Like travellers from fabled lands, voices come telling tales, sometimes shocking, sometimes familiar, sometimes magnetic, like echoes, like ultra soundings...
Duncan Richardson’s poetry can be fanciful like this but also grounded. A speaker softens the terror of his son observing a sabre-toothed tiger in a museum. Another hears a Siren urging him to jump from Victoria Falls.
Join in his discovery of ghosts in everyday highrises..
Duncan Richardson writes prose and poetry for children and adults.
His previous IP title was Jason Chen and the Time Banana. His verse play The Grammar of Deception was broadcast on ABC Radio National in 2008.
He lives in Brisbane where he conducts writing workshops. Previous children’s books include Wennabees and Yum-worms and Revenge.
ISBN 9781921869341 (PB, 120pp)
140mm x 216mm
His work is always accessible; his perception is typically acute, textured with dry wit or pity at the peculiarities and ironies of the human condition. In Ultra Soundings Richardson can be seen as a confident, mature and skilled master crafter of verse.
– John Knight, Post-pressed
In his latest well-crafted offering, Richardson carefully observes the world, and then reveals it through astute reflection and a tinge of black humour. An engaging collection.
– Rosanna Licari
Links
Sample
Time Held Us Green
I don’t remember
who found the beast
and brought us running
but leaves shone savagely
as we crept on hunters feet
makeshift spears in hand
watching for startled prey
finding the rabbit half-moulded
to the earth
its chest rising faster
than the pulse in my ears.
It wouldn’t flee
and give the thrill of chase,
eyes shining, shivering
- the shoes and sticks that probed
brought only a sickened twitch.
That brown patch of fear swelled
to fill the silence
ancient and breathy.
Evening filled the bush
with shadows as we left
sensing a tinge of wild fur
upon our skins
a bubble of voices
toying with spear thrusts
dried entrails taut
for bows that twang in dreams.
Next day the grass had no trace
of flesh nor fur
and though we searched under
every bough and blade
found only
air.
Ultra Soundings
all fluid and spinal twisting
like a fish
on a line
legs into torso
an amoeba
of the mind.
so I thought you might be
a Capricorn One
or a Demidenko
of the fetal world
how would we know
when you were born
it was really you
we’d seen.
Highrise Ghosts
The building where I work has a ghost.
In its paint-dust freshness
raw memories lurk
of a construction worker who slipped
fell down the rubbish chute
fourteen floors.
In a restaurant nearby
the teaching staff discuss
the shortage of dustbins
and overhead transparencies.
The building where I used to work
has two ghosts in the lift
-safety harnesses caught
in the doors when it rose
strangled the men
who wore them
This too
we have learned
from the plaster grains
seeping through our skin.
Footsteps chip at concrete
in the cold chasm of the stairs
where we move like souls
ascending to Limbo
In the cloud distance
we can hear
“Boom”
a fire door
slamming.
and the lock
clicking
on the other side.
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