Live Encounters Poetry & Writing February 2025
Sonnet for a white dress, poem by Esther Ottaway.
Sonnet for a white dress
Broderie anglaise, billows in sleeve and tier,
it makes of me a vision, cool and sweet.
I am a cloud now, crisp as twilight rain.
I am a fair woman photographed on a beach,
I hold the noble reins of a white horse,
we are equally improbable.
How my mind enjoys the dress’ ideals,
its smooth denial of life’s insistent mess.
How I long to live this way. Not for me
Earth’s detritus and entropy – I will not sit
on the half-mud beach, perspire; I’ll hold
no babies, eat no picnic. Ah, how doomed,
how false our embroidered fantasies.
See, here comes the beetroot flying.
© Esther Ottaway
Esther Ottaway is a Tasmanian/lutruwita poet, editor and mentor whose poetry has won or been shortlisted for many international and Australian prizes, including the Tom Collins, Woorilla, MPU International, Bridport, Montreal, and Mslexia. Her second book, Intimate, Low-voiced, Delicate Things, won both the $25,000 poetry prize and the People’s Choice prize in the 2022 Tasmanian Literary Awards. Her new books are She Doesn’t Seem Autistic and a landmark anthology of Australian disability writing, Raging Grace (co-edited with Andy Jackson and Kerri Shying).