Poetry

U3A Talk on the unfolding of her writing life by Pip Griffin

colleen Poetry , , , ,

 

Last Friday 9th February 2024 , poet and friend,  Pip Griffin led a very enjoyable and informative morning,
as U3A speaker for the month, at the Leichhardt Library.  Pip shared with us the unfolding of  her writing life, the challenges of writing a verse novel and with a vivid and colourful set of slides took us through the inspiration and process of writing three of her many books.  There was a great gathering of more then 30 people who came to support and hear Pip’s very interesting journey.  And we had a great celebratory lunch afterwards with some friends to cheer Pip’s very successful morning.

 

Pip introduced us to her earlier and highly acclaimed verse novel Ani Lin: The Journey of a Chinese Buddhist Nun.  The slides of her actual journey in China and on the edge of  Tibet where she found the inspiration for her Buddhist Nun were excellent and she thanks her son John for his assistance in this. 

As the dust jacket informs its readers: “In 1892, 18 year old Lin enters a mountain nunnery, where she begins a journey that will take her on a difficult spiritual and physical path.  Her dream is to work for equality for women in the Buddhist world.”  In her Afterword Griffin announces that this is an imaginary tale: “In 1874, my imaginary nun, Lin, was born in a village near Yunnanfu (capital of Yunnan Province and renamed Kunming in the 1920s).  She died in 1939, the year I was born.  Her story was conceived in 1985 when I first travelled to Guilin (Guangxi Province) and experienced feelings of déjà vu in the spectacular karst landscape.”

Pip’s opening poem “Coming home from the market” exemplifies the ethos behind the poem novel as she introduces the young girl to her readers:

 I ride my bicycle
 on the bumpy road
 through hazy landscape
 patchwork gardens illuminated
 by the setting sun
 stacked mountains layered
 against orange sky
This is a work laden with possibilities that result out of an engagement with people, places and landscape, real but also mythically-charged.  And as her reviewer, Patricia Prime, wrote a little while back.

“The journey is beautifully evoked by Griffin as the girl traverses rivers, mountains, sacred peaks, sanctuaries and a visit to the Mu household where, in the poem “Visiting the Mu household” “Prince Mu has asked us / to take tea with him.”

Griffin’s poem novel is activated by small moments unfolding from the fragments of daily minutiae: a sense of miracle, bliss is localized, transcendence is brief and raw, insight comes from focusing on the elements of Lin’s journey, the playing of her flute, wandering in the lamasery garden, meditating, eating and drinking. “ 

Next Pip spoke of her research and writing  of  her verse novel, Margaret Caro : The Extraordinary Life of a Pioneering Dentist, New Zealand 1848-1938.  This is the story of her great aunt  and  pioneer in New Zealand, first female dentist in NZ, a convert to Seventh-day Adventism  and social reformer . A towering figure she and her husband  Jacob (a Physcian )  worked in many difficult places including in NZ goldfields .

Lastly Pip spoke of her highly acclaimed and award winning verse  novel, Virginia & Katherine: The Secret Diaries  . It is well summed up in the following from the SWW web site.

… K & I had our relationship, & never again shall I have one like it – Virginia Woolf, October 1924
In January 1923, Virginia Woolf noted in her diary that Katherine Mansfield had promised two years earlier to send her diary to her. She was perplexed and hurt that she had not, not knowing how ill Katherine had been. The ‘secret diaries’ – Virginia’s begun after Katherine’s death in 1923, Katherine’s begun in 1920 are written in lyrical poems inspired by the friendship (and intense rivalry) of the two women. Virginia and Katherine recognised that they were ‘both after the same thing’ in their compulsive, innovative work of ‘writing their lives’.  The book presents a fresh dialogue that also suggests a tantalising possibility.
Pip Griffin, with meticulous research, creates biographical, poetical fiction that is fascinating and intriguing, filled with wonderful quotes and speculation. A pleasure to deeply dive in – jenni nixon, poet
Publisher: Pohutukawa Press
ISBN:  9780980318456
AUD 20.00 plus postage available from:
The author pipgriffin8@gmail.com
Wheelers Book www.wheelers.co.nz
James Bennett Pty Ltd www.bennett.com.au

 

1.Ani Lin: The Journey of a Chinese Buddhist Nun, Pip Griffin.  Pohutukawa Press, Leichhardt, N.S.W. 2014, Australia.  

