Jodie Young, verray jangleresse

@jangleresse.bsky.social

1859 Followers 3871 Following

Poet (reading more than writing atm) in Naarm | Melbourne, Australia Poetry, books, art, history. Resisting the urge to despair.

Picture shows the cover of Best of Australian Poems 2024, edited by Shastra Deo and Kate Lilley. The cover has a pale beige background with geometric shapes forming an abstract picture
Picture shows a sleeping cat next to a copy of a book, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Both are on lying on top of a warm blanket
Text of a poem by Bruce Dawe Why Liberation from Dictatorship May Take Some Time Our Great and Fearless Leader (may His Name be forever praised!) like a wise farmer has planted many fields full of ears In the particles of dust from the sandstorms He is also present; if we would breathe we must do so very carefully In those distant clouds in the heavens above us hidden cameras record our every activity Even the birds on the city rooftops as well as those in the distant villages cock beady eyes and fly swiftly to inform Him of all that we say Now foreigners come, bearing (they tell us) freedom - but freedom is only a word we have heard fluttering like a feather on the lips of the dying
Peter Boyle poem: 379,000 POETS AVAILABLE 379,000 poets are writing precisely at this moment. Right now their hands are wavering above a keyboard or their pens hang poised over blank paper or their fingers hover for a few seconds over their phones. Through each poet night and day pulse to their own rhythm and in six thousand languages words start their unforeseeable journeys into the void. And simultaneously everything and nothing is said while over their shoulders the earth's long darkness prepares to settle in. At every instant 379,000 fresh attempts to make hope more hopeful, to put more shudder into sadness, to dust clean while also preserving the webs the spiders weave over our windows, to fine tune all the colours of the world and surreptitiously pour a little more sky into blue.
Sara M Saleh poem: Unholy Verses How the seas emptied of salt And the tides swelled And the pipelines built And the gas pumped And the forests logged And the fisheries depleted And the reef bleached And the mountains landslided And the bees starved And the stars absconded And the sky broke open And the planet tuberculated And the corporations monetised And the surveillance digitised And the protestors fined And the people calloused And the laws ossified And the women paid first And the bodies of earth testified against us.
Poem by Hasib Hourani: HOW TO HOLD YOUR BREATH: ONE take your right hand use your index finger and your thumb to pinch your nostrils shut TWO take your left hand place the palm over your mouth use lots of force to make sure no air can come in or out THREE make your lungs stop moving NOTE if you are my mother don't worry about steps ONE through THREE you know how to hold your breath without doing anything at all
Judith Beveridge poem: Black-winged Butterfly When I saw you as a caterpillar eating the vine's new leaves, perhaps I should have flung you to the birds but I didn't want there to be one butterfly less to do the good work we need. Finally, you've emerged— but you can't untwist your wings, their scales can't refract the light and raise your body heat. Carefully I unlatch you from the edge of the chrysalis. Against my fingers legs and feelers work in hard circles, second-hands delirious for extra increments of time. I offer you honey-water— your proboscis, thin as a human hair, sips from my hand. I think of how long you've spent in your sealed bauble: the cocoon turning from green, to thin gold-leaf, to black when the wings quickened. Now unable to open, they're like the banners of a thwarted regime. Soon you'll die in my palm, the only small holding you'll know.