poetry

My Poem ‘My Friend Is Swiping & Scrolling’

~ Libby Sommer ~ Leave a comment

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.

Copyright 2022 Libby Sommer

My Poem ‘Hostilities’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 6 Comments

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.

Hostilities:

I worry about the ones

who disbelieve in science,

the ones on social media

with no qualifications

but a good command

of gobbledygook,

and the one who said

she’d had enough of wimps like me.

Scientists observe and calculate,

study the risks,

wave us across

as we wait by the side of the road,

even though the science of pandemics

is incomplete.

It takes a lot of guts sometimes

with those who are close to us.

Relatives, old school friends, intimates …

Anti-vaxxers still find arguments

to fire at us. I think of Aristotle’s warning:

there is only one way

to avoid criticism –

do nothing, say nothing,

and be nothing.

Copyright 2022 Libby Sommer

Release of ‘The Cellist, a Bellydancer & Other Distractions’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 4 Comments

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.

My Poem ‘Holding On’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 4 Comments

Submissions to the fifth issue of Australian literary journal Burrow are open until July 20.

I’m very happy to say my poem ‘Holding On’ was accepted for the upcoming September edition.

The editors, Rhiannon Jillian Hall and Phillip Hall wrote:

“We are delighted to be able to publish ‘Holding On’. This is such a richly evocative and appreciative poem of place, & emotional/spatial fragility. We love it.”

I encourage my fellow poets to check out this fabulous journal. The provocation for the September issue of Burrow, Old Water Rat Publishing is : What does mental health (good or otherwise) look like through the prism of place?

My Prose Poem ‘Someone I Don’t Know Sideswiped My Car’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 2 Comments

Have a read of my prose poem ‘Someone I Don’t Know Side-Swiped My Car’, first published in Quadrant magazine April 2021, Hope you enjoy it.

Someone I Don’t Know Side-Swiped My Car:

Bad luck recently, you could say, after surviving some extremely unfortunate luck. For hours I sat across from you in the Emergency Bay:  your face dripping with blood. They gave you a compress to stop the flow of red from your cheekbones and your nose. Every time you touched your face, it opened up the wound. Punched in both eyes and the nose. A robbery as you walked home, I hear you tell your girlfriend on the mobile. And then you’re telling the emergency nurse you can’t wait any longer to see a doctor. ‘You may have concussion,’ she cautioned.

Did you find your way home?

For days I wonder how you are. I sniff the first spring jasmine hanging over the fence and your girlfriend whom I’ve never met crowds my thoughts, till one day, peering out my bedroom window, I notice someone has side-swiped my car. Not exactly what I’d expected to see but, man, the wisteria are showing their purple blooms. A nervous possum balances on the telephone line above the road and there’s a newspaper article about an elderly cyclist who died after a freak bike accident caused by a swooping magpie. Bad luck that a second vehicle crashed into my car while it waited at the smash repair place. Look up, take care, someone or something you don’t know may sideswipe you or punch you in the nose.

Copyright 2021 Libby Sommer

.

Poetry Opportunities

~ Libby Sommer ~ 12 Comments

I’m delighted to say that my new poem ‘Words’ has been accepted for publication in Quadrant magazine. Big thank you to Literary Editor, Professor Barry Spurr.

Unfortunately, it takes at least a year from acceptance to publication in Quadrant, but I’m not complaining 🙂

Maja Amanita shared on Facebook this list of poetry opportunities for you to enter sourced from the Red Room Poetry page and email list.

Opportunities for poets

My Poem, ‘Jogger At My Heels’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 7 Comments
a path through the trees in Cooper Park

My poem, ‘Jogger At My Heels’ was first published in The Canberra Times, Panorama arts section 20 November, 2021. Have a read. Hope you enjoy it.

Jogger At My Heels:

Each morning he races up the steep

steps of the gully and then down again

on the path I take

to buy my daily newspaper.

I recognise his exhalations just behind

and apologetic grimace running back,

urging me to move aside

to let him through,

but today I understand him

more fully than before.

Hearing my own heavy breathing

as I walk up the gigantic slope

I’m sure he’d like to say, Don’t rush

don’t rush.

… but he’s in too much of a hurry.

Copyright 2021 Libby Sommer

My Poem ‘White Ibis’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 2 Comments

My poem ‘White Ibis’ was first published in Quadrant magazine in December 2021. Have a read. Hope you enjoy it.

White Ibis

We wish that nature could stay put

in their home, far away …

not urban tip turkeys, bin chickens –

not like us,

scrounging for a living in cities,

but stay where they thrive,

feeding in swamps, lagoons,

floodplains & grasslands

their black downward-curved bills

digging for crayfish and mussels.

The farmers’ friend,

featherless black heads

flocking in V-shaped flight

to locust-afflicted areas,

gorging on ravaging hordes of insects.

Unlike us, they can eliminate

plagues with ease.

There are nights when we fall asleep

dreaming of ibises

flying back home.

Copyright 2021 Libby Sommer

My Poem ‘Survival’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 13 Comments

Have a read of my poem ‘Survival’ first published in Quadrant magazine December 2021.

Hope you like it.

Survival:

More gusts of wind

through new high-rises

sharped-edged.

More traffic,

more construction dust

much overshadowing

in grey & black.

Newly-planted in the local streets

the bottlebrush should know why it exists:

nectar feeding of insects,

of butterflies & birds.

East of the city

blue beaches dazzle & swell.

They re-emerge

in a spring break out

giving hope to the lone crimson flower

squeezing through densely-packed leaves.

Copyright 2021 Libby Sommer