Robert Adamson

Rating: 4.33
Rating: 4.33

Robert Adamson Poems

Where was it we left him?
We say the journey’s up, but maybe
memory sinks deeper.
Our journey so far
...

When my granny was dying
I’d go into her bedroom
and look at her
...

A black summer night, no moon, the thick air
drenched with honeysuckle and swamp gum.
In a pool of yellow torchlight
on a knife-blade, the brand name
...

The old hull’s spine shoots out of the mud-flat,
A black crooked finger pointing back to the house.
On the dead low the smell of the mangroves.
The river seeps through the window, the books
...

A step taken, and all the world’s before me.
The night’s so clear

stars hang in the low branches,
...

Writing this in sepia ink on a Japanese fan,
pain slants my calligraphy
this way, sex just under the cap of my skull.
...

We loved the front, your wall of words,
and the fact that snatches made
sense to the professors. We read
The Double Dream Of Spring on a jetty
...

Morning before sunrise, sheets of dark air
hang from nowhere in the sky.
No stars there, only here is river.
...

They are talking, in their cedar-benched rooms
on French-polished chairs, and they talk
in reasonable tones, in the great stone buildings
they are talking firmly, in the half-light
...

Morning shines on the cowling of the Yamaha
locked onto the stern of the boat,
spears of light shoot away
from the gun-metal grey enamel.
...

Robert Adamson Biography

Robert Adamson was born on 17 May 1943 at Neutral Bay, and raised in Sydney, Australia. He was educated at Neutral Bay Primary School and Crows Nest Technical College. His grandfather was a fisherman on the Hawkesbury River to the north of Sydney, where Adamson has lived, on and off, for most of his life. A series of juvenile misdemeanours resulted in him being sent to various detention centres. It was during this period that he first began writing poetry. Adamson is one of Australia's leading poets, and is a successful writer, editor and publisher. His books have been published in the UK and the USA and his poems have been translated into several languages. He has published fifteen volumes of poetry and has organized and produced poetry readings, delivered papers, lectures and readings at literary festivals throughout Australia and internationally. He has been writer-in-residence at Australian universities, and was President of the Poetry Society of Australia, 1974-1980. He was a key player in the growth of the 'New Australian Poetry' and was an editor of the Poetry Society of Australia's magazine, New Poetry, from 1968 until 1982. He taught creative writing classes for the W.E.A during the seventies and was the poetry reviewer for Australia's national newspaper, The Australian. In 1975-76 Adamson organized, as President of the Poetry Society, Australian reading tours for Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan. Robert Adamson has worked as a poetry editor and consultant with Angus & Robertson/HarperCollins and he established several small publishing companies, including Prism Books and Big Smoke. He was the poetry editor the literary magazine Ulitarra from 1993 to 1997. In 1997 he became a founding editor, along with James Taylor, of the international poetry journal Boxkite.)

The Best Poem Of Robert Adamson

Reaching Light

Where was it we left him?
We say the journey’s up, but maybe

memory sinks deeper.
Our journey so far

has been quiet, the only
incident being that rock dislodged

as he spun around on his heel.
What was that stuff – brimstone?

The first slice of sunlight glanced off
a slab of dark marble that turned to glow.

His back moved ahead of me –
his curls, shoulders,

that neck. What new bone was he inventing
in his shuffling head, what chance

that a doorway would appear and then a house?
The dark supported me, comfortably

behind me, a cradle woven from
demon hair. As I rose

and climbed toward day, his turning head,
those eyes – strips of memory,

silver tides, moons rising over the
rim of the world—

brought back the day we were married,
standing in fine rain, then escaping from family,

sex by a rolling surf in a high wind, velvet
heavens and the stars omens:

calendars, clocks, zodiacs –
straight, bent signs.

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