Have a read of my poem, ‘That’s All You Can Do’ first published in ‘First Refuge Poems on social justice‘ (Ginninderra Press). First Refuge is a collection of poems marking the twentieth birthday of Ginninderra Press as an independent Australian publisher. ‘Beyond a celebration of years, this collection reflects the vision of Stephen Matthews to open up opportunities for Australian poets who so often give their voice to the unheard.’
That’s All You Can Do:
The news reports:
at watch and act today total fire ban
smoke haze poor air quality asthma sufferers
and other respiratory problems stay indoors.
Hot north westerly winds
west and southwest of Sydney
properties cleared and prepared
an anxious night distant sirens confusion
to leave or to go?
Springwood, Yarramundi.
Residents report:
rescue our animals and get out of here
a new fire break
it’s always your family that’s more important
pack up your photos that’s all you can do
temporary accommodation
photos are what you’ve seen and experienced.
On amber watch today
200 houses destroyed so far
hoping and praying for the best
containment lines will they hold?
Exhausted fire fighters
people’s lives are the most important
fire crews keep back-burning
what else can you do?
Despite ember attacks on homes
Rural Fire Service to link up bushfires as winds drop.
Have a read of my prose poem, ‘The Backpack” first published in Quadrant Magazine. Hope you enjoy it.
The Backpack:
What can a man who meets you at the station and offers to carry your backpack mean to a woman traveling the world alone?
I was scared, like anyone who has no sense of direction. The journey was a series of stops and starts. Whether to use the Eurail pass or post it back home and ask the kids to get me a refund. Giovanni appeared one European winter, thick padded jacket, woolen beanie, scarf and gloves, tall and imposing, I’ll carry your bag.
I was small, the backpack the length of my spine, the zip-off bag on one shoulder, the daypack positioned in front like a nine-month baby bump. That evening, as we climbed the steps of the Corniche – the wind bitter across the Mediterranean, the metal stairs covered with slippery ice, the railing melting beneath my hand. Soon it would become my railway platform, my steps, and Giovanni my landlord.
We walked there in the crisp night air. My own place. It didn’t cost much. No-one yet knew I was here. I could ask Giovanni if I needed any help. I knew my children would be pleased I had a base. I didn’t want them to worry. It was the thing I wanted the most secretly, studying maps, absorbing travel books. To be safe, a desire whispered to the moon that moved behind my shoulder at night. If you guide me to a safe haven I promise to be happy. And the moon listened. I did my best.
The winter sky closed down and the spring began its flowering. I took photos and painted and rang the children every week. Watch your money, don’t talk to strangers, be careful walking at night – you know the drill. The pebbly beach, the weekend markets, it was all there for the exploring. A glimpse of the sea between terracotta roofs – a vision in turquoise. The cobbled streets could show which way to follow – and none of them wrong. A room at the top of the stairs – till June I stayed reading the English books Giovanni had left in the bookcase, shopping for food, telling my kids and friends they should come for a visit.
Where had the months gone? Almost two years on the road. Summer approached. The rents would go up and the tourists arrive. Time to move on. I could only take with me what I could carry on my back. A Jewish gypsy they said. One more step into the unknown. Pack up, give away what I couldn’t manage, but keep the palette knife and miniature easel. There was stuff happening back home. The boys were grown and earning a living. Their sister turned twenty-one. People were reinventing themselves all over the place then coming back home. A thousand train rides later, my mother nearly eighty. I won’t be around much longer, she cried.
His was a helping hand in a world that says, but what are you doing there? What are you doing?
I’m reposting this post from last year when we were deeply in the midst of the pandemic. It’s worth having another read about the benefits of poetry:
‘Neurologists at Exeter University, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, found that reading poetry activated different brain regions to prose – even the lyrical prose we find in fiction. When the research participants read poetry, it lit up the regions of the brain variously linked to emotion, memory, making sense of music, coherence building and moral decision-making. Poetry, the study’s authors concluded, induces a more introspective, reflective mental state among readers than does prose.’ – Sarah Holland-Batt, Weekend Australian, 21–22 March 2020
If you feel you’re losing your ability to focus on a long book while confined indoors and surrounded by digital screens (as staying up to date on a global pandemic seems to command), try turning to poetry to nurse your shrinking attention span back to life.
In the Time of Pandemic
And the people stayed home.,
And they read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still.
And they listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.
Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.
And the people healed.
And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.
—Kitty O’Meara
‘Poetry is the quiet music of being human and in these days and nights when our humanity is fully vulnerable and exposed, poetry takes a small step forward. In our separate isolations, a poem is like the Tardis: bigger on the inside. Like spring – to recall TS Eliot – poetry mixes memory and desire.’ – Carol Ann Duffy, The Guardian
This poem by poet Ian McMillan, reminds of us of just what we lose each time a library is closed.
