This Is Love by Gemma White

for P. J. Harvey

Those swish-swish hips
Buttocks swelling in suit pants
Brief exposure of elliptical breast
Guitar thrust! And thrust again!
Flick back of black, black hair
Angle-faced with red lipstick
Lopsided grin from ear-to-ear mouth
I want escape and release!
Take me white-suited goddess,
Take me over with your song!
I am sacrifice to your guitar slinging,
I want to lick its strings
You're a sacrilegious hymn, a hint of fuck-you
Cracking through my monochrome world
A whiff of something rare
Buzzing electricity through every hair
A whole 3.48 minutes of ecstasy.

from Furniture is Disappearing (IP, 2014) by Gemma White. Reprinted here with the kind permission of the poet.

Furniture is Disappearing is available from the publisher and on Amazon. Gemma also says:

I sell Furniture is Disappearing in person at local open mic nights around Melbourne (the next one is at WestWord Poetry, @ The Dancing Dog on the 26th of April, see www.facebook.com/events/857275297646951). The Facebook page for the regular Footscray poetry event is here: www.facebook.com/WestWordpoetry.

Tuesday Poem Editor: Tim Jones.

The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, the anthology I co-edited with Tuesday Poet P.S. Cottier, had two launches in Australia in June 2014: one in Melbourne and one in Canberra. The Melbourne launch was a double launch with Gemma White's debut collection Furniture is Disappearing, which I've been reading and enjoying over the past few weeks.

There are many poems I like in this collection, but I think my favourite is "This Is Love" - indeed, I love the way it captures P. J. Harvey's swagger, power, sexuality and energy, both in general and in the titular song:




Gemma White's short, stabbing lines perfectly mirror the aggression of P. J.'s playing style. The poem pops (and rocks) as much as the song.

Gemma White lives in Melbourne, Australia. She is a poet, artist and musician.

Her poetry has appeared in The Age, Voiceworks, page seventeen, Visible Ink, The Green Fuse, Unusual Work, foam:e, Verity La, Award Winning Australian Writing 2011 and Best Australian Poems 2013.


This week's editor is Tim Jones, whose own recent books include poetry collection Men Briefly Explained (IP, 2011) and short story collection Transported (Random House, 2008).

With Mark Pirie, he co-edited Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand (IP, 2009), and with P.S. Cottier, he co-edited The Stars Like Sand: Speculative Australian Poetry (IP, 2014).