- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones
Damen O’Brien
Kraken Air
inspired by ‘Kraken’ by China Mieville At the apogee of oxygen where cyan turns to cyanosis and air frays and fritters into space, where metaphysical angels sing and ET friction-brakes his saucer something loses its dispute with nothing and up …
Posted in 115: SPACE
Tagged Damen O'Brien
The Anatomy Lesson
The bucket of eyes blinks at us. We each choose a bauble, carbuncular, gimleted, unflowered irises, winter buds winking. We draw from the jelly bean jar, jewellery that watches us, observing observers, each to an orb. This is serious work, …
Posted in 111: BABY
Tagged Damen O'Brien
Eddie Speaks
after Venom, the Movie (2018) I sometimes wonder if I made you up – imaginary friend who will say yes to all that should be no. I sometimes wonder if you sprung from my worst – the secret Id gnawing …
Posted in 110: POP
Tagged Damen O'Brien
Carcinization
This side of the water-line everything is beetles, on the other, the kingdoms of crabs, all else are sports, dead-end prototypes, and us. The startling dominance of it, the inevitable reordering to the type: un-shucked, re-burdened, the great evolutionary retreat …
Posted in 106: OPEN
Tagged Damen O'Brien
2022 Queensland Poetry Val Vallis Award Winners
Introducing the 2022 Queensland Poetry Val Vallis Prize winners.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Bethany Stapleton, Damen O'Brien, Dan Hogan, Lucy Van, Sophia Walsh
2021 Queensland Poetry Val Vallis Award Winners
Rich in imagery that is both vividly real and subtly symbolic, ‘Cicadas’ is a lyrical meditation on mortality, transformation and sustenance.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Andy Jackson, Damen O'Brien, Dan Hogan, Dimitra Harvey, Sara Saleh
What is Wrong With the Date?
Go ask the white historians with their shrunken heads, grumbling in their dusty cabinets, or the great collective forgetting, go ask them, spinning in their moral outrage, go lay your hand on Endeavour’s wormy beams, that brought a freight of …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Damen O'Brien
What Animal Could You Beat in a Fight?
a Twitter Found Poem I’m glad you asked. It would have to be small. Maybe an insect. Not poisonous ones. Would I be wearing body armour? Or some kind of stiffened leather? Do I have the advantage of surprise or …
Posted in 102: GAME
Tagged Damen O'Brien
Egon Kisch Takes The Dictation Test 1934
I do not speak the language which condemns him. My task is to speak the language of this door, the simple words of yes or no, you may enter here, you may not. Behind me Australia branches and the door …
Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
Tagged Damen O'Brien
Fatberg
Help, I’ve fallen in a fatberg and I can’t get out. I have spelunked the greasy caverns of Johannesburg, I have scaled the dripping chasms under Tokyo, I have seen the tallows glowing under Texas, and now I’ve fallen in …
Posted in 95: EARTH
Tagged Damen O'Brien
2019 Val Vallis Poetry Award Winner
Damen O’Brien is the winner and the runner up to the 2019 Val Vallis Poetry Award, managed by our longtime partner, Queensland Poetry Festival.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Damen O'Brien, Judith Beveridge, Tamryn Bennett, Yvette Holt
Bezoar
Every day a beetle has its bowl of grass. Every day a nip of mouse is pursed up in the articulated ribs of an Eastern Brown. For each breaking of a Heron’s fast: a nail of Perch headfirst gulleted and …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Damen O'Brien
Ice and Glass
You will be out of reach upon a wafer shelf of ice, crabbing through dreams with bent knees, while the ice snaps and smokes like a fragile simile. But this has not happened yet. You sit with me, sketching out …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Damen O'Brien
Logical Fallacies of Alien
generalisation Ripley’s first failure was one of generalisation: that one alien’s elemental viciousness could be ascribed to all. gambler’s fallacy that the late acid savagery of subsequent samples was similarly brutal proved nothing. Repeatedly. divine fallacy the Giger-counter leap at …
Posted in 91: MONSTER
Tagged Damen O'Brien
What We Know About Her
the price of freedom is eternal vigilance – Thomas Jefferson What we know about her is what she gives us freely of her own will, one click wrap privacy policy at a time, swiping across the slate of her life. …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Damen O'Brien
Winners for the Val Vallis Award for an Unpublished Poem 2018
Run by Queensland Poetry Festival, and named in honour of a distinguished Queensland poet, the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award for an Unpublished Poem is committed to encouraging poets throughout Australia. 2018 Selection panel: Alison Whittaker and Angela Gardner.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Alison Whittaker, Angela Gardner, Damen O'Brien, Zenobia Frost
The Land Becomes A Story I Can Tell
Walking home in the unsteady night fragrant with stars, we stepped through fig mush and the sand wrack of yesterday’s high tide, arguing with the beach and maybe we pierced noisily through someone’s story, webbed ragged in this Quondamooka country, …
Posted in 82: LAND
Tagged Damen O'Brien
Winners for the Val Vallis Award for an Unpublished Poem 2016
Run by Queensland Poetry Festival, and named in honour of a distinguished Queensland poet, the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award for an Unpublished Poem is committed to encouraging poets throughout Australia. 2016 Selection panel: Chloe Wilson and Robert Sullivan Winner …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged brett dionysius, Caitlin Maling, Chloe Wilson, Damen O'Brien, Miro Bilbrough, Robert Sullivan
Sand
The sand hangs in a suspended glaze in Abu Dhabi: a silicon horizon, washing down the sky in glaring white. Moted in it, the falcons spiral on dune thermals and salt thermals, and circling higher, the 737s scrape north. The …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Damen O'Brien
Eyes
The Trilobite’s eyes were chipped calcite marvels that had a million years of ocular dominance and then vanished in a blink. Before the plexus of nerves, there were first lapidary conjunctions of a thousand eyes, polished and re-faceted to new …
Posted in 66: OBSOLETE
Tagged Damen O'Brien
