The Botanist at his Mother's Grave

In this poem about processing human grief, I consciously drew on eco-critical theory – (Wilson 1992, Bate 2000) – and Darwinian literary theory (Carroll 2004) to explore the tension between ideas of the ‘natural’ apprehended through the senses, and poststructuralist ideas of the construction of reality through language.

Guitar

Poem

The dead are bored

Poem in international anthology

Littoral Marginalia

Poem

An illustrated history of settlement

Poem

Mercado

Poem

The Flowers on his bedside speak of eternity

Poem

Elegy To space

Poem

Tragedy and assimilation : reciprocity between surface and subject

Here we unveil a tragic triptych of three Australian women painfully painted onto the walls of interior surfaces. The woman at the centre of the triptych is Florence Broadhurst whose tragic death still remains a mystery. To the right is Australian skin illustrator Emma Hack who recreates Broadhurst’s wallpapers, mimicking their colourful patterns onto live models. Hack perfectly assimilates the models’ body into the wallpaper, camouflaging bodies except for small hints at something more in the foreground. In the process of Hack’s images, the models become statues, standing painfully still holding their breath for minutes at a time. The third woman, to the left of the triptych, is the fictional character Candy from the 2006 Australian film Candy. Candy’s traumatic struggle with addiction ends with her conveying her pain in a poem she writes on the walls of her home; culminating her tragic story into a disturbed domestic wall surface. This research tries to understand this relationship with the surface through tragedy as a reciprocal agreement between surface and subject and not a permanent transference between one state and another. What the surface provides in times of personal struggle and turmoil is a method for us to come to terms with out material existence.

The hazards

Poem

Postcard from another life

Poem

Three sketches of a favourite cat

Poem

Possum

Poem

Approaching Paradise

Poem

A crab tide

Poem