Page content © Julian Wood
Julian Wood is a Sydney-based poet and academic. He was born in London and moved to Australia in the early 1990’s. He has been writing poetry for four decades. In his early days he was part of the Morley College group of poets based in South London. Although his poems are mostly written ‘for the page’, in recent times he has enjoyed reading his work aloud at the WordInHand poetry night at the Friend In Hand in Glebe.
He mainly writes short lyric poems. His interest is in catching the fleeting moments and small glimpses that are hidden in everyday life. Julian lives in the inner West of Sydney. He also dabbles in cartooning and the making of short films.
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Here are some of Julian's poems...
Spider
I don’t know where you came from
(Other spiders presumably),
but suddenly there you were,
A small blackberry of venom,
visible through the Venetians,
hiding in the light.
I got over the shock of you,
and even came to appreciate
your cannibalistic calm,
and taking care of business
when prey protested.
I must admit I felt alarmed
when you bred
(seemingly out of no one),
And filled the frame
with your new black dominions.
But now you’ve eaten your babies,
and cleared the way
for your candy-floss-webbed old age,
(How long can you crouch? A month? A year?)
I have scrapped my chemical weapons.
You could have killed me too
with just a casual nip. I know that.
A balance of power exists between us,
which it would be tactless to disturb.
Ode to Joy
Here’s to Joy who spilled and clattered into my lecture
And then my life. Survivor and seductress.
Joy, brighter than the rest
Who sat in my eye line waiting to be noticed
Joy, who kissed me in the car park on that first time
And said “no strings” as if we were puppets starting a revolution
Joy, whose hand stroked my hand stroking hers,
In a pyramid of invitation.
Joy, who bought her abundant vegetables grown
In her ex-husband’s garden
Joy, whose lightly sprung curls
Caught the winter sun on that day filming on Bondi
Joy, who stripped naked in my study at midday
And stood trembling and giggling by my desk
Joy, who coaxed me back to light
After a stone had rolled over my cave
Joy, who played with my soft cock
As if used to such reluctance
Joy, whose pale, beseeching gaze
Was a beacon searching for the shore
Joy, who damned up her tears to a torrent
And then told me all at once of the father-fucked sorrow of her life
Joy, who moved to my part of town
And said it was ‘coincidental’
Joy, from another life
Only yesterday ago.
Joy, who I don’t see in the supermarket anymore
Who lives so close but now so far.
Picnic At Hampstead Pond
The weeping willows bowed
To the weight of small birds
Who clicked in its branches
like typewriters on holiday.
Beneath it we picnicked
And got drunk and laughed.
You talked to me
Of older poets and what they’d said,
And I listened to your calm voice
Spread out over the brown pond,
To where a speckled duck chugged by
Drawing two silver threads of sunlight
In a vee from its stern.
Beyond, the Hampstead houses
dipped their heads in the water
and drank long and slow
as if in companionship.
At last the pond darkened
beneath evening clouds
And we rose to go,
Leaving behind the precious crumbs
The birds had waited all day for.
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