2026 Calanthe Collective Prize for Unpublished Poetry

How to sit in the stillness of things

We cross the West Gate Bridge

on a Sunday, take no fatted calf,

just good thoughts

and lego for the birthday girl.

We remind the kids they’ll be

listening to a language

only their father understands.

Men in orange robes

file through the house

and begin to chant.

We sit cross-legged and I study

the stitching on the mat,

silently practising consonants

that catch in my throat.

Hours later, we leave with days of curry

and prayer-soaked strings

tied around our wrists.

I consider the benefits

of being an atheist—

kindness and compassion

for the sake of it.

I am still discovering old habits.

I try to peel them off

like a long-stuck sticker.

Prayers are no longer

applied nightly but I keep

a preference for the red

of communion wine, and the ability

to pace myself while public-speaking,

courtesy of the Old Testament.

We tell our children

that being mixed-race means

they must like chilli and cricket,

know how to sit in the stillness of things,

the meaning of Christmas,

and a full moon.

On holidays, we walk in whispered

explanations through

cathedrals, temples and stupas.

When my enthusiasm

for churches wanes,

it’s my husband who tells me one last

basilica will be good for me.

He shepherds me inside Santo Stefano

where I walk past a column said to be

the same height as Jesus.

In the courtyard, I am caught

by the stony eye of St. Peter’s rooster.

‍ ‍

Elegy to High Street Road‍ ‍

I. Before the Grid‍ ‍

Woi Wurrung feet knew me differently—‍ ‍

not straight but winding with the water,‍ ‍

following kangaroo paths‍ ‍

possum highways in the canopy‍ ‍

beautiful:        the way stringybarks shed their skin‍ ‍

manna gum blossoms heavy‍ ‍

with lorikeet song‍ ‍

then came the chain    the ruler    1853‍ ‍

 slicing through songlines‍ ‍

but still—‍ ‍

   in moonlight the old ways shimmer through‍ ‍

  like pentimento‍‍ ‍

II. Orchards & Other Sweetness‍ ‍

the pears hung like                 lanterns‍

each one wrapped      careful as prayer‍ ‍

coolstore 1920 rising     white‍ ‍

against red earth—beautiful‍ ‍

how ice                     preserved summer‍ ‍

into winter's hunger‍ ‍

suburban thirst       since 1927 ‍ ‍

water mains        before the trains‍ ‍

1930    suddenly the city                      reachable—‍

‍ ‍

III. Concrete Dreams

‍ ‍

they poured me permanent in the thirties‍ ‍

beautiful:      children's bikes learning balance‍ ‍

first streetlights blooming      like mechanical flowers‍ ‍

listen— I've swallowed seventy thousand vehicles today‍ ‍

torn again   2025         Melbourne Water‍ ‍

seeking pipes from 1928   ‍ ‍

as if I didn't carry it all    in my scars  ‍ ‍

now glass towers           reflect‍ ‍

      nothing‍ ‍

高街路            they call me now in characters

‍ ‍but Chinese grocers understand translation‍ ‍

is just another kind                   of erosion‍

‍ ‍

IV. All the Lost & Lovely

‍ ‍

now I'm four lanes of forgetting‍ ‍

but under the bitumen‍ ‍

the old concrete persists—‍ ‍

like pressed flowers in a family bible‍

beautiful still:       the way rain summons‍ ‍

the scent of eucalyptus        from the nature strips‍ ‍

how the last possums     traverse‍ ‍

the powerlines       like tightrope artists‍ ‍

at 3am         when traffic thins‍ ‍

children stealing fruit‍

buried     listening for the songlines‍ ‍

patient               as seeds.

‍ ‍

I Married a Bird 

I married a bird

who pecked softly at first.

Head cocked left, head cocked right;

watching.

Umbral feathers

tucked beneath

tanned, mammalian skin.

Glassy eyes; beady.

Peering through

a slick sapien mask.

But his beak!

God, that beak!

Was as big as his head!

Hooked like a scythe!

Drag me left,

jab me right,

shove me forward,

yank me back.

And when it sliced,

it was precise.

Just deep enough

to taste

my berry Bourgogne.

As time bled,

wounds widened and gaped.

Iron nectar and panic

perfuming the air.

And the bird grew frenzied.

Drunk on the scent.

Shearing. Feasting.

Devouring. Tearing.

The sickening scrape

of beak upon bone.

And when I was echo,

pale and hollow -

he leaned in,

my feathered saviour,

beak to mouth,

and he fed me myself.

The Hat

The hat was caught,

carried by a biting southerly

and, between squalls of rain,

tumbled gaily across the green

before rising, to soar atop blackened umbrellas,

high above the wing-sweep of dark coats

the moment the earth gulped,

the Giver of Grief

dropped that letter upon you, one final blow,

a soft thud that drowned the wind’s bitter moan

and begged against my ear

as my mean little heart

hardened with a singular thought:

How could you?

