Almanac Poetry: ‘Bunyip’ – Robyn Black.
Bunyip
It hunkers in dusked shadows, slowly
flexing and contracting with each laboured
breath, growing ever larger – curved
tusks glistening under glower of eye
Kaieltheban woman drifts in lee of current
feet sculpt digging tool, scrunching coarse
river-sand through arch and heel, scoops up
hard-shelled mussel, clammed fearful and closed
her story ripples over gill and scale, dips
through billabong, climbs clay bank on
lizard toe and lifts into hot cicada’d air,
is picked up by the river birds clacking
gossip passed on from beak to bone
to clawed perch view in eucalypt canopy
where expectant … they watch
she senses a shift, feels the warp and weft
of her songline being tugged and snapped,
raw and savage the air bridles and writhes
rends open with teratoid roar, and
she is suddenly gone – removed from
Language from this moment forward …
but now, the river birds sweep up the
wail, screech it from outpost to outpost
squall raucous narrative along Kaiela, snaking
through time, away and away
they refine the refrain, perfect
the chorus, lay down the coda of loss …
they know this song, they have heard it before.
©Robyn Black
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About
Robyn Black is a poet, memoirist and short story writer who has twice won the Open Poetry section of the Joseph Furphy prize and then annually judged this section of the Award until it ceased in 2019. She is the co-ordinator of the new Furphy Literary Award ($15,000 1st Prize), an annual award which commenced in 2020. She also judges the Furphy Literary Award Youth Poetry section. Former president of the Goulburn Valley Writers Group Inc., she is also a former editor of Tamba Magazine and has been published in a number of literary magazines including Tamba, Ripples, The Wild Goose, Regime Books and The Australian Writer as well as on the Australia Poetry website. Robyn has enjoyed a varied experience in connecting locally with literary pursuits including being involved with the former Country Festival of Writing (which ran for 10 years in Shepparton); literary workshops; poetry sessions in local primary schools; joint ventures with local arts organisations; is an interviewer of writers at ‘author talk’ and literary panel events, including the 2023 Bendigo Writers Festival, and has several years involvement with the Shepparton Arts Festival ‘Breakfast with the Poets’. Robyn was also longlisted in the inaugural (2011) Montreal International Poetry Prize with her poem ‘boat talk’. She was short-listed in the 2016 and 2017 Alan Marshall Short Story Awards and the 2016 VU/Overland Short Story Award for Emerging Writers and has collaborative work exhibited at several local art spaces. She shortlisted in the 2024 Margaret Hazzard Short Story Award and gained a Special Commendation for her short story ‘Old Truths’ in the 2024 Scarlet Stiletto. Robyn is the Regional Ambassador – Goulburn Valley Region - for Writers Victoria. Her first collection of poetry - No Straight Lines published by Ginninderra Press - was released in October 2021.
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