Poems
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Anatomy of a Lignotuber
By Nandi ChinnaStacked on the back of a truck,
delivered to suburban houses,
a lignotuber may be known as carbon,
energy stored, until tossed into the fire, -
In Search of the Meelup Mallee
By Nandi ChinnaHeading south, windscreen wipers
frantic, breaking waves of runoff
beneath Mandjoogoordap Drive.
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Koolark—Home
By Daniel HansenFrom the woodlands to the Sclerophyll,
Of the Eucalypt Forests I know,
Within the air I can certainly feel,
A benevolence which resembles that of Home. -
Sweedman’s Sprawling Mallee
By Nandi ChinnaEucalyptus Sweedmaniana
In every moment of human time
our skins open, porous to influence -
In the Mallee Garden, Kings Park
By Nandi ChinnaA global mix of accents and dialects
echo along the terraces,
rising and falling amongst the flowers.
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Exploration in mallee
By Luke Sweedman“A load on each spirit, a cloud o’er each soul
With eyes that could scan not, our destiny’s scroll”
~ Ernest Giles crossing the Great Victoria Desert
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In mind’s eye
By Luke SweedmanMallee in my mind’s eye is mostly a below ground affair
what we see above is only a part of the overall mystery
the multi stems above ground are part of the living heart
that sends a maze of roots below to unknown depths -
Mallee love poem
By Luke SweedmanWe came to the mallee in spring
When dawn and dusk light shone
And the scent of the seasons
Blew warm in the soft spoken wind -
What is a tree?
By Luke SweedmanWhat is a tree but a throw away term
a northern hemisphere assumption
that we all grow straight and tall
and adopt a standard upward function -
kangaroo paw
By Scott-Patrick Mitchellblood beats red, thumps in
elation, dread. how, as an
immigrant, my ears rang
with this land sang diaspora -
karri
By Scott-Patrick Mitchellkarris will always remind me of you
how we drove through a canyon
of ancient wood, marvelled at how
sky bowed in boughs, us driving -
Macrocarpa
By Nandi ChinnaThe show takes place on the edge
of the car park. We sit in our cars,
engines cooling, as swirling red stamens
thrust off their woody caps. -
Desert Delirium
By Luke SweedmanThe desert is a brooding furnace of sand
remote dunes, a night sky full of unknowable stars
falling, flying and dying like all of us can
a place that in season leaves no heat in the land -
Sorrow and Beauty in Equal Measure
By Nandi ChinnaMottlecah - Eucalyptus macrocarpa
In 1842 a macrocarpa was grown from a seed at Kew Gardens
It flowered five years later in 1847.
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Ravensthorpe
By Luke SweedmanCrucible of eucalypts
a woven thread
a spiritual tome
a million forms -
Red Flowering Gum
By Scott-Patrick MitchellHome is a syllable in your heart. In order to speak it whole, you must clap it out: with glee; in ovation; as sarcastically as the Venus de Milo. Here, you build new monuments from stone, adorn altars with flowers the likes of which you have never known. But the Latin names are familiar, because back where you came from, somebody thought it’d be a… -
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Mallee desert
By Luke SweedmanThe morning in the Great Sandy Desert
is an entirely new narrative of the senses
Thryptomene shrubs and mallee stands
a tonic, a memory, a gift that recompenses -
Jarrah (buying the block)
By Renee Pettitt-SchippEucalyptus marginata
I am a shooter, the seller says
and neither of us meet his eye
earth, shade of a wound, up high -
Banksia
By Scott-Patrick MitchellI thought they were a bird. Or rather, birds. On a branch, flocking. Out on a limb, imagination sparking. The mind can transform, as can fire, with tongue, laughing. Like a tired owl, hiding its eyes, the banksia misplaces birdsong, not singing. But rather in bloom. A thousand individual flowers spiral upward as feather. Beneath all of this, banks…