2.Margaret Caro : The Extraordinary Life of a Pioneering Dentist, New Zealand 1848-1938.  Pohutukawa Press, 2020

3. Virginia & Katherine: The Secret Diaries   Pohutukawa Press, 2021

 

 

The Mozzie, Poetry Journal by Colleen Keating

colleen Poetry , ,

 

Excited and honoured to have three poems published in the latest Mozzie. Thank you Ron Heard for keep on keeping on . It is a valuable contribution to our poetry world.

a poet

on Lennox Beach
i strode out 
the long flat expanse 
in my younger  faster days 
a shape-shifter in the dawn

above a brown wide-winged 
kestrel glided too
on the whipped air currents above
then dived into the grassy
sandbank and took off

Back at my cabin 
i wrote 
a poem from the heart 
stirred by this bird   posted it
to the Mozzie   and the editor –

Ron Heard  published it 
and I saw
my first ever poem in print
and that is how my life 
as a poet took wings

Colleen Keating

LOSS: VOL 9 The latest edition in the Lifespan series from Pure Slush Poetry Anthologies.

colleen Poetry

Very affirming to have a poem in the latest edition of the Lifespan Series from Pure Slush – Loss and exciting to be published with some other family friends including Pip Griffin.  

Loss Lifespan Vol. 9

570 pages – to be published February 2024

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paperback ISBN: 978-1-922427-36-6

ePub ISBN: 978-1-922427-37-3

Kindle ISBN: 978-1-922427-84-7

to purchase Loss, click here for  paperback  /  ePub  (ePubs can be read on Apple devices, and all eReaders except Kindle)  /  Kindle

For Loss

Featuring the poetry and prose of Alex Reece Abbott, Carol Adams, Edward Ahern, Tobi Alfier, Dee Allen, Kathleen Aponick, Richard Clarke, Ken Cohen, Sage Cohen,, Flemming George, Declan Geraghty,  Gabby Gilliam, JW Goll, Jim Gormley, Ken Gosse, John Grey, Pip Griffin, Betty Naegele Gundred, Chris Hall, Ronald T. Hardwick, Richard Harries, Doug Hawley, Tom Hazuka, Mark Heathcote, Henry, Kathleen Herrmann, Theresa Hickey, Matthe Fiona M. Jones, Kenneth M. Kapp, Colleen Keating, Alan Kennedy, gundo, Judith Shapiro, Pegi Deitz Shea, Emily Shearer, Josh Sherman, Michael Shoemaker, Joan Seliger Sidney, Cheryl Snell, Amy Soricelli, Gail Sosinsky, Adrienne Stevenson, Robin Stratton, Marianne Szlyk, Christopher Tattersall, Phillip Temples, Suzette Thompson, Lydia Trethewey, Lucy Tyrrell, Leo Vanderpot, Linden Van Wert, Donald R. Vogel, Kenneth Wagner, Zhihua Wang, Tony Warner, Kresha Richman Warnock, Alison Wassell, B. D. Watson, Michael Webb, Brian Weston, Lynn White, Thomas Reed Willemain, Jeral Williams, Todd Williams, Russell E. Willis, Allan J. Wills, Mike Wilson, Melissa E. Wong, Anne Harding Woodworth, Stephen Paul Wren, Mantz Yorke and Gary Zenker.

 

My poem chosen for the Anthology

morning litany  the day after

air tastes brittle         hits hard                    
like the head of a nail being pounded 

there has been no rain for weeks 
earth is dry 

leaves   dusty and blueish 
curl in foetal positions 

caught 
in a Philip Glass time warp 

the antiphon of morning birds 
is devoured by an leaf blower 

roaring hungrily nearby
the tree out the back sacrificed

 because someone said it was dead    
lies weeping cut up in small offerings

birds that nested in its knotted hollows
have fled 

and i have  to look away from
being a witness 

away from TV images 
Gaza Ukraine Mali Israel

garish glint of metal and concrete   mock
new home units towering out of place

the riff of rivulets in Coups Creek muted
in welled-up rock crevices   

later   leaning into the warm dimpled trunk
of a doyenne of the bush  i watch a flock

of spotted pardalotes   their tiny pieces of sun
wild and cheerful  skittle the morning

Opus, a life with music by Pip Griffin A Review by Colleen Kearing

colleen Poetry

 

A REVIEW by Colleen Keating publ. in Womens Ink Journal Summer 2023

What more powerful way to reflect on your journey of life than entwined with the memory of music. Exquisitely wrought, Pip Griffin’s Opus: a life with music, gives us snapshots, sometimes softened, sometimes shocking but always honed and beautifully crafted, revealing the deep perception and intimacy we have come to know in her poetry. Using music to unearth memories of her life, these poems are infused with frankness and authenticity. With themes of love, betrayal, loss, nostalgia and resilience we experience the connection between music and the human spirit, as in the poem, Mahler 1:

