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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                     #8/thyla8k-jc AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 8 The Poetry of Jennifer Compton Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Jennifer Compton by Harvey O'Sullivan, 1994. I Dead Man Singing I Octopus Speaking I The Sound of a Breaking String I Every Morning, Waking I The Children I The Blue Light for the First Time I Dead Man Singing I'm listening to a dead man singing which I understand my great-great-great grandmother would not have done. When you died you were dead and never spoken of again. That put the tin lid on it. As far as you were concerned. How would we entertain us if our dead were dead? So we killed so that the dead could live. Her son worked his passage to another country where his dead could not haunt him. He's dead, of course, but I speak of him. Published by Valley Micropress (NZ). Octopus Speaking In the underwater tunnel of the civic aquarium the octopus leaned his wretched head against the glass of his turbid pool sucking on his breathing tube, like a severed vein so he could live. He asked for his ocean. He asked me, the daughter of the powerful race. I was standing alone like a child stands with her entry ticket in her hand. Published by by Takahe (NZ), Wagtail (Australia) and Poetry Nottingham International (UK). The Sound of a Breaking String The spring rains have arrived on the second day of spring. We drove to town today. The country was so dry the forest on the hills by the highway had begun to drink the air like smoke. I was afraid. It was the wrong way round. But tonight the great cord snapped and it is almost too beautiful to write of the effect in Cherry Orchard, Act 11. It seems to come from the sky and is the sound of a breaking string. Tonight it broke all over again. The spring rain moved in. It has the sound, the absolute sound of rain. Published by Westerly (Australia), jaam (NZ) and The Frogmore Papers (UK). Every Morning, Waking Out in the zero velvet of the night swinging deep into left field the first interrogatory of the aubade. A startle of - Where was I? What! Then the anxious, enquiring flex, - And am I still a magpie? Yes! Published by Quadrant (Australia). The Children They were knocking on the bedroom window. I rolled over in bed and said to my lover There are two children knocking on the window. Well - he growled - I'm not their father. But they kept on, they wouldn't stop. A boy of near five and his younger sister. It seemed they were looking for their mother. But he was plainly not their father. Published by Blue Dog (Australia) and jaam (NZ). The Blue Light for the First Time The blue light shone the new negative idiom. In the Ladies Rest Room during a hail storm. My false teeth were unusual in the mirror as I searched for the water which I knew would be flowing from the tap as it always had. I couldn't find the vein of living water in the blue light. The untanned columns of my bare arms reached for the water in the hideously albino basin muttering with chill lips - Cyanose. Cyanotic. Published by Quadrant (Australia). About the Poet Jennifer Compton Jennifer Compton was born in New Zealand and emigrated to Australia in 1972. She has been publishing poetry in magazines etc. since the age of 14 in New Zealand and Australia, and more recently in the UK, USA and Canada. Her first book of poetry From The Other Woman was published as part of the Five Islands new Poets series in 1993. In 1995 she was awarded the NSW Ministry for the Arts Fellowship. In the same year her poem 'Blue Leaves' won the Robert Harris Poetry Prize. Another stage play, The Big Picture, written with the aid of a grant from the Australian Council for the Arts, premiered at the Griffin Theatre in 1997. Her book Blue, was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize in 2001.    [Above] Photo of Jennifer Compton by Harvey O'Sullivan, 1994. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.8 (September, 2003)