Amerigo Vespucci’s Ship in the South Atlantic Ocean, 1501 AD This cross that hangs in godless doubt slid out of Europe’s reach a thousand years ago down ever deeper into this pagan blackness. But now it watches as we bring a greater cross and knows there’s nowhere left to hide; nothing and no one escapes… Continue reading Ninth View of the Southern Cross

Meteorite in the Australian desert Nothing here has changed at all since this burnt rock thrust itself deep in dirt red as sword wounds all those thousands of years ago. Once the noise that no one heard had faded and the cloud of blood that hid the sky had settled, this exile waited for someone… Continue reading The Exile

Distracted, I moulded the darkness into the shape of your hips while you slept. Through the pillow I felt the splitting edge of the mental knife I’d stashed there overnight. Thinking I’d said too much already, I stopped my betraying mouth and started to think that this was just my body lying there, while my… Continue reading sleepless, fearing commitment

THE COCONUT There had never been a coconut in our townuntil my sister ordered one from the shop.We waited months for it to arriveand almost drove Mr Baldini crazyasking for news of this round messengerfrom the outside world we’d never seen.When the coconut finally arrived,it was like a taste of the exotic,a cure for our… Continue reading More Poems of Australian Childhood

I have some items of poetry news to share. Firstly, I am very pleased to have been shortlisted for the Allingham Poetry Prize. The final results will be announced next month, so we shall see what happens. Two of my recent poetry acceptances have some special sentimental value. My family originally came from County Roscommon… Continue reading News

The Continent of Insects Australia is really theirs:for hundreds of millions of years they have fought each otherand the brutal landscapein primordial arms racesthat developed specialised workers,warriors with pincers and shieldingand sophisticated social structures.Wars and alliances between themstill come and go, like their cities,while elsewhere humans in parallelare living out their noisy moment. Numbat Our journey… Continue reading Poems of Australian Childhood

To say just what you feel is never easy. A woman’s clothes lying by her feet in a pile might be the foam from which a goddess is born or the frothy breakers of a sea that might rush in and overwhelm us. We can think that our acts are not our own and rather… Continue reading Adultery

In the endless metropolitan grey, the weekend flashes by between two darknesses. Many wander lost in the pause: swimming, lying on the beach or flying, giving their bodies back for a moment to the elements from which they were made, while others die, going back to them for good; time has washed against them like… Continue reading another bright sunday

PASSENGERS ON THE ICEBERG Australian Antarctic Territory, midsummer Then in a patch of clearer ice I see him; a bearded man with an outstretched hand. I want to dig him out and ask him who he was, but then he’s gone and the ice is milky. Still, we’ve got months to go until the night… Continue reading a journey poem