The Bus Stop. A Fragment
Brian Barratt has warming memories of a village bakery.
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Brian Barratt has warming memories of a village bakery.
Betty Collins's poem voices sobering thoughts on a solemn day in the Australian calendar.
Betty Collins’s poem expresses the wish that we all share, no matter how old we are, to go home.
Betty Collins's poem is imbued with natural peace.
Betty Collins’s poem mourns the death of a noble creature.
Betty Collins's poem probes the subject of sex - and allied matters.
Betty Collins’s profound poem says that “remember’’ is a better word than “sorry’’ for someone born of love and hate.
…-Oh Lord!
I wish I’d grown up to be a frog…
Betty Collins contemplates the nature of an amphibian wonder.
Betty Collins sums up a woman’s lifespan in twenty brief poetic lines.
Betty Collins provides the very words that are needed on this special day.
Ever cut a slice of bread?
Conducted an orchestra?
Changed a tire?
Driven a car?
Betty Collins spares a poetic moment or two to praise elbows. For more of Betty’s memorable poems please visit Red, Green, Red and Purple in the menu on this page.
…in a shelter of shabby shadecloth,
two thin dark men
tell stories of the Dreamtime…
While the kings and queens of world music are strutting their stuff there’s a sideshow which catches Betty Collins’s compassionate eye.
…When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter...
Betty Collins has written a sprightly riposte to Jenny Joseph’s oft-quoted lines.
Betty Collins’s sobering poem raises a question. Do you have to be good to do good?
For more of Betty's outstanding poems please click on Blue, Green, Red And Purple in the menu on this page.
Ah, but the leaves and the flowers know that a storm is on its way, as Betty Collins’s poem reveals.
Do please read more of Betty’s memorable poems by clicking on Blue, Green, Red and Purple in the menu on this page.
‘Mortify the flesh’, they cried, rapping us
on the head with the wedding rings they wore as the Brides of Christ,
and helping us do so with sharp cuts over the knuckles...
Betty Collins writes of a pain-filled convent education.
A thought, deep inside someone’s head in the darkness of some night, inchoate, slowly forming words…
Betty Collins’s poem is about beginnings.
Betty Collins’s dramatic poem recalls a mercy mission of long ago.
To read more of Betty's poems please click on Blue, Green, Red and Purple in the menu on this page.
You can feel, hear, see the day-long rain in Betty Collins’s atmospheric poem.
To read more of Betty’s poetry please click on Blue, Green, Red and Purple in the menu on this page.
Your banner is nailed to the cross of your own making...
Betty Collins directs a question at the famous whose pictures confront us every day.
Each man is an island as the prisoners march in Betty Collins’s poem. But there is a hint of hope…
No sound effects I’m afraid, but you will still find that Betty Collins’s poem for radio is very atmospheric.
Betty Collins was inspired to write this poem after reading words written by Australian performance poet Geoff Goodfellow.
Please do visit Geoff's Web site
http://www.vulgar.com.au/goodhome.html
Betty Collins’s poem muses on a mythic character, and the birth of unfaithfulness.
Betty Collins strives to convey the loss which is bigger than any words, bigger, almost, than human heart can bear.
Let out the air from tyres, open out the gates and let out the dogs, open the cages and release the birds…
Betty Collins writes of an unhibited bout of spring fever.
…Gravity suspended turns keys in locks, turns back the clock
and they laugh joyously, witlessly, for the very absurdity of it…
In Betty Collins's colourful poem the ladies in the Senior Aquarobics Class manage to turn back time…until they get out of the pool.
Continue reading "Video Clip...Old Ladies In The Swimming Pool" »
Whereas I do not love thee quite as much
As what I did before: it’s still a lot…
There's loneliness beneath the chuckle in Betty Collins's poem.
For lots more poetic gems by Betty click on Blue, Green, Red and Purple in the menu on this page.
Betty Collins's defiant poem calls on young folk to blow the clarinet, to dance, sing, rhapsodise – and legless get.
…Silent suburbs turn their backs on you…
Betty Collins's poem expresses the oppressive feelings of being alone among many.
Humans have to put a name to this miniscule four ounces of spitting yellow fluff, but the creature instinctively knows who it is. Betty Collins’s delightful poem approaches the nature of being a cat.
She came to womanhood in times when girls were gentle,
when homes were soft shelters lined with the breast feathers
of crocheted tablecloths, embroidered cushion covers,
cross-stitch traycloths under shining cups and saucers, and
big teapots warmed by little porcelain ladies wearing
huge fluted woollen crinolines…
Betty Collins’s deeply evocative poem reminds us that something as simple as a set of coathangers can revive the deep comfort of knowing one is at home.
A solitay letter. Just one letter, in all those decades. Such a letter deserved a poem to honour its arrival, and Betty Collins wrote one.
…But for me, I know exactly when it’s Spring:
It’s that moment when, suddenly one morning,
I open my wardrobe door - and there is NOTHING to put on…
For Betty Collins Spring heralds a time to go shopping.
