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… Read More Catchment Voices
Edition 4 of Catchment: Poetry of Place was released in June 2025. The online journal publishes tanka and longer forms of poetry relating to locations within Australia and elsewhere. Edition 4 included a poem of mine about Central Park in New York City. Central Park needs no introduction, having featured in countless movies including Breakfast… Read More Central Park, New York City
Edition 2 of the online journal Catchment – Poetry of Place was published in June 2024. Catchment publishes tanka and longer poems that convey a sense of location. Many of the poems are inspired by scenes and experiences within Australia, though there are always a number of poems relating to other countries. I was pleased… Read More Catchment – Poetry of Place: Edition 2
Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was an American realist painter. Many of his paintings feature subdued urban scenes containing one or two figures in a contemplative pose. A Hopper painting often conveys a sense that the image is merely one scene within a larger a story that’s unfolding, or about to unfold. Given the narrative quality of… Read More All the World’s a Stage
The organisers of the Trailblazer Contest have challenged writers to use haiku, or tanka, in new and unusual ways. They’ve challenged writers to incorporate the essence of these Japanese forms into contemporary poetry that is fresh and innovative. You can visit the Trailblazer Contest website here. I was fortunate to have one of my haiku… Read More Haiku Trailblazer Contest
Bob Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. Sixty years ago, his songs didn’t just include literary and philosophical references, they also addressed political and social issues which saw them become anthems for progressive movements of the time. As with most… Read More The Way the River Flowed
The black swan is common across large areas of southwestern and eastern Australia. As I was watching the quiet progress of one such bird on Yerrabi Pond in Canberra, the words of this poem began to form in my mind. The poem was subsequently published in Issue 7 of the Sydney-based online journal, Authora Australis.… Read More Black Swan
The Poetry Editor and publisher of StylusLit, Rosanna Licari, kindly selected my poem, Radiant Arrows, to appear in Issue 13 of the journal. StylusLit is an online literary journal that publishes poetry, short stories, interviews and reviews. You can read Issue 13 here. Radiant Arrows was written in response to the painting, Composition, by Lyubov… Read More Radiant Arrows
Gregory Piko 