Steph Amir, occasional poet

 As published in  The Victorian Writer , September 2022: On writing and parenthood The house where I write is warm. The room is filled with sunshine and quiet. There’s a percolator of coffee and a window overlooking an ocean, or perhaps snow-covered eucalypts. It’s perfect because it only exists in my imagination. My real house has trams rumbling past, a five-year-old pretending to be a dog, and a baby making a beeline for the most dangerous item in the room. Most of my poems aren’t written in a house at all, or even on a computer. I draft on my phone while pushing the pram around the suburbs, sitting on the grass during my lunch-break, or collapsed in bed at the end of the day. Parenthood is at odds with the stereotypes of writers: men with coffee-stained manuscripts arguing about literature late into the night; women at their desks with cats on their laps and pots of tea by their side. Parenthood is also at odds with the reality of writing. Any art requires time and space,...

My poem Heathrow was written for the  'Dreams' issue of Ghost Girls Zine . I enjoy themed calls for submissions, because it often prompts me to write something new.  In this case, I wrote about my recurring dream of running late for an international flight.  I am so often lost in an airport, or in tunnels between platforms at unfamiliar train stations. Something I enjoy about poetry is the opportunity to write something completely bizarre, and to have others read it and laugh, saying "yes, it's just like that!" Thanks to Ghost Girls for the inspiration. Heathrow It’s 10am. The plane is leaving at 11. The gate is past the airport juice bar.   It’s 4pm. The plane left at 11. You are at the juice bar on a beach in Jamaica.   It’s 11am. You are on the plane, with your pineapple-mango mocktail and your sleeping bag. It’s going to be a long flight. You wish you hadn’t left your books on your hotel bed.   You are at the hotel, collecting your boo...

Anyone who has met me knows that I don't really have a haiku vibe.  I'm neither minimalist not serene, but in the interest of exploring different poetic forms, I wrote a few haiku for the 'Light and colour' issue of  Echidna Tracks journal last year, and had two published.   This is the first one.  The editors removed the word "where" , but I prefer the symmetry of the 5-7-5 format. When I read this now, over a year later, the word 'mourn' jumps out, but at the time, it was written with the intent of capturing a particular time and place.   Just over a decade ago, I was heartbroken after being dumped by someone who I'd been crazy about.  I was living with a friend in Brunswick, in Melbourne's inner-north.  The front of the house faced west, and in typical sharehouse style, we had an old couch on the verandah.  I loved that I could have the comfort of the couch combined with the warmth of the afternoon sun.   The relationship h...