Australian Poetry Library

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michael dransfield

Michael Dransfield

Michael Dransfield was born in Sydney on 12 September 1948....read more

Features

Poets

  • E. J. Brady

    Edwin James Brady was born on 7 August 1869 at Carcoar, near Bathurst, New South ... more
  • Dorothy Porter 2008, portrait by Juno Gemes©

    Dorothy Porter

    Dorothy Porter was born in Sydney on 26 March 1954. She attended Queenwood School for ... more
  • Roberta ("Bobbi") Sykes, photo courtesy University of Queensland Press

    Roberta Sykes

    Roberta ‘Bobbi’ Sykes was born about 1944 in Townsville, Queensland. Raised by a white mother, ... more
  • Ada Cambridge

    Ada Cambridge was born on 21 November 1844 in Norfolk, England, the daughter of a ... more

Review

Interview: Pam Brown, January-March 2014

Why do you write poetry? That really is a tough question. I doubt that I'll give you a very interesting answer -   I can only sound glib. For me writing poetry might be a habit, or a disorganised ritual.   I've done it all my life, since around the age of seven - I started with lists. It's partly a way of notating my thinking. I suppose it's also a kind of irreligious vocation - one with hardly a skerrick of remuneration. How do you read? Diversely, but very consciously. I usually have three or four things that I'm ... ...read review

Poems

Dreams by Julian Croft

Involuntary flights in the seconds before
then plunge into the unplumbed dark, the diver
kicking against himself, against water, against warmth,
then rising like a bubble, breaking out
into the cold hard of the urgent seconds after.
When I think of it, like death or the dentist,
I resist, but then how nice, what places, what people
you meet; often yourself much better, much worse
sidling through once fashionable forests, now forlorn.
... more

Tonight is my Birthnight by Yu Ouyang

tonight is my birthnight
a simple one at that
i am thirty now, i'm tired, i need some rest,
strolling in the garden, i swoon with the laurel flowers
tonight last year where was i? ten years or twenty years ago where was i?
was i walking down the dark mountain lane rank with weeds forehead high
or with eyes too drunken to see the swimming faces around in the restaurant?
can't remember. have i ever lived? where is the proof?
he who walks in heaven leaves no traces
... more