His genius still draws bows

across my body as I sit with seagulls

in winter sunlight

and in a moment of serendipity in a later poem, Philip Glass in Florence:

Glass begins to play

his layered, hypnotic compositions

his fingers entrancing us 

into a fourth dimension

and we are reminded of the universal solace that music can offer in fraught, fragmented times of conflict:

you took the vinyl record from its sleeve

compelling us to sit and listen  

to the gentle swelling harmonies

letting Vaughan Williams sing us back 

until our souls returned 

This collection of poetry is divided into seven sections. In the section called Air on a G String, Pip writes of the funeral after the tragic death of  her sister:

Though her funeral service is a blur

the music lives forever in my body

soundtrack to her sudden violent death

In the poem Keeper we hear the connection between mother and music: 

At thirteen I’ve become her keeper –

my best friend whom I adore

who chivvies me to practice scales 

 . . .

whose own ambitions dribbled away 

like the gin I watch 

drain slowly down the kitchen sink.

and later in Resurrection:

Singing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’

at one with the voices of a hundred 

she’s alive , the last of her bonds broken. 

The trumpet sounds for her –

Opus is imbued with music, including that of the ocean and sometimes birds. Pip’s selection of music is eclectic and ecumenical: from Bach to Brahms, Britten to Brubeck, Chopin to choirs and the cello, Elgar and Elvis, Handel to Haley, Mahler to Leonard Cohen to name but a few. Published by Ginninderra Press, Opus is an engaging collection and highly recommended. 

Colleen Keating

 

Ömie Barkcloth exhibition at the Chau Chak Wing Museum

colleen Poetry , , , , ,

Lost Innocence

Untouched by a crowded, commercial, corrupt-tempting world
unblemished by greed and fear of need and fame
protected by impenetrable jungle wilderness
and thick mountain mist, an unknown world, hidden from t

enticles of progress enigmatic, endangered as a planet humans
want to conquer. Discovered by the clambering, climbing, curious
determined to find the last small pocket of skythe Ömie people are
found living their beauty of being alive, honouring their creative

human spirit with art, story, song in forever land.
Their world, their inspiration.twig, tusk and teeth,
leaf and twine to weave and plait, vine, feather, bone,
and web, wood and bark, mystery of the eye and their

mountain that nourishes them. They write their story
and adorntheir bodies in design, decoration, pattern
with minute details of leaf, snake backbone, hip joint
of mountain frogs, of beetle jaw and spider.

In cyclic beat of time, coloured,in plant yellow, black
and brick reds. We stand back and learn of a world
we have lost. Of innocence, simplicity and beauty
and now found, it is lost once again.

Colleen Keating

;

REVIEW
Ömie barkcloth:

Pathways of nioge is currently on display on the fourth floor of the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum. Upon entering the gallery space, one is met with a black title wall, and illuminating the text design, is a creative and understated use of exhibition lighting. It is employed throughout the entirety of the exhibition, giving one the immersive feeling of almost being situated within the shadows, and silhouettes of the rainforest highlands of Northern (Oro) Province, Papua New Guinea.

The Ömie people are a distinct cultural group with their own language; a population of around two thousand lives in a series of seven main villages and many more hamlets. Their region in the Mount Lamington Huvaemo, and Mount Obo foothills – close to Kokoda – is sacred to them as the site of their creation stories. Their art is prolific and diverse.

Ömie tapa or nioge in Ömie language is beaten bark cloth, made from the inner bark, or bast, of certain rainforest fig trees including banyan to give a brown finish, and the paper mulberry tree – mori arobe, for the whitish tapa. The bark is cut, then the outer bark is cleaned off to make the inner bark or bast ready for beating. Drops of water are continually sprinkled over the bark as it is beaten to soften it. Paint dyes come from various roots, bark, leaves, fruit, seeds, and nuts. These include combinations of natural plant materials, ash, and water.

The works that comprise the exhibition form the basis of the largest public collection of Ömie nioge, donated to the Chau Chak Wing Museum over the last five years by oceanic art collector and dealer Todd Barlin, who acquired much of the work from fellow collector, and dealer David Baker.

This exhibition is full of vibrant and arresting works, striking for their diversity of size, shape, colour, and symbolism. Many of the works are displayed on large, dark, floating walls, allowing you to walk around and view them while moving in and out of the light. The large white walls of the gallery space are subdued by the creative lighting design. This gives the exhibition more depth overall, and furthers the geometric pathways of nioge design that are the focus.

An added bonus for us on our visit to the Chau Chak Wing Museum was that one of the of curators Rebecca Conwdaughter of Jan took us on a conducted tour of the exhibition and in the afternoon we enjoyed a question and answer panel discussion with Drusilla Mojeska who has been one of the first to trek into the mountain (Mt. Lamington) and befriend the ömie women amd her biographer Bernadette Brenton . Then lunch in the cafe indoor/outdoor at the Museum.

 

 

 

Women’s Ink; The Society of Women Writers NSW. In memory of a black summer by Colleen Keating

colleen Poetry , , ,

Very honoured to have my poem  Memory of a Black Summer chosen to be published in Women’s Ink Summer 2023., the quarterly Journal of the NSW Society of Women Writers.

The theme was ‘Climate – the heat of the moment’and my summer poem fitted right in.

Thank you to the editor Jo Shevchenko and to the President Maria McDougall for a very affirming year .

CLIMATE -THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT

In memory of a black summer   

 We had the experience but we missed the meaning.  

    – TS Eliot

the cicadas ring earlier 
morning birds call earlier too
and then become silent

the summer ritual of each day –
carrying buckets of water 
to top up the bird baths

is quickly appreciated
there seems an orderly queue 
no boisterous bickering today

as if there is bird protocol
we all need to preserve our energy
for these days are solemn

so much loss   so much to mourn  
so many birds   so many mammals  
insects and living worlds lost

the smoke-laden air 
can hardly be breathed   
the  ashened sun masked

our summer of people fleeing 
livelihoods burn 
metal buckles

people rescued from beaches 
refugees in their own country
we fear 

we dread 
we are in pain

for ourselves and our traumatised earth
even the south pole 
ash-blanketed     melts

our carefree boxing day 
of cricket    tennis   yacht races 
is carefree no more 

I continue my summer ritual
of topping up the bird baths early
the birds fly in 

then sipping at the edge
keep nodding  thank you  thank you
as if they know I’m watching

 

Colleen Keating

 

 

Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality

colleen Poetry , , ,
Cover image of Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality

Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality

The John Hopkins University Press

December 2023

Very honoured and excitied to declare I have a poem chosen for the latest Spiritus Journal .  It maskes me Internationally published , not a new thing as my Hildegard poetry is published in Germany and USA but it is a highlight for 2023.  The poem  is From the Dust of Stars , shortlisted in the SWW  National Poetry  Competition  and now to be published. 

Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality (SSCS)
Interim Editor :

Mozzie ed Ron heard, poetry journal

colleen Bush walks, Poetry , , , , ,

 

THE MOZZIE

Volume 31 Issue 03, October 2023

The Mozzie is a small press poetry magazine published in Queensland that publishes the work of established and emerging poets.   Ron Heard is the very dedicated editor. Volume 31 ssue includes 2 poems of mine.  I submitted to the magazine during the year and love it when a poem of mine gets chosen to be published.

MozzieOctober 2023, published two of my poems,

counting summers

morning litany after the referendum

It was very rewarding to be in the journal with a writer friend and supporter Pip Griffin.

Pip’s latest book Opus: A life in poetry is promoted and a poem from her new book is published.

Congratulations Pip Griffin.

Thank you to Ron Heard for his dedication to poets and our poetry. 

morning litany  after the referendum

air tastes brittle         hits hard                    
there has been no rain for weeks 

leaves   dusty and bluish 
curl in foetal positions 

caught 
in a Philip Glass time warp 

the antiphon of morning birds 
is devoured by a leaf mulcher

roaring hungrily nearby
the tree out the back sacrificed

 because someone said it was dead    
lies weeping    cut up in small offerings

birds that nested in its knotted hollows
have fled 

and I have  to turn away from
being a witness 

away from tv images 
Gaza Ukraine Mali Israel

garish glint of metal and concrete mock
new home units towering out of place

the riff of rivulets in Coups Creek muted
in welled-up rock crevices   

later   leaning into the warm dimpled trunk
of a doyenne of the bush  I watch a flock

of spotted pardalotes   their tiny pieces of sun
wild and cheerful  skittle the day

 

The Crow edited by Brenda Eldridge publ. Ginninderra Press

colleen Poetry , , , ,

 

Excited to have my poem Exodus chosen tor The Crow. Thank you Brenda and Ginninderra Press .

The Crow is a Pocket Poets collection of poetry edited by Brenda Eldridge at Ginninderra Press.  It might be small but it pulls a punch in a very reflective way.

