prod! poets ride online dangerously

Red Dot a stop-motion video responding to Josephine Rowe's poem Red Lights for prod! Supported by media@rmit and the Australian Poetry Centre

Red Lights

by Josephine Rowe

(A stanza from the poem - Red Lights)

1.

Melbourne, it was a little red light

sewn under your skin.

From thirty k’s distance

we could still make it out.

Sitting on the rooves of our parents’ cars

in outer suburbia

we watched it winking,

traced it along the lit veins of your highways,

in and out of traffic, past the docks and

down blind alleys where everything

that had been said and sold and bought and done

in the lost hours of a hundred and fifty years of Saturday nights

had seeped into the cold stone and left it wanting.

From thirty k’s distance,

from as far away as childhood,

it was a little red light

moving under you skin

and we were all meant to be someone else by now.

Melbourne, you promised.

An underwater video responding to Gemma White’s poem - The Mariner’s Lover for prod! Supported by media@rmit and the Australian Poetry Centre.

The Mariner's Lover

by Gemma White

It is not possible. Seas have upheaved upon us.

It is not a surprise; I saw the new tide coming.

It scared me from the first idle rip-wave. You couldn’t

look that far ahead. It was too misty, you said. Besides,

you could not tell which way you would drift. And you wanted

to be billowed by any coming breeze, whirled into the eye of

any ocean twister, following the tailfins, of any bejeweled sea heiress.

For me it is different. I can no longer give anchor to this mirage

of feeling. The albatross has flown. I thought, shooting it down

could only bring me grief, but its death is a herald of relief, feathered

hope whispering in, like discarded seagull plumes. He is touching me

in the subtle dip and meet, of calami alighting water; free. My ancient love,

I have lost your compass. And it seems, you have lost me.

Search for Soul a stop-motion video responding to Jessica Raschke's poem Bustles for prod! Supported by media@rmit and the Australian Poetry Centre

Bustles

by Jessica Raschke

As nervous fingers thumb the pads

As jostling arms seek airs to swallow

The lingering wishes for spaciousness

Are denied their chance in this hustle blitz

I wish

To stomp the earth in solitude

I wish

To wake free of white noisiness

Unsound

Unkempt

Impossible

My mind it sprawls in search of yours

Amid the ranges of bustled hordes

What wakefulness is promised me

Among glittering life saviours?

I am told, once more, consoled:

A slapping chorus awaits your heart

The search for soul

Breaks down

At last