Robert Adamson, an Australian poet, is known for his vivid imagery, raw emotions, and deep connection to nature. He mostly writes about the following topics:
Nature:
Adamson’s poems often celebrate the beauty and power of the natural world. He uses rich descriptions of landscapes, rivers, birds, and other elements of nature to evoke a sense of wonder and awe.
Personal Experience:
Many of Adamson’s poems are deeply personal, drawing from his own life experiences, struggles, and triumphs. He explores themes of love, loss, identity, and redemption with honesty and sincerity.
Australian Identity:
As an Australian poet, Adamson’s work often reflects a strong sense of place and identity. He captures the unique sights, sounds, and rhythms of Australian life, from the rugged coastline to the vast outback.
Spirituality:
Adamson’s poetry often explores themes of spirituality and transcendence. He delves into questions of existence, mortality, and the interconnectedness of all living things, drawing on both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions.
Language And Imagery:
Adamson’s use of language is both lyrical and precise, with vivid imagery that brings his poems to life. He employs metaphor, symbolism, and sensory detail to create evocative and memorable verses.
Overall, Robert Adamson’s poetry is characterised by its intimacy, authenticity, and deep connection to the natural world, making it accessible and resonant to readers of all backgrounds.
Let’s read some poems about Robert Adamson.
Winter, Hospital Bed
BY ROBERT ADAMSON
Memory was the room I entered down a long corridor
Thrown by the white drugs of pain though pain
Was adrift on a glassy stream of green tide
Where images flickered and ran on
I didn’t write poetry for publication
In those days but to grab the attention
Of readers nearby who had been crushed by life
Who floated across the exercise yard like headaches
Smoking rag-cigarettes looking sideways
For the next punishment for a break or maybe distraction
Chips of memory kept rising to the surface
Of our minds to take another bite
I had no idea why poetry the squid caught me
It clung to my brain in the damaging climate
A creature in the alien element of air
Arising from centuries of survival
Thoughts must be inky and capable
Of working the bait with a black beak
For a quick kill and a metaphysical rise up through the abyss
Poetry in those days was a handmade lure
There were no fish or birds so I spun my lines
To the ones with heads spring-loaded with resentment
Their temper a red fleck twitching in an eye
While poems of the future waited in line to hear my number
Praise And Its Shadow
Standing on this rocky shore
at the end of the point, sun’s
hitting sandstone escarpments as it sinks,
colouring everything red –
I watch the felty black surface
of the river carrying pelicans
downstream to the mouth.
I could easily disappear into
this landscape, become
a fisherman again and work
the tide through the moon’s cycles
and its darks, pierced with stars –
A local Novalis, courting
the night itself – my nets always
coming in without a catch,
at dawn each new day my head full
of emptiness, nothing there
but love for the long, echoing darkness.
Australasian Darters
BY ROBERT ADAMSON
These water birds flew out from the minds
Of fishermen and became fishing peons
Wealthy sailors watched as darters emerged again
To spread drenched wings in the sun
And marked them as emblems for spinnakers
Painters and ornithologists studied darters
Until they became black-feathered arrows
That pierced the souls of their creators
These birds rode surf of bitter laughter
And wiped out on a zoo’s concrete Key Largo
To imitate darters lovers ripped off their clothes
And plunged into the swiftness of estuaries
Down the water column they entered brackish hell
Their hair transformed to iridescent plumage
Ruffled by memories of earth’s human atmosphere
We can experience the lives of these feathered beings
By flexing our particular despairs each morning
At evening we take in the news as best we can
On late nights we gaze at dead bodies of water
And almost perceive those wet wings working the tide
THE RIVER
A step taken, and all the world’s before me.
The night’s so clear
stars hang in the low branches,
small fires riding through the waves of a thin atmosphere,
islands parting tides as meteors burn the air.
Oysters powder to chalk in my hands.
A flying fox swims by and an early
memory unfolds: rocks
on the shoreline milling the star-fire.
its fragments fall into place, the heavens
revealing themselves
as my roots trail
deep nets between channel and
shoal, gathering in
the Milky Way, Gemini –
I look all about, I search all around me.
There’s a gale in my hair as the mountains move in.
I drift over lakes, through surf breaks
and valleys, entangled of trees –
unseemly? On the edge or place inverted
from Ocean starts another place,
its own place –
a step back and my love’s before me,
the memory ash – we face each other alone now,
we turn in the rushing tide again and again to each other,
here between swamp-flower and star
to let love go forth to the world’s end
to set our lives at the centre
though the tide turns the river back on itself
and at its mouth, Ocean….