November 2021
Jenny Pollak

began a dedicated poetry practice in 2012 after having been a full-time artist for over twenty five years. Her poetry has been published in various journals and anthologies, including MeanjinCordite Poetry ReviewThe Australian Poetry JournalVerity La; and Australian Award Winning Writing. She won the Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize in 2016 and is currently working on her first two poetry collections.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Before, After, Enduring

by Scott-Patrick Mitchell

Published: November 2021
Scott-Patrick Mitchell

(SPM) is a non-binary poet who lives as a guest on Whadjuk Noongar Land. In 2019, they won MPU’s Martin Downey Urban Realist Poetry Award and The Wollongong Short Story Prize. SPM was recently shortlisted for The International Googie Goer Prize for Speculative Prose and the 2020 and 2021 Red Room Poetry Fellowship. Scott-Patrick’s debut collection, Clean, will be released early 2022.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Oracle

by Jane Frank

Lock liquid eyes. Swim in feathered crimson.
Drink the knowledge of this mountain. Leaves
are logograms. Read the layers: green almost
silver, green almost ochre, green almost blue.
Stone velvet against your bare soles. Light braille
rain on your tongue. Forget the horizontal
boundary. Climb tall white trunks with forest
sense. Make a potpourri of papaya, peat, mulch,
honey, the astringency of wet pine, a waft of
moss and lichen. You are already living and
dead. Sense your skin shedding, growing wild.
Remember the backbone road, the soft sculpted
valleys. Watch the king parrot fly to the talisman
tree, knotted, gnarled. Drop to the hollow
sanctuary inside, wood dust and leaf litter. Hold
your nerve. Now you are ready to go home.

Published: November 2021
Jane Frank

is a Brisbane poet, originally from Maryborough in the Fraser Coast region. Her latest chapbook is Wide River (Calanthe Press, 2020). Jane’s poetry has won prizes and been published widely in Australia and internationally. Most recently, her work has appeared in WesterlyStylusLitLive EncountersShearsmanGrieve vol 9 (Hunter Writers Centre, 2021), Poetry for the Planet (Litoria Press, 2021) and Not Very Quiet: The Anthology (Recent Work Press, 2021).  She teaches in Humanities at Griffith University.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

The Angel of the Forest has a Migraine

by Beth Spencer

The Angel of the Forest has a migraine 
She lies on a platform suspended high
above the forest floor 
willing it to be gone, 
willing all the pain in all the world 
in through her veins, into the fine-spinning 
of her cells, the dendrite branches 
the pink-grey curls, parched lips, riven heart
the soft lining of lungs 

— as the lungs of the world cry out
— & the matter of the planet burns
— and the sponge of the ocean leaps 
in anger

But the Angel in her torn dress, patched 
wings, can hold only so much to her chest 
only so much grief in the cup of her soul 

Until the trees rip the sky apart 
calling up the river’s blood 
And everything beating and being 
in the forest breathes and listens 
& weeps too

This poem is inspired by the Weld Forest Angel, with thanks to all forest protectors.

Published: November 2021
Beth Spencer

Beth Spencer’s books include Vagabondage (UWAP) and How to Conceive of a Girl (Random House). The Age of Fibs won the CBdL Award and will be published as an expanded print book in 2022. Her work has frequently been broadcast on ABC Radio National. She lives on GuriNgai / Darkinjung land on the NSW Central Coast. www.bethspencer.com / @bethspen

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Two Poems

by Rory Green

creatures of the in-between

like sea foam / scattered over
moss log / a faint glow
paints the forest floor /
then now i am / in or of you /
chew leaf / carcass / and

otherwise unitary ontologies /
disassemblage engines blaze
rhizomorphic possibilities /

shed dark words / for
ghost flesh / the soft
spore mass / make
spells of shelter / death / resurrection soil

rhizome lyric

A rhizomatic network diagram, loosely resembling a human heart, where dotted lines link these single-word nodes: cave, sentence, find, voices, doubt, hold, water, cloud, flashes, land, need, name.
Published: November 2021
Rory Green

is a writer, editor and digital media artist living on Gadigal land. Their work has appeared in Australian Poetry AnthologyCordite Poetry Review and Running Dog among others.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

