Chris Mansell

Chris Mansell Poems

Chris Mansell Biography

Chris Mansell (b 1953 ) is an Australian poet. She was active in Sydney in the 1970s and 1980s as an editor and poet and since the 1980s has lived in regional Australia where she continues to write, perform, and edit. In 1978 she founded Compass poetry & prose a little magazine which published many of the young Australian poets of the time. She closed the magazine in 1987 and soon after, was a member of the collective which founded Five Islands Press. Like many poets of her generation, she makes her living by performing her work, publishing and teaching writing at various institutions. Although primarily a poet she has also written a number of plays including Some Sunny Day. Always interested in experimentation with form, she now also works in digital media. She founded PressPress, a small independent poetry publisher in 2002.)

The Best Poem Of Chris Mansell

The Good Soldier

On someone else's place
it seems to him the land
slings distance way out
the dirt is dead and
the sky seems twisted
the beat of the stones is wrong
he doesn't know how to say it
there are no words no opportunity
and anyway
what would you say
that you're a stranger
and this doesn't say it at all

he walks with his weapon through the town
and from time to time he sees the luscious curl
of intimacy the uncommon common life
it's dressed differently he can't understand
the language rasping and gargling
another time he'd be an interested tourist
now he's a hunter and the hunted

soon they say
he'll be freed to retreat home
where the earth is vein deep
and when he puts his hand on the ground
he'll feel it beating but now
he can't remember home
though he knows the words well enough
back paddock Steve's paddock the yard
it's just words but now the imam calls
and winds a veil around his senses
and sometimes he thinks he'll never
get back to where he belonged

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