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Special N.02 – Poets speak up to Adani

Adani

by Jennifer Maiden

 

 

requested by Anne Elvey

 

I’ve written about the Appalachian Fall, when mines

beheaded mountains like limp fowlyard kings, but this

is too neat a betrayal, the wetlands and the coral

becoming a coal pier, the discard dumps, the holes

left behind like Novocaine extractions, the tunnel

that winds inter-related as a rat’s, and drains

the water table, the smooth decapitations, the funnel

giving money to the heartlost and the hopelost: what

could I say that isn’t said, I think? At last,

someone will holiday on carbon credits, perhaps

the company secretary when the coal runs thin,

proud that anthracite funds a hospital. Qld

governments are by definition plump and little,

campaign for those who will campaign for them.

No owner can prove quite traditional: the earth still

owned only when transactional: sold to hunting people

who wear it out, not suffer it like skin.

Published: August 2022
Jennifer Maiden

is an Australian poet. She was born in Penrith, New South Wales, and has had 35 books published: 27 poetry collections, 6 novels and 2 nonfiction works

 

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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.

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