Wattle blooming
By Sophie Masson
Sudden bursts of gold,
Sweeping colour bold,
By rivers, by roads, in country and town,
In farms and gardens, the wattle’s the crown.
Of the end of the winter, beginning of spring,
The blooming of wattle will sing and sing
Of birds in their nests and the warm days to hand,
For the wattle is blooming across the land.
Exciting news! The wonderful illustrator Lorena Carrington and I have established Pardalote Press, a tiny Press making small surprising things. We’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign this morning to support our first two projects, Bird’s Eye View and Wayfarer. Bird’s Eye View is a chapbook of words—poetry and prose—and black and white images, which together form glimpses into the world of birds, and the world as seen by birds. Wayfarer is a unique set of sixteen beautiful full colour cards which in words and pictures take you on a journey of mystery, magic and meaning.
The campaign is to raise funds towards production and printing of the projects. We hope you might be interested in having a look! Here’s the direct link: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pardalote-press-launch#/
You can learn more about the Press and our first two projects on our website, and social media: Facebook and Instagram. There’s also a great little news item about it at Books+Publishing. And here below are a few words from Lorena and I, extracted from that article, as to why we started Pardalote Press:
It was in fact a mock medieval bestiary—published as an appendix to our joint book Magical Tales from French Camelot—which first made us think of the idea of working on unusual little projects. We started with the idea of Bird’s Eye View, and then, later, came the idea for Wayfarer.
We knew these were a bit too left-field to fit into mainstream publishing lists, so decided to create our own tiny press to produce them and other things we might come up with.
So–do check us out, have a look, and if you are interested, we would be very grateful for your support in the launch of this tiny press making small surprising things to help the imagination take flight!
I’ve created a new playlist on my You Tube channel, which presents video readings I’ve done of several of my published poems for kids. I created it to help support my presentation in the fabulous CBCA NSW online conference focussed around Poetry(which you can still book in for, as it’s pre-recorded and available till the end of May for delegates). I also thought it could be an ongoing resource for parents and schools, and in fact anyone who might be interested. Hope you enjoy!
It was the inaugural Spring Fairy Dance festival in the charming small new England town of Uralla on Saturday–a festival themed around all things fairy and magical, aimed at children and the young at heart. It was a big success, with the townspeople supporting it strongly and visitors enjoying it. And for its special storytime event, I created a video poem called Fairy Feet–thought readers of this blog might enjoy it too!
It’s been very cold here at the end of winter but there are still many signs of approaching spring: and of course one of them is the blooming of wattle everywhere. It’s a positive festival of wattle flowers on our block at the moment, so to celebrate it I thought I’d republish a children’s poem I wrote a few years ago, about that lift of the heart that seeing the blooming wattle brings, and illustrate it with pics of some of the glorious trees gilding our place with living gold and bringing that fragrant sunshine into the house!
Wattle blooming
By Sophie Masson
Sudden bursts of gold,
Sweeping colour bold,
By rivers, by roads, in country and town,
In farms and gardens, the wattle’s the crown.
Of the end of the winter, beginning of spring,
The blooming of wattle will sing and sing
Of birds in their nests and the warm days to hand,
For the wattle is blooming across the land.
I was delighted to get the latest issue of ‘Countdown’ edition of The School Magazine, where my poem Owl, Hunting, has been published, illustrated by the fabulous Marjorie Crosby-Fairall. And Marjorie’s illustration is also on the cover of the magazine, which is great!
I wrote this poem on a visit to my father’s place in the green, wooded countryside of south-west France. One night I woke to hear an owl hooting close by. Listening to the lonely, evocative sound, and imagining the night scene outside, the poem just jumped into my head at that moment.
Today, I’m delighted to welcome June Perkins to my blog. June’s new book, Illuminations, which is a collaboration between her as a writer and illustrators Ruha and Minaira Fifita, comes out early next month, and in this guest post, June writes about the process of creating Hope, one of the poems from the collection, which is reproduced below.
Writing ‘Hope’ for Illuminations – June Perkins
My poem ‘Hope’ is a speculative imagining of how Emily Dickinson would respond to Cyclone Yasi if she had been a poet based in Far North Queensland and draws particular inspiration from her work 314, often titled ‘Hope’ although she didn’t give it a title.
I first heard of Dickinson from a vinyl record, Parsley, Sage Rosemary and Thyme by Simon and Garfunkel, the song was’ The Dangling Conversation’ And yet it was years before I took the time to learn more about her poetry and life.
