Ellen Shelley
Raised in a family of step-siblings and a procession of stepmothers, Ellen soon learnt the art of resilience and the importance of finding her own voice in the world. From early on, poetry was the
language she used to align the uncertainty of her world. Delving around wires of disconnect, her words find strength from wherever she calls home at the time. Ellen’s work appears in The Canberra Times, on a footpath in Adelaide, Cordite, Manly Ekphrastic Challenge, Australian Poetry Collaboration, Woman of Words, Rabbit, Australian Poetry Anthology and Westerly. Out of the Blocks is out with Puncher and Wattmann.
crashed
it rained and the tv went numb
the atmospheric antenna
dialled-in the wild
then fogged up the bulb
i wanted to be more than my surrounds
to be
unaffected by storms and poor reception
but my fortress of rock collapsed
from being
too much
they gave me a test
and labelled me antisocial
pegged me to a journey
to define the triggers inside
an answer to the speeding
an explanation to the experimental
too ready too reactive too risky
i harnessed heat
to weld the friction
and still i strayed
fast cars
and boys
those stark corners of acceptance
my hands reaching
for the physical attributes
of a connection