Selected poetry

I currently write poetry with the ‘Deadly Poets’ Society’, which is a part of the Centre for Research Excellence: STRengthening systems for InDigenous health care Equity (CRE-STRIDE). I thank the Deadly Poets Society for the space, collectivity and inspiration through poetry. I began writing poetry as a child, and also used it in my research practice, with poetry published in the Doctorate Magazine.

She’s home
(2022)

**Treehouse**. 2022. Acrylic and mixed media on watercolour paper. *Painted in response to this poem.*

That place
The way I remember you
Only visible when I squint
As though editing memory into sharpness.

But still
This place, with its institutions
Single questions and bottom lines
That commodify and exploit our humanness,

As though
Driveways and four-ways, dividing
Actually slice apart our inter-connection
While we withstand drought and heat, as one.

I digress
Across oceans and colonial borders
Place after place after place
None of them, though, hold that feeling of home:

So tender,
She cradles our soreness with her own.
Walls repainted, doors unlocked, owls nested
Her music dances across treetops and facades

To brighten the way back home.

A hello and goodbye (2022)

A hello, a goodbye:
Roots of home entwined
With those beneath my feet
Each moment removed
A rupture in my soul
Too far to touch what I knew
I found pieces of me
Unknown, too much for home
Embraced in the land
of the so-called free

A horizon stands by, like
A Californian guard
That dresses my wounds
In a sunny balm.
She scoops me up, in her arms
Presses her sunkist ocean
And fire-drenched forests
Against my cheek
And whispers the futile dream
So it is; this is California

And just as I came
Somehow I must leave
Already my heart tears
But the scars and the stories show me how
And who I am tomorrow reaches
To the me of today
And together we walk
Towards that horizon

**Bay Area Grasslands**. 2022. Acrylic on gallery-wrapped canvas.

Breathing ashes of ancients (2021)

Sound
Our feet
Scuffling through forest
“Crack”, “crunch”, soaking into trees

Smell
Fresh, clear to breathe
Complete: soil, water
Life, death, intermingling

Terror
Kin engulfed
Swiftly, forest transformed
Fire explodes, years of excess

Smoke
Hard to breathe
Will we make it?
But where to go? This is home

Sorrow
Anger so hollow
Earth sheds her blistered skin
Makes her heart open, while we watch her burn

**Smoke again**. 2022. Acrylic and mixed media on wood panel.

Set on fire(2021)

The smoke has returned.
Computer screen glares at me,
While I look for the sky.
That big dream in the sky -
The beams of light
And epiphanies that keep us rolling,
While our lungs grate with air.

If your job is waking the woke crows,
Mine is swallowing the sword.
So to speak, anyway.
Gobbling up the big truths of the world,
With maybe a laceration or two,
But serenity, because
At least I'm not desensitized.

My heart is filled
With impenetrable love
For the habituated contact.

Sydney dwelling (2017)

Nature here manoeuvres,
Resting, sighing upon structures,
Bringing fourth our relief.

Nature as servant:
Green space, gathering place,
Dig and excavate,
Endless productivity, activity.

My home, a high-rise -
A space in the air -
Walls, a lift, a car park, a road...

Nature... but a whisper.
She is my reprieve,
in Sydney.