Colleen Keating is Winner of two SWW Book Awards

Colleen Keating is Winner of two SWW  Book Awards

Colleen Keating is the winner of two awards. Her recently published Hildegard of Bingen: A poetic journey, has taken out two awards at The Society of Women Writers NSW Biennial Book Awards. This was held at the State Library of NSW on Wednesday 10th February 2021.

SWW Poetry Book Award  2020
SWW Non-fiction Book Award

The judge for the Poetry section, highly acclaimed poet  Margaret Bradstock  wrote:

‘Keating plays with language, uses nouns as verbs, creative imagistic parallels to enhance emotional states. Poetic descriptions such as ,

‘The Rhineland moon/ edges the icy road or dawn-crackle of ice . . .erratic shivers of the horses/with huff of dragon smoke ‘ ,

to quote just a couple, vividly evoke the scenarios the poet wishes us to experience. . . it was Keating’ employment of figurative language, of subtle metaphor that determined Hildegard of Bingen to be the winning title. ‘

The judge for the non-fiction section,  renowned writer and editor for reviews at Women’s Ink, Judith O’Connor wrote:

How wonderful and fitting that Colleen has chosen the poetic form. Her narrative and style never miss a beat – almost racy at times, bounding along with passion and action against a backdrop of the beauty of nature as seen through Hildegard’s eyes. Lines like,

‘Her body knows what she wants
… as honey birds know
the most succulent flower
and geese
instinctively migrate (p.51)

The book speaks with the voice of a writer truely inspired, immersed, seeped in the knowledge and spiritual understanding of this far-away woman who lived to a remarkable 82 years of age. Colleen takes us on the outer, physical journey of Hildegard’s life but also the rich and spiritual inner journey. Harsh at times but always compelling.”

 

Thank to all for this awards. Thanks to the shortlisted poets and especially Pip as runner-up.  Jan Conway, President of the SWW  and the committee.

Special thanks to Stephen Matthews AOM and Ginninderra Press for affirming my work and beliveing in Hildegard and publishing my verse novel.it

 

Ungraspable a poem by Colleen Keating

 

ungraspable

it happened with the turn of tide
on a shallow sandy shoal
now it had beached dry

hot air sharp as spears
summer sun
glistening on its silver grey skin

blue spots shimmered across its flank
as it flapped intermittently
like a large bird with a broken wing

our carefree stroll along the beach
stopped
here was a life and death matter

the world was silent
only the waves measuring time
like a tolling bell

a young stingray lay before us
like a sacrificial lamb
eyes open as if pleading

using our bucket we splashed
water over its fretting skin
like cooling a fever

until it was still
then we noticed the hook
embedded in its flesh

we got down on our knees
my grandson and i
as if to reassure this creature

there was a tenderness
confusion
a hole of helplessness

a lifesaver brought a spade –
i was sorry it could not be pushed back
to sigh one last time amidst the waves

later the piled up hill of sand
was still there
Is that where he is? my grandson asked

it was time to take his little hand
and walk to the edge of the ocean
listen to its rill whoose back and forth

see its gifts of shells and spinning stones
watch the gulls whirl in the thrill of life
feel the ungraspable cycle of give and take

by Colleen Keating

 

A Stingray story  with Mum, Grandma ,Edison and Darcy

(Written while we were holidaying at the Dolphin House)

It happened in the dark of night
on The Entrance beach
and in the morning
it made us all so sad.

It happened at high tide
and we found it as we were rambling
along the edge of the waves
playing happily with pieces of Neptunes Necklace

and looking for all sort of shells the high tide had left behind.
It was Mum and Grandma and us two boys Edison and Darcy.

We were jumping in the waves and running up on the sand
and then we saw it
a large grey and blue blob lying helplessly on the sand
it was a large greyish stingray
beached, left behind when the tide went out

 

It couldn’t breath air because it doesn’t have lungs.
It has gills like fish and breathes its air through the water
Mum thought she saw it take a last gulp.
It was too heavy to push back in the sea.
It lay there before us all .
It looked so beautiful in the sunlight.

It was grey with beautiful blue marking
and sad eyes and open gills.

We all patted it and were surprised at it soft sticky skin.
and remembered the Torpedo Rays in Octanauts.

We stood helplessly by, till a lifesaver came
He turned it over and it became an even sadder story

because it had a fishing hook embedded in its blobby flesh .

