Currently, I’m reading the new edition of Cordite. The theme for this edition is ‘difficult’ and it includes some provocative poetry along with artworks from Paola Balla and Hoda Afshar, translations into English of Brazilian and Romanian writers and an interview with Bangladeshi writer Kaiser Haq. There’s also six essays including a piece on poetry on the radio by Prithvi Varatharajan and an essay by Lynn Davison,  What the Repetitions of Poetry Might Help Us Remember about Home, Belonging and the Self  where she discusses how poetry can…

’embed us in place and community …and is maybe why we turn to it at heightened, frightened times in our lives. It orients us, it gives us context. And what we hear is not the remnants of a seemingly separate and distant oral tradition, but the called notes for our ways of knowing and being…

Among 50 new poems, my favourite so far – is Jini Maxwell’s bay city plaza

…and the dock sits, sunk like an old dog.
They say a good body is hard to find.

It’s seven now. I’ve had braver days.
Last night, the sea tantrumed herself flat
now the shore creeps out from under waves
as if cringing away from a smack;

Cordite is well worth a read (if you can get away from the construction noise: the crew with the hammers and saws starts early next door). And if not, try something noisy like Sons of Kemet live from the Vortex Club (big hair, big tuba)

---

Image: Postcard of old St Georges Shopping Centre, Preston Victoria, Tony Worral Photography, Flickr