Top 20 Poems of ’09

One hundred and six poets submitted a poem for the inaugural Cricket Poetry Award competition, in which twenty were selected to be publicly read by actors on the 1st Oct 2009.

Based on the reading and crowd response, the last four poems were chosen and re-read the following week on the 8th Oct at the Cricket Art Prize opening – SCG, Members Pavilion.

The judges, Adam Gibson and Jessica Halloran mentioned that a great majority of the one hundred and six poems were of a very high standard. As such, they had a very challenging time when reading and re-reading all poems; having to make some very hard decisions in the end to get the field down to twenty for the first public reading; then select the last four for the reading at the Cricket Art Prize opening.

Adam and Jessica were particularly attracted to poems that “…spoke about how cricket was interwoven with life in an unforced and natural manner…”

Andy Kissane’s “The Catch” won the inaugural Cricket Poetry Award in 2009.

His poem eloquently describes the many thoughts and feelings that run through a persons mind when faced with the challenging situation of taking a ‘rainmaker’ (a high up-and-under).

“The Catch” by Andy Kissane (winner)

Standing under a rainmaker that is falling towards
your waiting hands, it’s surprising how much crosses
your mind – how you’d like to pash with Cathy McBride
behind the grandstand after the game, how the coach said
Mental Toughness was the key to Success, how catches
win matches and Doug Walters served in Vietnam
because he loved his country. How if your marks
don’t improve you won’t be allowed to play cricket again
for the rest of the summer, how the Kookaburra hangs
in the air like a baggy green you hope to wear
and then spinning closer, looks like all the mistakes
you’ll ever make in life and slips through your cupped
fingers in slow motion, before rolling to rest,
right there, at your feet on the sun burnt grass.

“The Last Test” by John Gordon (one of the last four)

Eight o’clock. The warm night creeps in.
The ball flies from his hand to the tree,
And back again.
He counts them off.
‘Fifty-eight, Fifty-nine’.
Behind him in the house,
The rest of his life is falling apart.
‘Nine for sixty; sixty-one’.
It’s the Ashes. Down to the wire.
The Oval. Fifth Test. Last day.
The series started at dawn.
Two-all. One hundred and twelve to win.
His Mum is leaving.
She told him last night.
She’ll send for him when she finds somewhere.
Hand to tree, ‘one hundred and ten’
And back again.
What a fight back.
When all seemed lost.
The rubber ball hits the bark crevice; Edge!
It flies at an absurdly acute angle.
Dive; fly through the air, fingers stretch.
Hit the ground.
Out!
It’s over.
The crowd is stunned.
The dark home is silent.
He lies, arm outstretched.
And tears come.

“The Siblings” by Maree Peterson (one of the last four)

White shorts and white tees
Small boys of mixed abilities.
All share the gear, all keen to bat.

And there’s a girl.

Memorable game
facing the prep boys,
Eleven little ‘Pontings’
in monogrammed kit.

The girl gets a hat trick.

Wickets get longer.
Rules get tougher.
Head down, boys hold off tears;
It’s a long walk.

Now that out means out.

Into long whites with their own bats,
The girl keeps up with her brother.
Batting a ball in a sock, hanging from a tree.

Wet days ‘The Ashes’ on DVD.

She’s picked for their region;
playing in a woman’s league;
He’s Captain for school, for the club he’s a senior.

They’re both going on tour.

Cricket is in their DNA.
It’s shaped who they are.
He’s batted twice his 100; she’s been robbed at 97…

We feel for them when they’re given.

‘Cos out still means out.
-The Parents

“Social Cricket, the Universe and Everything” by Graeme Philipson (one of the last four)

They call it ‘Social Cricket’ as if it’s just a fling
As if there’s not more to it, no more than other things.
But they also say that ‘life’s a game’, or that ‘love is in the mind’
We make light of many things, it seems, it’s the way that we’re inclined.

But if our cricket’s only ‘social’, then Shakespeare was just a hack
And Bonaparte a soldier boy, Hippocrates a quack
Einstein described mere trifles, Scott strolled out in the snow
There’s more to bat and ball and stumps than we can ever know.