Adult Fiction
I always loved libraries, the quiet of them, The smell of the plastic covers and the paper And the tables and the silence of them, The silence of them that if you listened wasn’t silence, It was the murmur of stories held for years on shelves And the soft clicking of the date stamp, The soft clickety-clicking of the date stamp. I used to go down to our little library on a Friday night
In late summer, just as autumn was thinking about Turning up, and the light outside would be the colour Of an Everyman cover and the lights in the library Would be soft as anything, and I’d sit at a table And flick through a book and fall in love With the turning of the leaves, the turning of the leaves.
And then at seven o’clock Mrs Dove would say In a voice that wasn’t too loud so it wouldn’t Disturb the books “Seven o’clock please …” And as I was the only one in the library’s late summer rooms I would be the only one to stand up and close my book And put it back on the shelf with a sound like a kiss, Back on the shelf with a sound like a kiss.
And I’d go out of the library and Mrs Dove would stand For a moment silhouetted by the Adult Fiction, And then she would turn the light off and lock the door And go to her little car and drive off into the night That was slowly turning the colour of ink and I would stand For two minutes and then I’d walk over to the dark library And just stand in front of the dark library.
‘The astronomer and poet Rebecca Elson (January 2, 1960–May 19, 1999) was twenty-nine when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma — a blood cancer that typically invades people in their sixties and seventies. Throughout the bodily brutality of the treatment, throughout the haunting uncertainty of life in remission, she met reality on its own terms — reality creaturely and cosmic, terms chance-dealt by impartial laws — and made of that terrifying meeting something uncommonly beautiful.
Rebecca Elson, 1987
‘When she returned her atoms to the universe, not yet forty, Elson bequeathed to this world 56 scientific papers and a slender, stunning book of poetry titled A Responsibility to Awe (public library) — verses spare and sublime, drawn from a consciousness pulling the balloon string of the infinite through the loop of its own finitude, life-affirming the way only the most intimate contact with death — which means with nature — can be.’ – Maria Popova
Elson’s crowning achievement in verse is the poem “Antidotes to Fear of Death,”
ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH by Rebecca Elson
Sometimes as an antidote To fear of death, I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back, I suck them from the quenching dark Til they are all, all inside me, Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself Into a universe still young, Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space, The light of all the not yet stars Drifting like a bright mist, And all of us, and everything Already there But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough To lie down here on earth Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields Of our discarded skulls, Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis, Thinking: whatever left these husks Flew off on bright wings.
Hope you felt the positive benefits of reading these poems.
Poetry Sydney is an independent literary organisation committed to a presence for poetry in our culture. On their website they have the following information re poetry publication:
The Australian Poetry Publishers directory is a portal for poets to have their poems published, to encourage Australian poetry to be purchased and to support Australian Poetry in enabling poets to have the opportunity to be published. Publishers on this list are those who publish poetry within Australia.
Dangerously Poetic (no unsolicited submissions currently) Byron based. dangerouslypoetic.com
Flying Islands (no unsolicited submissions currently) Website coming soon.
Fremantle Press WA (open for unsolicited manuscripts from new and emerging Western Australian poets) Please note that while they are open to considering work from established writers, their focus at this time is on the work of new and emerging poets. https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/
Friendly Street (open for submissions from members and residents of South Australia) friendlystreetpoets.org.au
*HunterPublishers (no unsolicited submissions currently) hunterpublishers.com.au
Interactive Publications (open for unsolicited submissions)Valuable contributor to Australian poetry, but check terms advised. Reading fee. http://www.ipoz.biz/interactive-press/
Light Trap Press (no unsolicited submissions currently, but check for open submissions in September) http://www.light-trap.net/
Lightning Source not a publisher, printing and distribution for self-publish. www.ingramspark.com
*MagabalaBooks (an Indigenous publishing house. Publishing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander poets – open unsolicited submissions) https://www.magabala.com
Melbourne Poets Union (MPU) Chapbooks (competition based selection for chapbooks) Several open periods during year. https://www.melbournepoetsunion.com
* Wild Weeds Press (not a publisher, but operates as a printing service for self-publishing)Western Australia based. https://www.wildweedspress.org/
This Australian Publishers directory was compiled by Les Wicks for Poetry Sydney, December 2021. All reasonable efforts were taken to ensure information is accurate. We welcome information that assists in maintaining the directory. We urge you to look at the array of links, and encourage you to buy some great Australian poetry. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
Listings marked with * did not respond to our queries and those publishers marked had information gleaned from their website.
Have a read of my prose poem, ‘The Cellist’ first published in Quadrant September 2020.
