- About
- Lisa D'Onofrio
About Lisa D'Onofrio
donofriodiva@hotmail.com
Collections:
Looking for an Echo — Lilliput Press 1994
Blowing out the Candle to St Jack — Lilliput Press 1996
Greatest Hits — Lilliput Press 2003
My work has appeared in many magazines, anthologies and journals,
both print and online in Australia and the UK.
I have written two plays which have toured around Victoria,
Australia, and associate produced a documentary Pluck Me, for
ScreenEast in 2002.
I have made several TV appearances both in Australia and the UK,
including being commissioned by About Anglia to write and perform
a poem.
I have supported John Cooper Clarke and Benjamin Zephaniah, read
at various literary festivals including Glastonbury Festival and
on national radio.
I have received many grants including two Arts’ Council Year of
the Artist Grants in 2000.
For the past 16 years I have worked in schools and with community
groups teaching creative writing and facilitating literature
projects.
I am currently project managing a Poet in Residence project for
the Norfolk and Norwich Festival.
My work is informed by issues of identity and displacement,
gender and domesticity and I’m enjoying exploring these issues in
collaboration with InPrint, the artists/writers collective
exhibiting at The Fringe.
Inarticularity
Inarticularity
The cat’s got my tongue
I gave it to her
It was giving me gip
Didn’t need it no more
Wrenched it plain out
With an oven glove and skewer
The hollow feels warm
Like some exotic liqueur
I’m feeling so peaceful,
A skinny–girl Buddha
The thoughts have closed down
Each breath is a prayer
Inarticularity 2
Words had failed me for too long. When they did come out they
were frayed and worn, run down and faded. I met a woman in a park
once, and she told me that this was the 2nd day in 6 years that
she’d spoken. She said it was okay at first, got harder in the
middle — then people just forgot about her, which was what she
wanted, I guess. She was a broken woman, trying to mind her
tongue, and instead she got to hold it for a while. She still
looked a little crazy to me, but what did I know, shiksa from the
suburbs that I am.
And down the line a little, now I get it. And even though the
squeaking wheel gets all the grease, it doesn’t matter — like I
need more grease. So I let all of them fly, and off they landed,
to cause earth tremors in Guatemala.
In the beginning, my rib cage strained with the weight of all the
things unsaid, but soon, and amazingly, speaking stopped being
something I didn’t do and silence became something I did. I could
hear the softness of my internal hum and that was enough. Maybe
I’ll return to words, like the lady in the park. But maybe I’ll
learn a new language and I’ll live as free as my tongue.
Lisa D'Onofrio
Poet's comment: Two poems inspired by Bronwen's piece, Broken. The first is more traditional, a black look at being silenced, with the narrator paradoxically taking control by giving up with communication. The second is an extension of the theme, using a similiar style to Basketcases 1 and 2. Bronwen's piece made me think about 'scratching' i.e. scratching the surface, which led to records and being recorded, which led to voice.
Basketcase 2
it started with sharp pencils and I got no joy from that/ so then
I tried a needle but that was no good, pin pricks/ and didn’t go
deep enough dots not lines I needed lines/ so then went on to
compass but I couldn’t drag it across,
you see, it could only dig and I didn’t want to dig I wanted/ to
cut across, in
long fluid lines, I wanted to create lines, etch them in, cross
hatch them/ and make them flow, I wanted to see the blood bubble
out I wanted the line of grey to turn red and then finally white/
rosered rosewhite mirror mirror the shoe never fit/ I wanted to
raise my shirt and press myself on a white white wall and print
myself on it, red white, reddy rust against/ white, I wanted to
print myself, / The wall absorbing and repelling the lines stark
and fresh/ I wanted to leave an impression/
sessions lasted five minutes or less, they were intense a burst
of activity in an otherwise dull and protracted and tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow life a flurry
an action a swift and easy slash a release and all the while I
imagined my body against the cool surface of the wall, if I
pressed hard enough I would become the cool surface of the wall
hidden behind the wardrobe, become the wall flat and simple and
undemanding
Lisa D'Onofrio
Poet's comment: This piece began with me wanting to continue the themes brought up by Basketcase 1. I completed the words while Bronwen worked on the piece, and this process seemed to work for us. Previously we had discussed some ideas. I was thinking about skin and the way bodies hold memories, and I kept returning to the the phrase 'written on the body'.
This is a sequel to Basketcase 1
u figure
i
grew her
to fat, so she filled the room
when i walked away. her curves her hollows
became me, forever and before we had
met, i had always been the
jam in her
bun
with each
lip–smacking and the letting fly of
lumps she weighted me, we left each other
waiting, and no one under
stands there was less
of her to
love
For M (who painted the bathroom floor blue)
It had felt the slap and
tickle of feet —
bare and wet
the cat, the mat,
the thud, the pat
and now, its colour drained,
it had settled under the steady stroke of just two pairs.
She knew this blue.
It had played beyond her lids
while chopping fruit, and spreading bread
or hanging clothes
while gazing out the kitchen window,
descaling fish
defrosting the fridge,
leaking time.
At 4am,
more paint than skin
she is rocked to sleep
her toenails dreaming in blue
and wakes, excited –
shrieks at the scene
it was not meant to be like this,
so again she mixes, tastes, examines
and goes to sleep
anchoring the room with her paint–splashed clothes.
On the third morning
knowing that the colour matches the one that lives in her
head
she isn’t surprised to see
the bath tub sailing down the corridor
the towels waving behind.
Lisa D'Onofrio
Story of my life and death
I went to the fortune teller
And she said to me
I don’t mean to scare ya
But you’re coming back
As the worm in tequila
Lisa D'Onofrio
I have forgotten how to cook
I
My fork casts a net
over food prepared for me
by other people’s hands
In floating kitchens
my nets come back empty
the gravy thickens into a dirty puddle
In the supermarket
I am lost
my gleaming ribbed charge and I
wander despondently
trying to decipher
the meaning from the glare
The potato just a thing
with too many eyes
tomatoes plump and mocking
Ladies fingers beckoning with
empty promises
an aubergine cold and hollow
Once comforting in its incarnations
Melanzana
Eggplant
Berenjena
Food in its multiplicities
a strange continent
and my visa application
has gone missing
II
Something has stirred
carrots greet me
orange with possibilities
Kernels burst from their
silken wrappers,
a cabbage crinkles with mirth
My fingers tremble
with the beauty of the
first cut
that reveals designs
that the recipes do not
I slice thinly, sauté
Add and taste
sprinkle and whisk
We come together
To follow i knead
my cool hands
ensuring pastry with bite.
Lisa D'Onofrio
Trolley trilogy
1
Do the trollies lark
In the trolley park?
Do they muzzle each other?
And cause a spark
Do they maraude the street
When it gets dark
Cruising silently
Silver sharks
Do their ribs hold precious secrets
We cannot start
To understand?
2
When I am old
And do not care
What other people think
I will collect trollies
Like other women gather china teapots
Or stray cats
I will muster them in my back yard
Where, if they wish
They may bleed
Or pirouette under clouds, or roll aimlessly
The long grass tickling their ribs
Unburdened by necessity
In my back yard
It will be eternally
Palm Sunday
3
I hate seeing
A lost trolley
Gleaming ribs
Circling seagulls
I want to take it home
Paint it
Tie balloons to its handles
And tell it
It’s ok
To be empty
Lisa D'Onofrio
Basketcase 1
it's like tape you see, glittering from a distance, looping
through branches and wire fences/
you think – that's so pretty –and for a moment you forget
you've seen it before and it draws the corners of your eyes
in/
you get up close and see the plastic carcass, disembowelled in
the mud, it's innards – brown tape suddenly dull when the sun
goes in/
when i felt it the best i can say was it was like that
transparent cassette case/
nothing in me put me in a player and push on and nothing will
come out/
and i tried hard to think but thoughts blew me away and they
thought they could see right through me/
they didn't like that so much was visible i was festooned
with workings and words/
here now the insides have been taken out and put on display,
hanging from the washing lines, waiting for the light so they can
dance/
the stuff i took made me like that case – see through nothing
going on here mister and im wearing my insides out still
Lisa D'Onofrio
Poet's comment: This piece represents the first entire collaboration by Bronwen and myself. I had had the image of a basket woven with words in my head for some time, and had discussed this with Bronwen. I then went away and wrote the words while Bronwen worked on the piece. The words are meant to be flowing, but I used a jagged sentence structure to represent the disparity between the narrator and others' perception of her. I love this final piece – in it I feel you can see a real development in both our work.
See also Basketcase 2
brekin/up/broken/down
rarelynowiimaginsomethinin
bedwithme,sumbeingthatlies
bymysideitswarmbellybeating
thrumystrainedskinchestbehind
thehollowofmine,foldinmeup
insoftsparrowwings
singingoverandoveritwont
happenagain.
Lisa D'Onofrio
The Witch at No 66
With each skinning she gave
I grew larger
(milk, and pancakes, glistening sweets)
padding myself
from the inside out
I tried not to question
why smoothing scraps of wood, in his shed
was more important than noticing
A path out of the darkness came with a boy –
and a girl – cooked for 9 months, their father
(Milk, and pancakes, glistening sweets)
pressed to breadcrumbs under my bulk –
I raised them into wholeness,
glazing them with spittle
(milk, and pancakes, glistening sweets)
still getting bigger
I’d have bent over backwards for trying,
but I could hardly make it up the stairs.
I realised, too late
how they struggled for air,
under my weighty gaze.
In the long afternoons,
when the sun melts the road into stickiness
I hear other people’s children playing
daring each other to knock at my door.
Lisa D'Onofrio