Why I had to be a political activist
After watching
Sitting passively
Not participating
I knew
I had been distracted
There is no shame
A conversation is enough to start
Re-directing the agenda
Giving the power back
To the people
We all live under the political domain
Either actively or passively
So I ask will you
Speak out now or later
Cry out ... why me?
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Why I had to be a political activist considers political awakening as a moral turning point — suggesting that to live under power without response is itself a form of participation, and that even the smallest act of speech can begin to return agency to the people.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
A contented heart
There is so much to sing about
If you don’t let sadness drag you down
Lift your head to the sky
Laugh at how small you sound
Reach out and make contact
Feel the impact on the ground
This day belongs to nobody
Walk free
Study instead
The rhythm of the earth
Directions from a night sky
Music that travelled through history
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. A contented heart explores joy as a practice of perspective — turning away from private heaviness and towards freedom, wonder and belonging within the larger rhythms of the earth and human history.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Ghosts in the machine
We live on the outside
Of locked doors
We walk on by
A mournful sigh escapes
We can see
But are never seen
Remember me
You saw no reflection
So a living wage was taken away
Dehumanising the worker
They are seen as a machine
Assembled to serve
A ghost of a being
With a face to smile
A touch that soothes
This is no machine
Now do you see?
Connections will be made
The light of the spirit flickers
So one day we will be free
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Ghosts in the machine explores the dehumanisation of labour under systems that demand service while denying recognition — insisting on the irreducible humanity, dignity and inner life of workers too often treated as invisible instruments.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
More please?
Why must it always be more?
More of me
More of you
A push for more
Why do you want more?
More of the same
More for less
More to digest
When did the simple
Slip away for more
Make way for more
A traffic congestion of more
More time for waiting
Less time for doing more
More often I crave less
Strip it down to less
Do with less
Make more with less
More is an overcrowded room
Where I do not belong anymore
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. More please? reflects on the exhausting logic of excess — questioning a culture of endless accumulation and suggesting that clarity, freedom and meaning may instead be found in the quiet discipline of less.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Charity
A notion slaughtered
Severing connection
To the gift
No goodwill exists
In a wolf that dines
In sheep’s clothing
Recognisable in gesture
A purpose to be seen
Disingenuous disguise
Nobility is tied
To invisible strings
When iniquity funds
There is no charity at all
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Charity explores the corruption of giving when it is emptied of sincerity — exposing how power can disguise self-interest as virtue, and how generosity without integrity ceases to be generosity at all.
Love will always find the kind
I have visited misery
Floated on a sea of tears
Ached to slip into eternal slumber
Wished for just a chance
All fell in vain
For all it took
Was an act of kindness
A shift from the centre
Time for another
Given as a gift
No interest payable
The ledger personified love
Delivered in abundance
As the given is received
Trust in kind-heartedness
And love will find your door
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Love will always find the kind reflects on the saving power of human generosity — suggesting that even in deep suffering, kindness can interrupt despair and restore faith in love as something reciprocal, quietly abundant and life-giving.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
A day of peace
Let peace win the day
You were going to lose anyway
Water leaks from a class war
Human rank and file
Has bled to death
And died in vain
Today pay with your own time
Be virtuous by deed
Wise with truth
Share the load
Poverty was too violent a war
It was always going to come to an end
This is a public service announcement
Have a nice day!
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. A day of peace speaks to peace not as passive idealism, but as a deliberate social and moral refusal of exploitation — urging truth, shared responsibility and humane action in the face of class violence and needless suffering.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Narrow lens
I was in the paper once
It took me by surprise
To see a face I did not know
An illusion of the narrow lens
It was nice for a while
To see the possibilities
But I prefer capturing the truth
That beauty that glows from within
Take another picture please
The wrinkles can stay
Better I recognise
Who I am
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Narrow lens considers the tension between image and selfhood — rejecting polished illusion in favour of a truer, more inward beauty that can recognise age, character and identity without disguise.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
To market to market
Am I really missing out?
I do enjoy something new
The allure of fantasy
If only for awhile
For now I will enquire
After a new line perhaps
The electrifying buzz
It’s sweet seduction
Passes faster than the cost
Another hit please
I ask again
What must I acquire?
The ship has sailed
Traded around the globe
Advanced mankind
Left behind the kind
A query for the man
Where is the next land?
Most live only to get by
In a redesign of slavery
By the owners of capital
You are now free to starve
Here stands a prison cell
Allowing weekend leave
How modern is this market
Elite capitalism rules
Where imperialism perished
Leaving most in the dark
New name same rules
If only we knew
The next trend is too divine
And off we set once more
To produce to purchase
If only profit prevails
Where does it end?
What was the purpose again?
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. To market to market explores the seductions and cruelties of consumer capitalism — exposing how desire, novelty and profit can mask deeper systems of exploitation, alienation and moral emptiness beneath the spectacle of the modern market.
A poet I am
This I know
I do not sleep well
I toss I turn
Until I find the words
This I know
The words will stir
A need to be set free
To find their way in the world
This I know
Words torment me
Release me
I must reflect
For this I note
Thoughts compel
This I know
I may walk alone
But never be lonely
For words are my companions
Spilling out they compose
Poetry
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. A poet I am reflects on poetry as both burden and companionship — portraying language as an insistent inner force that disturbs, consoles and ultimately gives shape to solitude.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Anger
I cradle you
You soothe me
I dare not let go
You smother me
Sometimes you are
All I have
And all I am
I cannot breathe
Release me
Leave my side
Walk away
I carried you too far
The enemy within
You will not win
Even when
I fear the light
It draws
Me in
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Anger explores the intimate seduction of rage — revealing how it can feel protective and sustaining even as it constricts the self, until the possibility of release begins to draw the speaker back towards light.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Playing my last card
The deck was stacked
I have played fast and fearless
Nonetheless
The game is coming to an end
Holding tightly to one last card
Not a winning card
Perhaps only an opening
A new game would be nice
This game has taken a toll
Should the card be played
Or held instead as hope?
Hope without action ...
A fool’s platitude
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Playing my last card considers the exhausted threshold between endurance and change — confronting the limits of passive hope and recognising that renewal may require the courage to act, even without certainty of victory.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
There are signs of hope
When images disturb
Read keenly
Keep reference
Hold it up to the light
Let us not forget
Hope is a living thing
Birth is messy
From this, new life springs
At first it may stumble
Even take a step back
Struggling to leave the past
Reach out in support
And the future unfolds in gentle hands
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. There are signs of hope reflects on hope as something fragile but active — suggesting that renewal is rarely clean or immediate, yet can still emerge through memory, care and the steady willingness to support what is struggling to begin again.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Female voices
My voice
Sounds female
My mind
Is of the humankind
Female voices
Misogyny denied
Tried to hush
Built a barricade
Female voices
Rise
Unapologetic
For this disruption
My voice is not alone
It has been raised by the past
Connected to the present
Spoken for the future
Imagining a peaceful world
Women’s voices are heard
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Female voices speaks to the collective force of women’s expression — affirming female speech as intergenerational, defiant and necessary in the ongoing struggle against silencing, exclusion and misogyny.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Roots
A grounding sensation
A place to call home
To hang a hat
A place to grow
The dream we all have
Remains attached
Even when uprooted
Aching to find fertile ground
Where to now?
Displaced wearily they wander
I have known this journey
Packed the bags, paid the toll
Searched the hills, followed the streams
To find a place, a home
Still the roof is rented
Denying the roots
To community
Decay seeps in
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Roots explores the human longing for belonging and permanence — revealing how displacement, precarity and insecure shelter do not only unsettle the individual, but slowly erode the deeper roots of community itself.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Lost potential
It was always you
hidden in the corners
patiently waiting
Business always came first,
so you were relegated to dusty desk drawers
Visiting at dawn and dusk,
when the mind has time to wonder
How much sweeter life would be
if you were the nectar
instead of the broken promise
Every day is made better
when allowed to roam free
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Lost potential reflects on the quiet sorrow of neglected inner life — suggesting that what is deferred in the name of duty or ambition may in fact be the very source of sweetness, meaning and creative freedom.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Australian summer
Well sunned and salted
My heart beats to
The rhythm of the sea
The breeze kisses gently
Heavy eyelids give way
Summer siesta’s bliss
These childhood memories
Ingrained in my senses
Australian life by the coastline
Was once wild and free
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Australian summer explores memory as a sensory refuge — evoking the warmth, freedom and coastal ease of childhood while quietly holding space for the distance between what was once lived and what can now only be recalled.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Muse
My wondrous muse
My wonderful world
You seem distant this time
I scribble in vain
But you do not appear
I feel lost to you
Or perhaps you are to me?
I am pacified with dribble
Distracted by nonsense
I rush to your side
You are gone when I arrive
In this fleeting time
I grapple to find a space
Just one poetic verse
I feel it should be said
I feel it should be done
I feel until I am numb
The words escape again
As despair becomes my companion
Together we march in monotony
I can only be in one place at a time
Still I get caught up in a dream
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Muse considers the ache of creative estrangement — capturing the restless tension between longing and distraction, and the sorrow of pursuing inspiration when language feels just beyond reach.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Seasons of thought
A cycle by nature’s decree
This is how we thrive
Harmonising new with old
Cultivating creativity
Well rested we begin
Reflecting on the approach
Time rewards
Sowing fresh concepts
Reaping new breakthroughs
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Seasons of thought reflects on creativity as a cyclical and regenerative process — suggesting that rest, reflection and renewal are not interruptions to growth, but the very conditions that make meaningful insight possible.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Awakened
It was a thundering sound
When it fell, crashing
Obliterating all comfort
A heavy heart sank
You were not there
It would be harder now
Harder to brush aside
Harder to push down
Harder not to see
Masters of society want more
More of what is really less
They play as gods
Far from sight
Littering the earth with misfortune
The fortune is almost wasted
Spilling over the entire sphere
Nowhere to hide
Wars break out
To feed the machine
Because peace is free
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Awakened explores the collapse of innocence in the face of systemic violence — confronting the ways power, greed and war are sustained by those who profit from human suffering while remaining distant from its consequences.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.