Live Encounters Poetry & Writing September 2025
I Am/Was, poem by Patricia Sykes.
I Am/Was
Once aboard the train
she opts for clarity
via third-person mode
she begins 30 minutes
ago at her own front door
her keys on the bookcase
her verified ticket
safely tucked away
in her shoulder bag
as the forest flashes by
her mind rustles among
the morning’s nuances
her fingers on the piano keys
the sharps, the flats, the chords
the improvised melodies
a note here and there slightly
out of tune, recording it all
like an obsessive diary
one life, she whispers, one life
remembering much younger
mid-winters when her feet
danced so easily across
a myriad floors, mapping
contours, depths, and now
here she is again, dragging
her life’s freight behind her
suitcase after suitcase.
© Patricia Sykes
Patricia Sykes is a poet and librettist. Her poems and collections have received various awards, including the Newcastle Poetry Prize, John Shaw Neilson award and the Tom Howard Poetry Prize. She has read her work widely and it has featured on ABC radio programs Poetica and The Spirit of Things. Her collaborations with composer Liza Lim have been performed in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, Germany, Russia, New York and the UK. She was Asialink Writer in Residence, Malaysia, 2006. A selection of her poems was published in an English/Chinese edition by Flying Island Books in 2017. A song cycle composed by Andrew Aronowicz, based on her collection The Abbotsford Mysteries, premiered at The Abbotsford Convent Melbourne — now an arts precinct — in 2019. A podcast of this work is available on various platforms.