WILLO DRUMMOND
Dr Willo Drummond is a Sydney poet, early career researcher, sessional lecturer and supervisor in creative writing at Macquarie University. With interests spanning the ecological and cognitive humanities, her interdisciplinary research draws upon theories of distributed cognition to illuminate the performative materiality of creative writing cognition and practice. In 2020 Willo was the recipient of a Career Development Grant (poetry) from the Australia Council for the Arts. Her literary and scholarly writing is published in Australia and the United States, and her debut poetry collection is forthcoming with Puncher & Wattmann in 2023.
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Dr Willo Drummond is a Sydney poet, early career researcher, sessional lecturer and supervisor in creative writing at Macquarie University. With interests spanning the ecological and cognitive humanities, her interdisciplinary research draws upon theories of distributed cognition to illuminate the performative materiality of creative writing cognition and practice. In 2020 Willo was the recipient of a Career Development Grant (poetry) from the Australia Council for the Arts. Her literary and scholarly writing is published in Australia and the United States, and her debut poetry collection is forthcoming with Puncher & Wattmann in 2023.
TURNING
after Image 6, Kristen Lang’s 'Touching the Dark' and Sheila Heti's Motherhood
This persistent undoing. Pendulate
folding, ceramic
bowl of cerulean knowing. [Fragile. This Way Up.]
I see your face in there. Shadowy
specter threading all
vision. Certainty
turns in a day. Cells transform
between nice to see you
and 'later. On Friday:
firebrick only (going forward). A fierce
determination. By Tuesday:
tourmaline, the only truth. I witness
an insistent spin
into myself. Collapse the mold
to begin. At the wheel
a [re-]turning, and all of us seeking
our own hands in the dark, imperceptibly
enacting departure—
Body Mapping Inside the Arachnoid Disco
Life is jumping at the Callosal Commissure
longitudinal fissure, luminous
hall of mirrors. Citrus days / splice
indigo nights, oranges
and apples paint hemispheric
fields. Always more than
ones and zeroes, in this fine philosophy. I
and I and I... anybody... no onei
to: think, feel, hear, see
the nerve! Remember: trace, move, transpire
(Right [Ctrl] left left [Ctrl] right).
It’s all about
‘aboutness’ here,
cakewalk at four lobed disco; constant
cartography catching the essence of everything—
all night long, all night—ii
Past the junction, emergence is full
of fluffy hope, the flush hues of a landscape
like a salmon morning;
love, lust, longing, languid
days lace across
mater, through matter (I and I matter
without choosing to matter).
A matter of mater
this matter, a spattering
of technicolor, light fantastic
tripping cellular jelly.
Shapeshifter: omniscient
town-crier of two-way dance, teller
of tales, collector of story
chemical body whisperer.
Lyrebird of corporeal
communion, I and I mimic
each flow of body weather
move with the music
of the spheres, spongy
cauliflower calling:
I am home (let me tell you)
I am here (let me show you)
I am
i With acknowledgement to Denise Levertov, “People at Night” and
Rainer Maria Rilke “People by Night”.
ii Lionel Richie.
after Image 6, Kristen Lang’s 'Touching the Dark' and Sheila Heti's Motherhood
This persistent undoing. Pendulate
folding, ceramic
bowl of cerulean knowing. [Fragile. This Way Up.]
I see your face in there. Shadowy
specter threading all
vision. Certainty
turns in a day. Cells transform
between nice to see you
and 'later. On Friday:
firebrick only (going forward). A fierce
determination. By Tuesday:
tourmaline, the only truth. I witness
an insistent spin
into myself. Collapse the mold
to begin. At the wheel
a [re-]turning, and all of us seeking
our own hands in the dark, imperceptibly
enacting departure—
Body Mapping Inside the Arachnoid Disco
Life is jumping at the Callosal Commissure
longitudinal fissure, luminous
hall of mirrors. Citrus days / splice
indigo nights, oranges
and apples paint hemispheric
fields. Always more than
ones and zeroes, in this fine philosophy. I
and I and I... anybody... no onei
to: think, feel, hear, see
the nerve! Remember: trace, move, transpire
(Right [Ctrl] left left [Ctrl] right).
It’s all about
‘aboutness’ here,
cakewalk at four lobed disco; constant
cartography catching the essence of everything—
all night long, all night—ii
Past the junction, emergence is full
of fluffy hope, the flush hues of a landscape
like a salmon morning;
love, lust, longing, languid
days lace across
mater, through matter (I and I matter
without choosing to matter).
A matter of mater
this matter, a spattering
of technicolor, light fantastic
tripping cellular jelly.
Shapeshifter: omniscient
town-crier of two-way dance, teller
of tales, collector of story
chemical body whisperer.
Lyrebird of corporeal
communion, I and I mimic
each flow of body weather
move with the music
of the spheres, spongy
cauliflower calling:
I am home (let me tell you)
I am here (let me show you)
I am
i With acknowledgement to Denise Levertov, “People at Night” and
Rainer Maria Rilke “People by Night”.
ii Lionel Richie.