“I’ve been writing since I was a child – making illustrated storybooks, or typing on the computer. But I never thought of writing as something to pursue until I started University,” she says. Now in her third year of  an arts degree majoring in writing  at the University of Queensland Mia says that for her poetry is like solving a puzzle.  “For me it’s exciting there seems to be just one right answer for every poem, and the poet has to experiment with language and sound until the pieces fit together.”

We loved the poem she sent us which so beautifully draws a word picture of a summer’s day.

The Washing

There is a feeling

only felt when washing

whites, hung and drying

in deft slanted slats

of domestic sun.

A clean, soft feeling

only felt when standing

in damp, dress-shaped shade,

down pillowcases

with buttons undone.

A feeling

like bathing

in clear and cool water –

observing the warm

sun on your shoulder

and feeling the lick

of a slick fish skimming

your calf in water:

a dry, spiny bur

flicking your ankle.

Mia Slater

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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)

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