An optimist at heart

by Kristen Lang

such a small heart—
fairy wren   mud crab   banker  
belted galloway   tree hugger

just look how we have learned
the divide of things,
each of the heart’s trillions

given names that we might away
ourselves from all
the deep belonging,

the small
ache amid
the remembering.

all our feet
joined to the ground, sky
in our lungs and yet

a pre-framed self branded
along the billboards in the brawl
of our too-many tales …

all of us? moss
in the pavement, breath marks
in the schedules of our hours

where we arrive again,
feeling what we touch,
meaning what we do not speak but

pour into our tongues—
do we want that now?  do we?
ourselves   

becoming land,
becoming   
biome,

the rockets in our minds
veering off into other worlds, un-
breathable but at least

singular—the one red hue
lending its glow. the optimist
hauling the few

trillions into her arms
using the heart that belongs   always
to us all …

pelican   shingleback   code writer
fairy shrimp   mountain ash   poet

Published: November 2021
Kristen Lang

Kristen Lang’s Earth Dwellers was published this year by Giramondo. She lives in north-west Tasmania and is working on ways to use poetry as a cultural response to the Anthropocene. Kristen’s SkinNotes (Walleah Press) and The Weight of Light (Five Islands Press) were published in 2017.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Space is Blue in Being

by Jill Jones

Space is blue as morning
as noon, as evening
At midnight the dark forest parts for you

Our mouths are space
our craniums, wombs
the air tunnelling songs through our lungs

Space is where all space lives
it broods near its edges
darker and more vehement as it swells

Space has spoken, you can hear it
where you are, where you will be
There’s nothing more primary than here

Light lifts its corners
where space becomes space again
and all colour is stretching like a tree

Space is a window, a shining
a murmuring screen
green as heaven, blue as the underworld

Lift your grassy tongue into the dark
hear how your feet walk through each space
how blue they become

after Space, Dušan Marek

Published: November 2021
Jill Jones

was born in Sydney and has lived in Adelaide since 2008. Recent books include Wild Curious Air, winner of the 2021 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, A History Of What I’ll Become, shortlisted for the 2021 Kenneth Slessor Award, and Viva the Real, shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and the 2020 John Bray Award. In 2015 she won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry for The Beautiful Anxiety. She has been an academic for a number of years, but has also worked as an arts administrator, journalist, and book editor.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

The Sky Is The Great Entrance

by Jill Jones

What is the world of breath?
The air is a huge forest blowing

Is matter always in flight?
Everything bends with love but can’t be folded in a box

Was I once a sea, a very small one?
Every night is the morning of my death and my resurrection

How often have I floated so that I could rise?
All sounds end with sky and ocean

What kind of magic is rain?
I am the dust of an asteroid, the blink of an atom passing another

Aren’t all corners special?
Here are the great laws of photosynthesis, volume, gravity

What is the dark matter of love?
The endless turning atmosphere, the shaping wind

Where is the sky’s origin or end?
Air is gold with starlight when I step out towards the sand

What is it about rending that seems sad, isn’t that a kind of making?
As if this underworld was clear and cool, or a place to hide

How often has my breath caught on my body?
Matter in the end is always light

Isn’t time a kind of detour, but necessary?
The dust of others, waves of grass

Isn’t every discussion an unravelling?
There’s this assonance in things   waves   tracks   days

Is it here you stop making sense?
Crows circle above the shuddering trees

Robe, 6 December 2020

Published: November 2021
Jill Jones

was born in Sydney and has lived in Adelaide since 2008. Recent books include Wild Curious Air, winner of the 2021 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, A History Of What I’ll Become, shortlisted for the 2021 Kenneth Slessor Award, and Viva the Real, shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and the 2020 John Bray Award. In 2015 she won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry for The Beautiful Anxiety. She has been an academic for a number of years, but has also worked as an arts administrator, journalist, and book editor.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Sea Ice Breakup, From Erebus’ Summit

by Tehnuka

The cold and ice kill humans—so we learn
from the Heroic Age of polar exploration.
When the wind blows frigid seventy below 
and we struggle from tent to hut in blizzarding dry snow,
when we cannot work, only live, 
I believe this.

