OCTOBER

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. This will equal 16 poems a month for 12 months (meaning 192 poems by the end of the year). After this, there are just two more months of this excellent feast of poetry to look forward to …

1. ‘Cobra Lilies in the Supermarket’ for Wallace Stevens by Diane Wakoski

When I studied the piano / I always cried at my music lessons. / My teacher stopped criticising me. / I heard that secretly she called me / a crybaby. / I gave up piano. / Took up voice instead. Now, my lessons are concerts / where crying is considered an art. / I shout, / I speak, / I whisper, / and at last again / I can cry. This time / no one taunts me / but other crybabies; and when I am alone / I defend myself with poetry: / ‘I remember the cry of the peacocks.’

Diane Wakoski has published more than forty collections of poems and four books of essays. Her honours include a Fulbright fellowship, a Michigan Arts Foundation award, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Michigan Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council, and the Arts Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. ‘Cobra Lilies in the Supermarket’ is published in her collection Virtuoso Literature and Four Hands.

2. ‘Domination of Black’ by Wallace Stevens

Out of the window, / I saw how the planets gathered / Like the leaves themselves / Turning in the wind. / I saw how night came, / Came striding like the colour of the heavy hemlocks / I felt afraid / And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

Wallace Stevens is now considered one of the major American poets of the 20th century. However, he did not receive widespread recognition until the publication of his Collected Poems, just a year before his death. His major works include Ideas of Order (1935), The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937), Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction (1942), and a collection of essays on poetry, The Necessary Angel (1951).

3. ‘As Wasps Fly Upwards’ by Judith Beveridge

Sometimes I lie awake at night and remember / that death will come – … / perhaps from a fever, my skin crawling / as though I were lying in the path of a horde of bull acacia ants; / or intense itching and burning as if I’d been / rubbed with a concoction of wasabi, hot mustard / and the necrotising venom of a white-tailed spider. / Or perhaps, just from a build-up over the years / of light, ephemeral stings – / barely noticed, no pain worth recording – / just a remote hum in a honey-vault of light / then a smoky drifting away.

Judith Beveridge was awarded the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry by the Fellowship of Australian Writers in 2013. She has published numerous collections, the latest being Devadatta’s Poems and Hook and Eye, which has also been published by George Braziller for the US market. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Sydney and is the poetry editor for Meanjin. ‘As Wasps Fly Upwards’ won the 2015 Peter Porter Poetry Prize.

7. ‘Nine Nectarines’ by Marianne Moore (1887 – 1964)

One perceives no flaws / in this emblematic group / of nine, with leaf window / unquilted by curculio / which someone once depicted on / this much-mended plate / or in the also accurate // unantlered moose or Iceland horse / or ass asleep against the old / thick, low-leaning nectarine that is the / colour of the shrub-trees brownish flower.

Marianne Moore was widely recognised for her work; among her many honours were the Bollingen prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1921, she became an assistant at the New York Public Library. She began to meet other poets, such as William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, and to contribute to the Dial, a prestigious literary magazine. She served as acting editor of the Dial from 1925 to 1929. ‘Nine Nectarines’ is from Marianne Moore: Selected Poems.

5. ‘Loser Bait’ by Erin Balieu

It must be swell / to have both deed and / the entitlement, for leaners who hold our lien, / consumers who consume like / red tide ripping through a coastal lake? / Who find themselves so very well / when gazing in that kiddie pool, or any / skinny inch of water. / That guy, remember? How tell this tale / without him? A story / so hoary, his name’s Pre-Greek. / What brought Narcissus down? / A spotty case / of the disdains, I think, / a one-man performance / where the actor hates his audience.

Erin Balieu is an American poet whose poems have been chosen four times for inclusion in the Best American Poetry anthology series. In 2009, along with the poet Cate Mavin, Belieu founded the national literary organisation VIDA, whose annual VIDA Count has helped to bring attention to the difficulties of gender bias in literary publishing. Erin Belieu’s most recent book is Slant Six. ‘Loser Bait’ is the title poem for her next collection (her fifth) and was also published in Poetry, June 2016.

