I Home I About I Contact I Guidelines I Directory I World I Peace I Charity I Education I Quotes I Solutions I Photo Gallery I Archives I Links I

Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                    #4/thyla4k-lw AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 4 The Poetry of Lauren Williams Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Lauren Williams by Raffaella Torresan, 1999. I Thanks For Calling I A Short Word on Behalf of Fish I You Can Keep Your Boats I Mistaken For A Prostitute I What must it be like to be the man? I Thanks For Calling Hi! I'm so hot for your money, sitting here beside my phone in tracksuit and slippers, reading the Women's Weekly with a cuppa, waiting for all you poor horny buggers with your poor lonely horns to get on the blower and blow over what you think is talking to you - some photo of a lipsticked, big tit bimbo about to give head to the handpiece. Honey, I'm 45 with a mortgage, Caesarian scars and no time for you unless it's $5 per minute. My friend Sandra pre-records her stuff so she doesn't even have to listen. Since the TV ad she makes good money and is putting herself through university. I'm thinking of doing the same. I might become a psychologist. So dial 0055 1234 right now. Push those buttons, boys, so I can push yours. A Short Word on Behalf of Fish Some people think clean water comes out of a tap, that a goldfish bowl is the correct receptacle for a goldfish life. Mummy, fishie's not moving. Don't worry darling, we'll get another one. For the screen, artistic directors buy a tank, gravel, a few plastic plants, just add water, some fish and Bingo! An attractive aquatic death-agony behind the star's left shoulder. Or the joke with a hook, flapping about on dry ground, a tradition of being swallowed alive. Ha ha ha. You need four legs and fur for the RSPCA to stop laughing. We buy from fish shop windows with their iced displays of rictus, eat in seafood restaurants watching death row watch us. Is it because they can't close their eyes? Because they have no voice? Who's got cold blood? You Can Keep Your Boats O still and solid, O lovely land, left for the sea's unsexy infidelities, the stink of diesel and varnish, the whipping sheet and jamming cleat, the thrashing sail and braining boom, air-shredding percussion of the stays, the fixed and desperate gaze at the bottom of the bucket when all the horizons in the world can't save you. So what if there's a line with five flathead on it? They bring their curses aboard with their deaths. Strong drink, the only cushion you get for an arse in the hard wash of the cockpit. Heave ho, it's down below to slosh in the narrow berth and watch a sweating salami strung in the galley swing like a clock hand stuck below the decks of 3 and 9, not giving a toss for livin' or dyin'. Enough of your gone-fishin' poems, your seafarin' bloke poems, your barnacled, briny, hull-slappin' ocean-going poems. The truth is a cancerous sun, a bullying wind, drying salt and drowning depths, the endless pierced and netted deaths. Prison with no lock, no port to port, to starboard no star, nothing for'ard and nothing aft... Sailing? Mate you'd have to be daft. Published in The Mariner (Australia). Mistaken For A Prostitute The woman at the VD clinic was chatty, collecting pamphlets on the usual diseases to take 'round to the parlours "cos some of the girls still give head without condoms, for the extra money you know", and I'm thinking how bad all that latex would taste and suspecting she thinks I'm a professional collecting pamphlets too, in my velvet skirt, my french perfume, my cared-for skin, my uncertain age and unmotherly air, the stamp of men on me, recent, brisk and similar. The woman enters the cubicle I've just left. "He's good with a speculum, that one," I say and it occurs to me that perhaps, indeed, I'm owed something. What must it be like to be the man? who opens a woman  with his eyes               like twinkling can-openers till there she is  (poor little sardine) so appetizing  so delighted to be appreciated so already gone Opens her with words  kissing cousins               to kisses  colours he gives her to paint the man inside her head while her words kiss glass  unknowing how unknown she is Opens her and lets the weather               blow her away It's not required to catch her just touch her  skin with skin for the downplayed miracle               of being welcomed in What must it be like to be the man who courts and sparks and enters and walks so lightly away so unopened. Published in Invisible Tattoos (Five Islands Press, 2000). About the Poet Lauren Williams Encountered live poetry at The Living Room in 1983. Returned the next week, with poems. Within a year, purchased a small printing press and began publishing a 'zine, Big Bang, as a text gig for poetry aired at the various venues. For the next five years, she moved between poetry and music, and singing with various blues/R&B/funk bands until, in 1988, the two artforms merged in the rap crew Itch 2 Scratch. From 1990-1994 Williams was an associate editor of Going Down Swinging. Her first collection, Driven To Talk To Strangers, was runner-up in the 1991 Anne Elder award. She was one of nine poets in the play Call It Poetry Tonight, at the Wharf Studio in Sydney. In '95 she was the first Australian poet to attend the Festival Internacional de Poesía en Medellín, Colombia. Her poetry is widely anthologised and has been televised and broadcast nationally. She is a visiting poet in schools and universities, features regularly at Melbourne readings and festivals, and occasionally interstate. Since 2000 she has been convenor of the long-running La Mama Poetica readings. In 2002 she received a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. She sings with blues/rock band, The Negotiators.    [Above] Photo of Lauren Williams by Raffaella Torresan, 1999. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.4 (September, 2001)