After Cyclone Yasi in 2011, I began to compose poetry in response to both its damage, and the way people and nature fared in its aftermath. Living in Far North Queensland in a rural community, I became acutely aware of birds – king fishers, cassowaries, curlews and more. We had a pet bird, Peep, who amused us and helped us keep calm during the cyclone. He disappeared briefly to spend time with other birds before returning with all of them in tow as if we could put them all up in the house. He died a few days after of shock. I took solace in Dickinson’s poems. I was particularly drawn to 314 because it speaks of hope as if it has feathers like a bird.
The poem used to live on my blog, but in recent times, joined part of the working collection for Illuminations and it made the final cut for the book. The poem fits well with the overall themes of the collection and picks up on the symbolism of birds. Over the last few years, since our move to Brisbane, the poem has come to mean much more to me than a response to a cyclone’s aftermath, and an expression of respect to Emily Dickinson; it represents that wider theme of how poets can through their creativity bring hope to any situation including a pandemic.
More about Illuminations:
Author: June Perkins
Illustrators: Ruha and Minaira Fifita
ISBN: 9780980731194 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780648720508 (hard cover, dustcover)
Publication Date: 20/6/2020
80 pages
This collection captures the wonder of the act of creation, the burst of excitement associated with the birth of the new, and the challenges and sacrifice involved in bringing inspiration to fruition. Reflecting on the impact of the challenge of the new, in both the material and spiritual worlds, several of the poems refer to the advent of the Báb, the 19th century Prophetic figure, whose contemporary message inspired and challenged a sacrificial response on the part of those who embraced His Cause.
You can pre-order Illuminations here. The book is available for pre-order in Australia, New Zealand, the US, UK and Canada.
About the author:
Dr June Perkins is a multi-arts creative born to a Papua New Guinean Indigenous mother and Australian father. She was raised in Tasmania as a Bahá’i and combines poetry, blogging, photography, story and more to explore themes interesting her – peace, ecology, spirituality, cultural diversity, resilience and empowerment. Earlier poetry book is, Magic Fish Dreaming (2016). June has had poems published in Nineteen Months, Tokens, Voices in the North, Under One Sky, Etchings, Cracks in the Canopy, World Order, Spooktacular Stories, Creative Kids Tales, Story Collection 2, Writing the Pacific, ABC Open, The Queensland Art Galley, Ridvan is Everywhere, and Talking Ink from Ochre.
About Illustrators Fifita Sisters / IVI Designs
Ruha Fifita was born in Vava’u, Tonga and spent most of her life immersed in the culture and vibrancy of life in the Pacific. Her love for visual and performative forms of expression have been nurtured through the support and encouragement of her extended family and study of the writings of the Bahá’i Faith.
Minaira Fifita is a visual and performing artist whose work aspires to reflect her love of creation and faith in the unity of humanity. Her style of creativity blends together her Polynesian and Celtic roots and experiences of vibrancy, balance and harmony within the Pacific and her spiritual beliefs as a Bahá’i.
L to R: June Perkins, Ruha Fifita, Minaira Fifita
A lovely start to the publication year for me, with my poem for children, Long Neck, published in the first issue of ‘Orbit’ , part of the wonderful School Magazine, with a beautiful, atmospheric illustration by Jenny Tan.
Here, below, is the poem–hope you enjoy! And by the way, if you are interested in fabulous writing and illustration for children, and would like to support one of Australia’s great and longlasting literary treasures, consider subscribing to The School Magazine–you don’t have to have anything to do with schools to do so.
Recently I ran two poetry workshops for children 6-12 years old in my hometown public library. They were sequential workshops: in the first one, I talked about writing poetry, based on the gorgeous book A Boat of Stars, in which I have 7 poems–and talked about how ideas from poetry can come from anywhere, then we orally created a (rather silly!) poem together, and then everyone chose their own subject and wrote their own poem. In the second workshop, I talked about how you can illustrate and decorate a poem to create an artwork out of it in all kinds of ways(again, that was inspired by A Boat of Stars!) And then the kids set to and created their own poem artwork, based on the poem they had written the previous week. The library had provided lots of coloured pencils and pens, stickers, magazine pictures to cut out, coloured shapes and paper and more. Everyone had a lot of fun and there were some amazing creations–have a look at the photo gallery!
I wrote this little poem after watching a ‘Jacky lizard’ the other day at our place.
Jacky lizard
by Sophie Masson
Little Jacky lizard,
Perched up on a stone,
Like a guard on castle walls,
Protecting his lord’s home.
Beady eyes survey the scene,
Head swings from side to side,
Soaking in the sun he likes—
But knows where to hide!
He hears a sound and freezes,
His tail goes stiff with fright.
Then little Jacky lizard
Is gone, as fast as light!
Photo from Museums of Victoria Collections website
Feathers of the Firebird 