S'hi D'Amour

Biography

Founder of annual Poets Picnic, community artist Ruthven Storytelling Garden, initiator Reservoir wRiters and Reciters. Performance poetry since 1984, co-ordinated/ published Luna Linx festival of women's writing 1987, small mag and pamphlet poetry publisher, readings, events, workshops across a broad range of styles and communities.

Samples

(for more recent works visit www.poets-picnic.com) Our Country (for Australian bicentenary 1988, after Dorothea MacKellar's My Country) The love of loans and credits, of green and crisp new notes, Of ordered goods and deliveries, all this is your rote. Strong love of Wall Street brokers, of Amcare nickels and dimes, We know but do not share it - our love has warmer climes. We love a blood-drenched country, a land of dying dreams, of barren out-back deserts, of cratered hunting grounds. We love her mushroom horizon, we love her torrid breeze, Her beauty and her terror - the wide brown land diseased. The tragic tennis tournaments where our children face the world. Their triumphant sails flying when they bring the cups back home. The winter ritual football, the summer whites bleached clean. We love the cheering millions with their blue cans in their hands. Core of our hearts, our country, our piteous old men cry, When shuffling march together to honour those who died. But then the young folk gather and jeer at foreign wars - the unemployed, women, homeless they fight another cause. Core of our hearts, Our Country, land of the yellow gold, For oil, steel, uranium, to the US we’re sold. But when the grey crowds gather – the tourists from Japan – We sheer our sheep for jumpers for sheep from another land. An open-hearted country, home for many lands - You who haven’t migrated you wouldn’t understand - Though earth holds many sorrows, wherever we may die, We know for what brown country our poetry will cry. S’hi D’Amour

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.