On a blue-sky day, the Ross Sea is white ‘downstairs’
from high on the steaming crater rim of Erebus. 
We seek the secrets beneath the volcano;
clues contained in the gas it emits.
But there, hidden, is something more.

Our air is changing; I see it in the spectra 
from the plume of a lava lake in remote Antarctica. 
Up, the carbon dioxide, each year—and, each year, 
when I see the frozen expanse fragment earlier
into dark blue liquid sea, I remember 
it is humans who kill the cold and ice—
so we learn now from our science.

Published: November 2021
Tehnuka

is a Tamil tauiwi writer and volcanologist from Aotearoa New Zealand. She likes to find herself up volcanoes, down caves, and in unexpected places. Others, however, can find her as @tehnuka on Twitter, and some of her recent work in Apparition LitMermaids Monthly, and Grist’s Imagine 2200 climate fiction collection.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Excerpt from ‘At Kamay’

by Jake Goetz
Cl(if)f sonnets 


if i               were a cliff      cut           
 	           by wind         a whale  
 	           breaching      water
 	           or octaves      in sand 	        
 	           crunching aeons   to feet 
  	           to weave      a page
 	           into coastal   entangle	       
 	           -ment   could you then  
 	           hear      how fraught     
 	           this space   or how easy 
 	           rocks break      what minds      
 	           make distant   in their  
 	           proclivities      for days      
 					    
 	 	                \

if i               were to trace   a second-
 	           hand shoe   spelling
 	           Vietnam   from trade
 	           routes      that constant                
 	           sensation   of movement   
  	           in the   commercial    
  	           nature      of each              
 	           continuous     moment                
 	           in which lies      the point
 	           of some       kind
 	           of poetry   or a line
 	           at least             from which
 	           it extends   honey-sweet 
 	           thought      a tea tree sense 	
      			
	 	                \

if i              were a southerly   or sand-
 	          stone patch   exposed
 	          like bone      eroding   
 	          sonnets into   the permo-
 	          triassic   kneecap
 	          of a dipro- 	    todon
  	          where broken   glass 
	          is as green   as grass
 	          is water   clear and
 	          booming       beneath     
 	          SING-      APORE      
 	          sky’s steel orca   sustained              
 	          by the nutrients   of a
 	          krill-like         capital	   

	 	               \

if i  	          were a vista	  word-
 	          wrapped cliffs   seasoned  
 	          by salt      each angle
 	          each shape   a relation 
 	          of wind      minute 
 	          ridge lines   of rock  
 	          repeating   dissecting   
 	          expressions 	    in eye-
 	          socket   shadows
 	          great chunks   of cheek 
 	          jagged grey         nose
 	          frothing at 	    lines   
 	          of repetition      in waves 

	 	               \

if i  	          were water      a spray
 	          of white   twisting   
 	          yellow      flowers into    
 	          questions   i.e. how
 	          avoid   a taxonomic               
 	          acumen   those categorical            
 	          urges      like trying
 	          to quit   smoking
 	          having been   born
 	          with a       Winfield
 	          in your  	  mouth    
 	          as out   on open water
 	          no other way   to come here         
 	          the outer limit      of ego

Note:

The last three lines of this work come from George Oppen’s poem, From a phrase of Simon Weil’s and some words of Hegel’s (2001, Selected Poems).

