Download PDF Here
14th Anniversary Edition, Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Three Nov-Dec 2023.
And you away, in desert scenes, poem by Esther Ottaway.
And you away, in desert scenes
This prompting day, the first of spring,
which past the winter’s caution leans:
a sun both gold and fresh as cream,
the grass full green in backlit blades.
Our breeze-rubbed river jags and gleams.
The scarpered gait of native hens
can-canning territory routines
down claw-worn paths through arcing reeds.
Joy-cries of big gulls, biking kids,
a toddler in a tutu dress –
and I have lived within four walls.
Bright oyster shells make opal signs.
My heart half hesitates, half dreams.
© Esther Ottaway
Esther Ottaway’s poems have been shortlisted in the international poetry prizes, the Montreal, Bridport, MPU International, and Mslexia, and she has won the Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry, the Tom Collins Poetry Prize, the Queensland Poetry Festival Ekphrasis Award and other prizes. Her acclaimed new collection, She Doesn’t Seem Autistic (Puncher & Wattmann), creatively illuminates the hidden experiences of women and girls on the autism spectrum, and her previous collection, Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things (Puncher & Wattmann), which explores family and its origins, motherhood, love and the loss of love, won both the Poetry category and People’s Choice in the Tasmanian Literary Awards. Often powerfully bringing to light the experiences of women, her work is widely published, including in Rattle (US) and Mslexia (UK), and anthologised in Australia and New Zealand, notably in Thirty Australian Poets (UQP).