6. ‘Grey’ by Edwin Morgan (1920 – 2010)

If small is beautiful, is grey, is plain? / Or rather do we sense withdrawal, veiling, / a patch, a membrane, an eyelid hating light? / Does weather have some old remit to mock / the love of movement, colour, contrast – / primitives, all of us, that wilt and die / without some gorgeous dance or drizzle-dazzle.

Edwin Morgan was Glasgow’s first Poet Laureate 1999-2002, and the first to hold the post of ‘Scots Makar’, created by the Scottish Executive in 2004 to recognise the achievement of Scottish poets throughout the centuries. ‘Grey’ comes from Morgan’s 2002 collection, Cathures. More recent published works by Edwin Morgan include A Book of Lives and The Midnight Letterbox: Selected Correspondence 1950-2010.

7. ‘Painted Turtle’ by Gretchen Marquette

Summer road the ring around the lake, we drove mostly in silence. / Why aren’t I your wife? /  You swerved around a turtle sunning itself. / I wanted to go back. To hold the hot disc of it and place it in the grass. / We were late for dinner. / One twentieth of a mile an hour, I said. Claws in tar. You turned the car around.

Gretchen Marquette is the author of May Day, her debut collection—which was largely written in the May Day Café in Minneapolis, where she lives. She has served as the assistant poetry editor for Water~Stone Review and as a first reader for the National Poetry Series. Her work has appeared in places such as Paper Darts, Harper’s, Tin House and the Paris Review. ‘Painted Turtle’ was published in March 2016 by Poetry, the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world.

8. ‘The Lake and the Skiff’ by Peter Streckfus

Tell me again about the lake of the poem. / The little skiff. / In which you were curled, like an infant in its bed. // The dark canopy of sky rattling above. /  Standing at your bedside, we recounted our tale to you. / The regularity of our speech prevented the breezes being so discursive. // You looked out through your eyes at us and blinked to show you heard.

Peter Streckfus is the author of two poetry books: Errings, winner of Fordham University Press’ 2013 POL Editor’s Prize, and The Cuckoo, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2003. His poems appear in journals such as The Chicago Review, The New Republic, Seattle Review, The Volta and Slate. He lives in the Washington DC area and is on the faculty of the Creative Writing Program at George Mason University.

9. ‘Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace’ by Joy Harjo

At dawn the panther of the heavens peers over the edge of the world. / She hears the stars gossip with the sun, sees the moon washing her lean / darkness with water electrified by prayers. All over the world there are those / who can’t sleep, those who never awaken.

Joy Harjo is a critically acclaimed poet and a member of the Mvskoke Nation. She received the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award for proven mastery in the art of poetry by the Academy of American Poets. She has published seven books of poetry and released five award-winning CDs. ‘Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace’ is from her collection The Woman Who Fell From the Sky.

10. ‘Birds of Ohio’ by Kathryn Nuernberger

And then the birds who don’t know / north from south, so they stay here and freeze into glass / on the window sill and their song is the woman- / scream of the panther you may have heard no longer / ranges here, but she is here      with the bird that plucks / a wasp from the air, then beats it against a brick / until dead.

Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of The End of Pink (forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2016), which received the 2015 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, given to recognise a superior second book of poetry by an American poet. Her first collection, Rag & Bone, won the Elixir Press prize. She teaches at the University of Central Missouri and serves as the director of Pleiades Press. ‘Birds of Ohio’ was published in 32 Poems Magazine.

11. ‘My Wife’s Back’ by Stanley Lea

Marvels under Black Mountain, but I am fixed / On your back, indifferent to other wonders: / Bright minnows that flared in the shallows, // The gleam off that poor mink’s coat, / Even the fleas in its fur, the various birds/ —The lust of creatures just to survive. // But I watch your back. Never have I wished more not to die.

