Here’s my project. I read a poem a day, imbibe its rhythms and use this as an inspiration for my own writing. Because it’s 2016, I’ll choose 16 quotes from 16 of these poems to feature on A Bigger Brighter World so you’ll get to enjoy a taste of them too. I may not manage it every month. But, if I do, that will equal 16 poems a month for 12 months (meaning 192 poems by the end of the year). What an excellent feast of poetry to look forward to …

Here are my 16 poetry quotes for March.

1. ‘# 10 Ball’ by Eileen Myles

Is there anything about oil we don’t / know already / like we’re driving on our own limited past / something that’s ancient like the history of / this ball we’re driving these cars on / the fluid of everything and everybody / that was ever here / we’re draining that / just to get around

Eileen Myles is the author of nineteen books including I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems, and a reissue of Chelsea Girls, both published in 2015. ‘# 10 Ball’ appears in her collection Snowflake: New Poems.

2. ‘Ant Familias’ by Meera Atkinson

King Solomon instructed, ‘Look to the ants, consider her ways and be wise’. / Work together, yes? / See what hive mind holy order takes shape when we forget ourselves. /  See what great works create when we are small, become ourselves. / Ants have no corporations, no stock markets, no matchstick factories crammed with / brown bodies earning less in a month than what I ate for lunch. / They’re working with the tide, working with the weather, working with the light, with / the drop of juice from a peach.  // The problem was that I was killing them. I tried not to, but / the numbers overwhelmed me.

Meera Atkinson is a Sydney-based writer, poet and scholar. Her work has appeared in over sixty publications, including Best Australian Stories 2007, Best Australian Poems 2010, and Griffith REVIEW. ‘Ant Familias’ was published in Volume 3 number 1 (February 2016) of Plumwood Mountain.

3.  ‘The Last Suburb’ by Sarah St Vincent Welsh

The oil stain in the drive has Rorschach wings. / I scry the bathwater we kept for the plants. / The dog laps at it and growls, / I pull out the plug. // I can read the signs but can’t do anything / about them. The past is here and the future, so / I read the toilet bowl and the dirty / hand basin and the drips from the tap / are very telling / I don’t even need / to really see or listen / as the evidence is here. / Then I flush it away.

Sarah St Vincent Welch is a Canberra-based writer, editor and writing teacher. She is publishing a chapbook with Rochford St Press in 2016. She studies at UTS and has joined Project Three Six Six to write a draft poem a day for a year with other poets and artists. ‘The Last Suburb’ was published in Cordite 53.0 THE END in February.

4. ‘Casida of the Dead Sun’ by Rebecca Perry

The world is in the process of ending. / The insects have dropped from the air. / The last wasp is sinking through / the gloopy green water of a garden pond, / the most melancholy diver. / The sun is on its back at the very top /of the sky, floating bleakly, jelly-eyed.

Rebecca Perry is a graduate of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing and her poems have appeared in many magazines. ‘Casida of the Dead Sun’ is in her first book-length collection, Beauty/Beauty.

5. ‘Exhumed at Earth’s End’ by Rachel J Fenton

Without arms, her hips, / too were frozen in the earth’s cervix / mid-birth; unable to push herself free of it, / she’d given up, suspended between the spit and swallow of orange clay.

Rachel J Fenton lives in Auckland. She is a novelist and poet. ‘Exhumed at Earth’s End’ was published in Overland, Issue 219, Winter 2015.

6. ‘The Party Tent’ by Henri Cole

Tomorrow, after the tent is gone, / a crew will remove the damaged sod, / aerate what’s underneath, and apply a top dressing / of new sandy soil. Like musical notes or formations / of rock, everything will be forgotten.

Henri Cole has published nine collections of poetry, most recently Nothing to Declare. He teaches at Claremont McKenna College. ‘The Party Tent’ was published in The Paris Review, Winter 2015.

7. ‘Edward Hopper’s Automat’ by Fleda Brown

Yet on her head is the most / yellow and chic cloche, round and drooping. / It’s awkward, this leftover hope, shading the downcast / eyes. Yet, if you approach her, tell her it will be all right— / maybe nothing is wrong. Or maybe what’s wrong / is the best thing, her possession, what can’t be bought / at the Automat. Maybe she’s gone too far to want / to be distracted now. Maybe she can see from here / the internal workings, where all is sorted and rearranged.

Fleda Brown’s most recent collection is No Need of Sympathy. Her New & Selected Poems is forthcoming in 2017. She lives in Michigan. ‘Edward Hopper’s Automat’ was published in Southern Poetry Review Issue 53, Number 2.