Not everything is called the same as what it really means
Some say that cricket’s nothing but a game between two teams.
And ‘social’? Sure, but so is birth, and death, and all between
I say, if cricket’s just a game, then life is just a dream.

“For Six” by Ron Moss

A Cricket Haiku Sequence

sun shower
a red smudge widens
on the bowler’s whites

record heat
a spectator claps
from his paddling pool

bowler’s run-up
orange skins-glow
in the twilight

silly mid-off
a cloud of sandflies above
the batman’s head

summer moon
moths bigger than stars
in the commentary box

last wicket
a bowler runs a finger
over the seam

“Heroes of Cricket” by Joan E. Collins

Australia’s colonial days
When cricket led the way
Brought smiles and tears
And many who jeered
To this challenging sporting game

The Ashes Era opened in 1881
England defeated Australia won
And to this day
Where matches are played
This is the sport where heroes are made

And so began another match
Green is the oval, and cricket patch
Teams of eleven walked briskly down
An easy game played on home ground
The toss of a coin the games underway.

Delivered in a flash the ball hits the bat
Up and over the batman strikes back,
Shouts all around, the ball is caught
Down the leg side is what was thought
Stunned in silence an appeal was heard.

Overruled by the man in white
His imposing finger raised in sight
The lonely man turns bat in hand
Walks back to the pavilion, past his fans
Hears nothing, sees no one.

“D.I.Y” by P.S. Cottier

In the backyard I was always David Gower.
I opted for an easy nonchalance,
the sweep you could weep for, the air cut
with a wooden knife of sudden elegance,
(when it could be bothered to dance the dance).
Truth is, I couldn’t bat al all, but that
is merely a fact. In the suburb of dreams,
I was graceful and quick and David Gower.

Why would anyone opt to be Dennis Lillee?
Grunt-powered, facial hair fallen to chest
where it grew to rain-forest, sweat-sprinkled.
There was nothing of the lily about him;
nothing quiet or lovely or sweet-scented
(although he always bowled as if he meant it).
Yet everyone else chose this dubious flower,
right-handed terror to my imaginary Gower.

“A Rich, Rewarding Innings” by David Campbell

My Dad had cricket in his bones,
it was his one religion;
he spoke of it in awe-stuck tones…
of Punter, Warnie, Pigeon.

The Ashes were his Holy Grail,
the SCG his altar,
while Richie Benaud could not fail,
and Wisden was his psalter.

On long-ago, hot childhood days
I’d go to watch him playing.
He loved the game, lived by its ways,
and I recall him saying:

‘It’s taught me well, so listen, son…
your life is just like cricket.
Play hard but fair, don’t miss a run,
and never waster your wicket!’

He died last year at ninety-nine;
from humble, proud beginnings
he built a score, he walked the line…
a rich, rewarding innings.

I like to think he’s out there still
when summer days are nearing,
with Yabba on the Sydney Hill…
both on their feet and cheering.

“Different Strokes” by Brian Hallewell

Forty-five degrees of cracking outback heat
Shimmer above the dusty polo ground nearby.
In the dilapidated stand, his dutiful fiancée feigns interest,
As she alternates between her knitting -
And her newest Agatha Christie.

Old Hec thunders in,
Determined to dislodge this precocious newcomer.
Fine leg digs burrs from his hand and elbow;
Decorations from a fruitless boundary chase a ball ago.

“Yes!” yells Hec’s nemesis;
And scampers through for the one to make his fifty.
He turns, bat aloft, seeking approval from the shadows of the stand -
But Agatha proves much more absorbing.

Forty-five years later, he exasperates about what might have been -
But for ‘the beach’ at The Oval.
Trudging into the bedroom, he laments,
“The Ashes are gone!”
“What a shame,” comes the sleepy, sympathetic reply.

“Rubbish day, tomorrow. Are the bins out?”
And another half-read novel slips through the covers to the floor.

“Dream Catcher” by Kane Murphy

Adrift in an ocean of grass
each blade supports his endeavour,
If he cannot make this fatal catch
he won’t live it down
Never.

Slipping, stumbling, trembling, fumbling
curse this dreaded weather!
Team mates shroud imprudent thoughts
resurrecting their saviour
Together.

Thousands of muscles spring into action
now befalls forever,
Worries quashed by frantic manners
fears are undisclosed
Clever.

