We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Beyond 2020

by Richard Tipping

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 AUD  or more

     

about

Poem by Richard Tipping, from Instant History (Flying Island Books, 2017)

Recorded in a single take at Sunset Ridge Drive, Bellingen, Australia
using a Fuji XT-20 camera and Sennheiser MKE400 microphone.
Thanks to my two grand-daughters for their cello playing.

lyrics

Beyond 2020

The developers are eating raw money,
shooting out huge holes in the ground.
Architects computing blueprints of the bank
juggle laptop martinis with projected rents.
Town planners click powerpoints from helicopters:
prime cut fillets of prestige CBD.
Entire histories are wiped out in a week.
Nooks, crannies, layerings of footsteps,
whispers, reflections, urgent corridors all
smashed to rubble, whistles and dust.
The deep holes wear high fences out of shyness,
narrow slits where pedestrians peer in,
see lithe men working, dot high in celestial cranes.
Yellow pile-drivers on solid sandstone beds
are banging steel rods right through to China.
The brainwaves of corporate clients
for colour schemes and naming rights
are fed repeatedly into the small blue screens:
industrial sunsets, absolute waterfronts, the best.
Some holes sprout complex foundations, and stop,
all greys and rust. Those big boys temporarily bust.
Nubile futures' brokers wink and wave their mobiles.
Call in the foreign capital - from the skirts of
Mother England to the pants of Uncle Sam
to the dark silk suits of post-imperial Japan.
China waits.
Giant palm trees start arriving
like prisoners in trucks.


© Richard Kelly Tipping

credits

released December 9, 2018
Voice: Richard Tipping
Cello: Mali Tipping
String percussion on cello: Lily Tipping

Photograph of the author by Robert McFarlane, 2018 (detail)

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Richard Tipping Sydney, Australia

Born and raised in Adelaide, Richard Tipping completed a doctorate at the University of Technology Sydney, and has published ten books of verbal and visual poems. He is also known as a sculptor and graphic artist, with work in many public collections.

Tipping explores the physical qualities of language and making art with words, getting poetry off the page and into the street
... more

contact / help

Contact Richard Tipping

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like Richard Tipping, you may also like: