Poem: Outside a Library

A music event at Adelaide City Library inspired this week’s Poet’s Corner contribution by Pam Makin.

Oct 25, 2023, updated Mar 18, 2025
Photo: Sam Roberts
Photo: Sam Roberts

Outside a Library

Inspired by ‘Music in the Library’,
Adelaide City Library, Rundle Mall, 13 December 2019

There is talk of what multiculturalism might look like?
Consider, what does it
Sound like? Taste like? Smell like?
If you combine, mix, blend, respect, listen, trust…
How might it feel?

I am sitting beside a vibrant Indian woman
as I listen to a Scottish air
expertly played on a Swedish keyboard.
The warm evening breeze wafts the scents of
frying spices from the Asian fusion street food stall.
I sip my coffee – flavour origins possibly
African, South American, South East Asian
It matters little.

I am in Adelaide
named for the German wife
of an English king

on Kaurna land
outside a library
where anything is possible

even this.

Pam Makin, originally from Melbourne, lives in South Australia. A marriage celebrant, she also writes poetry and short stories. She was a heat winner and runner-up at Spoken Word SA’s Summer Slam 2019, and is currently compiling a manuscript of poetry, “to get the written as well as the spoken poem out to an audience”. More can be found about Pam at her website here.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.