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AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS & WRITERS FOR PEACE
Shoalwater by Kristin Hannaford

[Above] Photo of Kristin Hannaford by Shaune Sinclair, 2004.

Kristin Hannaford

Shoalwater
from the Wetland Sonnets

Tonight the Americans rumble over Darumbal soils.
Tanks landscape coloured greys, sands
and greens disappear into Shoalwater military territory.
Spectacular vivid orange in the light
the dunes rise over Capricornia, the Tropic line.

Imagine water held deep within the dunes
a great lens of liquid arced
percolating & siphoning freshwater to lower wetlands.
Our son swirls and dissolves sugar and salt             in glass
his small fingers hold the pattern
the history of waters movement over land.

Tonight the floodline shadows
on forest paperbarks, watermarks
as if the trees were living litmus tests

Published in The Cool Breath Burn (Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology, 2004).

About the Poet Kristin Hannaford

Kristin Hannaford lives in Yeppoon, on the Capricorn Coast of Queensland, Australia, with her husband and two sons. Her work has appeared most recently in Otoliths, foam:e papertiger05/06, Famous Reporter, Treci Trg (Serbia), Small Packages 2005 QPF Anthology and on ABC Radio National's Poetica. Poems from her 'Wetland Sonnets' sequence won the 2004 Leichhardt New Media Poetry Prize, and joint second for New Media in the 2004 Newcastle Poetry Prize. Swelter (Interactive Press 2003) includes her first collection of poetry, Inhale. She recently completed a residency at Varuna via the Macquarie Bank Longlines programme, and is a tutor for the Queensland Writers Centre. Kristin is currently at work on her second collection of poems.
   [Above] Photo of Kristin Hannaford by Shaune Sinclair, 2004.

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