Work: New and Selected Poems
‘Vivid, vivacious, intelligent, these distinctively-voiced poems take you from A to Z and back again. A handful of polished stones for your journey.’ Bronwen Levy, feminist critic.
‘A wonderful sense of character and humour.’
‘There’s wisdom and compassion within these pages.’
Each poem takes as its subject the occupation of a worker. Twenty-six occupations are presented in alphabetical order, from artist to zoologist. The forms are as various as the people they celebrate: confessional poems, dramatic monologue, found texts, haiku, lyrics, laments, obituaries, prose poems, shape poems… The result is a kaleidoscope of individuals who contribute their energies to the world in inventive and powerful ways. ‘Hold them in your hearts,’ the poet invites. ‘Hold them.’
“Towards the end of 2017, I combed a beach in Sicily, charmed by volcanic stones whose threads of quartz made them like letters of the alphabet. On return to Australia, an old puzzle fell into place – didn’t many of my already-published poems fall into the general category of ‘work’? Didn’t they beg to be arranged into a collection about toilers, from A to Z, like the stones I collected?
I was astonished to learn that I was birthing a ‘first’ - apparently no other Australian poet has devoted an entire collection to the subject of ‘work’, though a bunch of Melbourne anarchists and performance poets in the late 1980s & early 1990s created a magazine that featured poetry ‘for the workers, by the workers, about the workers’ work’, called it 925, and distributed it for free!
This collection, whose ‘working’ title was originally ‘Alphabet of Work’, takes a universal view of ‘workers’ work’. Driving buses - sure, everyone recognises that as work, but preserving a path, making kites, surviving domestic violence? Is custodianship of a temple for over ten centuries ‘work’ to you? Perhaps we need to reconsider the Biblical view ‘by their deeds you will know them’ because workers are surely extraordinary - in the face of the alienated system of labour we’re expected to conform to - we bring our hearts, and minds, and love to our deeds. Aren’t we all resilient and utterly marvellous?” - Lesley Synge
Our Countries
Manmeet Sharma, you came to Australia to get ahead
drove taxis at first, and now this bus.
You’re twenty-nine and handsome.
A Sikh bangle silvers your wrist.
You sing love songs at parties.
Brisbane’s Indian community loves you.
You have chosen a fiancée. North of Amritsar she waits.
You’ll fly there soon, for the engagement.
The future is bright, yar, as Diwali lights.
It’s Friday morning and you’ve agreed to a fill-in shift
for the 125, Garden City to Fortitude Valley.
You stash your water bottle
wipe down the steering wheel
adjust the seat
start the engine
press the button that opens the door.
Passengers nod g’day as they enter
and you swing your bus under the freeway
up the forested hill.
Compared to the hub-bub back home
the streets are so quiet.
Oh for a bus boy to collect the fares
and shout Challo! Challo!
Our Punjabi man
passes the creek where ironbark trees
once shaded the camps of the Jagera people.
A bing lets him know when a passenger wants to stop
they alight with a thankyou driver
or a ta mate, and he smiles back.
The Moorooka shops are ahead.
It’s nine a.m. Eleven on board.
Hush. The sun blessing his adopted city
is yet to anoint the Himalayas.
The sleep of his parents is still-peaceful.
Hold them in your hearts.
Hold them.
Manmeet Sharma, you press the button to open the door
and a man pushes in, yelling.
The man is shouting
‘Take me to Central Station!’
(Police will later say he’s known to authorities
has mental health issues.)
‘The 125 doesn’t go there’ you advise politely.
‘Cultural Centre, yar, City Centre—’
In a fury, the stranger
throws his backpack at you
and lights you up.
You burn, dear man.
Dear man, a Molotov cocktail burns you alive.
Manmeet Sharma, popular and handsome
engaged to be married
loving son, loved brother
you did not survive.
You could not survive. Yet you live on.
Your last minutes on our shared earth
have seared the hearts of both our nations.
Our memory of you is as radiant as sunrise
as everlasting as
our sorrow.
Transport worker Manmeet Sharma was murdered in 2016 when driving a Brisbane City Council bus. The Rail, Tram and Bus Union will never allow him to be forgotten. Other unions relevant to the collection include Maritime Union of Australia, Queensland Nurses & Midwives’ Union, Queensland Teachers Union, National Union of Workers, and Professional Firefighters’ Union.
Buy
Brisbane: State Library of Queensland’s Library Bookshop;
BooksStones
Maleny: Rosetta Books
For signed copies, contact the author.
EPUB on Amazon Kindle coming soon!
She Is
She paints herself.
She is walking forward.
She is wearing orange.
Her legs are bare.
Her skin is radiant.
Her hair is up.
She does not hesitate.
Her step is strong.
The rocks before her are huge
but the slabs are steady
the scree is stable.
There’s no hesitation.
The sky is ahead.
This excerpt from the longer poem ‘History’ is about surviving domestic abuse. It was inspired by a painting by Anne Wallace. It was incorporated in the dance performance Her Life is still Being Written (choreographer Brian Lucas, premiere Australian Dance Collective in Judith Wright Centre Brisbane 2022).
‘In Foreign Parts’ by Anne Wallace 1995, oil on canvas, 198 x 121 cm. Courtesy of the artist.