The Camel Saloon Editor’s Choices
Posted: July 30, 2011 Filed under: announcement, fiction | Tags: fiction, The Camel Saloon, The Second Hump Leave a commentMy story “A Woman Who Watches” is published at The Camel Saloon’s Editor’s Choices (The Second Hump Volume II). Thank you very much, Russell. I’m thrilled.
from On Love: a poem sequence
Posted: July 26, 2011 Filed under: poetry, publication | Tags: love poetry, poem sequence, poetry Leave a comment1
There was this sound
then nothing after;
a quickness
then what quickened you;
a style then
how we stood aside
like a generous condemnation,
like delight
at something gone,
never to be confused
again with coming.
Then there was this ache
and nowhere you’d rather be.
There was this murmur
and no heart
but a crowd of beats
and sorrow.
Where does it lead?
Where does ache follow
but where we couldn’t
satisfy?
And then you denounce
and I remove your pronouncements
like love.
How silent love is,
shaking us off.
We are tempted
and near;
we are slow
and desired.
What can happen in a day
but more day.
More heart to melt
the cold
like you could be
drowning.
And satisfaction
is set aside.
We are compassionate,
done with keeping time,
full of beauty
nearly loved.
National Poetry Day
Posted: July 22, 2011 Filed under: poetry | Tags: poetry Leave a commentHappy Poetry Day! My poem “Sorrow” is on the Share a Poem section of the Booksellers New Zealand website.
Review of “On Love: a poem sequence”
Posted: July 19, 2011 Filed under: poetry, review | Tags: love poetry, poetry Leave a commentExcerpt from Jack Hughes’ review of my latest book On Love: a poem sequence:
Jill is a practitioner of the meditative lyric. One thing she is able to do is work with the abstract in the poem as if it was an imagery. Her poems can be completely abstract, in the sense of, devoid of any but the most minimal image, nothing more than sunlight — and this has its own richness in this sense in which the concepts and conceptions are given leave to live; a withdrawal of sensory imagery allows them to have a reality.
“We are everywhere
We want to be in love.
A light through the trees.”
Somehow the natural effacement, modesty of her tone, allows her to use these words without it having the sound of a sweeping statement. The otherwise grand inclusiveness of the pronoun ‘we,’ the capacious enclosure of ‘everywhere,’ remains somehow nicely inner and individual — her poems have the sounds of quiet inner individual meditative thinking. Meaning is controlled in the poems because meaning is only one of the things they pursue, or are built of; they also have soft rhythms, musical values, and values of how the images balance against the abstractions.
Jill-Chan.com 