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Vol 30 No 8
The possibility of poetry

ARTS AND CULTURE

The possibility of poetry

John Falzon
29 April 2020

4 Comments

Selected poems

You have to love happiness so hard it hurts

and even this for you is happiness

even when your demons

bless 'em

meet and have a drink together

playing a little two-up with your life

don’t worry about it

enjoy yourself

the view as you’re being tossed this way

and that

sky

then sand

spectacular really

so spectacular that it matters little

if anyone’s placed

a hefty bet on you

or if you meet your end while soaring up

or tumbling down.

The Comrades

I met massive friends

on the clandestine boulevards

slow they were

as oil and tomatoes

happy as beans

from the secret gardens of Sardinia

fearless

and inky

red and redolent

as wine.

Testament

To have been given even

just the possibility of poetry

that was enough

that was more than enough.

Dr John Falzon is Senior Fellow, Inequality and Social Justice at Per Capita. He is a sociologist, poet and social justice advocate and was national CEO of the St Vincent de Paul Society in Australia from 2006 to 2018. He is a member of the Australian Services Union.

Topic tags: John Falzon, poetry

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Existing comments

Nice one John. Thanks

Anne Benjamin | 29 April 2020

Testament! Why isn't 'poet' listed first in your occupations, Dr Falzon?

Pam | 29 April 2020

Maybe Dr Falzon sees his other occupations particularly as a social justice advocate as of greater value to humanity and the common good. Pam. Many would agree with him on that! Many deserve justice but relatively few read or write poetry.

john frawley | 29 April 2020

I loved 'UP', John! It showed me a side of you - the 'social justician' par excellence - that I instinctively sensed you must have. Fire and water in balance with each other as well as wild happiness and laughter to bring joy and respite to those you champion, as well as to those you love enough to take them on!

Michael Furtado | 01 May 2020

Friends and Rivals and the ocean in the shell

Andrew Hamilton
01 May 2020

In Friends and Rivals Brenda Niall brings together four significant Australian women writers. Between them they published works from the 1890s to the 1950s. Ethel Turner and Barbara Baynton were from NSW. Nettie Palmer and Henry Handel Richardson were from Victoria, both schooled at Presbyterian Ladies College.

The discomfort of apartness

Georgia White
28 April 2020

I keep going back to a short story, by Carmen Maria Machado in her book Her Body and Other Parties, called ‘Inventory’. In its simplest terms, the story is a narrator’s list of her lovers loved: boyfriends, girlfriends, neighbours, strangers. From this inventory emerges, bit by bit, the story that has made the list necessary: an epidemic is ravaging the world’s population.