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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing May 2023
The Poet’s wife – poem by Kate McNamara
The Poet’s wife
Jean Cocteau has said this woman
of mystery thinks she is alone
everything is real to the primitive
exposing herself to the night.
A broken bird a broken nest
all become a jungle green as
the lion asleep with the gypsy
a desert in her heart, an old
armchair becomes a lioness
about to spring facing
far away in the morning
she sees plants trees the moon.
Portrait of herself as the poet’s
landscape she will achieve the sky
become his empty space.
© Kate McNamara
Kate McNamara is a Canberra based poet, playwright and critical theorist. Her plays have been performed internationally. McNamara delivered the opening address to the Fourth International Conference of Women Playwrights in Galway (2001). She was awarded the H.C Coombs Fellowship at ANU (1991) and elected to the Emeritus Faculty. She won The Banjo Patterson Award for her short story Verity. Her published works include Leaves, The Rule of Zip (AGP) Praxis and The Void Zone (AGP). Her poetry, short fiction and critical theory has been published in a number of anthologies including There is No Mystery (ed. K Kituai, 1998), The Death Mook (ed. Dion Kagan, 2008) These Strange Outcrops(2020) and The Blue Nib (2020) She has also worked extensively as an editor and has only recently returned to her first great love, poetry. McNamara is currently working on The Burning Times.