8. ‘working from home—to do list’ by Anne Elvey

take yourself out and shake / the crumbs onto the grass / listen to mozart or the clash /   bpay something / narrate a tree or a mote of dust / eat hopkins drink leonard cohen /  smell the first leaves of your next book / brew them in your best pot / haiku your neighbour’s cat / finish your new cardigan / put teardrops into a dry eye / leave nothing out / and everything in the rain

Anne Elvey is author of Kin, shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2015, and four poetry chapbooks, the most recent this flesh that you know. Elvey is managing editor of Plumwood Mountain: An Australian Journal of Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics.

9. ‘Love Poem’ by Beth Spencer

Outside: / someone is knocking slowly on a closed door, / Inside: things fall from the wall (posters, cockroaches) / My pockets are stuffed with dead matches / it always takes at least three to light the stove / and the video shop is a nightmare! / I grab chocolate bars and run home / My feet have holes and there are holes / in the curtains as well / Men in suits ride by on bicycles / Their knuckles rap on the glass until / a crack forms along the outside of my skin /

Beth Spencer is an Australian writer who has published two books of poetry, a book of fiction and a double audio CD of radio pieces. ‘Love Poem’ is published in her book of new and selected poems, The Party of Life. This is part of the ASM/Flying Islands/Cerberus Pocket series of bilingual (English and Chinese) poetry books.

10. ‘Self Portrait with Coyotes’ by Cynthia Cruz

At four I awoke with a vision / Of death, in a hospital bed /In the Excelsior: / Tiger fur, and beaded rings of amethyst / And liquid onyx on fingers. / Crimson ribbons and powder pink / Stockings stitched in sequins. / Everything goes back to the Monroe House, / That strange blasted Eden.

Cynthia Cruz is is the author of three collections of poems: Ruin, The Glimmering Room and Wunderkammer, in which ‘Self Portrait with Coyotes’ appears.

11. ‘I Walk from Steeple to Steeple’ by Regan Good

Birds are the lilies. The will is the sickle. Birdsong / over the Willsong, one whistles loudly on the bluestone, / especially through long rains, though most hotly in the sun. / One wears it as a crown—the sun and its wreathing song. // (We are as in a big drum, cold, pale spring, the increments of an underwing.) // Above, birds flying in circles and common-seeming serpentines.

Regan Good’s first book, The Atlantic House, was published in 2011. Poems from her manuscript The Needle have appeared most recently in The Paris Review, Fence, The Ladowich Journal, and Hinchas de Poesia.

12. ‘Break on Through’ by Jill Jones

I remember being / pulled down a road / I had to stop miming / my watch though / time keeps going / begins to end static / wires tubes and batteries / only present crackles / within the harmonium / and sublime’s shaky hands / I was original bootleg / vox hypno and charge

Jill Jones is an Adelaide-based poet whose collections have received critical acclaim and whose work has been widely published in leading literary periodicals in Australia and overseas. Her poems have been translated into Chinese, Italian, Spanish, French, Czech and Dutch. ‘Break on Through’ was published in The Best Australian Poems 2011.

13. ‘Meeting Cheever’ by Michael Ryan

Above a half pizza and double gin, / his proffered hand trembled in the dark / as if, polished and slapped with cologne, / he had ridden a jackhammer from New York. // that broke up everything inside / but politesse, which dangled like a hook: / informed you had just won a prize, / he said, ‘Ah yes, I loved your book’.

Michael Ryan has written four books of poems, an autobiography, a memoir, and a collection of essays about poetry and writing. His work has appeared regularly in The American Poetry Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, and Poetry Magazine. ‘Meeting Cheever’ is from his collection The God Hunger.

14. ‘Morning’ by Frank O’Hara

I’ve got to tell you / how I love you always / I think of it on grey / mornings with death // in my mouth the tea is never hot enough / then and the cigarette / dry the maroon robe // chills me I need you

Frank O’Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet and art critic. Because of his employment as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O’Hara became prominent in New York City’s art world. O’Hara is regarded as a leading figure in the New York School—an informal group of artists, writers and musicians who drew inspiration from jazz, surrealism, abstract expressionism, action painting and contemporary avant-garde art movements.

15. ‘Roses’ by Geoffrey Lehmann

Young, I needed an occupation, / felt myself going mad without it. / Older, / I find music in anything, / sounds of nature, personal idiom, / doing nothing— // Lying on the back of my brother’s utility / my head propped among chaff bags / I watch falling stars / flicker down the sky, like the neurons in my brain / going one by one.

Geoffrey Lehmann is an acclaimed Australian poet whose most recent collection is Poems 1957–2013. ‘Roses’ was written for Nancy Steen (author of The Charm of Old Roses) and Charles and Barbara Blackman. Part of the poem appears in The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry.

16. ‘Notes To My Nieces (Or, Essays In Fortune-Telling )’ by Eve Shockley

say the past is a muddy / river. say the future is a belated alphabet / with which you and i might spell / different things. say the present / is something we can pass back and forth / between us, like an acorn, like / loose change.

Evie Shockley is the author of several collections of poetry, including a half-red sea and the new black. Shockley is also the author of the critical volume Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry.