Adam's latest poems can be found here 

Whilst the main page is all about The Aerial Maps, this site is also, on a wider level,  the general for Australian writer Adam Gibson. Along with learning all the news about The Aerial Maps, you can also buy Adam's books, read some of his writing, listen to some of his other non-Aerial Maps spoken word stuff, including with his old band Modern Giant, and generally keep informed about his movements and writing activities.

One of those activities is this ...  well, it's the perfect souvenir of Adam's hometown of Bondi ... it's his his latest book, available here! Bondi Poems is Adam's third book of poetry and, as it says on the back cover blurb, it "captures the essence of the iconic Australian beachside suburb in a wonderfully incisive and affecting manner".  Available here.

As the back blurb goes on, "Born and bred in Bondi, Adam writes with a strong sense of place, his turn of phrase being distinctly Australian and his imagery pure-honed and resolutely local. These are poems of vigour and perception, at times melancholy, at others intensely personal, wry and optimistic.

"These are raw stories of lives lived on Bondi's streets, of the passing of the seasons, the charting of the juggernaut of change and, at the end of everything, the beach that always remains in place…"

There are 60 poems in total in Bondi, a mix of old and new. With a superb cover from renowned Bondi artist Jennifer Baird, the book looks (and is) damn good! ... even if we say so, and we would cos we run Adam's website and we're fans.

 

So ... go to Shopping Cart page to buy a copy of that and other things.

Growing up in Bondi

On grass-clipping streets and median strips
and cracked concrete that baked in heat and
bitumen on roads that bubbled under feet,
you hurled water bombs at the kids
from around the street and
went to the beach 'cos that's
just what you did.

And there you sat in groups beside
North Bondi Surf Club
or near the barbeques
or down South on The Hill or in The Corner
or at First or Second or Third ramps.

And the milkbars were still standing
and at Valis's and Raffle's and Bill's
you drank thickshakes and played the pinnies
and you ventured to Homestead chicken
for special hot chips.

And school came and thankfully went
and the endless six weeks of Chrissie holidays
fanned out endlessly in front of you
and it was fish and chips in the sunset park
after a day in the water and into the 9pm dark
and into sandy feet station wagons and off home
to sleep behind salt-coated windows
and open fly-screen doors
and the whole neighbourhood wearing worn rubber thongs
and the cicadas noisy all the way into night.

Then February and on into the year,
Easter being marked exactly by the sideways blow
of the westerly wind like clockwork
and into the desolate antenna evening of June,
the grass-blade sunshine of July,
The flannelette days of August,
Then again the sudden jasmine days of September and
Into the salty October mornings,
Then the nor' easterly afternoons of November
and around again and again.

Then my life turned to high school
and the dumped couches on the footpath
and the boarded up shops of early '80s Campbell Parade
where you'd be crazy to loiter after dark,
the needle stick stabbing streets,
the heroin sand.

And the Maori kids who caused legendary trouble chaos down there
and the thrill of the stories of them
and those hot girls down there at night
who smoked ciggies and drunk cases and beer
and smashed bottles and fucked
and in one of those still-standing sheds
I kissed one of those smoke-tasting mouths
and I have never forgotten a single moment
nor the way I felt,

just as I have never forgotten
a single other moment
of growing up in Bondi
at all
either.

_________________________________

Hall Street

Killing time on Hall Street
the lost heart of Bondi
the commercial strip of
things getting done
and backpackers
expert on everything
after just one week
in town
(of course).

_________________________________

Bondi, April, 5pm

In this light
almost everything
looks as if it could be
asleep.

The whole town
dozing
in the smoke of
afternoon.

Ships linger in the
blown-off Botany Bay haze
awaiting docking instructions.

Cats stretch on
still-warm footpaths.

The wind smells like
firewood.

Meanwhile,
we drink tea
on the balcony.

and here are a few oldies...

Angel Alley
[this poem was to a degree inspired by this great website, www.derelictlondon.com]

we walk through the Heathrow streets at dawn,
we gather in the local pubs east of Angel Alley
and the flat skies of England above
the rows of houses gather slowly to permanent dusk;

and how I went to Fulham in the night,
in the dark lonely London night, on buses,
the black Houses of Parliament,
near where I worked on a building site
and heard the bells and chimes from the Abbey
as I swept floors and carried wood.

London still exists

afternoons in the coldest winter of my soul,
going all the way to Speaker's Corner
just to hear people speak
of damnation and sex
and sporadic ramblings of the innermost bell-clang
of jumbled thoughts.

