- 114: NO THEME 13with J Toledo & C Tse 113: INVISIBLE WALLSwith A Walker & D Disney 112: TREATwith T Dearborn 111: BABYwith S Deo & L Ferney 110: POP!with Z Frost & B Jessen 109: NO THEME 12with C Maling & N Rhook 108: DEDICATIONwith L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik 107: LIMINALwith B Li 106: OPENwith C Lowe & J Langdon 105: NO THEME 11with E Grills & E Stewart 104: KINwith E Shiosaki 103: AMBLEwith E Gomez and S Gory 102: GAMEwith R Green and J Maxwell 101: NO THEME 10with J Kinsella and J Leanne 100: BROWNFACE with W S Dunn 99: SINGAPOREwith J Ip and A Pang 97 & 98: PROPAGANDAwith M Breeze and S Groth 96: NO THEME IXwith M Gill and J Thayil 95: EARTHwith M Takolander 94: BAYTwith Z Hashem Beck 93: PEACHwith L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong 92: NO THEME VIIIwith C Gaskin 91: MONSTERwith N Curnow 90: AFRICAN DIASPORAwith S Umar 89: DOMESTICwith N Harkin 88: TRANSQUEERwith S Barnes and Q Eades 87: DIFFICULTwith O Schwartz & H Isemonger 86: NO THEME VIIwith L Gorton 85: PHILIPPINESwith Mookie L and S Lua 84: SUBURBIAwith L Brown and N O'Reilly 83: MATHEMATICSwith F Hile 82: LANDwith J Stuart and J Gibian 81: NEW CARIBBEANwith V Lucien 80: NO THEME VIwith J Beveridge 57.1: EKPHRASTICwith C Atherton and P Hetherington 57: CONFESSIONwith K Glastonbury 56: EXPLODE with D Disney 55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUSwith M Chakraborty and K MacCarter 55: FUTURE MACHINES with Bella Li 54: NO THEME V with F Wright and O Sakr 53.0: THE END with P Brown 52.0: TOIL with C Jenkins 51.1: UMAMI with L Davies and Lifted Brow 51.0: TRANSTASMAN with B Cassidy 50.0: NO THEME IV with J Tranter 49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH with M Hall and S Seita 49.0: OBSOLETE with T Ryan 48.1: CANADA with K MacCarter and S Rhodes 48.0: CONSTRAINT with C Wakeling 47.0: COLLABORATION with L Armand and H Lambert 46.1: MELBOURNE with M Farrell 46.0: NO THEME III with F Plunkett 45.0: SILENCE with J Owen 44.0: GONDWANALAND with D Motion 43.1: PUMPKIN with K MacCarter 43.0: MASQUE with A Vickery 42.0: NO THEME II with G Ryan 41.1: RATBAGGERY with D Hose 41.0: TRANSPACIFIC with J Rowe and M Nardone 40.1: INDONESIA with K MacCarter 40.0: INTERLOCUTOR with L Hart 39.1: GIBBERBIRD with S Gory 39.0: JACKPOT! with S Wagan Watson 38.0: SYDNEY with A Lorange 37.1: NEBRASKA with S Whalen 37.0: NO THEME! with A Wearne 36.0: ELECTRONICA with J Jones
CONTRIBUTORS
Cordite Poetry Review
Resole Malley: Love Me, Love my Protruberance
RESOLE MALLEY, a Trappist Monk, was raised by wolves. He has Canadian blood, which, unlike Canadian Bacon, doesn't stay fresh if left out. He has rambled around some, mostly from the bed to the bathroom, and once saw Prince in the Los Angeles airport. He also dated Vanity's sister, but has no claims to ethnic insider information. He published a novel once that some people liked. He also claims to have written “Islands in the Stream.” His wife tells him which shirt goes with which pants.
Posted in 24: CHILDREN OF MALLEY
Fleur de Malley: Notes for the Anatomy of Modern Art
Fleur du Malley, scion of a hapless aristocratic ?àmigr?à family from the Mallais who exchanged the Jacobin Terror for the Australian Terra, squatted in the backwoods of the Victorian frontier. Inspired by the local treescape, she australianised her name. Then under the tutelage of her showman beau, M. de Laire, Fleur flourished in the bush, to soon become the enfant terrible of Australo-French Letters.