We felt so mad about people who don’t look after our sea because all the sea creatures are so endangered by plastics and pollution.

Back at home we looked up fun fact about Stingrays
and it was good to learn some interesting things.

 

Fun Facts about Stingrays

1 They are one of the beautiful creatures of the sea as they move along in the water. 

2 They have no bones in their body – their skeleton is made up of flexible cartilage (the bendy stuff that your ears and nose are made of

3 Baby stingray are hatched from eggs that are held within the body of the mother 

4 They use a super set of electric senses to search for food. Their eyes are on the top side of their body   and their mouth and gills are found underneath so in murky water this electromagnetic sense is especially useful for searching for prey.

5 they like to live by themselves  and only come together for breeding . 

6 They protect themselves with venomous spines or barbs in their tail

7 They feed on fish clams and shrimp

8 Sadly they are now a threatened species .Overfishing, habitat loss and climate change are the major threats 

 

Thank you Edison for allowing me to use your drawing in this story.

Juukan Gorge, A Tragic Milestone in Australian History by Colleen Keating

a new mea culpa

 Sorry Day May 24th 2020 

if ever there was a day to grieve
so flattened by a melancholy action
that it makes you want
to close off your mind in disbelief
hold your aching heart
indeed cage your heart with steel

a day the healing song is silent
and your eyes weep red dust
when you had watched the first episode
of Operation Buffalo about the arrogance of Maralinga
and excused it
as happening before we were enlightened
and the ghost of Terra Nullius
still plagued our history books
when your mind is still etched by the ignorance
of the Taliban’s Palmyra destruction of ancient Buddhas

you realise that Australian miners have just blown up
with approval
rock shelters at Juukan Gorge
a 46,000 year cache of bones and tools
from before the last Ice Age
cutting connection with ancestors and heritage
of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama people
making Indigenous people of this country
walk in desolation
voices still unheard
and another piece of the soul of our nation
is blasted away
all in the name of profit

well today is just that day

 

We Australians still live in ignorance of the legacy of our first peoples and this land we live on.

It is the most ancient land on the planet.

The Indigenous people of this continent are the oldest people on the planet and carry memory of a wisdom we have forgotten to listen to.

Even if we try to listen its whisper is muted by the  loud noise of  Greed who yells profit over and over that  we make expediently from the earth. We forget

the ancient wisdom

“Only after the last tree has been cut down,
only after the last river has been poisoned
only after the last fish has been caught  . . .
only then will you realise that . . .
money cannot be eatten

We must stand up and speak out that this type of destruction never happens again.

Imagine if someone threatened the Lascaux, Palaeolthic Cave in France
or if someone touched Angor Wat in Cambodia,
the Roman Colosseum in Italy,
the Istanbul Bascilica in Turkey.

Remeber the world’s collective grief
watching 12th century Notre Dame burn
and remember the loss when the Barniyan Valley stone Buddhas
were blown up by the Taliban . This is the loss we have
and yet it is still not fully felt by Rio Tinto Iron Ore Compny or the Governement.
Shame, shame, shame.

Note the Taliban did not win completey, for the Buddhas shines again
in the towering cutouts in the mountainside
where they stood for centuries . . .they are back thanks to 3-D projection.

Above one of the illuminations. Thanks to modern technology.

What can we retrieve of the Aborigine heritage of our own First Peoples. ?

No modern technology can bring back this loss

Wild Moment: Thomas Keating-Jones, Published by John Muir Trust

A wintery hike on the Downs inspired nine year old Thomas to write An Ice Poem.

An Ice Poem

Glittering, glistening glass gleams and glides across the top of the frozen pond.
Mother nature’s classical music singing as it slides
Like stained-glass, the shattered shards  catch all the colours
It cracks, twinkling across the top of the ice…the ice…the ice…
It twinkles. jingles, like magic on the air.
Shining cracks appear wherever your foot rests on the shelf edge,
Chasing air bubbles, full of life,  out of their frozen prison.
It’s the top of the hill.
It’s the top of our world.

Thomas Keating-Jones, age 9 (with help from Eleanor Keating-Jones)

Thomas K-J ice pond 2

So proud to find my grandson and grand-daughter writing their thoughts about their wintery days on their nearby Downs while on a short exercise time from their strict lock-down

Welcome to Wild Inside – a fortnightly window to inspiration, activities  and a little bit of joy and wildness close to home.

