The 2008 Longlines Fellows:

Ali Cobby-Eckermann
Helen Hagemann
Kimberley Mann
Andrew Slattery

What is Longlines?

In 2008, the Australian Poetry Centre, together with the Varuna Writers’ Centre, devised a fellowship for poets who lived more than 100 kilometers outside Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane or Canberra. Four Fellows were invited to spend a week at Varuna workshopping their poetry with Ron Pretty. The manuscripts were then published in a series which effectively became a continuation of the Five Islands New Poets collections. The New Poets Series 2009, comprises:

little bit long time by Ali Cobby Eckermann

Evangelyne & other poems by Helen Hagemann

Awake During Anaesthetic by Kimberley Mann

Canyon by Andrew Slattery

In 2008, the Poets Union were considering the possibility of incorporating a regional fellowship into the Australian Poetry Festival. When we learnt that the APC and Varuna had already compiled such a program, we thought that the most useful (and efficient) thing we could do was to complement the Varuna workshops with a small number of Sydney events. The Fellows were invited to read at the Friend-in-Hand, to meet some locals at Anna Kerdijk-Nicholson’s, and to attend a day of extra workshops facilitated by Charlotte Clutterbuck, Martin Langford and Jutta Sieverding.

The following e-anthology represents a brief selection of their work.

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Helen Hagemann

Helen Hagemann’s poetry & prose have been published in literary journals, including Overland, Westerly and Island.

Harnessing the Horse

There are no horses in Broken Bay, only boats. And the talk
in town is of half-tide rocks, kingies and poddy mullet.
Loved boats in dry-dock feel the wire-brush, the gentle lift
of barnacled coat. Our dinghy floor becomes a tiddle of feet and
fish as we thread its wobbly life through the channel while cruisers
pass, bolt about us like renegades. When they climb to twenty
knots it’s a stinging breath in the nostrils, opening out a neck of
wash, bucking and breaking like a runaway. The bay is alive with
their snorting. Well, we can all dream of horses in the horsepower,
hooves in the whipcrack of water. Done with bailing the boat,
filleting the fish, we harness the horse; check the bit, the colt’s
vermilion eye, slap reins, shift irritant flies from murmuring flanks.
Then we arch Pegasus, lift happiness out, like he’s that horse
resting tall above the oil and pumps, those flightless wings rigid
in smoky moonlight, in a stampede of wheels, boys under weighty
hoods. He’s no-eater of lucerne or wheat, just a red Mobil sign
come to life, rising out over the bay, climbing an eastern sky.
Unstoppable on wings of mythic feathers, he smells
the wild honey dew of crimson clover, the percussion pot of blue
below, because we always knew he wanted to fly.

by Helen Hagemann

Life on the Stairs

Had she known what was beyond the stairs, she would not have climbed,
and chosen the backyard instead with morbid shadows, and a thin anxious Alsatian. At the top of the stairs, she knew her grandfather's enemies had defeated him; his medals had discoloured behind the cage he kept them in.
In the dark, his bedroom door braided a corona of light. Locked to ocean views, it held secrets her grandmother wouldn't share. He was old and could die in his bed, so she never ventured beyond the third top stair. Mouldy with tobacco smells, she could hear the static of gunfire inside, loud barbaric men. Going down, her bullet spring cracked each board, as if warning her to socks and silence. In her grandparents’ house the curving staircase had little light. Panicky mice and spiders left when an electric brightness fluttered up the walls. Framed war photos had men in trenches stooped into their bones.
Her grandfather said, "They're the rats of Tobruk.” Their eyes glazed in the light and she was careful not to panic them from the walls. Children must be careful going up and down stairs in case they should fall, bump glass, or delicate objets d'art; children who cannot stop what is happening

on walls, shapes of men
urging an old man to steer
his room in the dark

by Helen Hagemann

Ball Doyen(ne)

Out came the voile, the fabulous organza. So elegantly
does this debutante’s gown whirl, the night commissioned by
forefathers of the ball; Masons in tuxedos & secret smiles.
A young man takes her hand, the silver globe turns overhead.
She is the swan dying in the waltz. His black coattails ruffle in
the quick-step. The path of roses, the cultured pearls on each
motif swing full circle, jubilant in the light. The couple rests on
heels when the speeches are made, but the dress continues to
turn, brash white thing, Doyenne of the Ball, full rope petticoat
flouncing every seam. The tango tilts gardenias in her hair.
The ball gown, painstakingly made-by-hand, swishes down
the stairs, leaving restive swans drinking at the door.
The couple arranges their first scene of fidelity, gooseflesh
shimmering as lotus on a lake. Somehow they are lit up from
the ball, unbound, heads craned for the taste of the glide home.

in chilly waters
under a moonlit bower –
two star-puckered swans

by Helen Hagemann

Ali Cobby Eckermann

After 25 years Ali Cobby Eckermann relocated to the ‘intervention free’ village of Koolunga SA. She is restoring the 130 year old General Store. ‘Intervention Pay Back’ was written in central Australia and won the NT Red Earth Poetry Award 2008.

I Tell You True

I can’t stop drinking, I tell you true
Since I watched my daughter perish
She burned to death inside a car
I lost what I most cherish
I saw the angels hold her
As I screamed with useless hope
I can’t stop drinking, I tell you true
It’s the only way I cope!

I can’t stop drinking, I tell you true
Since I found my sister dead
She hung herself to stop the rapes
I found her in the shed
The rapist bastard still lives here
Unpunished in this town
I can’t stop drinking, I tell you true
Since I cut her down.

I can’t stop drinking, I tell you true
Since my mother passed away.
They found her battered down the creek
I miss her more each day
My family blamed me for her death
Their words have made me wild
I can’t stop drinking, I tell you true
‘Cos I was just a child.

So if you see someone like me
Who’s drunk and loud and cursing
Don’t judge too hard, you never know
What sorrows we are nursing.

by Ali Cobby Eckermann

Kumana

There is no life
but Family.

When I am young
I live with my Family.

When I grow up
I leave my Family.

When I am lonely
I miss my Family.

When I am drunk
I reverse-charge my Family.

When I pass away
I unite my Family.

There is no life
but Family.

by Ali Cobby Eckermann

Table Manners by Ali Cobby Eckermann

Warrior woman walks proudly
Close to where I sit in the street.
I notice her muted smile buried behind her scars.
Our eyes meet.

I bow my head.
‘Sorry sis’, I say quietly, ‘I got nothing’.
My friend looks at me, searches through her bag
‘I might have something?’

I respect the warrior woman, ask ‘What’s your name?’
Her eyes are focused behind me.
Focused on another place
Along Todd Mall.

Suddenly her focus is at my shoulder,
‘We told you before’ waitress yells in my ear.
‘You have to leave’
‘You can’t ask for money here’.

Warrior woman walks proudly
Away from where I sit today.
Her scarred face turns, smiles with her words -
‘She’s just jealous!’

Kimberley Mann

Kimberley Mann grew up in Alice Springs. She has published 50 poems, one libretto, two plays and a short story. She has co-edited two books; Blue, for Friendly St. Poetry and Painted Words, an Anthology of Short Stories. She works as a therapeutic counsellor and and reviews for the Adelaide Fringe.

under water

she has a sea urchin
between her legs, so soft
it opens for tiny fish

Out of Africa

my bedroom is a jungle in shadow
clothes lie strewn
the faded colours of fallen tropical leaves
left to rot in spots of sunlight
underpants still threaded with stockings
the long black roots of an exotic plant
I sink into the dark misshapen bog of my bed
lean back on soft rocks
& stare into the cave of my wardrobe
notice the intricate jewellery of moss over a boulder
& watch the fat leeches of bed socks
feed off the moss, suck moisture from the stone
scant light coming through the canopy

Making its way slowly towards me
is the thick, curling python of sleep
who’ll gently unhinge his jaw to swallow me whole
& then breathe for me

by Kimberley Mann

Terimbula

it’s when . . .
- the taste you’ve left me with
it’s seawater reflux
and an energy of salt

weed strung across my pale skin
days brighter than emotion
than thought

before remembering
after swimming all day
after all day jumping waves

- and in the dusk how we’d make
a circle of our tired limbs
sit, numbly putting food into our mouths
soak our poor skins to the air
let the day turn us to white chalk

that summer the yellow heat curled
the photographs on the dashboard of your car
you slipped oyster flesh down my throat
and your tongue to follow

bodies lost
we’d eventually crawl back to
the stars and a tingling aftermath
lie there for spinning eons, stare crazily up
at that darkest moon in her honey
and float…

then.
that’s when comes
that old brine stinking
at the back of my throat
and you

by Kimberley Mann

Andrew Slattery

Andrew Slattery’s poetry has been published in Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia. His prizes include The Roland Robinson, Henry Kendall and Val Vallis Literay Awards. Canyon is his first collection of poetry.

Memorandum

Bring every man
to the agony
of life’s last moments
by whip, fire
or injections,
and through terrible torture
he will undergo
the great purification
afforded by a vision of death.

Then free him
and let him run
in a fright
until he falls
exhausted.

by Andrew Slattery

Slatterys Wake

We are so many kinds of death.
Nobody has the right to sleep.
At the wake someone said he wore

coloured socks during the war—
careful when he sat down
or crossed his legs not to disclose

his furtive glee.
Outside the old men dance
with their lawnmowers.

Inside the wake conversations
overlap like crosswords.
The bread and milk are laid

like weights on the table.
I wonder how there can still be
men searching for the truth.

The house is old, maybe built
when the mountain was built.
I can only live at the beginning

or the end of this world.
We die because of all there is
and all there is not.

by Andrew Slattery

The Obama Urbanelle

Many for the very first time in their lives.
I know you didn’t do it for me.
No cars on the road or planes in the sky.

Our union can be perfected.
The struggle and the progress.
Many for the very first time in their lives.

I need your help.
We have seen so much.
No cars on the road or planes in the sky.

Children should live to see the next century.
I know you didn’t do it for me.
Many for the very first time in their lives.

Our union can be perfected.
The struggle and the progress.
No cars on the road or planes in the sky.

We have seen so much.
Children should live to see the next century.
Many for the very first time in their lives.
No cars on the road or planes in the sky.

by Andrew Slattery