Poetry Australia 104, The Train South (two poems--"Moving Day" and "Before I Renovate My Old House" | Bonnie G Roberts | Book

Poetry Australia 104, The Train South (two poems--"Moving Day" and "Before I Renovate My Old House"

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Bonnie gives an overview of the book:

Poetry Australia once accepted poetry from all over the world. The new Poetry Australia, which I found online, www.poetryaustralia.com, accepts work only from Australians. The review to which I submitted work consisted of poetry only. The two poems they published are both, in ways, about communicating, good change and bad change, in complete stillness and in total noise, respectively.

Read full overview »

Poetry Australia once accepted poetry from all over the world. The new Poetry Australia, which I found online, www.poetryaustralia.com, accepts work only from Australians. The review to which I submitted work consisted of poetry only. The two poems they published are both, in ways, about communicating, good change and bad change, in complete stillness and in total noise, respectively.

Read an excerpt »

Moving Day

The movers come quickly, do their work.
They are the thickest-gloved in town,
with two-inch padding on the bottoms of their feet
as well as between each china plate.
So quiet and efficient they are,
I am surprised to look up and find
myself
sitting in the wooden chair
I had been polishing earlier
(it still gleams and smells like lemons),
facing you, also in a simple chair,
in an empty room
with nothing
between us.
We sit very still
with the movers gone
and feel our feet touch the soft dust of the hardwood floor
and the warm sunlight
of the undraped windows.

It seems that Poetry Australia entitled each of its volumes, and my poems were in The Train South issue, which happened to be a special awards issue, honoring Grace Perry, the editor of Poetry Australia at that time. I still have an e-mail out to South Head Press to see if they are still connected with Poetry Australia. I remember "Before I Renovate My Old House," of course, but I'm not quite sure what kind of change I was trying to convey. I suppose an emptying out of the old and no longer wanted or needed. Maybe that poem was sitting on one of the synapses I lost or that fell out of an ear while I was in the shower.

About Bonnie

Both my parents were teachers, who met at the University of AL. My mother eventually taught 2nd-grade reading; my father taught math, history, and political science. To improve his income, he later became a seller of insurance, not something he liked, but it met the needs...

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Published Reviews

Jun.22.2011

Dances in Straw with a Two-Headed Calf by Bonnie Roberts; Elk River Review Press, 2002 $14 Paperback

Published by First Draft: The Journal of the Alabama Writers' Forum

". . . The human voice, as well as the voices of bears, wind, and waves, are at one with an animate universe, and when we are alive in and to the world we inhabit, we enter into a loving relationship with...

Jun.27.2011

Published by Inspiring Gardeners for 100 Years: Horticulture magazine

From interview:

"I think dirt is the reason I have spent my whole life in the South," offers Huntsville, Alabama poet, Bonnie Roberts, whose poem "Take Me Down That Row One More Time, Green-Eyed Boy...