Poems
Poems of Jaya’s can be found in The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, Poetry International, Contemporary Australian Poetry, Thirty Australian Poets and in nine editions of the annual Best Australian Poems, and in magazines and journals such as Poetry Review, London Magazine and PN Review (UK), Kenyon Review, Jacket2, POETRY and Poetry Daily (USA), Poesia (Italy) and throughout Australia in Australian Book Review, Cordite Review, Marrickville Pause, Meanjin, Overland, Rabbit, Southerly, Stilts and more. Here is a sample.
from Change Machine (2020)
Her late hand
An anagram poem on the handwriting of one deceased
in Weekend Australian (17 Oct 2020)
in Best of Australian Poems 2021
in Change Machine (2020)
📖 Read ‘Her Late Hand’ by Jaya Savige
‘Her Late Hand’, Weekend Australian, 17 October 2020, Review, p. 18; collected in Best of Australian Poems 2021, p. 97.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Whatever the question, the cordless
A poem on leaf blowers
in Shearsman 125-126 (Oct 2020)
in Change Machine (2020)
📖 Read ‘Whatever the question…’ by Jaya Savige
‘Whatever the Question, the Cordless’, Shearsman 125 & 126 (Oct 2020), p. 16.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Starstruck
A Stephen Hawking poem
in Rabbit Poetry Journal 31: Science (2020)
in Change Machine (2020) 📗
📖 Read ‘Starstruck’ by Jaya Savige
‘Starstruck’, Rabbit Poetry Journal, 31: Science (2020), p. 86.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Spork
A poem on hybrid vigour
in Australian Poetry Journal 9.1 (2019)
in Change Machine (2020)
📖 Read ‘Spork’ by Jaya Savige
‘Spork’, Australian Poetry Journal, 9.1 (2019), pp. 86-87.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Tristan’s Ascension
A poem on miscarriage
in Poetry Review (Winter 2019-20)
in Change Machine (2020)
[R: Bill Viola, ‘Tristan’s Ascension‘ (2005)]
📖 Read ‘Tristan’s Ascension’ by Jaya Savige
‘Tristan’s Ascension’, Poetry Review (July 2020), p. 34.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Bach to the Fuchsia
A poem on fatherhood
in Australian Book Review (Jul 2020)
in Change Machine (2020)
[Photo: JS & one-week-old son]
📖 Read ‘Bach to the Fuchsia’ by Jaya Savige
‘Bach to the Fuchsia’, Australian Book Review (July 2020), p. 34.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Carousel
An anagram poem about the night
in POETRY (Chicago) 208.2 (May 2016)
in: Change Machine (2020)
📖 Read ‘Carousel’ by Jaya Savige
‘Carousel’, POETRY (Chicago) 208.2 (May 2016), p. 117.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Magnifera
An anagram poem about mango-picking
in POETRY (Chicago) 208.2 (May 2016)
in: Change Machine (2020)
📖 Read ‘Magnifera’ by Jaya Savige
‘Magnifera’, POETRY (Chicago) 208.2 (May 2016), p. 116.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Read & Listen
🔊 Listen to Jaya reading ‘Magnifera’ and ‘Carousel’, followed by the magazine editors’ discussion, on the POETRY (Chicago) podcast.
Fort Dada
A poem on decompressing at a spa
in Kenyon Review 49.2 (Mar-Apr 2017)
in Best Australian Poems (2017)
in Change Machine (2020)
📖 Read ‘Fort Dada’ by Jaya Savige
‘Fort Dada’
Kenyon Review 49.2 (Mar-Apr 2017), 6.
Best Australian Poems (Black Inc 2017)
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Hard water
A longer poem on domestic violence*
in Meanjin (Summer 2019)
in Change Machine (2020)
*Trigger warning
📖 Read ‘Hard Water’ by Jaya Savige
‘Hard Water’
Meanjin (Summer 2019), 4-6.
