A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter Y

Yarning poetics

Concept
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A narrative approach in poetry, particularly in Indigenous Australian contexts, that weaves storytelling with cultural knowledge and oral tradition

Detailed Definition
Yarning poetics is a narrative and lyrical approach rooted in Indigenous Australian oral traditions, characterized by circular storytelling, relational knowledge-sharing, communal voice, and deep connection to Country (land); unlike linear Western forms, it emphasizes dialogue, intergenerational wisdom, and cultural reclamation, often resisting colonial structures of authorship and time; contemporary practitioners include poets Ali Cobby Eckermann, Ellen van Neerven, and Samuel Wagan Watson, whose works model ethical listening and decolonial aesthetics.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ali Cobby Eckermann’s “Inside My Mother” uses circular storytelling and ancestral dialogue typical of Yarning poetics; Ellen van Neerven’s “Mango” blends personal memory with communal knowledge in a conversational, relational mode; Samuel Wagan Watson’s “White Stucco Dreaming” weaves urban Indigenous experience through oral-inflected lyric; Jeanine Leane’s “Purple Threads” employs yarning structure to challenge colonial historiography; Tara June Winch’s poetic prose in “Swallow the Air” demonstrates yarning through land-based narrative; Yvette Holt’s “Anonymous Premonition” uses ceremonial rhythm and intergenerational voice central to Yarning poetics
Additional Notes
Yarning poetics originates in Indigenous Australian storytelling traditions, where “yarning” denotes a collaborative, circular, and relational mode of narrative exchange rather than linear exposition; in poetry, this manifests through communal voice, intergenerational dialogue, land-based metaphors, and resistance to Western poetic conventions; poets like Ali Cobby Eckermann and Ellen van Neerven exemplify this approach; yarning poetics emphasizes orality, cultural reclamation, and ethical listening—key for students engaging with decolonial aesthetics and non-Western literary frameworks.
Also Known As
Indigenous storytelling poetics circular narrative verse relational yarn poetry Aboriginal oral lyric Yarning Circle Poetics
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