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Jodie Young, verray jangleresse @jangleresse.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Survived Friday! Over the weekend I'm planning to finally get into the Best of Australian Poems 2024 (ed. @shastradeo.bsky.social & Kate Lilley). Some wonderful poets in this and I'm really looking forward to discovering some gems

Picture shows the cover of Best of Australian Poems 2024, edited by Shastra Deo and Kate Lilley. The cover has a pale beige background with geometric shapes forming an abstract picture

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Jodie Young, verray jangleresse @jangleresse.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Settled in with my cat and cozy blanket for my annual between-Christmas-and-New-Year read of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Picture shows a sleeping cat next to a copy of a book, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Both are on lying on top of a warm blanket

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Jodie Young, verray jangleresse @jangleresse.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Revisiting an anthology from 2006 and this poem from Bruce Dawe feels sadly as relevant as ever. Why Liberation from Dictatorship May Take Some Time #AusPoetry

Text of a poem by Bruce Dawe

Why Liberation from Dictatorship May Take Some Time

Our Great and Fearless Leader
(may His Name be forever praised!)
like a wise farmer has planted
many fields full of ears

In the particles of dust
from the sandstorms
He is also present; if we would breathe
we must do so very carefully

In those distant clouds
in the heavens above us
hidden cameras record
our every activity

Even the birds on the city rooftops
as well as those in the distant villages
cock beady eyes and fly swiftly
to inform Him of all that we say

Now foreigners come, bearing (they tell us) freedom
- but freedom is only a word we have heard
fluttering like a feather on the lips
of the dying

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Jodie Young, verray jangleresse @jangleresse.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

" and surreptitiously pour / a little more sky into blue." Peter Boyle poem: '379,000 Poets Available' from 'Companions, Ancestors, Inscriptions' (Vagabond Press) #AusPoetry

Peter Boyle poem: 379,000 POETS AVAILABLE
379,000 poets are writing precisely at this moment.
Right now their hands are wavering above a keyboard or their pens hang poised over blank paper or their fingers
hover for a few seconds over their phones.
Through each poet
night and day pulse to their own rhythm and in six thousand languages words start their unforeseeable journeys into the void. And simultaneously everything and nothing is said while over their shoulders the earth's long darkness prepares to settle in.
At every instant 379,000 fresh attempts to make hope more hopeful, to put more shudder into sadness, to dust clean while also preserving
the webs the spiders weave over our windows, to fine tune all the colours of the world and surreptitiously pour a little more sky into blue.

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Jodie Young, verray jangleresse @jangleresse.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

"And the stars absconded / And the skies broke open" Sara M Saleh poem: 'Unholy Verses', from 'The Flirtation of Girls' (University of Queensland Press) #AusPoetry

Sara M Saleh poem: Unholy Verses
How the seas emptied of salt And the tides swelled And the pipelines built And the gas pumped And the forests logged And the fisheries depleted And the reef bleached
And the mountains landslided
And the bees starved And the stars absconded And the sky broke open And the planet tuberculated And the corporations monetised And the surveillance digitised And the protestors fined And the people calloused And the laws ossified
And the women paid first
And the bodies of earth testified against us.

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Jodie Young, verray jangleresse @jangleresse.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

"make your lungs stop moving" Lebanese-Palestinian poet Hasib Hourani: 'How to hold your breath' from the collection 'Rock Flight' (Giramondo Press) #AusPoetry

Poem by Hasib Hourani:
HOW TO HOLD YOUR BREATH:
ONE
take your right hand
use your index finger and your thumb to pinch your nostrils shut
TWO
take your left hand
place the palm over your mouth use lots of force to make sure no air can come in or out
THREE
make your lungs stop moving
NOTE
if you are my mother don't worry about steps ONE through THREE you know how to hold your breath without doing anything at all

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Jodie Young, verray jangleresse @jangleresse.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

"I didn't want there to be one butterfly / less to do the good work we need." Judith Beveridge poem 'Black-winged Butterfly' from Tintinnabulum (Giramondo Poetry) #AusPoetry

$Judith Beveridge poem: Black-winged Butterfly When I saw you as a caterpillar eating the vine's new leaves, perhaps I should have flung you to the birds but I didn't want there to be one butterfly less to do the good work we need. Finally, you've emerged— but you can't untwist your wings, their scales can't refract the light and raise your body heat. Carefully I unlatch you from the edge of the chrysalis. Against my fingers legs and feelers work in hard circles, second-hands delirious for extra increments of time. I offer you honey-water— your proboscis, thin as a human hair, sips from my hand. I think of how long you've spent in your sealed bauble: the cocoon turning from green, to thin gold-leaf, to black when the wings quickened. Now unable to open, they're like the banners of a thwarted regime. Soon you'll die in my palm, the only small holding you'll know.$

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