Permission to use images and text should be directed to Spinifex Press	Wire Dancing Patricia Sykes Price: $21.95 (Australian dollars), $27.95 (NZ dollars), $14.95 (US dollars) $22.95 (Canadian dollars) £8.95 (UK pounds)
1995 - Anutech Poetry Prize - Shortlisted 1996 - John Shaw Neilson, FAW, Poetry Prize - Winner 2000 - Ann Elder FAW Award - Commended 2000 - Mary Gilmour Award - Commended 2002 - The Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize - Highly Commended 2002 - The Tom Collins Poetry Prize - Winner it takes neither dynamite nor earth quake the business of circus is its own upheaval LAUNCH SPEECH by Bev Roberts When you judge a poetry competition, you're always looking - and hoping - for the poem that announces itself as the winner: the poem that leaps off the page, speaks to you in a different and distinctive voice... and sometimes gives you goosebumps. When I judged the John Shaw Neilson Award a couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to find one of these poems. It was called 'river salvages' and began with these amazing lines: You purr through the door like a great cat  a story tiger generations of river ancestors streaming from your back I discovered subsequently that it was by Patricia Sykes. It was a striking and haunting poem and I returned to it several times - each time finding more in it. And wanting more... It was with great anticipation, then, that I heard Trish was about to publish a collection of her poems. And I have particular pleasure in launching it tonight into this sea of poets and poetry readers. (Or maybe I should take my metaphor from the world of circus and launch the book into the ring...) Anyway, my launching words will be brief. The first thing I want to say about Wire Dancing is that it's difficult to believe it's a first book. The poems are so strong, so confident and so well crafted that they are obviously the work of a poet with the polished skills of long experience. It is certainly one of the most impressive first collections I've ever seen. The second thing I want to say is that Trish Sykes' poetry is utterly compelling and absorbing - rare in any collection of poetry and rarer still in a first book. This is largely achieved through the economy - perhaps purity - of language, through spareness of form, and through the extraordinary (and extraordinarily wide) frame of reference. In poems that are at one allusive and elusive, Sykes leaps like an acrobat between past and present, mythology and history, the everyday and the exotic, from Bosnia to the circus. And, dancing nimbly along the high wires of emotion and intellect, she is passionate, witty, erudite and ironic. This makes for powerful and complex poetry - and often poetry that is confronting and uncompromising. But there are also many poems that are subtle limpid and moving. The last thing I want to say is congratulations - and thanks - to Trish for Wire Dancing, and to the wonderful women at Spinifex for publishing it. I am sure the book will be a great success for Trish and for Spinifex. And I urge you - even more emphatically than is usual - to buy and read this book so that you can share my enjoyment of what could well be the poetry experience of the year.
plastic surgery will not cure the mortalities of a circus maximus	Circus as drama and risk, as exuberance and irrepressible spirit, is the central metaphor Patricia Sykes uses to open a world where public and private share the same tightrope. The poems speak of women searching for footholds along the spectrums of politics, power, history, culture and relationships.

Theirs are performances of celebration and hope as they wire dance through circumcision and incest, madness and suicide, genocide and war. There is passion and resistance, hot comedy and fire in the belly. Falling is the first victory, balance is the ultimate skill.

They leap over boundaries, using language as a balletic or gestural medium.

Martin Harrison, Australian Book Review, Nov 99

Patricia Sykes won the prestigious 1996 FAW John Shaw Neilson Poetry Award for some of the work in this volume. She is a storyteller, and is currently a non-performing member of the Women's Circus in Melbourne.

living in the palace of the queen of heaven

The Floating Palace was built by R. 'Doc' Spalding, who used to run a drugstore before he took over a broken-down circus. It opened in 1852 and was an instant success, touring the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers annually until it burned to the water line in 1865.
(Source: Performing Arts Museum collection)

this boating life
this rock rock rock
of glitter water
living its history
of dreams with $42,000
circa 1850 and a vision
of the standard
42 foot circus ring
afloat queenly
on a barge

add multiplications
of 2400 patrons gorgeously
backdropped with velvet
lavishly slippered
with thick carpet
and always
touched masterfully
with a ticket box
ornately carved

add a towboat's
engines to tug
royally a palace's
mirrored enchantments
fire its 200 gas lights
warm it charmingly
with steam heat
and copiously hide
the workhorse smells
in the off-shore
menagerie

be the price
be the ticket
eternally eternally
be the year of operations
that burns like hell
to the water line


Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey exhibited 13 Ubangi women during the early 1930s. They were brought out of West Africa by Dr Ludwig Bergonnier. Their 'saucer lips' drew huge crowds
(Source: Performing Arts Museum collection)

did you think
it was some weird rite

that drew so many
small-lipped faces
through the circus gate

to stare at
your Ubangi beauty?

were willing even
to pay you dividends

for the privilege
of calling you
'foul smelling and savage'

and to marvel
at your foodish way
with raw fish

and unpeeled
bananas

but not to wonder
at their own decade
how it could pay

so much coin
as if it were a dowry
to the European

who had you brought
out of West Africa
for the enrichment

In his early days as a circus entrepreneur, Barnum acquired the 'Feejee Mermaid'. He planted stories, supposedly written by scientists, in newspapers and pamphlets to 'prove' she was authentic and began exhibiting her in 1842 with great financial success
(Source: Performing Arts Museum collection)

make me spectacular
a 'Feejee Mermaid'
cobble me a life
from a dead monkey's
torso and head

and a fish's body
keep the stitches sly
keep the stink low

keep the animals
robed to the profit

liberty and sweet life
a tabloid prayer
of bogus science

and mocked truth
full of gullible
and riches

don't touch/my
nerve ends (wired
and strange they can't
recognise each other's)
only the breath
that breaks
like a phantom wave
against a seam's
hybrid navel
and calls itself pain)

public me maul me
keep the dollars chinking
in the tills of heaven

In this age of ultrarealism the circus is a last frontier.
Wirth’s circus programme, Melbourne season and tour 1940.
(Source: Performing Arts Museum collection)

the money fats
devoured even Gargantua

Herta
I'm holding you
up to the light

without giving
you a bean

without paying
you a cracker

would you call
this theft?

would you say
it's cashing in

on the freaks'
hall of fame?

your lards
how they'd scatter publics

if you opened your mouth
and let fly with canaries

the show's never over
until the fat lady sings

fly your yellows
don't be a cave bird*
for every poking finger

let the owners
keep their poisons

let their patrons
test the mines

canaries were traditionally used in mines to test for poisonous gases. If a canary was overcome it was a sign the mine wasn't safe for humans.

Circus offered a prize of 50,000 marks (circa 1923) to anyone who could come up with a child who could match Herta's weight-for-age. She was 15 and weighed 500 lbs

Gargantua was a 600 lb gorilla. Acid had been thrown in his face when he was small, giving it a fierce, twisted expression. He was billed as the 'World's Most Terrifying Creature.' A pageant featuring Frank ('Bring 'em Back Alive') Buck was created in Gargantua's honour when he made his first appearance in 1938. (Performing Arts Museum Collection)

if you can't kill
the romance use it
adrenalin & rope
at trapeze height
& its half held breath
at Lillian Leitzel risk
willing to semi
dislocate its shoulder
with each spin's eyes
open to the fall
that killed her

her calculated launch
her displacement of bone
& muscle fluid as wind
& deliberately as headlong
a white knuckle glamour
to spotlight the flesh
& make it look easy

the reaction stretch
is agony yours
could change place
with hers the body
can get used to anything
but what will you risk
to keep this grip on hunger?

'I'd rather be a racehorse and last a minute
than be a plowhorse and last forever'
Lillian Leitzel

Billed as the 'Star of the Show' in Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey's 'The Greatest Show on Earth' (circa 1919) Leitzel was famous for her swingovers on the web, a rope that hangs from trapeze height. With her right hand anchored through a padded loop that was attached to a swivel she would throw her body over and over in a series of flips. Her record was 239. Each time she completed a plange her right shoulder became partly dislocated and snapped back into place. She was killed when her equipment failed during a performance at the Valencia Music Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1931.
Patricia Sykes (1999)

ISBN 1875559906 Sep/99 Poetry  120pp 128x198mm pb Territories:World  All rights: Spinifex