Sydney Lea is the author of 12 volumes of poetry. A former Pulitzer finalist, a recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller, Fulbright and Guggenheim Foundations, he was founder and longtime editor of New England Review. Active in literacy and conservation efforts, he lives in northern Vermont with his wife Robin Barone. ‘My Wife’s Back’ is from his collection No Doubt the Nameless.

12. ‘Not Fox Nor Axe’ by Chloe Wilson

Central America October – December 2013 // This is for you—this rough assembly of memento mori: / Mad Cortez, who curtseyed to his ships, then bent / to kiss each with a lit torch. The subtle buzz / of an unseen rattlesnake. Chickens boxed on buses, chickens / swinging from a limp wrist, chickens at the roadside / under the watchful eye of roosters, slick as pimps.

Chloe Wilson is a Melbourne-based writer whose most recent collection of poems, Not Fox Nor Axe, was shortlisted for the 2016 Kenneth Slessor Prize at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her first collection, The Mermaid Problem, was commended in the Anne Elder Award and Highly Commended in the Mary Gilmore Award. ‘Not Fox Nor Axe’ won the 2014 Val Vallis Award and was first published in Cordite online.

13. ‘Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard’ by Mary Oliver

His beak could open a bottle, / and his eyes—when he lifts their soft lids— /go on reading something / just beyond your shoulder—Blake, maybe, or the Book of Revelation. // Never mind that he eats only the black-smocked crickets, / and dragonflies if they happen / to be out late over the ponds, and of course / the occasional festal mouse.

Mary Oliver is among America’s finest and best-selling poets. She is a prolific writer of both poetry and prose and publishes a new collection every year or two. Her poetry has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Achievement Award. ‘Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard’ is published in her collection House of Light, which won the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award.

14. ‘Confetti by Dada’ by Felicity Plunkett

Cut it out. / Open his love letters. / Take a pair of scissors. / Snip each word. / Place yourself gently / in a bag and shake: / your portrait emerges / rare, ordinary, interchangeable: / lips, adore, golden, dark, I.

Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic. She has a PhD in literature from the University of Sydney. Her first book, Vanishing Point, won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize and was shortlisted for several other awards. She has a chapbook, Seastrands, in Vagabond Press’ Rare Objects series and is the editor of Thirty Australian Poets (UQP, 2011). She is Poetry Editor with University of Queensland Press and a widely published reviewer. ‘Confetti by Dada’ appears in Best Australian Poetry 2012.

15. ‘Bonds’ by Cassandra Atherton

for Gwen Harwood // You wore a white Bonds t-shirt to bed last night. A plain, white no-nonsense Bonds t-shirt and I knew it was over. I heard the death knell. And when you asked me if I was Emily Dickinson’s ear I nodded. Solitary. Solitaire. Solipsist. ‘For whom does the bell toll?’ you asked that afternoon. Campanologists? To in Campagna? Companiles? ‘It tolls for thee. R.I.P. my lover.

Cassandra Atherton is an award winning writer, scholar and critic.  She has published nine books (with two more in progress) and over the last three years has been invited to edit six special editions of leading refereed journals. She has received more than 15 national and international grants, and her most recent is a VicArts Grant to collaborate on the writing of a graphic verse novel, Pikadon. ‘Bonds’ appears in Best Australian Poetry 2012.

16. ‘Dear Ugly Sisters’ by Laura Mucha

skirts have been washed, hoovered the floor, / took out the bins—polished the door, // cleared up the kitchen, cleaned up the sink, / washed all your socks—still really stink,

Laura Mucha is a London-based lawyer and children’s poet. ‘Dear Ugly Sisters’ won the 2016 Caterpillar Poetry Prize. ‘This one caught us off guard,’ said Will Govan, the Caterpillar’s publisher. ‘It made us laugh out loud.’ Mucha said, ‘I love writing poetry for children and believe it’s one of the best ways of getting young people interested in language, reading and performance. I think the Caterpillar Poetry Prize is an important award, particularly as there are so few outlets for children’s poets, and it’s a huge honour to have won it.’