CONTRIBUTORS

Liam Ferney

Liam Ferney's most recent collection Hot Take (Hunter Publishing) was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. His previous volumes include Content (Hunter Publishing) and Boom (Grande Parade Poets). He is a public affairs manager, poet and aspiring left-back living in Brisbane with his wife and daughter.

BABY editorial

Posted on February 3, 2024 by Liam Ferney

We released the call-out for BABY on 30 May 2023. We were thinking of baby projects, the spark of something new, thinking of the person who we call ‘baby’, thinking of Liam Ferney, bard of the bubs, who writes the best baby poems this side of town.

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Submission to Cordite 111: BABY

Posted on May 30, 2023 by Liam Ferney

Send us your babies. Nobody puts poems in a corner.

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Genuine questions about Pet Semetary

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Liam Ferney

**Spoiler Alert!** First, what put that road there? Sure, stuff’s gotta get somewhere, but mostly someone’s gotta want it when it gets there, right? Semi-trailer gotta hurtle along some trail. Second, what are the odds of friendly ol’ Fred Gwinn …

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A Toll

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Liam Ferney

Buy a rugged lawnmower to caress domesticated grass. According to Ibid, I suppose; but not before we’re runover, stumped by a snap in our trump quiver. OK buy the Beamer not to notice more strung strings = $ for shamus. …

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

34 Weeks

Posted on May 1, 2021 by Liam Ferney

March was a crazy year. After the rains we were safe or so we had assumed. The era of weather as pleasure is past and I spent this day mooning over the poems I squandered when I left the laptop …

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Never Be Alone Again: Hip-Hop Sampling as a Technique in Contemporary Australian Poetry

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Liam Ferney

One of those most important battles of hip-hop’s first two decades wasn’t waged between two MCs at a cypher. And it wasn’t a couple of b-boy crews popping and locking at a block party. Instead, it pitted a hip-hop clown against a puffy-sleeved Irish balladeer.

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It’s Challenging

Posted on February 1, 2020 by Liam Ferney

i.m. christa mcaullife Folks I don’t plan to change my plans. It’s mourning in America. Melania and I are given to meme the tragedy of the challenger. We share no pain with no one. This is truly a national loss. …

Posted in 95: EARTH | Tagged

Liam Ferney Reviews Kate Lilley and Pam Brown

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Liam Ferney

In 1915, H G Wells published Boon, a satirical novel that featured long passages pastiching the literary style of his erstwhile friend, Henry James. It kicked off an epistolary barney over what art should be about.

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OzPo(st)

Posted on May 1, 2018 by Liam Ferney

our rock music might be shit but we invented the 21st century out of our favoured delusions. mid-thirties & the weekend’s dopamine costs more than the coke. we are the shrinkage & our favourite movies don’t come true, instead we …

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Sunburnt Jukebox

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Liam Ferney

‘We can write what we want to write.’ John Farnham, ‘You’re the Voice’ I want to tell you a story I come from a saltwater people Waiting on the weekend, set of brand new tires Is running in your veins …

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Liam Ferney Reviews Cassie Lewis

Posted on March 22, 2017 by Liam Ferney

Based on the poems in The Blue Decodes, Lewis is an artist who values silence as much as noise. The book’s ninety pages, which include a number of poems published in her chapbooks, represent well over two decades’ worth of work which provides an interesting purchase on the question of why write poetry in the first place, particularly if it seems like an adjunct to an already full life?

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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Liam Ferney

Seriously, spree killings are part of the furniture. Once you get used to it you’ll hardly notice, besides that new paleo place is. the. bomb. Don’t mention the free advice you get from strip mall shonks, just relax into your …

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Stampede, the Many Small Big Men of History

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Liam Ferney

“It’s Time, It’s Time” retranslated and the smell of her obese slander and propaganda. A republic of disappointment. We may never escape our consumption, a tractor beam of destiny. The optimist says he bulls-eyes womp rats in a T-16. The …

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63 no

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Liam Ferney

Play suspended for rest of day due to PJ Hughes’s head injury at 2.23 local time A day as deadly as the bulletin’s Cassandras broadcast. It hits home like a windshield spidered on the SE Freeway. Macca’s sign erased/ lead …

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Review Short: Ania Walwicz’s The Palace of Culture

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Liam Ferney

Ania Walwicz’s first book in more than twenty years, Palace of Culture, confirms her reputation as one of Australia’s leading conceptual poets. It consists of fifty (almost) prose poems, each between two and five pages length. The poems use the suggestion of narratives as a key organising principle. But suggestion is as far as any of the narratives get.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Guernica

Posted on December 1, 2013 by Liam Ferney

obviously “I was born on the day they dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.” She says that in the pool room as though she wanted to avoid a conversation about war. There is nothing left of his night. Jarred empathy made …

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that thin mercury sound

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Liam Ferney

after the fire escapes and security guards it is good to be beyond CCTV amidst the howling sirens whipped wind the thin mercury sound sculpted on sand the base jumper poised like a civilisation on a precipice of wasting military …

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AUSFTA

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Liam Ferney

borne witness to the names of the 60,000 Republic dead stickyfooted at the monolith equal parts David, Goliath before windsurfing down the runway of democracy the Capitol (mistaken for the White House) triumphantly crowning the National Mall compare our bush …

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The Viceroy’s Subservients

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Liam Ferney

Thou doth detesteth too much & so it begins with the ants marshalled like Ukrainian cannon fodder spread across the aprons of the Volga. & They Will Not Be Overcome! Not by powder or spray or the diligence to daily …

Posted in 55: RATBAGGERY | Tagged

Listening to Maggot Brain for the First Time

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Liam Ferney

– on a Dodo broadband connection for ND Freeways are never exactly that. Changing lanes with Maria Wyeth in the rearview like a tail. The headstones marched around the bend. The pool where I learnt to swim offered up to …

Posted in 55: RATBAGGERY | Tagged

Knocking Shop

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Liam Ferney

it’s like a Hiroshima of fun then instead of buying scones from the CWA ladies spruiking at Camp Hill State School we turn our attention to the candidates and I remember I collected how-to-votes for Hawke’s second or maybe Ahern’s …

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Glad to be Unhappy

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Liam Ferney

Tell me Martin – I remember the tutorial, (on who? Hewett?) about Stalin’s midnight Mandelstam phonecall, but as the grey sky marshaled troops for another assault on the swollen creeks I did my best to forget public service selection criteria. …

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It’s Time, It’s Time (지금이야, 지금이야)

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Liam Ferney

New Year clocks on over fog valley, temperate Tibetans account for contributions. Suburbs struggle and sweat through a summer scented with mumbles and deceptions. Fat detractors and software spruikers expire, the paddockbashers steam from the load. The thin mechanic massages …

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The New Scientist (새로운 과학자)

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Liam Ferney

like a brave flag parading in the slipstream of some desk jockey’s eight start day the miracles of this season ruffle like a party dress or the leaves in the trees that ridge as snug as a favourite collar and …

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