Justin Lowe was born in Sydney but spent large portions of his early childhood on the Spanish island of Minorca with his younger sister and artist mother. Completing his schooling back in Sydney, Justin gained a BA in the Central West of NSW and then spent several years in Europe working odd jobs and honing his skills as a writer. On returning again to Sydney, Justin settled down with his partner in what was then a fairly crusty Newtown teeming with disparate souls where through the course of the 1990’s he published more and more of his poetry and collaborated with some of Sydney’s finest songwriters such as Tim Freedman of The Whitlams and Bow Campbell of Front End Loader and The Impossibles, as well as editing seminal poetry mag Homebrew and releasing two collections, From Church to Alice (1996) and Try Laughter (2000). In 2001 Justin moved to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and has since published one more poetry collection (Glass Poems, 2006) and two verse novels (The Great Big Show, 2007 and Magellenica, 2008).
Will Oldham
her nape
smells of the earth
where I will hum my one, long note
in the powdery dawn
when the crocuses are budding
and the quicksilver in their irises
speak of poor choices
a fatal misreading of the times
though if there are limits
to the limitless
they are drowned
in the banquet trill of the magpie
and she turns
so slowly, anyhow
she barely troubles the creases
where I have let my hand travel
like God’s cold eye
along the ragged exodus
feeling out the green, ticklish spots
the gentle frost that never lifts
the hmmmm of the little girl stuck in her throat
and the question always asked
when the end is slowly dawning on us
crisp and golden in the lattices
baby, what time is it?
Janis
hers is the beauty
old prophets once exhorted
too long in the desert
pining for that cold touch
what some call purity
others a blade
the idiot wind
how many times how many times
but I am already
turning this poem on its head
for she is not one of those
ice maidens of sepia
the fog light tavernas
of the mud-caked generations, the ashen-faced:
the gods have not been kind to her
but nor have they played their usual games
she had a good man
a good, sweet, honest man
and he stuck by her
the Lord alone knows why
for she sang of him
but never to him
sang so long and loud of him
that all the nameless suddenly had a name
Patti Smith
Morrissey
if by a gypsy you mean
a man skirting the hearth light
the spastic dance of the tv
then I am your gypsy
I have a home, Johnny
but it is not of this world
whisper of traffic on a rainy Sunday
I am that hunch you see
on the stone plinth in the trench coat
with the eyes of tarnished copper
the stiletto wind on Canal street
the echo of your guitar in the old farriers
like a tap dripping steel in the old farriers
I hardly know you
why do I bother trying
to cut this cloth for you?
tapping away on that fretboard
like the ghost of a factory child
humming my heart and soul over and over
time is not our currency –
is that what you’re trying to tell me?
live short and punchy, Steven
make shapes of their hours