Hazel Hall

Hazel Hall is an Australian poet, musicologist and convenor of the School of Music Poets in Canberra. Her doctoral dissertation (1984) explored the relationship between speech and song, reflecting her special interest in the musicality of poetry. Hazel has published tanka, haiku and other poetic styles in many anthologies and journals including The Canberra Times, Blithe Spirit, Burley, Cattails, Concealing our Secrets, Eucalypt, First Refuge, From Ink to Paper, Gusts, The House is Not Quiet and The World is Not Calm, Kokako, Not Very Quiet, Presence, Skryptic Magazine, Skylark, Sotto, First Refuge, Visible Ink Anthology, and Wild. She has facilitated tanka workshops and judged tanka contests in Australia and abroad. Her publications include Sugar Loaf and Humming Birds with John Collard (Burmac 2013), Flood, Fire and Drought (Ginninderra Press 2015) with Suzanne Edgar, Kathy Kituai, Sandra Renew, One Last Border (Ginninderra 2015) with Moya Pacey and Sandra Renew, eggshell sky (2017) with two calligraphers and Parkinsons’ artists, and Step by Step (Picaro 2018), a tai chi chapbook with radio presenter Angelina Egan. She has been published in Red Moon Anthology and featured on overseas blogs and websites. Two books are close to completion: Passage, based on her visits to India, and Memories of Sound, which explores her ongoing musical travels.

Sample

prelude
from next door’s rooster
before dawn
the cock-a-doodle fugue
that Bach never wrote

long distance
rumbling to Central
through Picton
childhood years unwinding
in skeins of morning mist
For Tom

day breaks
with a piped chorale
I choose
a setting by Byrd
for the Sunday psalm
For Marcia

not far
from the boarded church
box gums
dance with shadows
in cemetery road

stitching my faith
together again
at sunrise
the golden threads
of a wattle bird’s song

just a touch
of moonlight on bitumen
after the storm
we speak more softly
to each other

lending
their calligraphy
to the dew
threads I almost missed
etched in morning air

blazing
in my vision mirror
the setting sun –
why bother to stop
my car for fuel?

Showing the single result