Rodney Williams and the team at Catchment: Poetry of Place have produced four editions of the Catchment journal, with a fifth due for release in late 2025. Each issue features tanka plus longer forms of poetry. Catchment is published in collaboration with the Baw Baw Arts Alliance.

During 2025, the Catchment team have been expanding their offerings. On their Home Page you will see they now publish occasional essays about tanka, poetry and poetry of place. This collection of essays will continue to grow over time.

In addition, from September 2025, a new feature titled Catchment Voices has been introduced. Catchment Voices presents audio files containing readings of various poems from the first four editions of Catchment. These readings can be found under the ‘Voices’ tab on the Catchment website. The poems are also broadcast from time to time on West Gippsland community radio station 3BBR-FM.

If you click on the ‘Stream2’ tab on the Catchment Voices page, you can hear two of my poems. Sudavik, Iceland which is read by Rodney Williams and The Gate read by Peter Roberts.

Listen to Catchment Voices by clicking this link, and then ‘Stream2’

My thanks go to Rodney and Peter for recording my poems. I certainly found it very interesting to hear my own words presented in this way. The text for these poems is shown below:

Sudavik, Iceland
16 January 1995, after the avalanche

searching for life
under rubble
under ice

under darkness

the team struggles
in from the blizzard

collapsing
seeing at last
the fear

in the eyes

of the rescue
dog

The Gate

If I was to walk
down the short concrete path
between the squares of neatly
mown green grass
toward the gate with
its freshly painted steel
bars glowing white in the
sunshine like a neon sign;
if I was hear the tinkle
of the latch lifting,
feel the gate swing lightly
open, and step through,
who knows what
I might find.

Submissions for Edition 5 of Catchment close on 21 November 2025. Submission guidelines are available here.