Polain’s poetry prized

THREE poems about love and loss have won an Edith Cowan University writer an international poetry prize.

Marcella Polain, a senior writing lecturer from the School of Communications and Arts, has been awarded the International Grand Prize for Poetry at the 19th International Curtea de Arges Poetry Nights Festival in Romania.

Dr Polain was one of 48 international poets to be invited to the festival, which is affiliated with the International Academy Orient-Occident.

"Im honoured and surprised to be the award's recipient this year because there were so many very good poets at the festival," she said.

"Getting to know those poets and their work over the five days was wonderful."

The three poems Dr Polain submitted were translated into Romanian and published in English and Romanian.

"The poems Still and Turn are about the complexities of love, and the poem Silence is about grief," she said.

Still

The scar, plump as an almond on your wrist;

the bowls of your nails;

your blue bicycle against the pink wall of our room.

Will they know it is hard to be angry with a man who makes me laugh and that you know this?

I dream you old;

I dream you suck clear soup from my spoon,

spill blood onto our pillow.

I dream you stand in the centre of our house and sing to me, and

all the magpies in the garden fall still.

Turn

With plain sweet night on our tongues,

under the moon's stern face,

I have seen.

Woken by

the moon's fierce grin

night after night and by tales

of just such

possibilities, such

lunacies,

I turn to you and, yes,

you are

there, turned

thickly furred and silver, sleeping.

Silence

There are no plans, no blueprints here.

This is the silence beyond all silence,

the hush after a car crash,

between the news of death and the first wail.

This is the stillness beyond all stillness,

the world beyond the world's edge.

This train will not stop at any stations.

This train will not stop at the end of the line.

This line does not exist.

There will be no announcements.

I have nothing to say.

I am the wind's sleeve, billowing, empty.

Language has its edges, too,

where someone cuts it.

My body moves but it's not me who moves it.

My body moves but it is not my body.