Category: poem

The 17 Group – Alienation

The June meeting of the 17 Group will take place on Wednesday the 6th of June at 7 pm in unit 6 at number 20 Drury St, West End and will be addressed by the writer Lesley Synge, who will read/perform 17 poems influenced by radicalism, the first being a meditation on Marx’s Theory of Alienation inspired by the discovery of a bundle of workers’ ‘Sick notes’ at an abandoned coal mine in Central Qld.… Go to Article

May the 1st Club


Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s there was a need for political culture. In West End appeared the the first coffee club in Brisbane – May the 1st Club which was a regular event organised by activists from the democratic rights struggles in the 1970s.… Go to Article

Lies & Silence – bias in Australian media

On this sad morning there is no justice in the dawn
So many years of dying where does hope get born
Not over the broken and bloodied bodies of sleeping children
Or the fork tongued lies of the criminals and their defenders
                                          — Phil Monsour
                                       Song for Gaza 2012
                             No More Lies No More Silence

This was broadcast on the Paradigm Shift on 4ZZZ fm 102.1 on Friday 23 Nov 2012.… Go to Article

When will Spring rain?

This is how I see it

Black throated pied butcher bird
picking up sticks
sees bicyclist
Pied strikes like a drone in Yemen
2 metre tall cyclist
Takes refuge
under Poinciana
Juveniles join in
Kamakase air raids
triangular strafing with clapping beaks
30 centimetre birds can cower a man

Takes off helmet to expose every grey hair
now sitting on dew covered grass
afraid to leave or to shout out
Raid after raid comes in and then…

Two women with pram appear
on Milne Lane

Beautiful pink baby inside sucking buttons of shirt,
Grey-hair tells them of attacks,
One woman, the mother’s mate,
says how territorial butcher birds are

Shared millisecond of concern
by all three for pink baby
blinking in morning sunlight
Mother and friend confident birds will give pram right of passage
down Parooba Avenue

Grey-hair takes flight down the road
only to come across an old lady on the path
who admonishes him
saying “Should you be on this path?… Go to Article

Living in the Colonies — What’s Left?

PShift 4zzz  fm 102.1 fridays at noon
Living in the Colonies, What’s Left?
Paradigm Shift Part I 12 Sept 2012

"Whose land is this land
 is it for you and me
who knows, who knows this land
better than you and me.
… Go to Article

The Fire on the Sand

Wild waterspouts put tendrils down to naked sea.
White water sucking bait-fish into the heavens
Migloo, puffing whale, meanders northward
As Minjerriba slumbers under a soft molten sky

Island serpent hidden in sand takes refuge from mining
Pumps, centrifuges and scoundrels building castles
Standing high on dune called Bippo Penbean
Overlooking Vance – a mining ruin
Grass trees planted in rows by machine

Sovereign rights held by Quandamooka people
Always was, always will be, aboriginal land
Mining leases rigged as security cameras set up on bush tracks
To deter walkers

Government practices simple arithmetic in mine and space
Foreign machines process coloured sands without a worker in sight
Upside down swimming dolphin calf at North Gorge
Sun become amber and then crimson

Finally wind worn sea eagle, Karboora, dies
And there was fire on the sand

Gannets poised aloft dive for fish
Winter whiting arrived at last,
Braminy Kite lingers as the moon rises,
Wild whales encrusted pass Point Lookout
Followed by despot yatch on a democratic sea
And wet suited surfers are bonding beyond the waves
As fishermen jag fish out of crowded schools

A low necked gull asserts dominance in the flock,
Picking over carcasses
And Dolphins murder mullet on the edge of a cruel sea


Ian Curr
Straddie
June 2011

[Music accompaniment and photo by Trevor Berrill on rythmn guitar.… Go to Article