New Poetry by Robert Verdon

shepherd’s pipe echoing

let me taste the wetness of your stones
your great walls leaping over trodden hills
and lives that have petered into nothingness
over the years before, before, before
the settling of the score
the stones wet with blood
the doll’s arm that flew off
as the sword flashed down
the policy-formation of empires
defending the might
of the lonely crown

let me sing
I am the recording angel
let me weep.


- Robert Verdon 2016

Robert Verdon belonged to Aberrant Genotype Press in Canberra from 1998-2002.

He came 2nd in the 2012 W.B. Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia, has been shortlisted in the Right Now Competition 2014, and was Highly Commended in the 2012 erbacce Prize, UK. 

His books include The Well-Scrubbed Desert (1994), Her Brilliant Career (1998), & Before we Knew this Century (2010).