AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS & WRITERS FOR PEACE
Quarry Land, Leased 'til 2020 by Janine Baker
[Above] Photo of Janine Baker by photographer unknown, 1989.
Janine Baker
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Quarry Land, Leased 'til 2020
In 1860
these green and teeming hills
lay dense with wood and herb,
with fur and scale and feather,
aswarm with a million insects,
timber stood proud and dammed the banks
of liquid crystal streams
In 1960
these brown and leaching hills
lay clothed with bones and weeds -
thistles from Britain, olives from Greece,
Cape daisies crawl from quarry slag-heaps,
birds cancelled flight and soupy creeks stank
under scums of blue-green algae.
Toward 2020...
these heat-hoven ancient hills
lie silent, resolute,
boxthorn skeletons creak in the breeze
but the natural course will not be undone -
here spins a leaf-green spider;
blooms a clump of candle flower;
winks a brown snake, at the new century's sun. |
About the Poet Janine Baker
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Janine Baker is a South Australian poet, scientist, and mother (in no particular order!). She was born in Queensland, and raised as an itinerant, living in various cities, towns and on islands around Australia and New Guinea, for the first 2 decades of life. Environmental change and human isolation are recurring themes in her work. Janine has contributed to various poetry journals and magazines, such as Spindrift and Poetrix (in which her work was often published during the mid to late 1990s), and more recently, Centoria and SideWalk. Janine read regularly at South Australian poetry venues during the late 1990s, and her work has also been heard on radio. More recently, poems have been accepted for the 2003/04 issue of Divan. A first collection has also been accepted for publication. |
[Above] Photo of Janine Baker by photographer unknown, 1989.
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