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Judith Rodriguez
Manatee and other poems
Diversity - International PEN Collection.
Copyright © 2003-2008 Diversity, Authors and Translators. All Rights Reserved. |
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Judith Rodriguez:
Manatee and other poems
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In-flight note
Kitten, writes the mousy boy in his neat
fawn casuals sitting beside me on the flight,
neatly, I can't give up everything just like that.
Everything, how much was it? and just like what?
Did she cool it or walk out? loosen her hand from his tight
white-knuckled hand, or not meet him, just as he thought
You mean far too much to me. I can't forget
the four months we've known each other. No, he won't eat,
finally he pays – pale, careful, distraught –
for a beer, turns over the pad on the page he wrote
and sleeps a bit. Or dreams of his Sydney cat.
The pad cost one dollar twenty. He wakes to write
It's naive to think we could be just good fiends.
Pages and pages. And so the whole world ends.
Judith Rodriguez
Judith Rodriguez's ten published collections include her excellent New And Selected Poems (UQP). Recent publications include The Cold (National Library of Australia) and "The Hanging of Minnie Thwakes", a ballad and lyrics in Kerry Greenwoood's collection On Murder: True Crime Writing in Australia (Black Inc, 2002). She has collaborated with Robyn Archer on a play, Poor Johanna, and with Sydney composer Moya Henderson on the opera Lindy, produced by Opera Australia in the Sydney Opera House in 2002. She has edited several important anthologies, and during the 1990s she edited Penguin Books' Australian poetry list. Judith is an Honorary Fellow of Deakin University. She remains heavily involved in the work of International PEN and Friends of the ABC.
Her Books:
Four Poets (with Rodney Hall, David Malouf, Donald Maynard, Cheshire Press, Melbourne, 1962)
Nu-Plastic Fanfare Red (Paperback Poets, University of Queensland Press, 1973)
Water Life (University of Queensland Press, 1976)
Shadow Upon Glass (Open Door Press, 1978)
Mudcrab at Gambaro's (University of Queensland Press, 1980)
Witch Heart (Sisters Publishing, 1982)
New and Selected Poems (University of Queensland Press, 1988)
The Cold (Pamphlet Poets, National Library of Australia, 1992)
The Hanging of Minnie Thwaites (in On Murder: True Crime Writing in Australia ed. Kerry Greenwood. Black Inc, 2000)
Terror: poems (for Terror! The Exhibition, Dandenong Ranges Cultural Centre, 2002)