Posted in 24: CHILDREN OF MALLEY
Michael Brennan: A Short History of Vagabond Press and Poetry International Australia
Chance and community might best describe how I edit and publish poetry. Chance in the unlikely alignment of latching onto good poems available for publication and that suit the nature of whatever I'm editing at the time. Community in the …
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged chapbooks, editors, michael brennan, publishing, vagabond
Q&A with Justin Heazlewood
Well I think ever since Primary School probably, everything I wrote had a sort of comedy element to it-I always loved being witty and playing around with words and being a bit silly and breaking rules and it just sort of always stayed with me-especially as a musician. I've got a whole heap of serious songs as well, but no matter how big the crowd is you never get much feedback on them.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Justin Heazlewood
Jacques Derivative: Interrogating ‘John Leonard’
First we must say something about the history of the inscription, “John Leonard”. Australian poetry, that world which is small enough that we can indeed say “world” and not “worlds” when placing it under discussion, is occupied, allegedly, by two …
Posted in FEATURES
Tagged humour, John Leonard
Zoe Dattner: The Greeting Card Writers
Poets come in many different shapes and forms. I'm not about to give you my ideas as to what makes a poet because I don't think I'm qualified. What I am interested in however, is all the different subsets of humanity where poetry exists. Where individuals take it upon themselves to express something in words, something they believe is representative of the way in which we all live our lives, the similarities in the human existence that highlight the fact that we are all suffering from, laughing at, celebrating, the same things. And so it was that I began to develop an obsession of sorts, that has since become an affection, for those unsung heroes, the Greeting Card writers.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged bad poetry, greeting cards, Hallmark
10 Driver Songs by The Fauves
So, Andrew Cox says he doesn't have the courage to submit poems to Cordite. Well, we've done it for him: here's ten samples from ten Fauves songs, all of them about cars or some other mode of vehicular transport.
Posted in FEATURES
Tagged driver, music, The Fauves
The Last Cameron by Evan Maloney
'I think the plastic arts are so quaint,' said one successful Australian artist when she was asked to comment on Hayes's work several years ago.
Posted in ESSAYS, FEATURES
Tagged Cameron Hayes, visual art
DJ Huppatz: My thoughts on Google poetry
John Cage came to me as an obvious start so I initially plugged in the words “Portrait of John Cage” only to find dick higgins has already written a piece called “jog he can” so instead I tried “Portrait for …
Posted in FEATURES
Tagged flarf, search poetry
Carlie Lazar: A Prank Call To John Howard
i hate john howard's galaxy: howard reads kc's essay and then sings along to some rammstein. do you call this working hard? we're not a spontaneous celebration of your amusing prank or, as the more politically correct call it, playing …
Posted in 16: SEARCH
Search Poems: Introduction by Cassie Lewis
The Poem of the Day Project on the email discussion list Poetry Espresso started in December 2001, as a result of discussions on the list about starting our own anthology. Andrew Burke initially suggested the concept. We produced a 13-month …
Posted in FEATURES
Tagged flarf, search poetry
Anna Hedigan surveys Australian journals on the web
Few of these journals have capitalised on the cross-over between people who love to read “hard” books and journals, and web-readers. Do they think we're all searching for porn? Or are they worried that posting content from their journal will dilute their brand?
Robert Merkin: "Draft Dodgers & Veterans"
A friend of mine, a math professor, has shown me a paper from around 1995 which shows that the Vietnam birthday lottery draft was fundamentally misdesigned, favoring some birthdays, making others significantly more dangerous. I find the implications of that — well, I don't know how I find them.
Posted in ESSAYS, FEATURES
Tagged Robert Merkin, Vietnam, zombies
Robert Merkin: "Returning, We Hear the Larks"
A lot of literature, unfortunately, tends to heap unique, exquisite beauty and virtue on Dying Young; impressionable young readers are encouraged to think they are missing something, and have failed Truth and Beauty somehow, if they reach age 30 with all their limbs.
