Monday 8 April

10.30-11.30am

Watsonia Library

Fitnessworx Frisbee proves there is so much more you can do with a frisbee than just throwing and catching. Join in on activities like frisbee golf, frisbee rounders, frisbee tennis or ultimate frisbee. Bookings required.

The Room For Poetry project features exciting established and emerging contemporary writers celebrating the intimate and intriguing world of the home through poetry.

Poems submitted from the Banyule community and beyond will be written and illustrated by artist Michael Camilleri on the stunning windows of Watsonia Library in April and May 2013.

Musical

Incredible

Cute

Hats

Apple

Enjoyed go to the gym

Love chocolate

Breakfast in bed

Enjoy sleeping in

Draw

Really good at weights

Outstanding at wii

Overly clean

Movies

Lets sit on it

You flush

You flush

You flush

You flush

You sit on it

You clean it

You need to clean it

It has a septic tank

It is screwed to the bottom of the floor

It has pipes

It has a seal

It has a bowl

This is the ladies toilet

You sit on it

In my mother’s kitchen:

Red as blood rosemary beads hang on a

Cupboard knob,

Red stripes on the curtains,

A red crucifix,

Italian telegrams with red borders.

The linoleum floor

Had a hospital strength hygiene.

The vintage metal sugar, rice, flour, tea and coffee containers

With black labels

Were still holding up a ‘Women’s Weekly’ cookbook.

Its butter-stained pages

Were a mistreated orphan

Inside a bookmark:

Diced beef in a wok

Ice in a fat-bottomed glass

I prolong the pleasure of the pour

TV blares as dog barks and kids bicker

Feet scream for a rest while I

Lay out dinner on the bench

Chop carrots and snowpeas

For stir-fry and fresh lime for gin

Just the one but today it’s a double

I splash sauce on red meat

Gin in the glass

Add tonic as ice cracks

Like stepping on egg shells

Add lime slice fresh as summer

Reminds me of hot nights

Like a life time ago

You can still walk in my study.

Yes, you can take three steps east

Which will take you to my favourite

Wheelie chair and computer,

Or three steps south,

Encompassing my thick green mat

With its years-of-yoga aura.

If you are careful, you won’t knock down

The green exercise ball

Neglected, but it makes a good seat

For people needing a sympathetic ear.

You will need to dodge the piles of books

Towering from the edges of the desk

In Grandma’s kitchen

It was not the cavernous stove

With its mantelpiece.

It was not the table where she

Worked the gingerbread machine

Churning out endless belts

Of furrowed biscuit dough.

It was not the milk jugs

Covered with beaded nets

Or the giant flowery cheese dish.

It was the cellar –

Under the table a trapdoor

With a ladder going down –

Shelves crowded with jam and marmalade

Rows of preserves, bottles of wine

My bedroom is so pretty for me

I love my bedroom

I love my books

I read them a lot

And I read them again

I love the cards on the shelf in my bedroom

I feel happy in the morning sun

When I wake up in my bed

Copyright Lily Romanes 2013