Why poetry? If you ask that question, you’re already in the room. 20 years ago, Tom Shapcott told me how he once had an eye on becoming a composer instead of a writer. During his stint in National Service, he realised the economy and weight of poetry could be carried in a notebook in his top pocket. The smaller the thing, the larger the capacity. As a boy, my family would often go down to Wellington Point. I’d scramble along the horizontals of the Moreton Bay figs. Architecture with leaves. Try holding a bag of flour with your arm outstretched. How long can you last? One fig branch holds itself like that for centuries. It’s a colossus. Size wise, one fig seed matches a sesame seed. Every time I look at a tree on that scale, I wonder how all that information, including its future, can be packed into such a tiny capsule. The easy metaphor of botanical time programmed to outgrow our relative insignificance. So, what’s that got to do with poetry? Every word carries the entirety of its meaning, its context, and its time, within itself, then as an external manifestation of its design and purpose, it lays itself down to invite survival. One word planted on a page. Again, all that information in a tiny capsule. Of course there’s no certainty, even within the perfect thing. The scream becomes silence on its way into the ears attached to long odds.

Memory and chance are my two favourite colours. In an old documentary on Fred Williams, he cites Matisse as his favourite painter. The interviewer (Patrick McCaughey) is taken aback, refers to their stylistic differences, presses Fred as to why? Fred replies, ‘Because he can make a painting with two colours.’ You can make a poem with two words. Words are objects only, the success or failure of those two words is at the mercy of a decision. The decision itself is at the mercy of chance. As a poet, when asked to take a seat, if there isn’t one, make sure you sit on the chair anyway.

Poets always seems to be peeking around corners. Trying to identify thoughts, waiting for them to move. From the lofty to the late-night suburban, I’ve just remembered Stevie Starr, the 80s performer who makes a living out of regurgitation. I’m wondering if that’s the physical equivalent of poetry? I conclude not. In an either/or sense, poets are only good at one half of that act. There are some who can swallow the light bulb, and some who can regurgitate the light bulb. Both respected skills in their own way. I haven’t met a poet who can do both as two sides of the same action. (Poets and poetry should believe in the incomplete). The poets that are important to me are wedded to impossibility, not necessarily logic. Although logic finds its way via the composition, and if you’re lucky you get to admire your slippers as if they’re mirrors.

In soft meteorites, my two favourite colours are caught in the underpainting throughout. Decked out in a weird little outfit tailored from breath, I hope to ricochet between light and time. As the reader, you get the chance to complete the picture, to do a stocktake on a box of light bulbs. There are dedications throughout the book. Why? Some reasons and associations are obvious. (Look up an index under, ‘death’.) Other dedications are about interaction. Conversations, silent or conventional. Words as alphabetic flies maintain our blood temperature. Do we shoo them away, or herd them into our eyes? Essentially, probably inadequately, I’m trying to keep people in my life, whether dead or alive, to soak them in memory. Am I just filling one those of bush-style canvas water bags to attach to my forehead? Memory equals thirst. The poems are speaking to people they do know, to speak to people they don’t know. (Look up an index under, ‘reader’). The ultimate human action is to look at language without saying anything.

soft meteorites would be a very different being were it not for Terri-ann at Upswell. I was fortunate to be the recipient of equal parts faith and latitude in all aspects of its publication. Upswell is a rare publisher, where the process seeps into collaboration. The four-letter word ‘risk’ tweezers a half smile and a few shavings of comfort through middle letters numbered two and three. Idea to object and back again. Language and printing indelibly stored in our Darwinian form guide. As with the subjects of the poems, who are no longer with us, they are in a small way translated back into the heavy-ash colour of ink.

Thank you is the most quoted two-word poem in our existence.

Nathan Shepherdson

September 2024.