Betty Collins’s autobiographical poem celebrates a glorious character, Minnie de Kok, a cook-general who dominated a household.
…And will there come a day when I look at your face
and see only the face of a stranger?…
Betty Collins writes of the end of memory and affection.
Betty Collins’s poem expresses a deep, deep longing to be young again.
…time is nothing but an abstraction
of our own making…
Betty Collins sets down in words what many feel, but are unable to shape into thoughts.
Those immigrants who cross the ocean change their skies alone, says Betty Collins in this perceptive poem.
“They carry with them all their usual load of woes
their usual nightmares, and their clouds that dim the sun…’’
hDeat is a natural function, says Betty Collins’s poem – “ The soft and welcome closing in of dark…’’
After the rain, after the whoosh and the swirling roar settles to a splashing, sparkling, twisting, eager, forward-facing, knowing-where-it’s-going sort of stream, after a while when a cookaburra appears…
Betty Collins writes of an idyllic time.
Betty Collins’s poem reveals that some housewives have been indoctrinated to define the world in terms of household chores.
Betty Collins’s poem suggests that now is the time for some re-building in the Australian city, Adelaide.
…I have delivered a big charitable box at the church door.
My life is an open book.
There are no more scuttling horrors behind closed doors…
Oh, the freedom that comes with a good kitchen clean-out. Whoop de doodle dooooo, crows Betty Collins.
…when dat Death Man comes a knockin’ he sure aint for sissies… Betty Collins’s poem about heart attacks is appropriately harsh and uncompromising.
No phone calls, no letters…then, salt in the wound, no new e-mail. Betty Collins’s poem concerns loneliness in an electronic age.
It’s cool to be an old lady, says Betty Collins – but is it possible to be too cool?
“My Gran makes soup in the winter
Great big pots of soup: my Gran says:
‘Nothing better than a bowl of soup when its cold’.
And she offers some to nearly everyone who comes to the door.
So embarrassing!’’ says Betty Collins.
Betty Collins writes of dainty little wheelie bins, all shining in the rain.
…Isn’t it sad if the worst you can think of
Is paddling with your skirts tucked into your bloomers…
Betty Collins’s poem says here is not really much to life.
It is so easy not to be bothered when one encounters the gardener, as Betty Collins’s poem reveals.
Betty Collins paints a word portrait of a sunset beach scene.
Is the house a fortress? A prison? Betty Collins blends four haiku into a poem that will make you think?
Oh when you loved me nights were all as day..
Betty Collins writes a villanelle about the anguish and anger of an abandoned lover.
Betty Collins writes of the false harbingers of an Australian spring.
Betty Collins writes about the wearying business of rummaging in a bin of clothes that are not “just right’’:
…They are cut to fit ladies six foot tall (and six inches wide);
Or four feet tall, and six feet wide….
Betty Collins sees something of the vampire in egrets which prowl amid the grazing cattle.
In this powerful poem Betty Collins unlocks a searing memory of a long-ago classroom punishment.
Old ladies who are dilly are not always as silly
as they pretend
Betty Collins's dilly of a poem is deliciously positive.
Betty Collins's poem expreses a sobering truth - demonstrators don't right the wrongs of the world.
Betty Collins's Christmas psalm is for this special time - and for all time.
The woman in Betty Collins's poem offers a firm instruction to the man whose intention was to steal her virtue.
"They say that closure’s what they want when someone dies...'' Betty Collins's angry poem demands that officers of the courts should bring about that closure for those who have been wronged.
Little ears listening avidly to the chatter of aunts and uncles... Betty Collins's amusing note-perfect poem recalls every child's experience.
In this moving and richly nostalgic prose-poem Betty Collins remembers an Empire Exhibition held in Johannesburg in 1936.
Betty Collins sees, beneath the tourist glitter, the dark realities of a paradise island.
Betty Collins pays poetic tribute to a wasp that came in search of cheese.
Continue reading "Ariel: To A Wasp One Fine Summer Morning" »
Betty Collins’s sensuous poem tells of a day when a cruel notice ruined what had started out to be a time of physical delight.
“It is a brown city this,’’ says Betty Collin’s poem which, though painting a picture in a single hue, makes Adelaide sound most appealing.
A derailleur is a gear-changing mechanism on a bicycle - and that's all you need to know about biking to enjoy this sprightly limerick by Betty Collins.
On a weekend when the United States is once again battered by the terrible forces of nature, Betty Collins reflects in this prose-poem on the disaster that struck the city of New Orleans.
"I could hardly breathe, believe...this wondrous thing was happening to me..'' Betty Collins writes of the joy of love - and of what follows that joy.
Auction lot books - Robinson Crusoe and Marie Corelli, Walter Scott and The Water Babies, The Jungle Book and Peter Pan... Betty Collins's poem expresses the immense joy of discovering literature.
Betty regularly writes for a hugely entertaining Web magazine:
www.bonzer.org.au
Go on! Treat yourself! Click the above link and enjoy the June edition of Bonzer!