Ella O’Keefe – Winning Poem in Southerly

Deakin HDR candidate Ella O’Keefe, who won the 2018 David Harold Tribe Poetry Award, has just published her winning poem, ‘warped up lamplight’, in the latest edition of Southerly journal.

Speaking about the poem, Ella says, “It’s about the movement of memory and language. It refers to a landmark recognisable by residents of Sydney’s inner west, the large, orange Kennards Storage building on Paramatta Road in Petersham (or more accurately, Tavener’s Hill, the birthplace of Ern Malley).”

The building was a former brewery, notes Ella, and retains a 1954 raised frieze by artist Paul Beadle called Farmer, Brewer, Drayman, Publican. “This artwork features in the poem as part of an interrogation of craft and material surfaces. The 2018 re-appearance of a 1980s billboard for Toohey’s 2.2 Lite Beer (“breathe easy”) on the same building likewise entered my poem. I once lived in an apartment that overlooked this building, and have strong memories of summer evenings at my desk lit by the structure’s ambient, orange glow.”

Ella’s thesis, submitted in January 2019, explores how different modes of vision operate in the work of poets Barbara Guest and Veronica Forrest-Thomson. She is now working on the manuscript of her first full-length poetry collection. Ella is also the audio producer for Cordite Poetry Review, recently co-edited an edition of Rabbit journal (No. 28, ‘politics’, with Alan Wearne), and has been working with staff at the National Library to digitise and make available archival interviews from the Hazel De Berg collection.

 

*Featured image by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash