CONTRIBUTORS

Dominic Symes

Dominic Symes lives quietly in naarm/Melbourne. His debut collection I saw the best memes of my generation (Recent Work Press) was highly commended in the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. In 2025 he was shortlisted for the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize and in 2026 longlisted for the ABR Peter Porter Poetry Prize. His latest collection songs of love & hate speech is published by Rabbit.

http://www.domsymes.com/

rent poem

I rent this body a poem is a rent of attention of course a poet doesn’t own: they rent! my intention is to live & die not to live forever in some perverse never-ending renovation montage but to love the …

Posted in 121: NO THEME 15 | Tagged

tropical skimming

from what I can remember gleaning it was a gas pipe issue & I’ve already let reception know considering this errant thong atop a recycling bin I treat the surface of the poem like it were the fresh water and …

Posted in 117: NO THEME 14 | Tagged

Korean Grocer

I can sit here forever in the coffee shop beside the Korean Grocer watching Brunswick St as the lights come on like in Hyper-reactive (the award-winning poem by Melody Paloma) feeling like cardboard in the rain …it won’t last! yells …

Posted in INVISIBLE WALLS | Tagged

Paul Verlaine’s pistol

rings out through poetry like a town hall clock in a village where poetry hides like a pill in a cabinet (entropy & all that) leave your text messages unread your heroes unsung suggests the band in long coats supplying …

Posted in INVISIBLE WALLS | Tagged

Tipping point (‘Blues for skip’)

my skin is deathly pale which is about the only thing I have in common with Keats if this were the nineteenth century I’d worry if I really was consumptive or just capital R romantic at present all my shirts …

Posted in INVISIBLE WALLS | Tagged

Dirty Hit

do you ever find yourself reading poems just to see what people who actually get published are writing these days? or sniff your clothes in the washing basket even though you know they’re dirty? I do it’s like I realised …

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged

Security Questions (True Vulnerability)

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. – Brené Brown Is this the light refracting innocently through a droplet of rain I’m seeing trapped in …

Posted in 108: DEDICATION | Tagged

Lunchtime Variations: Dominic Symes Interviews Peter Bakowski and Ken Bolton

I became interested in how Ken and Peter worked with one another, with an eye to discovering the conditions which allow poetic collaborations to remain fresh and full of humour, in the same way people examine the diets of people in Blue Zones, like Okinawa and Ikaria.

Posted in INTERVIEWS | Tagged , ,

Beginning and Ending with a Line from Hera Lindsay Bird

love comes back harder falling in love with you for the second time is trying to sail back to the harbour against a headwind that I hardly felt as a tailwind sailing out so confident though I’ve never been on …

Posted in TMLYMI v4 | Tagged

Greta Thunberg Ode

children the size of adults pester me with questions like how big is your carbon footprint? I mean yes I’m a minor poet not a major corporation but I’d still prefer being taken to task by someone with a stake …

Posted in 95: EARTH | Tagged

Review Short: Eddie Paterson’s redactor

As a physical object with an online extraction, Eddie Paterson’s new book of poems, redactor, presents the performance of mark-making in an ever expanding digital sphere. The juxtaposition between the white of the page and the black of the ink has long provided a site for textual collision, one that was used to great effect by the concrete poets and the French Symbolists.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Ekphrasis as ‘Event’: Poets Paint Words and the ‘Performance’ of Ekphrasis in Australia

To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Newcastle Region Art Gallery (NRAG) in 2007, Lisa Slade and Peter Minter co-curated the exhibition Poets Paint Words. The two curators commissioned some of Australia’s best poets to write poems in response to a selection of paintings held in the NRAG archive.

Posted in ESSAYS | Tagged , , , , , , , ,