Five South Australian poems broadcast recently on the National University of Colombia’s radio station, Brevísimo.

"Brevísimo” operates as a platform that celebrates not just the art of poetry but also the intricate connections between poets’ lives, societal issues, and the vivid imagery of their respective cultures and experiences. This episode, hosted by Professor Mauricio Albeiro Montoya Vasquez, centres on poetry as a form of short literature. It showcases a literary cartography that traverses Australia, Spain, and Peru, demonstrating a rich tapestry of voices and texts from various parts of the world. The show emphasizes the beauty and emotional depth woven through poetry, and features works by Antony Fawcus, Silvia Cuevas Morales, and Daniel Quispe Torres.

Here is a link to the radio program in Spanish: (191) Brevísimo - Literary Cartography - World (III).

Antony Fawcus, a South Australian poet originally from England, shares his insights into the mystical atmosphere of dawn and the harsh realities of summer heat, encapsulating the fight between nature and human experience. His poems evoke the serene beauty of dawn in South Australia and the transition to the intense summer heat. Poetic descriptions of cockatoos and eucalyptus create vivid images of the Australian landscape.

Dawn

from Gallimaufry by Antony Fawcus (Ginninderra Press 2017)

Dawnnarrated by Felicity Hunter

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Light filtered through the eucalypts

at dawn, a radiance divine,

renascent jewels to crown the air,

a shower of stars that came,

cascading through the leaves

to quench the night

with the first cool draught of day,

all else still dark.

I thought that sight to be

a foretaste of eternity.

Not age nor dotage

nor opacity

can close an inner eye,

etched with such a memory.

In the last grey fog of pain,

a softened halo seen

through mists of time,

will come back again

to lay the pallid smile

of Mnemosyne,

on death's pale lip,

in closure,

for that final flight alone,

the last leaf turned.

A South Australian Summer

from Written in Sand by Antony Fawcus (Ginninderra Press 2016)

A South Australian Summernarrated by Felicity Hunter

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There is a stillness in the air,

a languid stillness

in which pendulous leaves

sway feebly

to catch each tepid breeze.

Two Adelaide Rosellas swoop

From shade to nearby shade,

brief sparks of life

in the blue haze

of lazy afternoon.

An ancient red gum

sheds a swathe of sunburnt skin,

revealing layers of whiteness

splotched with grey

indifference.

The sleepy lizard edges

gratefully

into the new-found shade

and shelters there,

waiting for the moon to bathe

such wounds of day

in silver.

Then shadows will awaken

and wide-eyed possums stare,

as small scavengers

scuttle-search for prey,

themselves reflected

in the amber eyes

of soft-winged spectres,

silent overhead.

Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos

from Time Paused Today by Antony Fawcus (Ginninderra Press 2022)

Sulphur Crested Cockatoosnarrated by Felicity Hunter

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The screeching cockatoos in hundreds swoop,

avenging angels at the trump of doom,

with fanned white wings, backlit like skeins of lace;

a wheeling flock above the river's course.

Their sulphur crests on fire against the sun;

unsettled, as they throng round undrowned trees,

on whose gaunt limbs they shift, like candle flames

at mumbled evensong, in muted tones.

Dusk softly fades in blushes, rose and pink,

and squabbles soon subside to peacefulness.

All now is silent on the billabong,

but tiny splashes heard as bell frogs leap.

Small sparkling gems adorn the velvet dome,

attendant on the silent, rising moon.

The Bushfire

from Brindled Words by Antony Fawcus (Ginninderra Press 2018)

The Bushfirenarrated by Felicity Hunter

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By noon the trees are peeling paperbark,

red ochre scars and pink new skin exposed;

oil, oozed from pores, hangs listless in the air,

as sweating eucalypts withstand the sun

as best they can. Beneath their scanty shade,

a herd of kine lies still, their roan and brown

a speckled camouflage in flaxen grass

that, brittle, waits a spark to animate

this sultry lassitude of summer heat,

whose haze of blue asphyxiates the bush,

where parrots gag for breath, and small birds shrink

into the shadowed wattle undergrowth.

A slight breeze stirs, to fan a whiff of smoke,

uprearing, like a snake, from near a shard

of glass, to feel the air with flickered tongue.

Then flame spills fast across the dried-out seed,

and crackles in a flurry, raw with fear.

The dragon breathes once more upon this earth,

to cleanse its ancient frame of burnished bones,

yet from the charred remains new growth will come,

for where there's life that still exists, there's hope.

The Eastern Brown Snake

A Rispetto

from The Ethiopian Afar and other poems by Antony Fawcus (Ginninderra Press 2015)

The Eastern Brown Snakenarrated by Felicity Hunter

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Unseen on logs inside the shed,

the coils of copper blurred as he

upreared and hissed with flattened head;

his startled eye fixed straight on me.

Heart stopped for Death to change its mind.

Upon this day the fates were kind,

he slithered down behind a bale

and spared my life. I tell the tale.