The School of English, Communications and Performance Studies would like to congratulate Joel Lazar on winning the 2012 Monash Poetry Prize with his poem As Far As I Can Go which was selected from over 150 entries.
As Far As I Can Go
Going to water
Is my act of repentance
Swimming is my penance
The chest I beat
When the sin becomes
Too blue and deep
When I confess that I am
An estranged lover
Separated from myself
Then I go to water
That is as far as I can go
When I insist
That You, I and It
Are different
I flee the chapel
Leaving it to burn
And when I reach the forest
My breath becomes the
Space between the leaves
That is as far as I can go
Until the swirling vacuum
The black hole in the water
Where nothing lives
That is where I will be
That is as far as I can go
And when you see from afar
The anchor shoot skyward
That is my firework of iron
That is my mocking and rebellion
Against whoever stole my choice
To be atom or atomized
To leave home proper
Or spend my years building a new one
Only for the tide’s palm
To smash and erase it
Then creep away laughing
Holding hands with the wind
Into the horizon where they both live
That is as far as I can go
Making a space for myself
Between the silk sheets of the swells
Is my returning to
The Great Searched-For
The Great Run-From
The everlasting scar tissue of the world
Because the sea is mnemonic by Design
Catching me out when
I begin telling my children
That this is as far as we can go
Then I will remember
Grown men have waded further
When the waves fold
Then I will remember
That all towers will fall
Then I will remember
That the quicksilver of dreams
Lets us slip through the cracks
Of dam walls
And swim to the sand’s edge
That is as far as I can go
Where I’ll begin
And lie down to sleep
Not where my tears collect
But from where they come
From where I come
Where water begins
And lies down to sleep
Where it goes to cry
Special mentions also go to Caitlin Murphy for Alphabet, Sarah Holley for 6 months on and Kristen Richards for The Whooping Hollow.
