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Andrew Motion notes that a judge of a poetry prize in 2005, ‘found ‘three times as many poems about blackbirds - surely the nightingale of our time - as about the war in Iraq or 9/11’. The explanations aren't hard to find. Birds aren't just beautiful and delightful - at once familiar (in the case of the more common species, anyway), and fascinatingly other. They are also ambassadors bearing the bad news about what we have done to the planet.’
I was Sydney Convenor of Poets against the first Gulf war, organised readings, press releases, interviews and helped send 10,000 anti-war poems by Australians to the Prime Minister, John Howard. At the time (and since) I was writing anti-war poems, as well as poems celebrating and investigating the natural.
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Andrew Motion on Tim Dee, ‘In full flight’, The Guardian, December 10, 2005. The Forward Prize.

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from Thirteen Ways of Considering Black Birds, released June 5, 2023

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John Bennett and John Laidler image

John Bennett and John Laidler Sydney, Australia

John Bennett is primarily a curious poetic life-form.

John Laidler loves making sounds, and walks at approximately 4 km per hour.

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