Hazel Hall

Hazel Hall

  Hazel Hall is an Australian poet and musicologist who works across a wide range of poetic forms. She holds a PhD in Education from Monash University. From 2012 to 2018, Hazel was founder and convenor of the School of Music Poets, ACT: an ekphrastic group that collaborated with musicians, song writers, and artists to produce a series of poetry chapbooks. She directed the monthly event Poetry at Manning Clark House in Canberrra from 2018 to 2022. Hazel’s work can be found in a wide range of local and overseas anthologies and journals and has been a featured poet in printed journals, on websites and blogs. She has won a number of prizes and editors’ awards, and her work has been peer selected three times for the Red Moon Anthology. Hazel co-edited Flood Fire and Drought; One Last Border; Silver Fugue, collected works of the School of Music Poets; and The Ink Sinks Deeper. Her own collections include eggshell sky with calligraphers Angela Hillier, Narelle Jones and Parkinsons artists; Step by Step with tai chi practitioner Angelina Egan and Moonlight over the Siding, featuring artwork by the late Robert Tingey. Her chapbook Severed Web, with artist Deborah Faeyrglenn, highlights environment and climate change. Hazel’s crown of sonnets Please Add Your Signature and Date it Here is a radio play exploring problems in aged care. Breathe In, Breathe Out is a chapbook of haiku linked with answering tanka and cherita. Also due in 2024, with poet Moya Pacey and artist Leena Clark is Featherfall, a collection of poems exploring human relationships with birds. In 2024, Hazel will judge her fourth international contest, which to date have included the Tanka Society of America’s Sanford Goldstein Contest (2019) , the Haiku Poets of North America’s Tanka Contest (2021) and the British Haiku Society’s Tanka Contest (2023).

A River Crossed

1.
You told me of a tin your father kept, filled with images you recollect
of country life. His lineage retraced
in miscellaneous articles he placed
inside. The lid revealed a traveling scene depicting harsher times when life was lean encaptioned: Journey to Prosperity.
Your heart lay in that faded century
and leathery man who drove his herd across the Murrumbidgee while the torrents tossed his beasts across the lather of the floods. Sweat of horse and man, the stench of mud as cattle clambered up the umber banks bellowing, with leeches on their flanks.

2.
Gone thirty years ago. They could be days
He’s with you still. The dead run through our veins, and little things connected with him sought
while the loss was foremost in your thoughts.
The land went to his boys; the house consigned
to you. One day a brother came to find
that tin of tokens sitting on its shelf—
worth more to all of you than family wealth.
A violent storm broke out when he ransacked
your ties and trust. That one outrageous act
split the bond—a mighty river crossed,
neither sibling knowing what was lost
until you saw that all those angry rants
were only leeches on the cattle’s flanks.