Hope you enjoy it.
‘The Cellist‘:
I was grudgingly ancient. Not older, wiser and ancient. But easily recognisable as ancient. Skin was the culprit – the human body’s largest organ. I had his mobile number and he had mine, the cellist from the seniors’ dating site. I examined its configuration. Was there a pattern I needed to decode? I hated initiating, but he needed reassurance. It might take him forever to ring. Composing a text, my palms sweated. My heart thumped. Was he okay with texting? I hated my impatience. I hated my unexpected fragility. I sent the text. Yesterday’s meet-up was fun. I’d like to go for a ride on your motorbike sometime, although the helmet will squash my hair.
Then I worried I’d gone too far. My legs wrapped around him on a bike? I sounded like a whore. A desperado. A woman too long without a man. His reply was immediate. Had he been holding the phone in his hand? We can start with a short ride around the block. I’ve got a large helmet. Everyone gets hat hair.
I don’t want you to go on his motorbike, my daughter warned. I’ll go for a ride on his bike, my granddaughter offered. What sort of boat’s he got? A tinnie or a sail boat? asked my grandson. I googled: ‘what to expect when riding pillion’. Hang on. Brace for braking and acceleration by holding on to the rider’s waist. Bikes must lean to corner. Relax. Tyres provide plenty of grip.
We had dinner, exchanged silly jokes, leaned towards each other, went back to my place – and had incredible sex. The sensitivity of a stringed instrumentalist was really something else. If I knew how, I would have burst into song.
My poem ‘My Friend Is Swiping & Scrolling’ is published in this month’s Quadrant Magazine, July-August 2022. I wrote the poem during the first year of the pandemic. Have a read. Hope you like it.
My Friend Is Swiping & Scrolling:
My friend in the dark hour before dawn. My friend with the ragged stomach who had a bad night. In a different hemisphere he is turning on the bedside light, rolling out of bed, pouring a cap of antacid at the kitchen bench. My friend who hasn’t left his neighbourhood all year. My friend in London pining for how things used to be, for the Eurostar crossings to speak German and Spanish.
My friend scrolling through Facebook to see the faces of his family. My friend living alone who aches with aloneness. My friend the glass-half-full-kind-of-guy listening out for the early morning train thinking, we’ll get through this, in time. My friend who sits through forty Zoom meetings every five days. A rush of nostalgic reflections but is everything nostalgia? We’re all in this together.
The extroverted friend and the introverted one scrolling & swiping at home, the teenage friend whose father is hospitalised for a third time, my friend in China who sends me a red envelope, my friend in France dunking a croissant as she swipes left in greyish gloom, my friend in kurta pajamas beating a tabla drum, my friend in activewear driven to over-exercise, my friend who is addicted to social media like I am.
My friend in Israel my stressed-out Barista friend behind a coffee machine my friend with only one kidney my friend in palliative care under a sign I do not want visitors my young friend who was warned at school about swiping & scrolling my friend next door, who wonders if we are complaisant already my friend who is feeling lethargic my friend who hopes everyone will go back to work soon my friend who tells me she has a problem wearing a mask my friend who pretends not to see me on the street, even she must be on Zoom with others by now, so I let her go.
Scrolling will distract me from uncomfortable emotions as the cafes near me say takeaway only and the stores where I used to window-shop have empty frontages with To Lease signs and the famous writer I wish I’d had the courage to speak to when I had the chance, is diagnosed with dementia in another country, I snatch at memories of post cards sent back and forth. So who else should I pick up the phone and dial and say, Are you okay? Who else might I never see again?
All of us scrolling & swiping in the mornings and the afternoons and in the evenings near the hotel with the old TOOTH’S SHEAF STOUT Keeps you fit! poster telling us a tantalising beer with a dry finish and a medium body.
My poem ‘Hostilities’ is published in this month’s Quadrant magazine, available in newsagents, good book stores and in libraries. Big thank you to Literary Editor, Barry Spurr.
45 poems written over a 20 year period, here at last. THE CELLIST, A BELLYDANCER & OTHER DISTRACTIONS is officially released. My first poetry collection is available to order in bookstores and online.
Barry Spurr, Literary Editor, Quadrant writes on the back cover:
“Libby Sommer has the true poet’s eye for the deeper meaning that can abide beneath the ordinariness and small details of our daily lives and experiences. And she expresses her insights with the genuine poet’s careful and precise attention to placing the right word in the right place.”
Barry Spurr, Literary Editor, Quadrant
Big thank you again to Stephen Matthews OAM, Ginninderra Press. And much gratitude to everyone who has offered me support, encouragement and kindness over the years.
Libby Sommer, Author 