On 21 December 2023, at 14:59, a terrorist armed with a ZEV AR15 military assault rifle opened fire in the upper corridors of the Philosophy Faculty at Charles University, Prague, killing fourteen and wounding twenty-five. They were students and colleagues attending lectures, taking end-of-year exams and preparing an afternoon programme of Christmas carols.

& William Blake on the Manly ferry / shirtless at bowsprit, big dipper across the Heads. / the poem sought you out, / gullscreech in wide mandala sky, a ravenous / thing. lifetimes pass though art pretends not to, a burnt stub / on manicured suburban lawn, / once, almost.

My first real encounter with John Tranter’s work, outside the miscellaneous poetry journals that somehow found their way into the local public library, came about unexpectedly enough through the efforts of John Millett, editor of the soon-to-be-defunct Poetry Australia.

raw bone scrapes / wires through bared soles of feet & tin-can telephone voice to braindead hours like windowdraught. there are killing words of pure hypnotism, too, as though a contrary fact cld alter the physics of it. they whisper constantly.

1. the task isn’t to tell the truth / but to induce in the reader / the belief that they’ve discovered it 2. only the poet finds Abyssinia inside the toe of their shoe