Let's take our souls 
       for a day in the bush
                  

And gather our planters
          in the open spaces
          so they can 'dig'

Let's bring water and trowels
      as signs of care

And when we're done 
     listen to
          the saplings sing

By June Perkins

              

A planting day with Men of the Trees Queensland and Habitat Brisbane.

Many thanks to all planters and to the Scouts who put on a sausage sizzle for us afterwards.

Remembering Mr Richard St Barbe Barker.

Delighted to be included in Southerly.

June Perkins, Two Livestreamed Funerals, a Cancelled Wedding, and the Saving Grace of Poetry

Extract from Southerly Announcement

“The diverse work offered here, in Southerly’s first online-only issue, gathers “Australian” writing produced in many different places and circumstances. Heterogenous and singular in its contents, the layered contiguity of digital publication optimistically promotes the lateral and multitemporal formation of the commons, true to the big ambitions and longevity of this venerable “little magazine.”

Our contributors dwell in and on the permeability of extreme and ordinary states, temporal confusion and disturbance, bringing genre to bear on forms of technological, linguistic, and psychical mediation, exposing Berlantian “impasse” in myriad ways.

We are grateful to Create NSW for a grant to pay contributors at a particularly disastrous time for arts funding. Most of all, we are grateful to the brilliant contributors who have entrusted us with their work…