Inside, the edo-jin stir ashes to a dogged glow. A pair of curs sniff the bridgehead and the rat that passed there, now wallowing unreachable in river silt. They turn their backsides to our Hiro as he slips out of sight. The old town droops into silence and the rains begin. (Full poem online at […]
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Nancy Gaffield, Tokaido Road
I’ve just finished Nancy Gaffield’s superb Tokaido Road – 55 poems based on Hiroshige’s series of woodblock prints Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaido. I read it first without looking at the prints, to see how the poems work on their own (very well). Now I’m going to read it again, looking at the pictures. For […]
Private Poetry
Outside the Brisbane Powerhouse, apparently.
Louis MacNeice, ‘Passage Steamer’
One of my favourite bits of MacNeice: Upon the decks they take beef tea, Who are so free, so free, so free, But down the ladder in the engine-room (Doom, doom, doom, doom.) The great cranks rise and fall, repeat, The great cranks plod with their Assyrian feet To match the monotonous energy of the […]
Poet Inscribes Verse into Bacteria DNA
Many artists seek to attain immortality through their art, but few would expect their work to outlast the human race and live on for billions of years. As Canadian poet Christian B