Four Poems
Maria Takolander
Maria Takolander
"Portal 1" by Lisa Berley, mixed media, 22 x 30 in., 2013
Goldilocks and her Ghost
Grieve, Repeat
Night, Falling
In Memory of CR
What did you see as night was falling?
The vastness of the plains, the grass radiant with its secret knowledge, and then the darkness deepening.
Did the world speak to you as to a shaman?
There are always signs and daemons, but they were no longer for me to speak or sing.
Was it so dark you could not see?
At first there was a moon, shedding its bony light.
Did others hold you?
There were so many—of my own skin and smell and hair and blood—but I alone was being ravaged.
Did you feel the presence of god?
Only love, and the unbearable tragedy of its passing.
Did sleep finally come for you?
The night always comes from within.
And when you woke?
My body was quiet as a beast with its throat cut.
And now?
Can’t you feel it? Life is still longing for us.
In Memory of CR
What did you see as night was falling?
The vastness of the plains, the grass radiant with its secret knowledge, and then the darkness deepening.
Did the world speak to you as to a shaman?
There are always signs and daemons, but they were no longer for me to speak or sing.
Was it so dark you could not see?
At first there was a moon, shedding its bony light.
Did others hold you?
There were so many—of my own skin and smell and hair and blood—but I alone was being ravaged.
Did you feel the presence of god?
Only love, and the unbearable tragedy of its passing.
Did sleep finally come for you?
The night always comes from within.
And when you woke?
My body was quiet as a beast with its throat cut.
And now?
Can’t you feel it? Life is still longing for us.
Happiness
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History recognises Turun Söl as a standard disappointment in the ancient practice of poetry (/ˈpǝʊɪtri/ n. Now rare. Solitary word game played by the melancholy and potentially narcissistic.) While Söl’s name has become synonymous with an excessive form of morbid verse, it should be noted, if the translations of Söl’s soot-stained diaries are to be trusted, that the poet’s quest may have been originally optimistic. One must keep in mind that Söl’s goal was never to describe mirth or excitement, which are merely temporary conditions, easily tainted by inebriation or schadenfreude. The object of the poet’s mission was more stable and pure. Yet evidence of it was so ambiguous. Like pain, it was hard to credit in others. In fact, there was always the possibility that it did not exist at all. One could contrive its appearance simply by being acquiescent and inactive, as a monk or husband might. In any case, it was important to adopt an attitude of scepticism in order not to appear a sentimental fool. The greatest difficulty posed by Söl’s subject, of course, was that it avoided words as if they carried the plague. It protected itself like a blue-blood bounded by forest-fed walls of fire. It destroyed images of itself before they could be generated; the ultimate iconoclast, one might say. In the end, Turun Söl is said to have found herself writing obsessively about her subject’s manifold and miserable antitheses, such that it seems she herself wondered if language was invented for the sole purpose of expressing pain. |
About the Author
Maria Takolander is an Australian writer. She is the author of two books of poetry, The End of the World (Giramondo 2014) and Ghostly Subjects (Salt 2009), with a third, Trigger Warning, forthcoming with UQP. Her poems have been widely anthologised, including in The Best Australian Poems and The Best Australian Poetry, as well as in special ‘Australian poetry’ issues of Agenda (UK), Chicago Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Lichtungen (Austria), and Michigan Quarterly Review. Australia’s Radio National aired a program about her poetry in 2015, and she has performed her poetry on national TV and at the 2017 International Poetry Festival of Medellín, Colombia. Maria is also a prize-winning short-story writer and the author of The Double (and Other Stories) (Text 2013). Maria’s website is mariatakolander.com.
About the Work
"Grieve, Repeat" is an elegiacal poem, which uses the rogue form of a cyclical chart to reflect on the repetitive nature of daily routines.
"Night Falling" is an elegy for the extraordinary Australian performance poet Candy Royalle, whom I will always remember for her radical championing of love, vulnerability, openness. The poem attempts to recover her voice through the rule-breaking form of an interview with the dead.
"Goldilocks" is an elegy for a miscarried child, whose absence is not filled by a subsequent child. The poem fractures the form of a fairytale, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears,’ which is also about the condition of being ‘missing.’
"Happiness" is an ironic reflection on the ways in which poetry tends to focus on intense emotional states characterised by unhappiness. Would it be possible to disrupt that tradition and write about the apparently elusive condition of happiness?
Maria Takolander is an Australian writer. She is the author of two books of poetry, The End of the World (Giramondo 2014) and Ghostly Subjects (Salt 2009), with a third, Trigger Warning, forthcoming with UQP. Her poems have been widely anthologised, including in The Best Australian Poems and The Best Australian Poetry, as well as in special ‘Australian poetry’ issues of Agenda (UK), Chicago Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Lichtungen (Austria), and Michigan Quarterly Review. Australia’s Radio National aired a program about her poetry in 2015, and she has performed her poetry on national TV and at the 2017 International Poetry Festival of Medellín, Colombia. Maria is also a prize-winning short-story writer and the author of The Double (and Other Stories) (Text 2013). Maria’s website is mariatakolander.com.
About the Work
"Grieve, Repeat" is an elegiacal poem, which uses the rogue form of a cyclical chart to reflect on the repetitive nature of daily routines.
"Night Falling" is an elegy for the extraordinary Australian performance poet Candy Royalle, whom I will always remember for her radical championing of love, vulnerability, openness. The poem attempts to recover her voice through the rule-breaking form of an interview with the dead.
"Goldilocks" is an elegy for a miscarried child, whose absence is not filled by a subsequent child. The poem fractures the form of a fairytale, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears,’ which is also about the condition of being ‘missing.’
"Happiness" is an ironic reflection on the ways in which poetry tends to focus on intense emotional states characterised by unhappiness. Would it be possible to disrupt that tradition and write about the apparently elusive condition of happiness?
About the Artist
Lisa Berley began her career in San Francisco as an art director in CGI and animation after receiving her BFA. She integrated painting, photography and CGI in digital work. Returning to NY for two decades Berley exhibited abstract mixed media works on paper. She moved to Colorado in 2016 continuing to work from deconstructed found images and recently combining it with erasure poetry after the accidental death of her younger son.
Artist Statement
My work involves a process of exploring the deconstruction of found words and images.
Fragments of appropriated newsprint images are deconstructed and then reconstructed to make new images and in some cases erasure poems. Through this method the visual and text information is transformed.
Lisa Berley began her career in San Francisco as an art director in CGI and animation after receiving her BFA. She integrated painting, photography and CGI in digital work. Returning to NY for two decades Berley exhibited abstract mixed media works on paper. She moved to Colorado in 2016 continuing to work from deconstructed found images and recently combining it with erasure poetry after the accidental death of her younger son.
Artist Statement
My work involves a process of exploring the deconstruction of found words and images.
Fragments of appropriated newsprint images are deconstructed and then reconstructed to make new images and in some cases erasure poems. Through this method the visual and text information is transformed.
