CONTRIBUTORS

Dominic Symes

Dominic Symes (he/him) was born on Kaurna country (Adelaide) in 1990. He writes poetry, some of which has appeared in places as various as Overland, Cordite Poetry Review, Rabbit, Australian Book Review, Australian Poetry Journal and Best of Australian Poems 2021. In 2023 he was shortlisted for the David Harold Tribe Award for Poetry and the Woorilla Poetry Prize, and won the Woollahra Digital Literary Prize for Poetry. He helps curate NO WAVE, a monthly poetry reading series at the Wheatsheaf Hotel in Adelaide, which has been running continuously since 2018. From 2016 to 2019, he completed a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, under the supervision of the poet Jill Jones, that explored contemporary ekphrastic poetry and for which he was awarded a Dean’s Commendation. Previously he has worked as an academic at the University of Adelaide, Swinburne University of Technology and La Salle College of the Arts (Singapore), teaching English Literature and Creative Writing, and also as a touring musician in folk and indie music projects which took him around Australia, to New Zealand and across Europe. He currently lives on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people in Naarm (Melbourne) where he works as an editor. His first book, I saw the best memes of my generation, was published by Recent Works Press in 2022.

http://www.domsymes.com/

Korean Grocer

I can sit here forever in the coffee shop beside the Korean Grocer watching Brunswick St as the lights come on like in Hyper-reactive (the award-winning poem by Melody Paloma) feeling like cardboard in the rain …it won’t last! yells …

Posted in INVISIBLE WALLS | Tagged

Paul Verlaine’s pistol

rings out through poetry like a town hall clock in a village where poetry hides like a pill in a cabinet (entropy & all that) leave your text messages unread your heroes unsung suggests the band in long coats supplying …

Posted in INVISIBLE WALLS | Tagged

Tipping point (‘Blues for skip’)

my skin is deathly pale which is about the only thing I have in common with Keats if this were the nineteenth century I’d worry if I really was consumptive or just capital R romantic at present all my shirts …

Posted in INVISIBLE WALLS | Tagged

Dirty Hit

do you ever find yourself reading poems just to see what people who actually get published are writing these days? or sniff your clothes in the washing basket even though you know they’re dirty? I do it’s like I realised …

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged

Security Questions (True Vulnerability)

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. – Brené Brown Is this the light refracting innocently through a droplet of rain I’m seeing trapped in …

Posted in 108: DEDICATION | Tagged

Lunchtime Variations: Dominic Symes Interviews Peter Bakowski and Ken Bolton

I became interested in how Ken and Peter worked with one another, with an eye to discovering the conditions which allow poetic collaborations to remain fresh and full of humour, in the same way people examine the diets of people in Blue Zones, like Okinawa and Ikaria.

Posted in INTERVIEWS | Tagged , ,

Beginning and Ending with a Line from Hera Lindsay Bird

love comes back harder falling in love with you for the second time is trying to sail back to the harbour against a headwind that I hardly felt as a tailwind sailing out so confident though I’ve never been on …

Posted in TMLYMI v4 | Tagged

Greta Thunberg Ode

children the size of adults pester me with questions like how big is your carbon footprint? I mean yes I’m a minor poet not a major corporation but I’d still prefer being taken to task by someone with a stake …

Posted in 95: EARTH | Tagged

Review Short: Eddie Paterson’s redactor

As a physical object with an online extraction, Eddie Paterson’s new book of poems, redactor, presents the performance of mark-making in an ever expanding digital sphere. The juxtaposition between the white of the page and the black of the ink has long provided a site for textual collision, one that was used to great effect by the concrete poets and the French Symbolists.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Ekphrasis as ‘Event’: Poets Paint Words and the ‘Performance’ of Ekphrasis in Australia

To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Newcastle Region Art Gallery (NRAG) in 2007, Lisa Slade and Peter Minter co-curated the exhibition Poets Paint Words. The two curators commissioned some of Australia’s best poets to write poems in response to a selection of paintings held in the NRAG archive.

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