Verandah asked local poet, writer and musician, Barnaby Smith, to choose us a poem he felt reflected both the area, and also the current wonderful spring season – where our world is green and fresh again, before the heat of summer. Smith chose Mullumbimby writer Edwin Wilson…
Edwin Wilson, now 71, stands as one of the most notable poets to emerge from the Northern Rivers. Born in Lismore, he spent his school years in both Brunswick Heads and the poet’s precious Mullumbimby, a town that remains central in his imagination to this day. The rather unusual turns his career as a writer has taken, including the ‘Eileen’ furore, can be discovered at his own website, while Mullumbimby Dreaming, an exhibition of Wilson’s paintings and poems, is currently on display at the Tweed River Art Gallery until October 12.
Poet and painter Edwin Wilson’s The Mullumbimby Kid
Wilson, who worked in community relations at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens until retirement in 2002, in the same year published the comprehensive Anthology: Collected Poems, a rich, occasionally nostalgic array of poems that swings between pastoral and urban, sentimental and cutting, loving and caustic. ‘Flowering Trunk’ was first published in 1990 in the collection Songs of the Forest: Rainforest Poems.
Flowering Trunk
Like old crones
(warts and all)
beyond the change of life –
with scaly bark,
deep furrowed trunk,
pale brides with pliant bones
swell on the heartwood,
savoured and mysterious,
and tumble into flower –
unctuous nectar cups
of aromatic esters
spiked with love and hope;
to abrogate the loneliness
of jungle scrub –
as garland for a bower bird,
or balm for forest mice.
(You can check out Barnaby Smith’s work on his website: (https://www.barnaby-smith.moonfruit.com)
