06: NEW POETRY

Index of poems
Released 2000 (print) | 2001 (online)
Poetry Editor Adrian Wiggins
Cover Image Cath Barcan

Our sixth and final issue in print was in fact a double issue’s worth of poetry, critical articles, reviews and visual works. This issue was also our first to appear online. For convenience, we’ve split the poetry in the issue into two categories: 06: NEW POETRY contains the majority of the poems in the issue, while 07: NOTHERN TERRITORY contains a special feature on poetry in Australia’s Northern Territory as well as translations. Check out the original archives on the National Library of Australia\’s Pandora website.




Ian C Smith: Gesture

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

Fletcher’s juggling Bligh’s shrewd attention with bayonet, cutlass, maps, musket & pistol, a stance crying out for halcyon poise. Collar open, hair loose, lapsing into Pidgin, he could be a C20th film hero, even sports the unshaven scoundrel look suitable …

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Ian C Smith: Christianity

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

The Polynesian widows remain faithful to their rituals now John Adams stands alone. The shouts & laughter of children mingle with the cries of gulls echoing over fields where the widows work surrounded by the unchanging ocean wearing flowers in …

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Ian C Smith: Appearances

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

Under an oppressive sky two men shaving in an open boat after a four-thousand mile marathon soaked, their limbs swollen, unable to lie down excepting a brief landfall at New Holland, death’s sour breath blowing them ever westabout. John Fryer, …

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Hazel Smith: Fullers’ Walnut Cake

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

People with sore memories are getting fussed up because they are letting a war criminal into the country and suddenly the need to talk about yourself has flared though you hate confessionalism and you do not really know what you …

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Shen: The Way I Like It

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

The sounds of a vacuum cleaner awaken her some mornings, even if I shut the doors. I’m passing a stiff hose over the rug, the carpet and the floor downstairs. She passes me along the hall with eyes still stuck, …

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Shen: Falling Plums

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

Falling plums from the tree by the front door make stains on the paving every year. This spring I took a pair of shears to the fruit, cut them from branches while still green and the tree newly leafing after …

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Thomas Shapcott: After The Picnic

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

Whenever she remembered the smell and nuttiness of river gravel, in the old days of picnics and whole gangs of them at the sandy flat (smoky sausages had never tasted more alluring!) she would also remember that time Paul had …

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Thomas Shapcott: … a fable and a joke …

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

— Elizabeth Riddel     You walked up the stairs ahead of me and I said ‘Your legs are beautiful!’ In the 1970s it was possible to acclaim grace in a woman and your path up that stairwell spanked deftly …

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Zan Ross: Wadjemup*

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

Something comes out of nothing across the water on days when I am clear about sound, touch, a sharpness of taste as external. I mount the ferry, dramamine—s cradle — passage paid this side of the river. Arrival is rope …

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Zan Ross: Two-for-One x Three

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

Six versions of green towel on rack, my head flat to porcelain — hot flesh chilli thrust up the wall. A matter of interpretation: disjunctive prostheses a) mid-thigh to foot, b) fore-arm and hand, c) brain in a jar, d) …

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Janet Reinhardt: Seducing Hemingway

Posted on February 2, 2001 by Cordite Poetry Review

Leventado He hesitates outside Harry’s; contemplates an absinthe? a martini? no matter what matters is the girl making a slow pass across thwe room, her full, red skirt trailing behind her. She has the tight sprung look of a young …

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David Prater: Ken

Posted on February 2, 2001 by David Prater

ken you were the only vietnamese member of my year 12 modern history class you must have found it odd to be studying the history of indochina from a white perspective but then history is cunning makes fools of many …

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