Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume One
November- December 2025
Brushtails, poems by Anne Elvey.
Brushtails
if broken on
a lost coin’s
toss the air
fetid alive
the limb age
folds round
a new hollow
possumgift
to run swift
wireglance
in evening’s
eyeglimmer
body dodges
hands’ touch
Braided
for Jen
Stone against stone against stone —
building channels
where ribboning water
plaits through gravelled bed
From the slow-hastening of glacial recession
across rock
rapids resound
singing (are they singing) we’ll be lost
As I lean on the rail
I can see
why the stream’s shade of mineral-rich blue
is called ice
Last days
1
On the centre white line a magpie stands carolling while I attend
2
Sun glistens on camellia leaf amid the lift and curve of branch
3
The nurse calls with news of a pressure sore in ninety-nine-year-old skin
4
This season there is barely a blossom on the red flowering gum
5
The pink hibiscus opens under bloomless limbs heavy with gumnuts
6
Heat radiates through overcast sky and sand burns after sea’s relief
7
Ninety-nine is enough she repeats to ensure that I understand
© Anne Elvey
Anne Elvey is a poet, editor and researcher, of Irish, Scottish and English descent, currently living on unceded Bunurong Country. Her most recent poetry collections are (C)loud: A poetic response to child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church (Palaver, 2025), Intents (Liquid Amber Press, 2025), Leaf (Liquid Amber Press, 2022) and Obligations of voice (Recent Work Press, 2021). Her work spans ecological poetry and poetics, environmental and social justice, and unsettling settlerdom. Her most recent academic book is Reading with Earth: Contributions of the New Materialism to an Ecological Feminist Hermeneutics (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2023). Anne was inaugural managing editor of Plumwood Mountain journal until 2020. https://sunglintdrift.com/