Rachel Bush

It is with great sadness we learned that our good friend Rachel Bush died yesterday. Rachel was a wonderful poet, an astute reader and a warm supporter of other writers. She will be greatly missed. Our thoughts are with her family and close friends.

Thought Horses, Rachel's newest collection of poetry, will be published in April. We are so pleased that Rachel was well enough to work on her book with editor Ashleigh Young, and that she also got to see and hold her book. 

We will be holding a reading and celebration of Rachel at Vic Books on Tuesday 19 April.

Sing Them

i

Because I need to sew me 

a composer and knit me 

a singer who will wrap me

in the sounds of the words.

ii

Because in this house I hear

sparrows in the fan palm and tui that

hang out in pink camellia flowers but

these voices have no words.

iii

Because we lived with their questions 

when our mothers sang to us.

Who is Sylvia, what is she?

When our mothers sang,

the words became us

and the songs became us.

Where have you been

all the day, Billie Boy, Billie Boy?

iv

Because this was a congealed

day at the cold leftover end 

of the rind of winter but when 

you said you’d sing the poems,

they put on their warm clothes

and went out walking.

v

Because every day the poems 

stay folded and pressed flat in 

a suitcase of their pages 

till the composer unfolds

them in sound lines and when

you sing them, they float.

From Thought Horses by Rachel Bush (VUP, April 2016)

Rachel is also the author of The Hungry Woman (1997), The Unfortunate Singer (2002) and Nice Pretty Things (2011).