Published: November 2021
Jake Goetz

lives by a drowned valley estuary on Gadigal land. His first poetry collection, meditations with passing water (Rabbit Poets Series, 2018), was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Award in 2019. He is currently a PhD candidate in Writing at The Writing and Society Research Centre, WSU.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Colony

by Betty Johnston

cool morning ants    
scurry           lightly
across the gutter’s    
parched concrete
weave pathways
swerve         past
aunts brothers
friends         switch
direction

inside
in every cell of me
I have lodgers
I am their concrete gutter
their garden
they are not me
but share me
rent me         occupy
the strata title unit
the granny flat

they raise their families here
generate my energy
without them
I cannot think this thought
or move my typing fingers
I cannot
breathe         and

inside their every cell
ants too have mitochondria
gum trees
are unthinkable without their chloroplasts
lodgers every one
with their own green language

their symbiotic histories        tracing back
to deep antiquity       via
the long-lasting intimacy of strangers

Published: November 2021
Betty Johnston

I have been a teacher, a parent, a gardener. I have lived in a number of countries, alone, with a partner, a family, a communal group. I have always liked reading and doing maths. For years I have written stories and more recently poems, some of which have been published in journals and collections.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Anatomy of a Lemon

by Magdalena Ball

Lemons break down
surprisingly fast
thrown to the earth
by a resident possum
oils dissipating into soil.

I dreamt I picked one up
drinking juice from the open rind
as if it were a coconut
my head leaning back

scattered, scooped
under the tree
membrane, carpels, pith
shining yellow jewels on the path
waiting to slip you up.

Succour against a dry throat
my scurvy, my snapped future.

I never understood why defective
goods were called lemons.

I picked up my car from the service
rogue lemon rolling around in the back
bags like sunshine
distributed to everyone
in the neighbourhood
who wanted one.

Most did not, as everyone it seems
has a tree, with a resident possum
throwing lemons to the ground.

The smell was starting to rise
not unpleasant, it hit like memory
a fragrant flashback
reaching for where you had been.

I tried all night to find it/find you/find me
a citrus kick
eyes half open, groping like a lost child
aching for a language I no longer had
in a vision that was already over
your body desiccating in the desert
of your new world. 

I tried to phone you
on the telepathic line
which never really functions
my thinning eyebrows knitted
in concentration

while a symphony of lemon juice
played in the background.

It was a song about a possum and a tree
the possum long gone
the tree consumed by fire

sung in the mother tongue
from a time of abundance.

Published: November 2021
Magdalena Ball

is a novelist, poet, reviewer and interviewer, and is the Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader. She has been widely published in literary journals, anthologies, and online, and is the author of several published books of poetry and fiction, including, most recently, The Density of Compact Bone (Ginninderra Press, 2021).

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Late Summer Crescent Moon

by Alicia Sometimes

Ukulele sounds swing their way over by early evening
landing on the back deck. Stirred joy of rainbow lorikeets

perch by circle mirrors on the side wall—portholes
into garden oceans reflecting bright flecks of flight

mosaics in the shifting air. You, with a wide-brimmed hat
carving the bamboo as it encroaches upon the lost barbeque

halting for a second to drink a long iced-tea as the sun fades
then eating the plums and camembert on your ornate plate

I venture inside to grab a cool cloth to wipe your forehead
as the crow makes a fuss just because the dog is at his bowl

Patting your brow, you gesture at the broken twigs, evidence
of the brushtail possum living above the frayed trampoline

two slaters, Roley Poleys, dark grey and oval-shaped move
burrowing in the potato peels I put down earlier. These earthy

crustaceans are so small, the temptation to flick them is strong
but I don’t. Snails slide by them in the leaf litter and fungi

their trails—thin threads bridging over to shaded logs
This backyard needs its own encyclopaedia as I trace steps

of all guests. Magpies show off their études—lyrical timbre
of voice echoing across the street into neighbours’ yards

their song not disturbing the skink who was sunbathing
on concrete—his sleek reflexes put on hold while he stirs