Read online here.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
I was driving north to Woombye
A Sunshine Coast gothic poem
in Stilts 6 (2020)
in Change Machine (2020)
🖱️Read ‘I was driving north to Woombye’ by Jaya Savige
‘I was driving north to Woombye’, Stilts 6 (2020), Web.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Ladybugs
A poem on self-harm*
in Poetry Review (Winter 2019-20)
in Change Machine (2020) 📗
*Trigger warning
📖 Read ‘Ladybugs’ by Jaya Savige
‘Ladybugs’
Poetry Review 109.4 (Winter 2019), p. 61.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Hossegor
A poem on surfing & colonialism
in Island 146 (2016)
in Best Australian Poems (Black Inc 2016)
in Change Machine (2020)
📖 Read ‘Hossegor’ by Jaya Savige
‘Hossegor’,
Island 146 (2016); Best Australian Poems (2016)
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
Surveying what adheres
A poem about what sticks
in Cordite 96 (May 2020)
in Change Machine (2020)
🖱️Read ‘Surveying What Adheres’ by Jaya Savige
‘Surveying What Adheres’, Cordite Poetry Review 96 (May 2020), Web.
Enjoyed this poem? You can find it and many others in Jaya’s latest collection, Change Machine (2020). Click below to order.
… from Surface to Air (2011)
First Person Shooter
A not-very-nice poem on Wikileaks‘ Collateral Murder
in PN Review 37.6 (Jul-Aug 2011)
in Contemporary Australian Poetry (2016)
in Surface to Air (2011)
📖 Read ‘First Person Shooter’ by Jaya Savige
‘First Person Shooter’ in PN Review 37.6 (Jul-Aug 2011), 59.
in Contemporary Australian Poetry (2016)
in Surface to Air (2011).
Crisis
A poem on playing Missile Command as a child
in Surface to Air (2011)
📖 Read ‘Crisis’ by Jaya Savige
Crisis
Once I was entrusted with a planet. I was a child in a sweltering house. All the world's peace was up to me, Quiet, crosslegged before the mouse. The planet was a cinerous grey and when the missiles rained their trails shone like space's vivid blood streaming where the darkness had been cut. I cupped a palm and caught in it the wild congealing light, so that it wouldn't spill and burn the planet and all the coughing creatures living on it.
in Surface to Air (2011)
Circular Breathing
A poem on hearing a didgeridoo in Rome
in Heat 14 (2007)
in Best Australian Poems (2008 Black inc)
in Contemporary Asian Australian Poets (2013)
in Contemporary Australian Poetry (2016)
in Surface to Air (2011)
📖 Read ‘Circular Breathing’ by Jaya Savige
‘Circular Breathing’, Heat 14 New Series (2007), 75.
Best Australian Poems (2008 Black inc)
Contemporary Asian Australian Poets (2013)
Contemporary Australian Poetry (2016)
Collected in Surface to Air (2011)
Summer Fig
A poem on subtropical lassitude
in Weekend Australian (20 Mar 2010)
in Best Australian Poems (Black Inc. 2010)
in PN Review 37.6 (Jul-Aug 2011)
in Thirty Australian Poets (UQP 2011)
in Surface to Air (2011) 📗
📖 Read ‘Summer Fig’ by Jaya Savige
‘Summer Fig’
Weekend Australian, 20 Mar 2010, Review
The Best Australian Poems 2010 (Black Inc. 2010)
PN Review 37.6 (Jul-Aug 2011), 39.
Thirty Australian Poets (UQP 2011)
… from latecomers (2005)
Desires Are Already Memories
A poem of mourning
in latecomers (2005)
📖 Read ‘Desires Are Already Memories’ by Jaya Savige
Desires Are Already Memories
I have come to expect too much of the ocean. The tide is out again researching the month. Somewhere to the north lies a heart-shaped reef – here, a scarab mid-hegira from its burning island home clutches in death a charred Banksia leaf, bloated and afloat only because of its legs’ grim marriage with the leaf’s serrated edge. And now I recognise in its tough, unprisable grip, the grasp and clutch and grab and quip of everyone who’s ever known what it means to not let go the only thing to come their way amid the salt scrim and vicious sprint of the wind. A union, then, with leaves and other small commuters on the gust of some apparent consequence; for, what we seek to hold to when the world has loosed its hold on us may be what prevents us from never having been. So the wind discloses what we cannot relinquish, even in death, then carries us from our hearths to foreign beaches, there to hit upon what we must, what it means to be alone, at last – even if only another island in the bay? Sadness comes in a wave: the ocean has no stake in this, betrays no particular desire, nor any to remember – perhaps begrudging each our tiny fire.
Note: This poem takes its title from a phrase in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.
The Master of Small Violences
A poem about clearing ants from a Queensland kitchen
in latecomers (2005)
in The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (2009)
📖 Read ‘The Master of Small Violences’ by Jaya Savige
‘The Master of Small Violences’, in latecomers (2005). Appears in The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (2009).