We are incredibly lucky to have some great hikes on our doorstep. This poem celebrates the ice covered pond at the top of the Downs!

 

Praise by Rumi: A new dawn and hope for the planet.

 

Praise

Every war and every conflict
between human beings has happened
because of some disagreement about names.

It is such an unnecessary foolishness,
because just beyond the arguing
there is a long table of companionship
set and waiting for us to sit down.

What is praised is one, so the praise is one too,
many jugs being poured into a huge basin.

All religions, all this singing, one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.

Sunlight looks a little different
on this wall than it does on that wall
and a lot different on this other one,
but it is still the same light.

We have borrowed these clothes,
these time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise,
we are pouring them back in.

by Rumi

 

The Ocean Wonder by Jacinta Van Eyk

 

The Ocean Wonder

 

Waves crashing on Keating Beach.                      

The bright sun cuts through

the dark grey clouds.

The water sparkles on top

of the shimmering rocks.

The dolphins leap peacefully

over the crashing waves.

All morning butterflies flutter                                      

past our window.

All different people walking, riding, running .

The ocean wonder is so

extraordinary.

by Jacinta    8 years old

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

written while on holidays at The Dolphin House, Central Coast

A moment of reflection with Hildegard

 

 

You are encircled

by the arms of the mystery

of the universe

 

 

Sydney Summer Festival January 2021

Hildegard being remembered and performed.

 

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra celebrates the remarkable creative achievements of Hildegard von Bingen, the twelfth-century polymath whose life story and body of work continue to resonate through the ages.

Hildegard was a visionary and entrepreneurial German abbess who travelled widely as a linguist, mystic, scholar, naturalist, scientist, philosopher, poet and a composer. Nine centuries after her death, Universal Woman pays tribute to this iconic trailblazer with a moving and thought-provoking program curated by the orchestra’s celebrated artistic director, Paul Dyer.

The program also features a selection of Hildegard’s own songs and poems, narrated live by a prominent Australian actor.

A Sydney Festival exclusive, Universal Woman takes place inside the spine-tingling acoustics of St Mary’s Cathedral Crypt, with five performances led by singers from the Brandenburg Choir as well as the Brandenburg musicians on period instruments.

Runtime: 80 mins

Sydney Festival exclusive, Universal Woman takes place inside the spine-tingling acoustics of St Mary’s Cathedral Crypt, with five performances led by singers from the Brandenburg Choir as well as the Brandenburg musicians on period instruments. Find out more about Sydney Festival and Covid-19 planning.

 

 

Waitara Creek first ramble for 2021 and finding balance with nature

 

Waitara Creek at Normanhurst

 

New Year’s Day and a resolution to find more balance in life between nature and a writing  project at home. We set out on a pleasant warm drizzly sort of January day thanks to the La Niña pattern which is giving us respite from the dry, brittle, fiery heat of last summer.

 

 

 

 

Something beautiful is happening before our eyes a cycle which is a new year (January ) phenomena  – the eucalypts are shedding their bark –  the most spectacular, because of its blood red colour is the Sydney Red Gum, standing like a maiden with her elegant gown puddled at her feet .

 

The clean pink dimpled trunk has the cool alabaster feel of touching smooth curving skin.  One of theses three in the Wahroonga remnant of forest actually has a sign on it  ‘Hug Me‘. Hmmm here is the seed for a very sexy poem.

Angophora Costata or  Sydney Red Gum or Smooth-barked Apple  note the kino stains and careful observation you can imagine grey pink purple and muted tones of browns

The next is the Scribbly Gum  and there is the Narrow-leaved Scribbly Gum also stripping off its bark all the way to the ground

Sush an appropriate moment for us to experience this on the first few days of walking this same track after New Year.  It has become a moment of Contemplation  as we let go of 2020 with its anxities, fears,concerns, worries and  disappointments of missing  the children and grandchildren, missing holidays, having to adjust to celebrating milestones of our family life and my writers lifein new ways. Letting go to begin a new.

And having back my rambling partner and  friend to enjoy and share the beauty of nature with is the best Christmas and New Year gift of all. We have lots of adventures to share.

These past few days we have had some wonderful bird displays and we have been finding hidden gems of  wonderfully coloured fungi and all the stages of a fern in its growth to share.