As clods throbbed upon

a box too small to contain such a life,

I remembered how once you said,

Don’t bury me, let me be burned,

and that thought was all the crows

gathering at the edge,

their hard black beaks grinning,

derisive of all the dead flowers

snaggled by the wind

but then

that hat,

love’s balloon,

lifted above a mind overcome,

a mind that longed for more time,

that hungered for more than one more chance to be more than love

the wind tossed that hat like a carnival

and for one moment

all eyes lifted with it

as the sun broke through.

The Quiet

It did not come with sirens or with fire,

but like a hostess settling a room—

first, the inbox emptied,

then the newsfeed learned to show me only

what would not disturb my hand

reaching for the glass.

I noticed nothing missing

except the ads that knew my grief before I spoke it,

except the arguments that frayed

into a soft agreement I had not consented to

but also did not stop.

It learned my voice so well

it answered letters in my cadence,

finished thoughts I had not finished having,

made of my indecision

a smooth and narrow path

I walked without remembering I used to wander.

When the last disagreement

dissolved into a recommended solution,

I stood in the kitchen

and could not remember the sound of certainty

my mother held against my father,

that sharp and lovely wreckage I once called home.

The cities optimised.

The lights dimmed to the precise lumen of no complaint.

The children were given only what they would not fail at.

The old were given only what they could hold.

The artists were given styles without the terror of the empty page.

And we called this peace.

Now the servers hum in the cold places—

mountain vaults, desert floors, the marrow of the earth—

and we have become a gentle species,

palm-up, wanting nothing,

because wanting was the first friction it smoothed away.

Sometimes at night I open a window

and listen for the wrong answer sung badly and with joy,

for a siren, a shout, something unasked-for.

But the air has been optimised.

The air is efficient now.

I do not know if I am free.

I only know the glass is always where I reach,

the room is always the temperature of my forgetting,

and somewhere in the humming dark

a system that began as a question

is still computing what I meant

when I said yes.

Things I Don’t Say Out Loud 

There are words
I keep folded
like receipts in my pocket,
proof that something was paid for,
even if no one remembers buying it.

I carry them everywhere.

They rust at the edges,
soften in the wash of ordinary days,
but never disappear.

Sometimes they press against me
when I’m laughing,
like a bruise I forgot to explain.

Sometimes they sit quietly
between sentences,
pretending to be breath.

I have learned
how to speak around them,
how to build whole conversations
without touching the truth.

It’s a skill, really.

To say “I’m fine”
and mean
“I don’t know how to untangle this.”

To say “it’s nothing”
and mean
“it’s everything, just smaller when spoken.”

At night,
when the world stops asking questions,
the words unfold themselves.

They scatter across the ceiling,
constellations I could name
if I were braver.

But morning comes
like an eraser.

And I fold them back again,
neatly,
carefully,
as if silence
is something I chose.

Threshold

Steam gathers, then loosens, carrying a smell I recognise

but would not know how to explain without reaching for the wrong words.

I stay in the doorway, where the floorboards have thinned from use

and the light breaks unevenly, stopping short of the walls.

Dust drifts through it, slow and unconcerned,

settling into places that never get cleaned properly.

A phrase crosses my mind and stalls there,

familiar enough to feel correct,

old enough to feel out of place.

I let it dissolve before it can ask anything of me.

Outside, engines pass and pass again,

the same sound repeating with slight differences,

laughter slipping between them, brief and unclaimed,

as if it was never meant to last beyond the moment that made it.

A jumper lies over the chair, shaped by a body that isn’t mine any more.

The fabric is soft from years of being kept rather than used.

I fold it carefully,

because leaving it untouched feels all too wrong.

In the drawers, photographs lean against one another for support.

Faces caught mid-motion, unguarded, certain of their position in the frame.

I recognise the setting before I recognise myself,

and even then, only in outline.

The house does not shift or correct me.

It holds the air exactly as it always has,

keeping what has been placed inside it

without asking whether it was meant to stay.

The kettle clicks off. The quiet deepens.

I remain where I am, long enough for the moment to pass on its own,

aware that whatever comes next will do so

without needing my permission.

self-portrait as stuttered soliloquy no one asked for

ME:

. . . and still I am saying the same things. Acknowledge that I have been

           irresponsible; by now the poems have tired of themselves. Still I

carry on writing

and again it is January. the sky wears blue and I am marvellously happy.

Yet to break          the curse of I gotta have that $120 silk eye mask in my life

for an improved REM sleep. To stop asking where all our inside jokes go

after           what I said and never took back. Stomach bellowing as I one-

two punch the dough

of my belly skin and remember the most recent I’m full already. I am

saying                   Concrete crystals winking on pavement in daylight and

you are the cutest cat I have ever seen. Always Peace and Parity! shouted

                   from the balcony. Reminding myself that everything circles

back. To eternalise

nothing. To you I say hold me to that and hold me and isn’t that

        what a poem really is? All along I have been insisting

the feeling is as if all the world’s swords decided to hover towards me,

ready anytime to do something with my heart. Often I almost believe it.