Of Muse, Meandering And Midnight (uqp Black Australian Writers)

This is a striking debut volume by the winner of the Unaipon prize for unpublished Aboriginal writers. In a voice youthful, passionate and questioning, these poems reflect on growing up and on letting go; on urban dwellers in love and lust; and on the artist and his Murri community. The politics are unguarded and often amusing; and the language is playful, rhythmic and evocative. Ghosted by ancestors and muses, Watson's cityscape interweaves past and present. This is the debut volume by Wagan, the winner of the 1999 David Unaipon Award for unpublished Aboriginal writers. These poems reflect on growing up and on letting go; on urban dwellers in love, and on the artist and his Murri community. Contents include: a prelude -- magnesium girl -- after 2am -- back seat driver -- on the river -- waiting for the good man -- raindrops fall in vain -- chloe in the window box -- the postman's privilege -- musing: the graveyard shift -- new farm is closed -- white stucco dreaming -- the crooked men -- falling mother sky -- brown water looting -- jetty nights -- carefree -- the mosquito room -- mudflat -- deadman's mouth harp -- it starts -- a verse for the cheated -- 1986 -- the fatal garden -- radio thick blood -- midnight's boxer -- surgery music -- a bent neck black and flustered feather mallee -- the gloom swans -- a black bird of my mind -- fly-fishing in woolloongabba -- shout-me-a-wine requiem -- crust -- the writer's suitcase -- midnight's plague -- labelled -- for the wake and skeleton dance -- the dingo lounge -- valley man -- cheap white-goods at the dreamtime sale When May's mother dies suddenly, she and her brother Billy are taken in by an aunt. However their loss leaves them both searching for their place in a world that doesn't want them. May sets off to find her father and her Aboriginal identity In language soulful, image-charged, and often humorous, relationships of the heart are recounted against an industrial cityscape