Accidents of Composition

By: Merlinda Bobis

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Synopsis: Is it the sun a hole sucking in a bird or Icarus about to singe the sun? Which composes which? The poet asks as she circumnavigates the globe, history, and an inner universe. When it responds, there's the small shudder, the sprawl of a spin, or the quiet before and after a full circle. The eyes catch a black bird close to an eerie sun. Instantly, a poem: an accident of composition. Or a tree, rock, light from a story heard, dreamt, read or remembered returns as if it were the only tree, rock, light in the planet. The poet is caught, returned to her first heart: poetry. After four novels, Merlinda offers poems from the stillness of contemplation to the spinning of tales, then to passage across different histories. Glass becomes eternal greens underwater, fish gossip about colonisation, a gumnut turns dissident, and the dreams of Captain Cook and Pigafetta circumnavigate the globe leaving a trail of blood, beads, and the scent of cloves. But in between, the poet hopes: ‘there could be accidents / of kindness here.'