THE improbable true story of Thomas Watling of Dumfries, a forger-convict sent to Australia in 1788, only to become the colony's first official artist, is told by Tom Pow in prose and poetry, illustrated by Watling's own artwork, in A Wild Adventure (Polygon, £12.99 hardback).
Here is a sample poem.
LORIKEETS
As if when God's finished creating
light
He has some left over he's loath to waste.
So he weaves the scraps he has - a few bright
Threads around his feet, on the edge of sight
But dazzling as flowerbeds in the
white
Fields of snow - and from these the lorikeets
Are born. They are concentrations of light -
Light spectra on the wing. Hear them greet
Their own pleasure - chests rose hips in sunlight;
Imagine an autumn hedgerow in
flight!
Each day before him the dead are laid out.
He's watched the air spill from their wings - the shout
Of someone's success. As they fall, the bright-
Ness leaves their eyes. He learns when not in flight
They preen each other, for each takes delight
In the other. Lorikeets mate for
life.
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