Fare thee well 2020 Looking back looking forward

                                                  Looking back or looking forward

I just picked out a few dates from my journal to remember the year we leave behind . . .

25th March 

Everything is moving so quickly . It is unbelievable our world can change so quickly. I say our beautiful world of concerts and art galleries and libraries and all the enriching culture events and venues of our lives are closing .  But something in me feeling nature is exhausted and lashing out like a cornered scorpion with the sting of its tail. It is saying how else can i save the planet . . . here i bring you to your knees be afraid very afraid . . go home hide away  for nature shows us when we bring it to its knees it takes last resorts. 

Cruise ships are floating out at sea and governments don’t know how to handle them 

The cruise ship Ruby Princess is the symbol of the worst of them  Of course our dream cruise  feels like a nightmare now  and thank goodness it was not planned till late April. 

How quickly our writing has become Poetry from out my window or short walk around the block.

 

The inconceivable terror has arrived 

not in the form of a hurtling comet, 

not in the form of mutual nuclear annihilation

although that is still on the cards

it comes in the form of a microscopic bug

an invisible bot

it is impossible to see

like how one is unable to look at the sun

although it is shown for our imagination 

as fiery-red  spiring ball hurtling towards us 

covered in spikes that look like treacherous hooks

to catch us.

it needs us 

it cannot survive without us

it awaits on every surface

yet it is a whimp at the feel of soapy water

it dissipates like fairy floss at antibacterial whips

but thrives in us if it happens to get us.

and so we hide away

it is an unwelcome guest

it makes fear and panic go viral 

news fake and real spread 

before it around the world

faster than it can go itself

fear bursts out of its skin 

like the entrails of an giant red kangaroo

spewed on the road 

the vultures already there for the carrion 

guns sales shoot up 

panic buying

stockpiling 

trust and faith a thin line on a far horizon 

we huddle away

bunker down

4th April

Then we woke to its new name Covid -19 

like one gets a nick name when you become on familiar terms 

yet this name didn’t make me feel any more friendly to it.

Looking for answers it is hard to find them 

when we can’t identify the questions

yet we grapple with one big questions 

how are we so powerless

before a microscopic bug 

how can something so small transport everything

we thought  important to being irrelevant 

 can transform the world in weeks.

Were we really not prepared for this. 

Was this really not beyond the realm of possibility 

we have been living 

as if everything bends around human will.

the economic markets revolve around us 

we believe it iw one directional progress 

we have been living as if we are immortal 

invulnerable 

now we will have to learn to live the ways things really are

that we are deeply, profoundly vulnerable

that we live in constant interdependence 

and that all of the myths that we are caught  in 

that life is one directional 

that the markets revolve around us

and that there is always someone else to blame 

these myths are falling away as we write

 

Looking back or looking forward:  Our choice!

Our rabbits from Watership Down may be looking back to the destruction of their homeland or they may be looking forward to the image of a new homeland, a new potential, a new possibility, a new vision.

  Our rabbits have been travelling a challenging road of loss and pain and heartache which has intensified in recent months.  As those of us ‘on the road less travelled’ choose to come together in heart, mind and spirit, if not in ‘body’ and physical contact we are connected with our focus, commitment, dedication and taking spiritual responsibility for our role in the world.

The sky ahead promises unconditional love and promise of better times with more love, gratitude, forgiveness and a sense of oneness as we make our choices, to align with hope, promise and the creative power within every one of us to build a world of love, a world where we can rise above the anger, greed, resentment, bitterness, blame, shame, guilt and fear.

Love and blessings to us all we embrace and nurture ourselves, our visions and highest ideals, dispelling darkness and despair in our hearts and minds. This is Mother Earth is healing and so are we.

 

The year is coming to a close 

i have a whole dictionary of new words

some newly coined and some a hybrid of words .

It is a year that has changed us all .. A year of tragedy for many with to date 82 million people contacting the virus  19 and half million  USA alone with 330,000 who have died . It has shown up the inequality of our world . and sadly it is being manipulated to be a pink pandemic with women and the underprivileged most disadvantaged.  

