I have lived in Adelaide for a number of years now, though I was born in Sydney. I’ve published a number of books, most recently including two full-length books, The Beautiful Anxiety, and Breaking the Days, plus a chapbook, The Leaves Are My Sisters. Another book, Brink, is on the way (mid 2017) and is about body and environment, and love. My poetry is made of language, obviously, and the way I compose involves the body including seeing and hearing. In some poems sound and vision become integral to the poem’s idea as well as its composition. One thing I’m sure many of us notice at night is the way sound seems to change from the day’s experience of it. In Adelaide on the plain at night, sounds you might never notice during day travel from far away, sometimes very clearly and sometimes rising and fading rather than remaining constant. The nearby non-human does not always rest either. Night also changes seeing, of course, and suggests shapes that day doesn’t, just as language has shapes. Sounds that are detached from day sight seem to carry different implications. And there’s no thing as silence. If you listen carefully there’s always noise, even if simply the sounds the body makes, breathing, turning, waking. Sounds are made by things, by vibration though not always in sympathy. If you need to awake briefly you are in a between state, so that even feeling and touch is a different experience. How cold is cold? Houses are inhabited by many things. Night never rests. I often write late in the night.
lyrics
Poem:
Shade is a kind of writing, as well as a kind of light.
It passes across the ceiling well after sundown.
A bird lands on the roof, making that racket again
which spooked everyone last week.
Something crosses our path from the back of the house.
We’d feel uneasy if we weren’t so tired.
I swallow water mixed with a solution of mineral grit,
as though it’s a cure. As I tip away dregs, the colder night
pours more water from an ugly tap onto my wrist.
The window is still open and shadows blow in
like diesel and roses. The bird takes off, clattering as it goes.
Then a louder silence roars around the moon.
Will it rain?
The shade is full of itself and nothing. The tap still drips.
I get up an hour later to turn it off. The ceiling is clear.
There’s an owl somewhere near and a goods train
on the other line. It’s scary when it’s calm.
Where do you put morning?
credits
from The Night's Insomnia,
released April 21, 2017
Jen Lush
Music composition and vocals.
Chris Parkinson
Electric & acoustic guitars, bass guitar, vocal harmonies.
Richard Coates
Accordion, keys, iPad.
Produced, recorded, engineered and mixed by Chris Parkinson at My Sweet Mule — A MSM Production. Mastered by Mick Wordley at Mixmasters.
Jen Lush is known for her spacious and emotive, starkly modern folk songs wrapped around expansive storytelling. From her
2017 album of poem-songs ‘The Night’s Insomnia,’ to her 2021 album ‘Let Loose the Beating Birds’ Jen and her stellar band have appeared at festivals and venues throughout South Australia, Victoria, NSW, WA and Tasmania. New album 'Hum of the mettle' is out now....more
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