Poem Post: If the sunlight had echoes

By Izzy Roberts-Orr

I moved to a cave.
I have become very small.

I scrub the walls of my cave,
and fill it with echoes
of Burt Bacharach and Beyoncé.

Like a rainbow,
like a mirage, still
I prefer to belong to myself.

Don't touch me unless I say
yes.
Yes, I say to the mountain some days,
'My god, you are beautiful!'

If the world was ever a whole and untouched place,
it hid itself somewhere in the lines on your face.

I keep the bones from what I eat
to carve into delicate weapons.

Toffee sun cracks wide the mouth of my cave,
catching motes of dust,
hurling them back at the sun like,
'I don't want this.'

If I drew you, I would draw the mountaintop.
Breathtaking, treacherous and almost
impossible to reach.

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About this poem

First published in Voiceworks #101: ‘Echo’ all the way back in 2015, this is one of the oldest poems in my debut poetry collection Raw Salt. I wrote it during my Hot Desk Fellowship time at The Wheeler Centre, and it has been republished in the fabulous new Vagabond Press 25 year anthology, Living Systems: Poetry from Asia Pacific. I’m really honoured to be part of this collection alongside so many poets I deeply admire.

Living Systems Anthology

Living Systems celebrates poetry’s unique capacity to challenge and make new our experience of the world. At the heart of this collection is a reaffirmation of poetry as essential kit, as an art form that deepens and expands how we might perceive the world and know each other.

With over 400 pages from around 170 poets and translators from Australia, Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar, Singapore, America, New Zealand, Mexico and elsewhere this remarkable anthology is one to dip into for years to come.

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La Mama Poetica: December

I’m thrilled to be speaking at the final La Mama Poetica for the year, curated by the wonderful Amanda Anastasi (who, by the way, is a brilliant poet in her own right and has just published Taking Apart the Bird Trap with Recent Work Press).

Come along to hear from Manisha Anjali who invites us into the visions and awakenings of her Indo-Fijian ancestors from the sugar plantations of ‘Naag Mountain’. Peter Bakowski uncovers real and fictious characters through delightfully sharp portraiture, as he reads from his collection ‘Our Ways on Earth’. And enter the surreal, heart wrenching dreams and rural landscapes of Robbie Coburn’s ‘Ghost Poetry’. Find out more about all the artists and venue info here.

🗓️ 8pm, Tuesday 10 December
📍 La Mama Courthouse, 349 Drummond Street Carlton
🎟️ $20-40