London still exists

and we went home through the streets still cobbled with stones,
the low gutters towards and past the E1
and past Angel Alley streets lined with
bright fruit stalls of the street market on cold street,
and the cold faces past Ilford and the Island
and the girls in black jackets
smoking Silk Cuts at bus stops

London still exists

and the lorries passing through Wapping and
the Angel Alley sadness of descending days
or expiring work visas, loves we lost,
in Jamaican-sounding summers on trips to the Westway,
to Portabello pubs across mini-cab nights
and Nigerian navigation back through football streets
reverberating from Stamford Bridge and across to night
to the home of the Hammers,
the men in their colours with oversized cans of Tennants

London still exists

on the underground arteries and
the black soot tunnels that
Make you believe that Victoria is still on the throne
And Dickens is hiding in a filthy enclave
ready to grab your arm with filthy-fingered glove.

the slanting terraces
extending across threading streets and
all the sadness that descends upon me;
the low-pressure bathtaps,
the lime-fuzz around the top of the kettle,
the rim of the pots.

London still exists

and the jet-black girl who stood close to me on a bus
who didn't move despite the opportunity
and the complicit illicit smile she gave me on leaving
after 20 minutes of our knees touching,
and how she is now more lost to me
than anything can possibly be

London exists
London exists right now

in Angel Alley
and beyond.

_________________________________

Discrepancy

"Why would you be a nude model
if your dick was as small as his?"
all the male students asked loudly at drinks at the pub
after the life drawing class.
All the girls stayed behind meanwhile to see what

The model
Was doing
Later that night.
 
_________________________________

Lampwires 

all the friends you could have had
who took the time to stay with you
in collisions of meaning in full-scale rooms
and conversations missed by barbeque fizz.

This is the end of something that never started.
We live strung out like lamplights,
around a Christmas tree,
the wires of black threads pulsing
with three-beeped distance call memories.

And there's no-one there anyway.
And there's no-one there anyway.

While we wait for the world to get bigger,
while we wait for our scope to increase.

All vision of ourselves is lost in
fragments of broken mirrors on the road.

And I'm tired, more tired than I've ever been.

I remember a dancer I once kissed,
I remember her clearly, as if it was yesterday.
As if it were last month, last year, longer even.
When I'm older still I will remember her,
And I'll remember me, now, at this point in time.
I will remember me remembering her and
once more I will ask: was there anything more
I could have done?
And did I want to?

and the lampwires will fizz again and I
hope, now, that I won't be alone then
as I am now, too.

_________________________________

I am weak

She looked at me
I looked at her
She looked away
I looked away.
 
I looked at her
She looked at me
I looked away
She looked away.
 
She looked at me
I looked at her
She looked at me
I looked at her
She held my look

I looked away. 

_________________________________

scorched earth

up through madrid and beyond
and i'd guess there hasn't been
a drop of rain for twenty years
but i could be wrong
yet you'd concur if you saw these fields
of arid rocks and everything
scrubby and khaki and
for four hours i haven't seen a soul
for hundreds of bone dry kilometres.

they invented the term "rolling fields"
for this country but they omitted the lushness
inherent in the construction of the meaning
in this case,
stunted trees,
each grain of dirt desecrated
by all the footsteps of the invaders
from the moors to the romans
to the celts, to the australians and the eceteras,

and so my history goes astray,
from hill to peak,
from church to fort,
toeprints crumbling rock into ridges and
gullies damned into throat-parched valleys
hinting at me through tinted glass that
all history has had it,
all the past is finished,
show's over as the hillside to the right
lies quietly scorched by a fire burning now
but that which will never ever be recorded
in history
_________________________________

And a poem from the book Seasonally Affected

Sand Up Over the Road

a pair of blue torn jeans,
a time before cds,
the stars shone down on
the tape in the walkman.

birthday cards and cups of tea,
cases of beer,
unused condoms,
socks and hands on your hips.
windburn on both eyes,
sunglasses in the corner of your mouth,
football jumpers and moths hitting the windows,
shaved clean lips and surf shirts.

orange lights, small towns,
telemovies and panic attacks,
cricket loud on next door's telly.
sand up over the road,
disappointments and long darkness,
rejection.
pimples and kisses missed.

the small things you say at the end of sentences,
the bits you leave out,
love via backseat cars,
the first messy crisis.

sand up over the road,
fists into the wall,
long hair,
dogs, grass knees,
a picture of the beatles,
socks and sewage smell.

sand up over the road,
she loves me,
she loves me not at all and never has.
she was gone and a hopeless cause,
sex was a chore,
the night shakes like a moreton bay.

breaking into a car,
keys smiling inside.
a dryer with burnt out element,
oven moving with cockroaches.

the beep of reversing buses,
i miss you
i miss you i
miss you.
now that you have no urge to call,
perhaps we are finally equal.
i miss you and
the lack of sadness.

//////////