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Keywords: Modern Australian Poems

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Car park hunger

    • Brendan Ryan
    • 26 August 2014
    1 Comment

    A topless man shuffles into Coles. The Big Issue seller is liked and avoided. Buskers who specialize with the night, streetlights mooning the spaces that never close.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    He taught me how to somersault

    • Susan Fealy
    • 15 July 2014
    2 Comments

    Shamed me with his arithmetic, built me a balance beam... Let me practise, practise, practise:My body weighted all its edges, open to his eyes, the air, the sun.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The words are talking to themselves

    • Peter Gebhardt
    • 08 July 2014
    2 Comments

    We, in the calm, fill out the story-line with the words that will go on living, thriving. And be fresh enough to heal the deep of wounds, when the blood at the front has run out and silence is a bone.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Corroboree in the sky

    • Michael Sharkey
    • 17 December 2013
    2 Comments

    The bird that has no feathers mocks my language. Runs and flaps its wings at me but cannot fly. Throws land-things at me. We laugh like water, make corroboree in sky.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    21st century hermit

    • David Lumsden
    • 27 August 2013
    5 Comments

    He carried no phone and sent no text. He had no email address, deleted no spam, recharged no devices, never backed up.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Peter Steele's seven types of ingenuity

    • Philip Harvey
    • 03 July 2012
    7 Comments

    More than once I observed him walking from the Medley Building of the University of Melbourne to Newman College reading a book, not looking up. It was the book leading the human through the everyday world. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Feast of the fantastic

    • Peter Gebhardt
    • 20 December 2011

    This place is bigger than any kingdom. It opens out, boundary-less, to everyone everywhere. It doesn't matter how many come, and the skateboarders will always get a seat at the banquet, where they will taste the wine and food, learn to sing with the host and rejoice in his good.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    New English biblical translation

    • Paul Dignam and Jonathan Hadwen
    • 07 June 2011
    1 Comment

    Jesus said 'G'day mate, why don'tcher try a cast off the point there, I had a few bites just now, reckon you'll catch a feed, at least. I'll get the billy on ...'

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why we swear

    • Philip Harvey
    • 06 June 2011
    6 Comments

    Fining people for swearing is silly. We can no more control what people say than we can hold the wind, or even a very large fart. Victoria's swear-fine laws are likely to be used either as threat or reality on those who can least afford the fine and cannot fight back.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Weapon on a train

    • A. Frances Johnson
    • 21 September 2010
    1 Comment

    extracted .. from a small black bag .. on a peak hour train .. Held sharp and confident as a new razor .. against the shunt and shuck .. of the carriage .. Throwback to industrial tortures .. held against the soft wet eye

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Why I still go to church

    • Charlotte Clutterbuck
    • 02 March 2010
    5 Comments

    now because of you kneeling .. beside me, thumbing the scarred leather .. of the little mass-book your grandmother .. hid at the back of her Protestant linen-press 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Treeless Eden, oasis of wealth

    • Peter Matheson
    • 07 July 2009

    I spot the odd ornamental shrub .. And even the occasional bird .. Though only sparrows, it seems .. Beloved of the Lord .. Survive this sterile affluence.

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