As an extension of Arc’s Canada-Australia joint issue with Australia’s Cordite magazine, over the next several weeks, Arc will be publishing online selected pieces from Australian poets — this is in addition to the Australian poetry published in print in Arc 77. For the Arc-Cordite joint issue, each magazine handed the editorial responsibilities over to the other: so that Cordite filled Arc #77 (and these these webpages) with nothing but Australian poetry, prose and artwork; Arc did the same for Cordite (Arc’s part of this partnership will be published online at Cordite in December 2014). Our intent in this partnership is to showcase and cross-pollinate poetics between Australia and Canada and to share with a broader audience poetry that may be little known outside of home borders.
shadow apple south
“Perhaps this was meant to be
Such is the game of existence.
Take me home, mother
Night falls
I am tired.”
– Ramprasad Sen
“As the past meets the future, it gets clearer,
that it all boils down to love.”
– Badly Drawn Boy, One Plus One Is One
puts off shoes he must & in a box
a room her bells & flames / is black
like rain her skull-topped staff her eyes
of precious water ink & goats the river
makes with matted hair or moon he stole
the beast the ghost who followed magic
in her dream she came as swans the shade
of apples fell like endless pearls of sky all
red her palms & offered sweets she leaves
the house & tattooed rides a dog a newborn
corpse her earring (happy shadow) feeds
on what she kills or swallows ages sings a
cave of ice & drums & one last monster:
rest here eat here live here always (place
of swamps her face on banks no more than
stones her tongue a secret smeared in ash
or pox & rashes forest curd & lemon / trees
a key of life restored with fangs & blood-
shot eyes & unbound milk her lake of hair
Paul Hardacre was born in Brisbane, Australia in 1974. Since 2000, he has been a Managing Director of papertiger media inc. This has included his editing of the papertiger: new world poetry CDROM; hutt poetry ezine; anything i like art ezine; and the soi 3 modern poets imprint. His first collection of poetry, The Year Nothing, was published by HeadworX (Wellington, New Zealand) in 2003. His second collection of poetry, Love in the place of rats (Transit Lounge), was shortlisted for the Thomas Shapcott Award in 2003, 2004 and 2005, and was launched at the 2007 The Age Melbourne Writers’ Festival.