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From: Vol.09 N.01 – A Poetics of Rights

Pyrogeoraphy

by Angela Gardner
an almost sets a fire in the head

frontiers fire-hungry in vast alignment


: trembling sun. light’s bare movement: slowed glass stillness. the sky a category-error we aren’t seeing. a tremor in a field: analogue and enacting

	                 first fast tallgrass then the whole 

volatile vapours 	                     fire winds 	         feral extravagance gasps for air
outside are visions: clouds that will shine and vents of forest fires

then the whole a burning supernova. the forest 
spills from living fiery mouths. flowing, flowering fire-fronts as ignition fuels winds, fans 
gullets of combustion. destabilised: by our transmuting 


	who knows all the names for measuring our walls to keep the green world out?

lights grow and shapeshift, blast fire-wielding to ratchet and quicken.    
none so blind and blue as always in the calm and clear after-wreck 
   we believe is safe.
endless Summer fire-struck by this bright fulcrum. 
a flourish to burn Earth so lavishly.  
Published: August 2022
Angela Gardner

Angela Gardner’s verse novel The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette (Shearsman Books, 2021) is a UK National Poetry Day recommendation and is shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year, 2022. She is the author of six poetry collections starting with the Thomas Shapcott Prize winning Parts of Speech, UQP 2007. Her recent poems are forthcoming/published in The Yale ReviewWest Branch, Poetry Salzburg ReviewSoftBlowBlackbox ManifoldThe Long PoemSoutherly and Cordite. Her visual work is held in international public collections.

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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