Caterina Mastroianni
quiet sounds that never tire being re-written, re-felt, re-heard birds, rivers, cicadas, purrs, bush how to cherish vitality how to keep life away from eating and excreting death tranquillity is a sound that echoes music, poesia, soft maker voices bubbling bursts of creative quietude how to be an escapee of extroversion, living within the boundaries of self dadirri, sounds I don’t own call me to stop and learn how to listen, how to wait no more small talk, big talk no more self- imprinting of our human exclusivity take this beginning, a rare rupturing a salty stillness, a swishing littoral plea hold this time of introversion close
Note: ‘Dadirri’ is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘inner deep listening and quiet still awareness and waiting’.http://www.dadirri.org.au/dadirri-meaning/
Caterina Mastroianni is an Italian-born Australian poet and educator who grew up in Port Kembla and Wollongong, on the land of the Wadi Wadi people of the Dharawal nation. She has published poetry in various literary magazines and four Australian anthologies, most recently in Honeyguide (June 2022), in The Ekphrastic Review (June 2022), in Live Encounters Poetry and Writing Journal (January 2022), in Poetry for the Planet: An Anthology of Imagined Futures (Litoria Press, 2021) and at Medium. She lives in Sydney on the land of the Cadigal and Wangal people of the Eora nation.
Old Water Rat Publishing 