GUNCOTTON
Suspensions of the Real
Studying the Sylvia Plath archival papers at Smith College in 1993, poet, editor and critic Felicity Plunkett intuited that a number of pages were missing from one poem draft. Plath assiduously page-marked drafts of the poems that were to become the Ariel poems. Plunkett was unable to uncover these pages in any of the archives made available to her, which were still in the process of being organised. One night, in dream, she ‘receives’ a phone call, made from a black, period-piece telephone, words delivered in Plath’s idiosyncratic trans-Atlantic diction – ‘look in the yellow folder’.
Posted in GUNCOTTON Tagged Donald Crowhurst, Felicity Plunkett, Inger Christensen, Jacinta Le Plastrier, Jordie Albiston, Sylvia Plath 3 CommentsToo East Coast?
Hello readers, one and all. Firstly, thanks for continuing to read Cordite. I hope you’re finding some poems, reviews, essays to your liking in each issue. Recently, we have received a fair bit of correspondence expressing concern that the publication …
Submission to Cordite 43: MASQUE is now open!
This issue is the Masque. It extends an invite to displays of Devices and Mythic Mayhem. It desires to entertain Bold Interiors of Poetic Fancy and Brocaded Rewindings, Lyricised run-ons and flirtatious Kinks in the Narrative. A toying with Masks and Anti-Masks of identity, gender guises and human conceit.
IWD: Murder, She Wrote
Three lines from The Seventh section of Finola Moorhead’s A Handwritten Modern Classic, first published in 1977 and re-issued March 2013 by Spinifex Press, close out a varied discussion by the author on the political nature of death, that Socrates’ death ‘was political’ (as underlined in the handwritten original), that Socrates was not a writer and that writers ‘need teachers like Socrates’. In the same section she argues that artists often use ‘Another’s pain … for the success of expression’. ‘Art as comfort’, Moorhead follows on, ‘ — strange concept. / Such assumptions aren’t questioned often enough.’
Posted in GUNCOTTON Tagged Finola Moorhead, Jacinta Le Plastrier, Libby Hathorn, Rachael Bailey, Rachael Mead, Susan Hampton, Virginia Woolf 2 CommentsLaunch of Tricia Dearborn’s ‘The Ringing World’
Amidst its many echoes, the idea of a ‘ringing world’ conjures up for me a line from Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Words’, in which words are axes ‘after whose stroke the wood rings’. This ringing takes the form of words’ echoes travelling off like horses. Late in the poem these horses reappear ‘dry and riderless’ but nevertheless continuing on with their ‘indefatigable hooftaps’.
Audio of ‘Nonfiction Poetry: Performing the Real’
This panel from the NonfictioNow Conference 2012 – at RMIT University and in partnership with Iowa University and Barbara Bedell, the Copyright Agency Limited, the Wheeler Centre and ABC Radio National – explores and discusses the potential of ‘nonfiction poetry’ …
Posted in GUNCOTTON Tagged Benjamin Laird, David Carlin, Jessica L. Wilkinson, Jill Jones, Stuart Cooke 2 CommentsRe: NO THEME II Submissions
Just a quick thanks to the 423 of you – and your accumulated snowfall of 1200+ poems – who submitted to Cordite 42: NO THEME II with poetry guest-edited by Gig Ryan. That’s quite the crush of submissions from around …
Gorton, Alizadeh and the blog … (again)
Might as well come right on out with it: after eight years and a couple hundred reviews – all edited, a number authored as well – as Cordite’s Reviews Editor, I’m glum to announce that Ali Alizadeh is stepping down …
Notes about the INDONESIA Special Issue
When I approached major Indonesian poet Sapardi Djoko Damono – godfather of that sprawling nation’s contemporary poetics and a renowned translator of English-language works into Bahasa Indonesia – about working with me on a kind of ‘translation exchange’ to then …
Funding Success for 2013
Cordite is pleased to announce that we have once again received funding from the Australia Council for the Arts for contributor payments – including poetry, reviews, essays, recordings, images, translations and presenting new ways for Cordite Poetry Review to publish …
Ellipsis Getting Bigger
Me: Yeah, no, I write too … Person: Really, great! What do you write? Me: Poetry Person: ‘…’ Sometimes that person actually lowers their eyes, bows their head, as though I have somehow reached too far into their minds and …
Submissions for Cordite 42: NO THEME II Now Open
It’s summertime in Australia. Weekends officially begin on Thursday mornings. Your fridge will now gestate one bottle of Pinot Grigio, Blaufränkisch (or similar) per week until March. All public holidays go off in one seasonal barrage. We’re going to keep …
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