Investment
A pistol shot to the moon
in latecomers (2005)
📖 Read ‘Investment’ by Jaya Savige
Investment
I dare you to buy someone’s art then murder them so the price goes up.
in latecomers (2005)
The Dreamworld Murders
A poem about dreaming you know where the body is buried
in ‘Poetry Crimes’, Red Room Poetry (2006)
in latecomers (2005)
🖱️ Read ‘The Dreamworld Murders’ by Jaya Savige
The Dreamworld Murders
I If you like I will take you to him. The moment I saw his body on the news, I suspected myself of murder. I will take you to the swamp with the concrete blocks, along the bmx track dogs chase your bike down, and show you the black water where his face sings still. II Who funded these tunnels? Who cut these stairs into the cliff face? And where would all the water go without these weirs? She is heavy in this water. She is heavy on these stairs. III Step with me into the massacre of shadows, my carport, where thick sweaty ogres of darkness elbow unremittingly. I caught you earlier, prostrate before the matron of the moon. I overheard you asking to be spared. Step with me into the car and I shall spare you. IV Spiders camp in her mouth. Time’s bride yawning in her wedding webs. Roll her over to see the young feed on her spine. What flame through the enfilade? Hurry, someone approaches! Put things back the way they were! It must appear as though we were never here… V (death by naming) Behind the brick wall a dead tree whose leaves are hundreds of vagrant butterflies. This then is the wardrobe where the darkness begins, and out there are the many things the summer day discloses, things the light touches and lends existence to. Here I hold your name the way a spider tends an exhausted glasswing, but it slips from my web and shatters on the cement into a thousand tiny eulogies. VI I swear the weapon is around here somewhere, deep in the burgeoning suburb of the past. I intend to spend my last days here, fossicking. Only the rumour of the ocean, its dark unsolvable crime, and the sky littered with clues that corroborate my alibi. VII I have been weak, but now my strength returns. Someone else’s comics in the letterbox – planes blink in place of correspondence. In the red house across the road: a family of raw meat. There the world’s last sidekick lies unconscious. VIII One by one you killed-off all your fathers. The flexibility of bamboo – you choose to wear no uniform. A small faceless animal faces me. A corpse in loose cerements on the back seat of the getaway car IX Pastures of nightshade. The rain’s faint pulse. The pain of knowing objects fades – in the end we do not need them. X Death is in the bone the wind picks with the leaves. You’ve come so far to discover all this could be blown away in one unimaginable gust. Time becomes a simple case of being backed-up against the wall of death, an indefinite series of last chances. Death comes soon enough which must be worse – for then one’s forced to say that yes, they were lost who did not know their way among the vanishing.
Final poem in latecomers (2005)
Appears in Red Room Poetry, ‘Poetry Crimes’ (2006)
Read & Listen
🔊 Listen to Jaya reading ‘The Dreamworld Murders’ for Red Room Poetry
Image Credits
Background images: Jr Korpa on Unsplash & Sean Mungur on Unsplash.
Photos for ‘Bach to the Fuchsia’, ‘Hard Water’ and Hossegor’ © Jaya Savige. All rights reserved. ‘Her Late Hand’ – photo from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta or The Model Book of Calligraphy (1561-1596) by Georg Bocskay and Joris Hoefnagel. Original from The Getty. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel‘; ‘Starstruck’ photo by Vincentiu Solomon on Unsplash; ‘Spork’ photo by Partysquare; ‘Tristan’s Ascension’ still photo from Bill Viola, Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall) (2005); ‘Carousel’ photo by Anna Anikina on Unsplash;‘Magnifera’ photo by Rajendra Biswal on Unsplash; ‘Fort Dada’ photo by Hanna Postova on Unsplash; ; ‘I was driving north to Woombye’ photo by Megan Thomas on Unsplash; ‘Ladybugs’ photo by Laura Vinck on Unsplash; ‘Surveying What Adheres’ photo by lackqueline @ ebay; ‘First Person Shooter’ screenshot from Wikileaks’ Collateral Murder; ‘Crisis’ photo of Missile Command (1980) by Atari from Polygon; ‘Circular Breathing’ photo by Karim Ghantous on Unsplash; ‘Summer Fig’ photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash; ‘Desires Are Already Memories’ photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash; ‘The Master of Small Violences’ photo by Malcolm Shadrach on Unsplash; ‘Investment’ photo by Amauri Mejía on Unsplash; ‘The Dreamworld Murders’ photo by Kahfiara Krisna on Unsplash.