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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                    #1/thyla1k-ml AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 1 The Poetry of Mike Ladd Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Mike Ladd by Steve Hardacre, 1999. I END OF SUMMER, PORT WILLUNGA I YORKE PENNINSULA I CRY I AGAIN, SUMMER I END OF SUMMER, PORT WILLUNGA It should be enough - this one bale of hay, rolled into a lozenge of late-afternoon light - its rightness in the field on the sea's verge. It should be enough - that single wave slowly mounting from the expanse of grey, the sun torching its leading edge - but why does it cut like a flensing knife? Out there is a black dot. It could be a seal, or a swimmer, or me, thirty years ago. Even if I swam out, it would stay unreachable. Behind the beach houses, those dry hills, the crinkled hide of an impossible beast … Just that colour should be enough. YORKE PENINSULA Out of the mouth of limestone, the lung of Southern Ocean, a breeze slips between she-oaks into the small fish town - walk this way, you can be invisible too. Glide between stalks of wheat, the moon-white rocks, the radio frequencies. The brown snake does not see you in her rapid, onward spilling. Nor the crow flying from stobie poles in a backward arc, an animated shred of truck tyre freed from the minor road's verge. You have disappeared, and only now can you be here. CRY The gap between each boobook owl cry seems the same. But if you could measure, if you could hunt decimals right over the horizon, you'd always find the plump insect of difference. This night generates a series of imprecisions, a lovely mathematics of cry and silence. A star, a puff of campfire smoke, and human love - now you can plot them inside the same graph. AGAIN, SUMMER A creamy fizz of beach, blue jellyfish washed up - an accident in the glass factory. Sheep trails climb looming, treeless hills, midday ticks at their feet. Over a crinkly sea, radio waves bring music, news of children killed by snipers, and the cricket score. Hot vinyl fumes under windscreen glass, beach sand in the cracks of seats and buttock cheeks, scarlet where bathers rolled up, still wet, but drying fast. At about four a lone cicada clocks on - trying out his cry, letting it run down slowly like a pinwheel. The guinea flowers think about opening. Sunset: t.v's bloom in shacks, satellites cross the sky tracking weather systems, military targets, number plates on family cars. Summer sobs inside us, the night perfume - lost time. About the Poet Mike Ladd Mike Ladd was born in 1959 and grew up at Blackwood in the Adelaide Hills. After completing a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy at Adelaide University, he began to publish his poetry widely in Australia. In 1980 he formed "The Drum Poets" a group of musicians who perform his poetry using conventional instruments, found objects and pre-recorded sounds. In London he worked for the BBC and the British Institute of Recorded Sound. Returning to Adelaide, Mike began work with ABC radio. He became a producer within the Audio Arts department and is currently producer and presenter of the Radio National poetry program "PoeticA". He has published two books with Wakefield Press, The Crack in the Crib(1984) and Picture's Edge (1994). Mike is interested in collaborations between poetry and other disciplines, and has made poetic works for live performance, radio, film, photography, installations and the internet.    [Above] Photo of Mike Ladd by Steve Hardacre, 1999. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.1 (March, 2000)