Born in Melbourne, Australia, Pam Swanborough lived, studied and travelled in Europe for many years before returning home in 2017; she started writing in 2019 and won the ‘Best Regional Writer’ award, and runner-up ‘Best Fiction’, at the Writers Victoria Emerging Writers Competition in that same year. She occupied herself during covid by gaining an… Continue reading About the author
Author: Pam Swanborough
writing and other occupations
Sideshow
The patched and painted canvas of the small tents clustering round the Big Top was beginning to smell damp as the sun went down. A guy-rope slackened off as the dew settled, and the passing soldier itched to tighten it properly; but the two sheilas and his new army buddy William were pulling him on,… Continue reading Sideshow
This cold summer
This cold summer, that started with such promise, is ripe with metaphors; I reach out my open hand and they fall into my palm. The possums Have given up waiting For the tomatoes to ripen And are just eating them: Green and bitter, but still tomatoes. I can’t speak to your silence. March 2021
Kitchen Garden
...Her friend Cat seemed to be in love, and, boringly, to be in love with someone else, and Daisy herself felt isolated, surplus to need and ready for recycling, grey as the compound walls; colourless...
Gwennie and Elizabeth
Rain slants across the valley. The sky black as a valley floor, weighty as valley walls...
Kinked in broad daylight
I’m developing a kink for Thin old men in grey cardigans Who lean on country fences And watch the wind. Not the gaunt of ill mind or waning body. Not the narrow of a too-small mouth and a too-big religion. But the shape of someone easily distracted By words, or birds, or maps, or pebbles.… Continue reading Kinked in broad daylight
A Kallikantzaros’s First Christmas
‘I love Christmas!’ Cyst was angrily untangling some tinsel...
Sometimes I think
Is everything shit? Sometimes I think everything's shit. Do you want me to fuq off? Sometimes I think you want me to fuq off. Should I stop breathing? Sometimes I think I should stop breathing.
Finding Under Difficult Circumstances
Finding Under Difficult Circumstances by Pam Swanborough By the time you read this anything might have happened. She might have fallen in love by the time you read this. By the time you read this she might be dead. For that’s just how it works. Don’t feel bad for reading. It’s just how things work.… Continue reading Finding Under Difficult Circumstances
Rain
This building is being waterboarded. I live inside the sound of water, falling down a dozen long galvanized throats as it sheds off a roof the size of two tennis courts. Giggles, sighs, shouts of rain or coughs of hail that can last for hours. The sound is variously deafening, overwhelming, comforting: a maelstrom, a… Continue reading Rain
P A Swanborough 
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