Moore Park stops in its tracks
he swears he can taste the leather,
The moot Sydney crowd empty their seats
his body as light as a
Feather.
‘Surely he cannot make the catch!’
‘Surely his limbs will sever!”
Forty-six thousand strong rejoice
His team mates never doubted him
Whatsoever.

“Listenng to the ABC” by Ian Billows

March 2009….memories of almost 40 years ago are with me…

We holidayed at the beach;
played cricket on the sand,
just above the tide’s reach.

‘It’s time for bed!’ she said.

Cocooned beneath the sheets with my tranny and a torch -

McGilvray calls the score.
Sheahan returns with the ball.
Richards and Pollock batter us all.

Tired Ausssies in the field.
Lawry and Chappell make their appeal.
The series is a debacle;

A tour on top of a tour,
Our boys sent to the cleaners,
Administrators shown up as wowsers.

Tonight by the radio history will not repeat
with both legs almost complete,

But this last test at Newlands seems all the same
as those almost forgotten games;

Even with the changes of name
we’re getting hammered again:

4 for 174 (2nd innings)
the deficit: 268

They’ve only batted once….

“Camphor Laurel” by Maggie Shapley

This house now seems impossibly small
for seven of us, ‘almost a cricket team’,
even with two extensions squaring off
the cricket pitch where Mum planted the spindly
camphor laurel against the westerly sun.

It did for cricket stumps except she’d water
and muddy the crease, where we’d mark out our line
like Chappell did on TV. When Jim was clean-bowled,
just the once, branches and curse flew:
she declared the game over, the pitch out-of-bounds.

Thirty years later, the wicket blossoms
in extravagant clusters over the tiles,
shading the room where all of us slept in bunks,
outside, a battered abandoned bat leans
against the regulation-width trunk.

“The Beautiful Game” by Louise McKenna

Today, the outfield

is the limitless green of the Pacific,

the wicket, a gold sandbar. What

you glimpsed in your camcorder’s view

as a carmine bolt

of lightning, is this delivery.

Now in replay, you can magnify

and decelerate the ball’s meteoric

arc and apocalyptic

landfall, sand

erupting where it pitches.

And you notice the

hunger in the batsman’s eyes as

he preys upon it, then slices it

cleanly off the blade of the bat,

sending it into infinity. Then you

are shown the fielder, waist-

deep in water, arms pleading

for a catch, and the elation slowly dawning

on his daughter’s face, as if she

has captured a star.

“No Rockets” by Lydia Burke

Wrist bent like tortured tree limbs, tongue hooked to the right,
A daughter faces father for the last ball of the night.
As thronged feet start their run up, I falter just a tad,
Allowing panic to takeover as I cry ‘no rockets, dad!’

These games had no schedule, no season and no score,
A lost ball discovered simply meant the match was on once more.

We no longer share a roof, or indeed, share much it’s true,
And where the pitch once lay is now a rented four by two.
Our meetings read like catalogues; Fathers Day and Christmas too.
Dancing on the surface, as the best acquaintances do.

Yet through another silence, and efforts of pretence,
The Boxing Day test match crackles through the neighbour’s fence,
Soon we’re reminiscing on the exciting games we had,
And I look at him, my father, and sincerely say ‘no rockets, dad’.

“Fantasy for White” by Rachael Treasure

Zinc cream haze on freckles.

That’s me on The Hill.

Terry-towelling hat.

Wheat-blonde hair.

Breast just buds

70′s summer of love awakened with spilled-beer perfume.

Wobbly-booted yobbos, fizzing ring-pull cans.

The crisp ‘tock’ of ball on bat in the chasm of my chest.

Solar plexus bliss.
Us kids entertain the boozers, stacking tinnies pyramid-high.

Blokes clatter our Cascade kingdom.

Hoo-haaing in their Alvin Purple world.

Dad draped over his esky as if it were mum. Tranny to his ear.
My life grew green and white with blu-tacked men on bedroom walls.

Knights wield willow swords.

Sports-Gods, sunscreen-smeared.

Homework forgotten.
Now, The Hills is my heat-mirage of summer-youth.

Those Ashes men could be my son.

