Some days the old horse had a nosebag full of chaff. When she didn’t, she would wait out the front cropping grass at the base of the wooden telegraph pole near our driveway, plopping steaming turds the size of tennis balls, the colour of Keen’s mustard.

I haven’t written a lot of poems about my early years, but this suite Horses of Childhood has just been published in LiNQ journal’s latest volume Place, Past & Perspective.

There may be other Adelaide people as old as me who still remember horse-drawn Breadcarts, milkies and Parr the Rabbit-o. It was indeed a very different world – and certainly not one of privation…

It’s always an honour to share publication with a lot of talented writers, including poet-buddies Les Wicks and Jackson. Thanks LiNQ for publishing my work.

Read the poems HERE.

Photo: Nanette Mazey (from Adelaide Remember When)

When the Baker Delivered Bread in a Horse and Cart

My prose-poem crabbing from James Well to Rogues Point as an audio poem on ccmixter. Thanks Martijn and Javolenus yet again for superb music.

Listen HERE.

The text was originally published in Rabbit Poetry Journal.

Hōkoku-ji (Temple with Bamboo Forest) in Kamakura. Music: Koyasan by robwalkerpoet

composition and shakuhachi: rob walker
video: jpwhy

This is a short story I wrote years ago, never had luck with publication, and recently entered in the Best of Times Short Story Competition. It didn’t win but was awarded Highly Commended. You can read it HERE, if you’re so inclined…

Another collaboration with Magdalena Ball. I started this one with the title and first two sentences and then we played email pingpong. It’s great to begin a poem and have no idea where it might end up. I remember I found an online cowboy dictionary and two new (for me) expressions “absquatulate” and “bone orchard” and couldn’t wait to use them! I love Maggie’s “the wind ate his skin” and the “hat hovering over his face.” Once we’d finished it, Maggie suggested submitting it to Loud Zoo, which I hadn’t heard of. We each recorded a version (it was a challenge trying to sound as American as Maggie!) and I cut up the vocals, sharing lines. Then it seemed only right to record some atmospheric music with acoustic & slide guitar,  blues harp and some shakuhachi for the wind.

It may have been as long as a year between the original concept and publication but it was worth the wait.

Thanks Maggie for another great collaboration.

Thanks Loud Zoo – you are unique!

SEE the poem.

HEAR the poem