Poet Profile

Julie Constable

Julie lives at Corner Inlet, Australia writing and working as a teacher, librarian and mobile library driver. Her fiction, haibun and poetry have appeared in Verandah, Hecate, Hobo, Inkshed, Silverfish, Muse, Poetrix, Gargouille, Antithesis, Wanderlust and in the anthology 200 Years of Australian Writing edited by James Moore.
‘The Gunyah Tree’ appeared in the book In their Branches Stories from ABC RN’s Trees Project edited by Gretchen Miller. ‘Reams and Reams of Paper: Strzelecki Forest Campaigns’ was published in Earth & Industry: Stories from Gippsland, edited by Erik Eklund and Julie Fenley (Monash University Publishing, 2015) and now online .

43 degrees
birdbath nimbed by bees

buckled teak house ― greyed by time
a woman plants rice ― bent with age

clickety-clack 
over old wooden bridge
loose teeth and small change

cows here wear earrings
No. 9 takes windfall apples
with blue-black tongue

silence ― then the bat
coming this close to my face
sounds like cutting silk

they call them shit birds
ibis ― angels in flight
farmers’ poetry

Credits:

“43 degrees” - Creatrix 47 December 2019; “buckled teak house” - All the Way Home: Aging in Haiku edited by Robert Epstein, Middle Island Press, 2019; “clickety-clack” - Rusted Hinge The paper wasp Jack Stamm haiku anthology, 2005; “cows here wear earrings” - Hobo Issue 14,1997; “silence ― then the bat” - Poetrix 1, 1993; “they call them shit birds” - Moments 1, 1996.