A quarterly poetry journal published in March, June, September and December each year it has become a coveted journal to be chosen as an entry.

In the introduction From the Editor,  Brenda Eldridge  writes, 

“The results of the recent referendum have been a sobering  wake-up call for Australians. It prompts the question Who are Australians?”

And I like to think that our poetry might struggle with the way through all this  into the answer and find a way into the future and maybe sometime one day we  as a nation will find the oneness many of us wish for and we will find the air beneath our wings . 

My poem  exodus is set in with  many well known poets and next to a well known Canberrian poet Hazel Hall. 

So once again I say thankyou to Brenda and Ginninderra for giving us another place to publish  our work. Thnks Brenda for  your affirmation and support of poets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The American poet Jane Hirchfield  says the secret title of every poem is tenderness and a poem that hasn’t found it through the anger or despair or bewilderment  is probably mot there yet . She said in an interview I heard, that one stitch in a fabric of rant  such as the bowing to beauty, grief, compassion or kinship allows one to get up the next morning and open their eyes.  And we must find a way to that. 

When we become disillusioned with our world view, the framework  we see through, that for so long has ‘supported,’ ‘comforted’  ‘controlled’ us with its surety  be it an institution of religion, marriage, belief etc. it can be hard to change. We actually can become stuck and we can let ourselves die inside . There is a saying found on a tombstone 

Here lies . . . .
died at 45
buried at 75.

Yet if we jump from the edge we can  find we fly . The hard part is one cannot fly until they jump  and one cannot jump till they are either pushed or better, feel trustful or supported by love  to do it. 

exodus

so she left her boats behind
took courage to leave familiar shores
broke the yoke of fear 
untethered the bridle
and broke the bondage of institutional rule
that held her safe for decades

stepped into the ocean deep
and found herself battered  bruised 
buffeted    till finally buoyed by joy 
of trees and flowers light and moon and seas
like a fledgling bird leaving its nest 
she found the air beneath her wings 

fourW thirty-five Anthology from Booranga Writers Centre, Charles Stuart University by Colleen Keating

colleen Poetry , , , , , ,

 

       

We spent a very rewarding afternoon  being part of a group of writers for the launch  of the latest Booranga Writers Anthology – fourW thirty-four New Writing.  Thank you to the editor David Gilbey for his passion and hard work to bring this creation to fruition. David acknowledges a team of dedicated helpers and the large gathering at the  Sydney launch was testament to gratitude of Australian writers. I like how David Gilbey describes our writings –  “diverse, multi-layered &polyvocal writings . . .celebrated pieces are just a few of the gem in our ‘treasury of literature'” The launch was held in the auditorium of the AIT at Ultimo.  The new anthology,  fourW thirty-four  includes new work from 76 writers from all over Australai and from overseas,  more than 20 stories and fifty poems. It was special to be standing side by side with writer friends published, Pip Griffin, Antonia Reiseger and a few other familiar faces and to be published with some of our top poets Judith Beveridge, Andy Kissane, Mark McCleod, Damien O’Brien.  

 

 Dr. John Stephenson  a novelist who has written many thoroughly researched novels including The Optimist which is an early look at the poet Christopher Brennan. He gave a wonderful address . The words I remember ‘where are you my beloved country’ and how standing lost one evening in a dead end on the way to Wagga Wagga he got out of his car to see the sign and found once again his beloved country there surrounding him and he knew everthting would be alright. It was very uplifting .

Everyone who was present got to read their work and it was powerful to hear the voices of so many of our poets and short stories writers from all around the country.

I felt very honoured to read my published poem Intrusion. It is an unusual set out for me but it wrote itself one day when I couldnt take the violence intruding into my lounge room any more and then the low prioity  the subjects in the last stanza were given and the conclusion to make light of everything with the cat news . 

How can we change this low brow news that is our daily and nightly story?

Unable to get the spacing to work on this blog I photographed the poem above, Thanks to editor, David Gilbey

intrusion

and a WARNING
the following contains scenes
that may disturb some viewers
discretion is advised

Ah says the screen gotcha

disarmed
i rummage for the remote
under a pile of papers or behind the cushions
and flick to another channel
i don’t need these unnecessary images

flip back in time to hear the newsreader gloat
if this has distressed . . .

tipped you over the tipping point
overwhelmed your lonely hard cruel overwhelmed life
sunk you even deeper into the pit

you can contact LIFELINE
or 1800RESPECT

back to the news
no longer raising the shock flag

another woman is murdered today
indigenous incarceration ratio increased
2000 feared drowned in Pakistani flood
and a new cat show
where cats learn to walk tight ropes