in witness (2015)
This collection spanned a period of great change in my life. It considered places I spent time in (Scotland, Australia, Sri Lanka and Europe) and themes that arose (such as belonging, identity and grief). The collection was in five parts.
Find several excerpts below.
To read the full collection, please contact me directly.
Find several excerpts below.
To read the full collection, please contact me directly.
Wategos
Byron Bay 2015
Repetitive cracks of white foam
form to an unceasing soundtrack
of static and crash.
I wonder if the beach has even known silence
or known the comfort of its own cacophony
in which we sound all that cannot be said.
Byron Bay 2015
Repetitive cracks of white foam
form to an unceasing soundtrack
of static and crash.
I wonder if the beach has even known silence
or known the comfort of its own cacophony
in which we sound all that cannot be said.
One year passed
Melbourne 2015
Was it as the sun fell out of view
and a cold chill descended outside
the room that would always be yours?
Was it in the darkness disrupted
by a single candle's flame warding off fears
of the release from reality's suffocating binds?
Was it in the morning, when your dressing gown
remained hanging as it had all night,
a shield moving now only as a shadow.
Each narrative is an insight
into a version of an exit.
I will throw stones into this ocean
on the other side of the world,
closeness unbound
by the enormtity
of what we all must face:
single candles burning down to single plates.
Melbourne 2015
Was it as the sun fell out of view
and a cold chill descended outside
the room that would always be yours?
Was it in the darkness disrupted
by a single candle's flame warding off fears
of the release from reality's suffocating binds?
Was it in the morning, when your dressing gown
remained hanging as it had all night,
a shield moving now only as a shadow.
Each narrative is an insight
into a version of an exit.
I will throw stones into this ocean
on the other side of the world,
closeness unbound
by the enormtity
of what we all must face:
single candles burning down to single plates.
Ashes
Glasgow 2013
I desire a pen made of ashes,
delicate streaks of destruction,
dirty the bright white sheet,
purity wearing remnants of death.
My hand, the executioner,
craves perfect words from a golden pen,
momentarily passionate then forgotten,
I never touch the centre of the page.
Glasgow 2013
I desire a pen made of ashes,
delicate streaks of destruction,
dirty the bright white sheet,
purity wearing remnants of death.
My hand, the executioner,
craves perfect words from a golden pen,
momentarily passionate then forgotten,
I never touch the centre of the page.
Hikkaduwa
Hikkaduwa 2014
Every morning,
the women of the village
over the train tracks
from the beach
full of bronzing tourists
methodically
sweep their porches,
trying
to keep the jungle out.
They have done this
since we decided
we have the right
to define the boundaries
of our homes.
In the incessant buzz
of its desperate reach
the jungle
encroaches where
we naively marked
out space as ours.
Each morning
I hear the women
rhythmically
sweeping the
night’s progress
off their
porches.
Preventing
what encroaches
from reclaiming
what was
always theirs
or what was
no-one’s to lay
sole claim
to.
Without them
we disappear
under a
canopy of
newness.
Hikkaduwa 2014
Every morning,
the women of the village
over the train tracks
from the beach
full of bronzing tourists
methodically
sweep their porches,
trying
to keep the jungle out.
They have done this
since we decided
we have the right
to define the boundaries
of our homes.
In the incessant buzz
of its desperate reach
the jungle
encroaches where
we naively marked
out space as ours.
Each morning
I hear the women
rhythmically
sweeping the
night’s progress
off their
porches.
Preventing
what encroaches
from reclaiming
what was
always theirs
or what was
no-one’s to lay
sole claim
to.
Without them
we disappear
under a
canopy of
newness.