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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.

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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 …

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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.

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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 …

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 …

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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