​Eastern koel
            January companion
in the vertical air


Brown thornbill
            March folds away its songs
while sap falls


Southern boobook
            May returns
and the house is empty


Powerful owl
            July cradled like a pine branch
scored by talons


Fan-tailed cuckoo
            September softens
the hardest memory


Grey butcherbird
            November warning
before the sky darkens

​Sulphur-crested cockatoo
            February rises like 
a burning mantle


Grey goshawk
            April farewell
to a dying tree


Glossy black-cockatoo
            June cracks open 
as continents drift


Yellow-faced honeyeater
            August cascading over 
ruined limbs


Wonga pigeon
            October clock
steadying sorrow


Sacred kingfisher
            December fledgling
by a dry creek

This poem was commissioned originally in 2021 by composer and Associate Professor Bruce Crossman, for a collaboration by colleagues in Western Sydney University’s Music and Poetics programs. A recorded version of "Bird Calendar (Earth List)" features sampled readings from the poem alongside layered improvisations by Dr. Waldo Fabian Garrido and Dr. Nicholas Ng.

© Tony Mott

Kate Fagan is a poet, editor and songwriter whose third book First Light (Giramondo) was short-listed for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Age Book of the Year Award. She is Director of the Writing & Society Research Centre (WSU) where she also leads The Writing Zone, a mentoring program for emerging writers and arts workers from Western Sydney. Her album Diamond Wheel won the National Film & Sound Archive Award for Folk Recording and she supported Joan Baez on her 2013 tour of Australia/NZ.