#16: Five Blue Bottle Poems to Celebrate Five Blue Bottle Years

Here are some of my favourite poems from each year of the journal’s life so far.

While house hunting for an upcoming move, I am of course drawn to Rae White comparing me to a lapwing – the desperate search for shelter like the bird’s forage for food. The never-ending nightmare of mowing is too real. And the feather-friend answer to a cat’s “if I fits, I sits”: “if it flat, we nest”.

This found poem from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of the Island evokes the tragedy and violence of a society occupied, the pain endured from the sanding down of identity into someone else’s normalcy. Svetlana Sterlin notes the surviving pre-occupation objects are “pretentions sprawling protectively / over no great art” while the subject will “go down to my grave / unwept, unhonoured, and unsung”.

Have I become obsessed with New South Wales-based things since planning to move interstate? Is it my dream to write poems about the ominous quiet of a seaside town? Did I look up Angourie and add it to my visit list after reading? Look. We may never know the answers to these questions. But Emily Bartlett’s words did something to me, OK?

Nikita Kostaschuk (ink.eyta) has written a few poems about executive dysfunction – ghosts of Meanjin literary events might be familiar with their sisyphean dishes. In I am the swarm, they seem to plead with their housemate to recognise their humanity beyond their ability to provide labour. It’s a worthy addition to the growing canon of their anti-capitalist, ADHD-coded work.

As a sapphic, I can’t deny the appeal of heartbreak and the sea. Maddy Dale’s picture of a heartbroken soul in the shallows satisfies the aesthetic urge. The sea creates wonders and destroys them and doesn’t care either way. After realising you did, too, maybe that’s the best place to let go.

The first and only poem yet published by Blue Bottle this year, Ceviche automatically gets the spot. But it deserves it nonetheless. Paris Rosemont’s biting description underscores the carnal want, neediness of a sexual relationship.

Blue Bottle is collaborating with The Braddyton – a literary community project by myself and my housemates – on a poetry event for Saturday, January the 18th from 3pm to 5pm. Join us for an afternoon of curated poetry by Rae White, Maddy Dale, Svetlana Sterlin and Shastra Deo!

Word Count: 447