Category: writing

Stones for the Shoah: a poem

At dawn on March 11th 1943, the 3351 Jewish people living in Monastir, Macedonia (what was Yugoslavia then) were rounded up from Monastir, and incarcerated, with all other Macedonian Jews. 7350 people crammed into the old Monopol tobacco factory in Skopje. Over two hundred people died in Monopol – of sickness, or killed by the…

Snow Globes: a short story

You can’t pack a whole life into a small bag.
Mum dropped a rucksack on my bed that last day. My uniform took all the space. I put it on instead, shirt, skirt, jumper, over my jeans and t-shirt. That made room for more clothes, and school books. But what about my stuffed elephant from when I was a baby? Photos of Leo, of Dad? The snow globe Gran gave me?

Noisy Creatures

One of my favourite places to write, other than my art room on a sunny morning, is a local cafe – sitting at the quiet table in the corner, between a small forest of monsterras next to the window. If we go at the right time, it’s the perfect place. Wonderful art on the walls,…

First, Joseph

He was Joseph first. Maybe Joe, Joss, Joey? Then Luke. Joseph was locked down in a prison of time and amnesia. A footnote in official certificates. He was uprooted, transplanted. Luke was a shell, a skin other people constructed for him. He was grafted into a white weatherboard house owned by a white weatherboard family,…

Finding Poems in Unexpected Places – A Prisoner’s Shirt

Sometimes we have to go searching for ideas when we are writing. Sometimes they just drop into our laps, falling from unexpected places. Like this one – In WW2, Private Stan Herron (1914 – 1967) was captured by the Japanese, and sent to work with other prisoners on the Burmese railway. Prisoners were issued an…

Six Months in Aarhus

This time last year, you wore thin bladesscrewed to the sole of white leather bootsand wobbled close to snow-clad skirtsof a frozen lake. Your tongue still spilled English words skatesicecold The lake remained solid for weeks long after you coaxed your borrowed skates into swooping curves and spiralsto explore further from shore and your tongue…