Comment by award-winning Australian poet, editor and educator, John Foulcher, on the manuscript of my forthcoming poetry collection:

"At a time when opacity is often mistaken for profundity, carelessness for complexity, Esther Ottaway’s poetry is genuinely fresh and exciting. Always clear and vivid, her poetry is marked by its depth of insight, emotional honesty and attention to craft. We are repeatedly struck by the freshness of its imagery, its delicate attention to music and line, and phrasing which seems exactly right. Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things is a first collection of rare maturity; it is an extraordinary exploration of experiences most of us will recognise from our daily lives."




Liminal Love Songs


The way of an eagle in the heavens

Reflected in an eye, the dizzy paisley

of earth laid out for miles, the fiction

of early warning. Tallest bluff,

wind-chill written in the hunch of trees.

I cling to rock, stare at the arc

of wingspan longer than my body,

clutch at the theory of a home always 

in this nest, this lover. Time 

and unforeseen occurrence. Eggs

blotched like a hunter’s moon. We kiss, 

draw barbs and hooks to smoothness, 

fit closer than feather. How long 

can this slow pattern – caring,

paining, forgiving – take flight

and return? I trace the cliff

of your brow with my finger, 

your temple’s shallow chalice

the shape of a stick-raft nest

of exposure, the drop-edge

of cheekbone, imagine waking

beside you on the tallest

cliff, to the shock of height

and a hooked tongue, unable to tell you 

I’m sorry. Below us, everything.  

The way of a serpent on a rock

Come on then, sweet-skinned creature – 

love’s not one of the human rights

but something one learns

in the intricate sting 

of shedding, addiction to skin

and pattern, each scale mirroring

the contour of its mate,

half-hidden, half-exposed, the memory 

of my hair coming down in a certain light 

coiled into the pocket of your heart. 

Or instinct, the draw of sun-hot granite 

to the slow belly, urge to roll back 

the clenching cold; my hands 

in a nest of questions. I cannot 

grasp what makes a predator,

divide love from craving when we find

each other in the reptilian dark

of our separate selves,

eyes full of scales, 

blood racing with sinuous hunger 

to bite, to be swallowed whole.

The way of a ship in the heart of the sea

Hatchway of a vessel, the shower door 

shudders on its runner, takes us inside

I face you under the hot hiss of water, skin

plumping like soaked fruit, exhaling 

like leaves, wonder where in this water

we meet, what things your skin

might breathe to mine, what things are 

washed away, and whether I could name

what familiarity erodes, or whether 

these points of reference – 

breakers of foam on your razor, smooth

river-stones of your shoulders, shining

whalebone of your hip – have slipped 

into unconscious seas, and my skin is the fish

which no longer feels the waves, my senses 

are faithless as sand, and this is why 

I scribble charts of you, haul in shoals

of your words, sketch the precise drape

of sheet when you sleep, why my fingers

log the swell of a blue-soft vein, why,

when you tell me you love me

I sing to myself in the roiling dark:

I am in the heart of the sea

I am in the heart.  

The way of a man with a maiden

You pluck a poinciana, walk me through humid rain

around your childhood block. Thank you, 

you say, for coming here, and the flame tree’s bloom

is a blood-rush to my cheek. I can’t explain 

why fertile chance delivered you to me,

why until this journey I have not acknowledged

your uprooting. In every story you are alone.

I tuck the flower behind my ear, stoop

to a kangaroo paw’s black fist, send seeds

rattling like departing trains: clumsy on your trail

I make a mess of spoor, and can’t tell 

what it is that I have broken underfoot,

how to tread down the past. At the lawn’s edge, 

locked out of your home, you are as weary

as a man grown used to desert. I cling

to your hand, don’t have the words you need.

In the hotel I stroke the petals’ bruises, 

mesmeric as wounds. Beneath the sheet 

your hands         are the flower       

            a displaced heart, aflame 

you track me       seed me       tell me you will never 

              go away