Next door, the serene Satin Bowerbird with its purple eyes
gathering seed-pods, string, matchboxes, all to make a home

This side, the magnolia with its large, glossy leaves is towering
—existing well before bees, relying on beetles for pollination

graceful giants outlasting most. Someone close, on their own
partying, raising a glass to the sliver of moon. You join in

lifting your tea cup in empathy—a silent pact with the night
as the overhanging branches frame the buzzing expanse of stars

Published: November 2021
Alicia Sometimes

is a writer and broadcaster. She has performed her spoken word and poetry at many venues, festivals and events around the world. She is director and co-writer of the science-poetry planetarium shows, Elemental and Particle/Wave. Her TedxUQ talk in 2019 was about combining art with science.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Edwardsia ivelli

by Veronica Fibisan

meet in micro-tidal lagoon
sheltered by a membrane
of metaphor’s energy
sifts sentiency in vessel

penny-sized translucencies
tease out words of
tidal teleology
settle in crumbs
lago on mixopolyhaline mesh
decipher message sticks
diaphanous engravings
dredged from hydroskeleton core
divide tear’s territory in triggers
an anchor drops
physa’s exclusive use

teaches gentle touch
lago against the crush of current
contortion or reaction
to transverse bars of pale cream
curved on the aboral side
of oxidized zones

vertical excursion to mud surface
expanded tentacular crowns’ radii
repeat introversion in burrowing
lago spread on sand dunes

comprehend castrum
as mechanics of being
turbidity etched within
photometer’s reading
unclear levels in soft sediment
quasi-pelagic pool’s clay margin unmerging

a water-clogged thought
passes pathway’s shallow
shift in syllable towards peripheries of meaning
does not fit any known classification

derridean gift
a body lago
on surface
of suspended flux

stretches precision of words
as sedimented sleep
is pressed through the earth
into shaded bodies
skin-deep
doubled in vertical shaft
sharing steered stalked
lago limbs on
lines’ waterways
ripple weir connections
threaded tentacle asterisms
settle within one another
in the logos of silt

Published: November 2021
Veronica Fibisan

has recently completed a PhD at The University of Sheffield in English Literature and Creative Writing. She is Editor of the creative writing journal Route57, and ASLE-UKI Postgraduate and Early-Career Representative. She has published poetry notably in The Sheffield Anthology (Smith/Doorstop, 2012), CAST: The Poetry Business Book of New Contemporary Poets (Smith/Doorstop, 2014), Plumwood Mountain Journal (4.1), the Wretched Strangers Anthology (Boiler House Press, 2018), PAN (2019, 2020) and Voices for Change Anthology (2020).

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Invasion Species

by Gaele Sobott

Gaele Sobott

where yellow-spotted goannas lay their eggs

late in the wet season or early in the dry  
sinuous with whiplike tail  fierce long claws
she digs a helical burrow

down   backfill 		      dead end
across  backfill 		      dead end
down   backfill	              dead end
across  backfill 	              dead end
down   backfill  		      dead end


corkscrew   spiralling 
down twelve feet  to soil that’s cool and wet
she digs a chamber the size of two clenched fists
and lays her eggs  backfill

up         backfill 		      dead end
across  backfill		      dead end
up         backfill 		      dead end
across  backfill 		      dead end
up         backfill 		      dead end