Posted in ESSAYS, FEATURES
Tagged Robert Merkin, Vietnam, zombies
Robert Merkin: "On Thomas Pynchon & Mass Hypnosis"
There's a lot of popular (and insightful) American fiction and screenwriting beginning in the '50s that plays around with this living-death lifestyle of mass hypnosis.
Posted in ESSAYS, FEATURES
Tagged Robert Merkin, Vietnam, zombies
Robert Merkin: "As a little introduction to me and zombies"
As a little introduction to me and zombies, my head has always been filled with popular music, novelty songs of the moment, and one of them that had always stuck with me, from around 1960, was an American version of a Trinidadian Calypso song called “Zombie Jamboree” (or “Back to Back”) was written by Conrad Eugene Mauge, Jr, who performed as Lord Invader.
Posted in ESSAYS, FEATURES
Tagged Robert Merkin, Vietnam, zombies
James Stuart Interviews Pierre Brulleacute
Don't let the relative coherence of these interviews fool you: when I conducted them I hadn't spoken French regularly for at least six or seven years. That aside, I had barely engaged with the world of poetry in Australia over the past two. All this added up: playing back the three hours or so of recordings from the interviews was an at times painful experience in which I had to cyclically shake my head at botched phrasings of the most simple questions or comments in French.
Posted in INTERVIEWS
Tagged James Stuart, Pierre Brullé
Moses Iten: Because I Was Brought By the Road (3)
The road off the highway became a dirt road until eventually we were driving around a maze of rough dirt roads, weaving their way between humble homes. Camelia's large and jolly mum constantly quaking with a bout of laughter, gave us all a hug on arrival and wanted to give her son – one of nine – a duck. After a proud tour of their beautiful pig – “More handsome than Camelia himself,” teased Jesus …
Moses Iten: Because I Was Brought By the Road (2)
“Come and have beer,” shouted my friend Jesus, waving me over to a chest-fridge just metres from the shore. The local cantina: a corrugated-iron roof with a full fridge, an assortment of plastic tables and chairs occupied by a handful of fishermen. The chicken-feet joker was swinging in a hammock stretched up between two poles. Grabbed a beer and paid the owner, Don Julio, sitting on his throne of five stacked-up chairs. Crowned by large straw hat, with his sceptre – a walking frame – standing in front of him.
Moses Iten: Because I Was Brought By The Road (1)
One boat remained out in the ocean, beyond the rock. The other twelve boats had pulled ashore before we arrived. Not a single little fish had been in their nets today. The fishermen of the whole village would have to eat crabs from the lagoon. Scrape together some pesos to feed their families. So we headed to the lagoon nearby for some crabs.
Laurie Duggan: Cover Me [borrowed title]
It's in the nature of poetry that sampling, covering, or borrowing, conscious or unconscious happens all the time. We all try to write like people we admire. In the case of satire we may try to write like people we don't like at all. In language there are only so many riffs there for the taking and what makes a poem interesting is the manner in which it performs its little (or big) thefts.
Posted in FEATURES
Tagged copyleft, creative commons, michael farrell, remixes
Nic Fit: The Day the Sun Went Away
A backlit black disc hangs in the sky low over the western horizon, like a hole in the atmosphere. An eerie, incongruous twilight has descended, yet the hills on the horizon in all directions remain sunlit.
Posted in FEATURES
Tagged creative non-fiction, eclipses, science
David Prater Interviews Nick Whittock
Melbourne poet and raconteur Nick Whittock recently took time out from writing his inimitable cricket poems in order to face 12 questions sent down the wires by friend and fellow cricket tragic, Sam Kidman.
Posted in INTERVIEWS
Tagged David Prater, nick whittock
Christine Davey: Old Men Forget
Flashback to December, 1984. The cricket is in majestic swing. It's the time of year when pop songs are blown off the dial by commentary disputes involving field placings, team selections and bowling changes.
Posted in FEATURES
Tagged cricket, test match
