a concrete line lain
a circle or rectangle
little rig, a crane
a concrete line lain
an angle in cool rain
triggering a tangle
a concrete line lain
a circle or rectangle
This poem won the 2018 DESIGN Canberra Enrico Taglietti Poetry Award.
The DESIGN Canberra Enrico Taglietti Poetry Award was established to celebrate the work, poetics, personal style and contribution to the nation’s capital of an acclaimed architect and lover of poetry. Italian-born and trained, Enrico Taglietti is a respected Canberra architect who made a lasting and important contribution to Canberra’s built environment.
Taglietti first travelled to Sydney, Australia in 1955, and this led to a visit to Canberra to find a site for the Italian Embassy. He fell in love with a city ‘untouched by ugliness or history ... [with its] inhuman overwhelming silence ... infinity and eternity revealed’, and lived here until his death in 2019. He has designed several distinguished homes (in Watson, Aranda, Cook, Hughes and Wanniassa), as well as Giralang Primary School, Dickson Library, the Italian Club, the Apostolic Nunciature, and the War Memorial’s Mitchell Annexe.
In 2007, Taglietti was awarded Australia’s most prestigious architecture prize – the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) Gold Medal for Architecture. The architect’s distinct and highly personal design character is expressed through his use of unusual sculptural shapes and angles, cantilevered planes of roof and deck, and concrete. His contribution is significant, as is his attachment to our city. Taglietti’s thoughtful detailing, aesthetics, and sense of place have helped to shape Canberra.