The rookie Australian Poetry Centre Festival was an ambitious joust staged over three days/ two nights of the ANZAC day weekend in autumn-struck Castlemaine. In between and around the real program, (literary events stuffed with Bob Adamson, Judith Beveridge, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Esther Ottaway, Jaya Savige, Anthony Lawrence, Lauren Williams, Ross Gillett, Barry Hill, Sam Hamill (USA), LK Holt, Laksmi Pamuntjak (Indonesia), Lorna Crozier (Canada) and many more), sub-festivals and demi-parties raged and fluttered in anarchic fashion. By late Sunday the promised hail fell with a short, sharp flourish followed by a spectacular rainbow. The program was pricey (for poetry) and packed. Debates raged over who killed and who sucked (often the same people according to different punters). Interspersed with tracelike near-dozes which served to recharge batteries, the vibometer was pulsing along happily. Verdict: four horseshoes out of five. A fine idea brought to fruition - well done APC.

Aust Poetry Centre Festival # 1 goes off

boom shakalackalacka boom shakalackalacka!

Eagle

Bunjil

For Docklands’ ‘Eagle’ by Bruce Armstrong,
and the Wurundjeri and Kulin’s
legendary wedgetail protector of those who will accept his guidance


Bunjil
you are the spirit
seeing all that we have
done – the bright
madness of our gleaming
shells of metal
curling towards the Dome
the MCG, Docklands
cathedrals of Australian Rules
where young warriors
dig the possum skin again
leaping for your wings Bunjil,
that marngrook game we mixed
with English rugby

way up high
you
sentinel
though you sit unmoving
over the yellow eel twists
of the Birrarung and Melbourne’s
snake backbone of trains
the wild rushes through your feathers
like an aeroplane
like a storm