Success with Poetry In Motion

National Poetry Week 2012 featured what regular readers would know as the Poetry Train,  An event coordinated by Fiona McIlroy, a Cafe Poet, between CountryLink Rail and Australian Poetry Limited.

20 Canberran poets boarded and frenetically scribbled poetry as the train chugged towards Sydney. these poems were read on the hour to the poets and passengers who shared the journey. This were then read at Sydney's Central Station, and Australian Poetry had organised another reading at the NSW State Library and we formed the heart of a special slam at the Friend In Hand pub in Glebe.

The poems were collected to be published within a chapbook, and each was entered into the Countrylink Poetry Prize.

My poem, 'Upon Looking Back' was chosen by noted poet Charlotte Clutterbuck to be the recipient of the Countrylink Poetry Prize.

You can read the AP Poetry In Motion article here.

Upon Looking Back

I sat backwards as the train took off

it felt like

coming home/not leaving

the trees moved backward

the clouds rolled backward

rushing towards Canberra

not Sydney

The passengers looked forward to what was ahead

I mulled the past

The sign:

LARENEG

GNITIAW

MOOR

What else moved in reverse?

I thought perhaps/that just maybe/possibly/seems weird

But I was travelling backwards

through time?

things seemed less

modern.

strange and older.

I had no watch to test the theory

No. No I was not.

just the next stop was

NAYEBNAEUQ