 

Pressing forward is the resilience that Hildegard taught us . She was walled in as a young girl in an anchorage ,  she burst forth loving the garden and herbs and veriditas of nature. She was silenced from writing by Abbott Kuno and she found a way to get permission to write , then he silenced her from preaching, but she overcame that . She left the monastery leading 21 woman some not too sure  to begin her own Abbey with warnings she was forbidden to take her dowries  or have a priest for sacraments. She worked till those directives were changed . She completed her first theological treatise after ten years and built her Abbey on the Rhine gathering up to 100 women with their many gifts . She was invited to preach all along the Rhine.  Patriarchy  never gave up on trying  to silence her and once again they found a reason to do so on her disobedience for not exhuming a person she buried . She wrote and spoke and warned the men only the devil silences the musical sound whose harmony is heavenly and they quickly changed and exonerated  her. She won as a result of their fear of the wrath of God and  superstition .

  

  This year,

  Yes, even this year

   Has drawn to its close.

Buson

 

                                  Fare thee well 2020.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DEMOCRATIC POETIC POETRY MATTERS 40: SUMMER 2020

 

Democratic Poetics

A Gathering together of the finest.

Poems published in Poetry Matters from 2006 to 2019

 

One of my  FINAL ACHIEVMENTS FOR 2020

A  final exciting achievement FOR 2020  is to have  five (5 ) poems chosen for the last Poetry Matters Journal . . .

The journal is called DEMOCRATIC POETIC  . POETRY MATTERS ISSUE 40 2020

MY POEMS INCLUDED ARE:

escape with cezanne

seeing eyes

not narcissus

Marilyn

memory

 

I like my reflection which introduces my poetry in the journal

Colleen Keating October 2020

Poetry in my life/ my life in poetry

On reflection, the love of expressing my self in words (in the early days with rhyme)  guided my way towards now, where I enjoy the pursuit of words to express my amazement with life.

My work explores the paradox and wonder of nature, the harsh realities of life, of inequality, injustice and increasing threats to our natural environment .

For me, poetry is vocational. I not so much choose it as my medium of expression as much as it chooses me. To guide my thoughts and the things I write, I prize awareness, mindfulness and an unperishing sense of wonder about the world. I read poetry and write every day.

And I am inspired by Lee Ann Womack’s words:
when you get the chance to sit it out or dance – dance.

Special thanks to Cheryl Howard for her dedication to our poetry and for her compliling this very valuable document of some great poetry. 

 

2020  has been the best of times and the worst of times for a writer here in Australia.

I add the proviso of  ‘in Australia ‘ for with this pandemic I would not like to be in any other country. Anxiety levels here in Australia are high enough without the death rate of the rest ot the world.

I say the worst of times because

many writers need motivation  and play off one another:

many writers work to the dead line of the critique group

many writers need imput from others

For some reason I found I could work on each day at my desk with out those stimului.

I say best of times because

my calendar and by 2020 year planner fell away by mid March.

That meant all my bookings to promote and sell Hildegard, my newly published  book cancelled so time was free and on my hands . With nowhere to go I headed to my desk.

I was fortunate to get the final research stay at Alice Springs and walk in Olive Pink’s footsteps and fly back to Sydney on one of the final normal planes to fly for months, which meant I could work on the finals parts of Olive Pink and send for consideration by the publisher.

No sooner were we home from the research in Alice Springs –  it was lockdown.

With free time and no writers’ meetings,

no groups, no committments, no visitors allowed

no launches

no U3A,

no SWW, no WWN

no time taken up driving to venues

I was free to continue my writing projects and begin on a new idea.

 

Firstly I was able to sort and collect an interesting anthology of my poetry which began as  a

book of sea  poems to be called Coastal Patterns but it got bigger and soon became titled

Beachcomber  not sure where it is going now!

I was able to co-edit a Picaro Poets with Pip Griffin which we called Mood Indigo  (actually it was completed before the pandemic but just wanted to add it here

Next  a Ginninderra Press Chap book with Decima  Wraxall  called Mists of Time and now a Picaro on my own – Brush of Birds

I had the motivation to send a few poems off to journals . Got lazy with Eureka when I didnt hear anything back after I sent poems which I thought were good.

And I have continued to be in each Eucalypt  with a tanka and this year  a haiku in Windfall.

I had two pieces of work in the Splish, Splash childrens work publ. SWW

I had the wonderful experience of having my poem translated into German and being part of the Hildegard pilgrimage. 

and this week had my Christmas poem chosen for a Podcast of Pastor Tara Eastman in Central New York on HOPE