Winner of the 2012 IP Picks Best Poetry Award, musefood is modern, savvy and sharp-tongued verse at its best.
Ruckert’s musings on women in contemporary life explore a subject not often visited through verse. What could have easily been flighty or frivolous is instead a witty and honest social commentary, intertwined with varying shades of comedy and poignancy.
Winner of the 2012 IP Picks Best Poetry Award, musefood is modern, savvy and sharp-tongued verse at its best.
Ruckert’s musings on women in contemporary life explore a subject not often visited through verse. What could have easily been flighty or frivolous is instead a witty and honest social commentary, intertwined with varying shades of comedy and poignancy.
Margaret Owen Ruckert was born Margaret Owen in Sydney, NSW, to an English mother and Australian father. She studied at Sydney University, becoming a Science teacher in schools and TAFE colleges. During her career she wrote articles on science pedagogy and was a columnist for the college newsletter. Having written poetry as a child, she decided to take a Creative Writing subject in her mature-age Master’s degree and this opportunity continues to inspire her writing. Following early redundancy, she retrained and currently teaches Literacy and Numeracy. A previous winner of the National Poetry Competition of the Society of Women Writers, NSW, her poems and articles appear in leading Australian journals, as well as newspapers and anthologies. Margaret is Facilitator of the Hurstville Discovery Writers Group and presents monthly workshops on writing. Her first book You Deserve Dessert (2009) explored over 100 sweet foods through the poetry of language.
Coastal
she bobs across the city
on the morning rush tide
like cork on water
always on a high bounce
oxygen-fresh
muscles to go
if you asked her
how she was feeling
she’d shout you champagne
orange juice and ice
with compassion like this
her enemies dissolve
she’s fizz, flotsam
head above the surges
of water-mad workers
jealous of her freedom
waves of strangers
confront her future
if she’s wise
she’ll duck-dive
why waste explanations
on signs and billboards
female nudes fish for her
dollars – she won’t buy it
dipping a toe
outside at lunch
she tests the temperature
hot end-of-month sales
hot-for-her offers
it’s hard to stay cool
in a moving waterway
of exceptionally-today
young
she’s up to her pecs
cool coastal
picking off the predators
blanket of cloud
some phrases are so embedded in language
so in bed with others, we take them as partners
like blanket of cloud – that feature of sky
housekeeping with an English maid
pillows of smoke – implied requiem
a metaphor helpless to smother the horror
cover of darkness – where night is a friend
collapsing your fear with thick black humour
five-star rating – my Continental partner
a different bed, goose-feathers, duvet
I quickly saw the Continental benefits
nothing to be tucked in or tightened
nothing to encourage the gremlins of weather
under a quilted sky, I abandon the blanket
Neuro Evolution
as continents drift might organs drift
toward a body of wisdom
organs as raw, ingredients of change
inspired by an other-worldly mind updating
our continental body, its sensory plates,
our nerve-stitched skin, tectonic cloth
a one-sided cover that daily assumes
our enemies will only do battle at the front
a fossilised design for a seamstress of vision –
a fantasy physician – to cut another template
‘just as the physical world renews, we see
body-parts – volcano-like. Think Krakatoa.’
in this futuristic furnace, technologies ready
with their vulcanising heat, for a fit survival
on a volatile earth – their ideas not mine:
eyes to multiply, with some relocation to a higher
floor, opening brains to the possibility of sky
automatic eyelids to trick the missiles
noses pollution-savvy, some close to ground
vacuuming smells of the dust we abhor
the soil we mistreated, the dirt now to love
mouths as sockets for knowledge, female input,
a power board of mouths compatible with progress
with taste-bud alarms for molecular assassins
ears to flex, wide-ranging as wolves
retractable for safety, swivelling to listen
to the animal channel, its strategies on humans
skin to remain as one source of newness
a lavascape flowing to replenish the day
the body ever growing, the mind a quake
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Heather Taylor Johnson’s poetry captures the immediacy of a crisp Rocky Mountains landscape and the moments of intimacy we wish we could freeze-frame.
This is a celebration of clean air, snow and sunflowers, and a home divided between two continents, but it’s mostly about the vibrancy and transforming power of love.
Japanese people cherish the tanka form as much now as they did in ancient times. And for English-speaking people, this anthology will provide an excellent way of experiencing tanka as English poetry.
“These are poems that go beyond the limits of words. By wrestling with the poems in 3rd i, by engaging with them, the world is more intensely lived. This guy is offering us everything. This is heroic poetry.” — John Marsden
Jest the Funny Bits is a collection of Bill’s comic poems, plays and short stories. He had a lot of fun writing them and he really hopes you have fun reading them. However, spoiler alert, they’re not for everyone. If you’re a humourless sour grumpy-pants, whose face would split in two if you attempted to smile or laugh, then, whatever you do, don’t read this book!
In Oh My Rapture, Gemma White draws on her own lived experiences with bipolar, and her attempts to transcend it through the power of her imagination and the creation of art. Entwined throughout the poems in this collection are allusions to themes in The Red Hand Files, as every poem is a direct response to a different file.
That old childhood saying ‘pick what you want from the tree of life’ simply not working anymore? Becoming a foreigner in Indonesia might be as good a stab at something new and rewarding, as anything…
If you are the only one capable of saving the world, would a hedgehog be your go-to solution? Should you commit seppuku simply because you feel at home everywhere? How much trouble could you be in, if you imagine that most people you meet are your concubines? What if you find out that God occasionally indulges in writing dirty poems? These questions seem absurd. However, before passing judgment, you might discover the surprising poetic resolutions that Daniel Ionita proposes in this volume.
More Lies is a highly referential comedy thriller about a writer being held hostage in their own apartment and forced to type to hide the manoeuvres of a femme fatale, holding a pearl handled gun, and her brother, a small-time thug with big time ambitions.
The Fickle Pendulum assays belief and doubt through three historical figures – St. Thomas the Apostle, Galileo Galilei and Laura (Riding) Jackson – and uses them to pivot into wider thematic worlds The writing is thoughtful, exploratory and never weighed down by its subject matter, and the language vibrant and rich in metaphor.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd)
“On opening Margaret Ruckert’s new collection ‘musefood’ one discovers a generously stocked pantry of poems. ‘musefood’ is almost cornucopic in its range of subjects. There are poems focussed on the contemporary woman, on contemporary lifestyle, education, science, hospitals and doctors, shopping, real estate, eating out, personal and family history, quirky museums, nature – and more.
Ruckert has a sharp and perceptive eye, and an inventive mind. She has the reflexes of a caricaturist. Her poems can be humorous, playful, witty, acerbic – and trenchantly challenging. In ‘party girl – submarine class’ the poet comments ‘and when she works a room, she’s a periscope on legs’. Another poem is titled ‘Miss Diagnosis’. In ‘by 12 p.m. any weekday’ Ruckert cheekily inquires of an extended family group eating out
‘Caesar salad, is one or more of them celebrating
the birth of a baby……’
Lyrical moments such as a portrait of her mother’s shorthand skills in ‘mood cumulus’, and water image poems complement the more performative works in this collection.”
– Joanne Burns