But can I soak your whites?

Just to breathe the musk of liniment and mown grass.

Forever a girl, and fantasy for white.

“Junior ‘Tragics’ “ by Jo Burnell

Team-mates shiver
Shifting foot to foot
Any other sport would cancel
Instead we watch and hope.

Clouds lighten
Smattering of blue appear
Darkness looms in the distance
Sleepy officials inspect the pitch
Brooms cause tsunamis
An optimistic hammer pounds.

Game on?
Ten minutes remain
Players tiptoe across soggy turf
A warm-up game begins
Bowlers offer slow balls
Batsmen block, feeding to fieldsmen.

Three minutes left
The skies open
Adults take cover, but boys play on
The pitch re-floods
White blobs slide down windscreens
Hail.

Warm air kisses cold through glass
Windows fog
Boys wait and hope
‘When this lot passes?’

Ten minutes past the scheduled time
Rain hammers on
Ice melts. Windscreens clear
But the stumps are gone.

Opponents head home
Yet our boys hover
‘Maybe tomorrow?’
‘Sorry, boys. It’s a washout.’
Bags thump
Car boots slam.

‘Hey!’
Heads lift
‘The Test is on T.V.
Let’s GO!’

“Mind Games” by Megan Jordan

If my childhood was set to a musical track,
The beat would pound out with a leathery “thwack”.
Eight to the bar, thumped out in balls,
Incessant, relentless, a rhythm that palls.

The whole lot was played in a high, droning pitch,
Pocked with crescendos rabid and rich.
Wild exultations then groans of despair,
Appeals to the umpire cutting the air.

When day’s play was over..it wasn’t for me,
The music bowled on and was served up for tea
Ceaseless discussions on technique and form
Re-hashes, re-caps and replays were the norm.

Then out to the yard with caps, ball and bat,
And as darkness descended the cries of “howzat”
Echoed down gullies, cleared birds from the thickets,
The volume as loud as in match-winning wickets.

In the long days of summer no peace could I find,
The voice of McGilvary scratched tracks in my mind.

“Cricket at Seaforth” by Kassandra Ellison

Those were days that went and did not last
In a quiet street with hardly any cars going past
We played out the back the fence was the border
Rows of commission houses were in disorder,
One of the boys, a neighbour would shout,
“Let’s play cricket, get the bat, ball, wickets out”.
The backyard becoming a field,
The catchers almost kneeled,
Greg once had the bat,
He would hit it, so exact
Until the ball bound over a fence,
And broke a window, everyone was tense,
His mum came out, “what was that noise?”
They stopped the game, all of the boys
With his head hung low,
He said, “I broke the window”,
We would play also in the laneway or hall,
Mum paid the damage; he changed to a plastic ball,
Children in the street would all get together,
Until later grown-up, nothing was forever.

“Cradle to the Grave – A Five Test Series” by Tim Slade
There was a Swing Bowler of Perth
Who heard his wife (pregnant with mirth)
Call: “Darl, don’t race!
Just vary your pace
‘Till the Fremantle Doctor gives birth!”

A Father of Indented Head,
Very given to proverb once said:
”Only the good die young -
But don’t worry, son,
We’ll play a game of cricket, instead.”

There was a Young Lady of Tring
Who did the most surprising thing:
After marrying her man
She leapt to the sand
To play cricket in her wedding ring!

A Middle-Aged Man of Sebastopol
Blocked to keep down his cholesterol:
Yet, all he could manage
Was a low batting average -
And the occasional shifting of testicles.

An Injury-Prone Player of Hell
Said: “This shall not sound my death knell!
Amongst mortal men
I’ll play agen:
But for now: I’m not feeling so well.”

“Ashes to Ashes (a cricket emergency)” by Joan Ross

You were so anxious you couldn’t even say goodbye
Where the fuck did you go?
You just disappeared, so I looked for you,

tried to catch up,

and you know that’s not my best quality.

But you were sp far on the distance when I saw your backs, walking fast
almost running,
up the street,

to his car,

cause you thought you might miss the start of it.

For a minute I felt a bit lonely, cause we’d been together all day
And you took my beautiful friend as your accomplice.

And left me,

So I texted,
What,
Was there a cricket emergency or something?