Ten days later she emerges from the earth
into brutal sun her fork tongue flickers in search of food

where yellow-spotted goannas lay their eggs
       tightly-packed labyrinths corkscrew spiral
merge collapse erode ventilate the earth
with megacities of lizards  snakes  scorpions  centipedes  
       beetles  ants  frogs
high-rise densely-populated ecosystems 

where yellow-spotted goannas lay their eggs
           baby goannas hatch  with long claws
they scratch straight holes to the top
                                          emerge from soil to sun or moonlight
their forked tongues flicker in search of food
          infestations of cane toads 
colonisers
invasion species 
sugar plantations
dry warty toxic 

corkscrew 
spiral 
lethal                          	 	  dead end
yellow spotted goannas         dead end
underground cities    		  dead end
complex ecosystem    		  dead
Published: November 2021
Gaele Sobott

lives on Darug land in Western Sydney. Her publications include Colour Me Blue, a collection of short stories, and My Longest Round, the life story of Wally Carr. She was awarded a 2021 Varuna Writers Space fellowship and shortlisted for the 2021 Queensland Poetry Awards Emerging Older Poets Mentorship. She is the founding director of Outlandish Arts.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Touch

by Leone Gabrielle

I.

I uncoil nylon rope from foam block floats,  
tied round when not in use. Powdery
powder lifts the air.

If I can keep it long, I do.
The block is a float used for fishing
from someone with intelligence and less means.

Beautifully wound for work at sea and then. Lost …

II.

In sand, languages fade.
Fishing lines intwine in pieces
of toilet, kitchen, bath, bed, lounge. Habitat.  

Plastic toys, marine buoys,                                   
gas cylinders butterfly rusted, broken
bottles, cigarette lighters decay away. Today.

Floats, squid-jigs, pieces of boat, toothbrush, jagged combs,
deodorant, thongs, high heel shoes. Multiples of left feet … 

III.

Like stuff flung after a festival sung. Small net this beach
caught between rocks slowly sliding up stovetop sand.

Into the grasses. Up over into the scrub. Marches.

Crocodile, dingo, black necked crane,
tracks of turtles, hours old.
U-turn to the sea …

IV.

Foam blocks into flame, driftwood on top.
I burn our rubbish on a beach of rubbish
with a gust of petrol.

Nature a circle.

Disposable a culture,
decorating sacred space.

My bag of shopping, a pattern as bad as Rio Tinto’s. 

I acknowledge the Angkamuthi people of the Angkamuthi Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the Country I am writing this poem about: Vrilya Point, Western Cape York. I recognise their continuing connection to the land and waters, and thank them for protecting this coastline and its ecosystems since time immemorial. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.

Published: November 2021
Leone Gabrielle

is a writer of poetry and prose. She lives in Seymour, a snaking river town in Central Victoria, Australia, on Tungurung country. She has been published in Cordite Poetry ReviewAustralian Poetry Journal and is the creator of several community art and poetry installations.

Back to issue
From: Vol.08 N.01 – Embodied Belonging: Towards an Ecopoetic Lyric

Fogg Dam

by Jacqui Malins

Old people would tell me
this is a mere afterimage.
But the first good wet in years
and profligate tropical abundance
floods me.

The mud is rich and dark, water glass.
Under the sun, lotus lilies float
their burdens of petals and pollen.
Ibis and heron unfurl bright
across the shallows.

I turn to each splash, glimpse
flash of kingfisher with squirming sliver.
Flageolet whistle of kites descants above
sticky insect hum. A dragonfly thrums
the tip of every twig.

Great egret croaks a protest, wet feet
drag as it labours away from my
disturbance. Past freshwater mangroves
paperbarks shed skin and figs dangle
tangled rootlet tresses.

Bee-eaters snap at motes of light and motile
shadows are Shining Flycatchers’ obsidian glint.
I glance up to meet ringed eyes of a Boobook, resettling
its feathered self. A golden snake pours sunlit mercury
through burnished leaf litter.

In the monsoon forest’s soothing gloom,
vivid existence dazzles. Submerged in this urgent
here and now, without visible horizon
I can’t see what is ahead, what is coming.

Published: November 2021
Jacqui Malins

is a performance poet and artist based in Canberra. She has featured at the Woodford and National Folk Festivals, and has published chapbook Cavorting with Time (Recent Work Press, 2018) and her first collection F-Words (Recent Work Press, 2021).

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED