Poems from Goodbye, Cruel (Pitt St Poetry, 2017)
‘As the title suggests, the prevailing theme of this work is suicide: subject matter that might be mishandled by a maudlin or morbid writer of lesser skill. From Smith’s lines emerges a human pathos, tempered by a humane ethos, as the many voices she creates, mimics, translates, adapts-via-erasure, and adopts-via-cento take on a life (and death) of their own.. the work of a vivid, vitalic voice in Australian poetry.‘ – Alison Clifton, Stylus Lit
This collection was launched by John Foulcher at the Newcastle Writers Festival on Saturday 8th April 2017. Read the launch speech in full at the Rochford Street Review. Goodbye, Cruel is also the subject of a recent Verity La poetry podcast. And you can listen to Melinda read two poems here, as part of the Australian Book Review States of Poetry anthology.
Buy a copy from the publisher here.
Contemplating The Gap
i.m. Don Ritchie
Every story stumbles
in its own way. All so far
from here and from each other.
The funnel has a wide mouth.
But one by one they slide down it to teeter
on the lip of this one exit,
staring at the heave of the sea, breath
beaten from them by the cliff wind.
You can’t just sit there and watch
through your window. Can I
help you in some way?
A hundred and sixty times and I’ve never
lost one. Sometimes they come
for a cuppa afterwards. They
tell me things. They tell me
you feel the pull in your guts
and your giddy head, there is an urge
to laugh and an urge
to launch into the maw,
to make gravity finish all at once
the dirty dragging work it started the day
you were born. They tell me
you only feel vertigo
when you don’t want to fall.
Can I help you in some way?
Most of them come back with No.
I’m a salesman though. No
is a beginning.
Leaves from the Lovers’ Almanac
hold me
up to the light
read
my disease
I hover
just above
the idea of you
your breath
then mine
no argument
yet
you trail your vapour
my nebula
reddens
brush my lips
with bindii
you have left me
a blue hourglass
to sift
my blue hours
this tastes like the end
of something
sweet
when you pass
you leave flames
in the strangest places
smitten
by the struck match
I become
a dumb candle
I never said
I would leave you
unchanged
I can still feel
the glow
in my backbone
sight-read me
before the score
changes
mark me
with your dark barbs
if you dare
when you consume me
make all the air flower
with ruin
here I am
broken open
to a tiny carnival
when I look at you
I see more than one thing
burning
waiting for you
morning and night
the sea eats at me
‘Leaves from the Lovers’ Almanac’ is from a longer collaborative work, the #LookUP Project, with Bega region artist Rhonda Ayliffe. The #LookUP Project comprises 365 photographs of the sky taken by Rhonda (one for each day in 2015), for each of which Melinda wrote a micropoem. The entire photographic series can be viewed on Instagram here, with the micropoem for each image in the Instagram caption. Follow the link over the title of each micropoem above to see its companion image.
The project also produced a series of photograph + poem postcards, available in the SHOP.
View this post on Instagram
Read more about the project here.