Susan Bradley Smith
Susan Bradley Smith lives mostly in Australia, where she is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Curtin University. She began her writing life as a rock journalist in Sydney and London before becoming a theatre historian. Her most recent books are the poetry collection Beds For All Who Come, and the memoir Friday Forever. In 2013 Susan founded the writing and wellbeing consultancy Milkwood Bibliotherapy, and she is an advocate for Arts and Health. Her favorite things usually involve the ocean and her secret ambition is to swim in every ocean pool in Australia.
Happy birthday to me on earth: the 50th return
I should be bright green
and lost in space, kissing stars
just to lose my lips,
burning off fifty off-beam
years, but here I am—branded.
Surfing safari just to prove I’m not dead
When you paddle out
there is no end to the lust,
no end to wave’s loose-
lipped pash: there is only you,
this, and your migrating soul.
Sunday drive in September
The street where we once
lived looked warped and weedy, thus
losing its hostage
hold on me, despite its gold-
crusted memories (now dust).
Baggonise
Ballina airport
luggage carousel knows too
well my tired agony:
too much baggage, too many
dreams of tinfoiled surfboards: cracked.
Us watching the kids swim (Hallelujah)
Love like squeaked cotton
becomes us beneath the wild-
fingered trees as we
inhale clouds and worship the
lake which christens our children.
Blut
He’s my cousin, he
who turns back boats like old
girlfriends panting on
Facebook or unwanted knocks
on late night doors: red secret.
Us (afterwards)
It’s like reaching through
glass to history to find you
and though I do and
it’s real, perfect, the strangest
thing is that haunt of not was.
Sibling song (morning)
I saw my brother
from my bedroom window, he
was walking his dog
at fiveish after the night’s
rain, along satin ocean.
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The Postcult Heart
$13.00 (GST-inc)On the eve of her wedding, a mother hands her daughter an unpublished manuscript—a collection of love poems—written by the famous writer and matriarch of the family, Booker Makepeace. Booker had bequeathed the manuscript to her own daughter three decades earlier on the eve of her wedding before she disappeared. What do they mean, these snapshots of love? Are the poems instructions? Warnings? Documentaries? Clues? Lies? Revelations? Lovesongs?
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The Screaming Middle: a memoir in verse of a very strange year
$13.00 (GST-inc)The Screaming Middle is a memoir of a very strange year, the year of turning 50 for one woman who forgot to have a party. This confessional verse novel takes you on road trips, into psych wards, into the chambers of marriage and through epic failures, brilliant ideas and back to kingdoms of chaos and castles of hilarity.
