src=SciMag@2016-03-11: Peacock AC, Steel MJ (2016) The time is right for multiphoton entangled states. Science 351: 1152-1153.
src=QED@FeynmanRP-1985: Feynman RP (1985) QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton University Press.
src=SciMag@2016-03-11: Peacock AC, Steel MJ (2016) The time is right for multiphoton entangled states. Science 351: 1152-1153.
src=QED@FeynmanRP-1985: Feynman RP (1985) QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton University Press.
These lost boys translucent in the radiance
of a torn shop window with its eternal alarm
are ripping the side mirrors from a stationary Audi,
their vandalising hands strong with slowed time:
lizard eaters with tongues of rough leaves
and guts toughened by ingestion of dark meat,
the tintinnabulation of their armour issues glamour
like leakage of mercury from a watch-face.
The gesture clatters to the roadway, a Lenten
abnegation, honoured then unlearned. The child
ensorcelled by bougainvillea suffers pangs
of separation from primal heat. We had barely
discussed his slender maternal memories
when the police took him to Darlinghurst
lockup and beat him badly. He told me:
“They were showing the video of Ice Cream for Crow
when a black arm from Eveleigh Street
reached through the lounge room window
to repossess our television.” A mattress
dense with fleas exposed to early morning
Chippendale traffic, the sunroom strewn with ruby
fragments of smashed flagons suffused
in an ambulance glow. He borrowed money
from everyone he knew in the Trade Union Club
then disappeared forever: someone named
a cat after him. He was discovered later
swinging from the latticed balcony, to be revived
in the greenish pallor of hydroponic lamps.
Their supreme love expressed in meaty fistfights
down the staircase, hammer-threatened walls,
until one night a car skidded on its roof
against the pole outside our front door –
the topless waitress from the pub across the street
brought hot sweet tea in her netted singlet
to the white-haired suspended passengers.
Singed by the traffic slipstream we passed
secure in an insulating cloak of diesel, running
with the pack over six lanes of Parramatta Road.
The Review
scott rated it colleen rated it shannon rated it catriona rated it lyn rated it brittany rated it lynda rated it andy rated it don rated it apatt rated it dirk rated it szplug rated it sarah rated it henry rated it justin rated it ron rated it stuart rated it morgan rated it ian rated it lit bug rated it dead letter office rated it not getting enough rated it werner rated it jay ant rated it jason rated it aloha rated it chris rated it phrynne rated it #science-fiction #fiction-adult #sci-fi #apocalyptic-or-post-apocalyptic-psychological-thriller #owned-it #this-is-the-book-upon-which-the-film blade runner was-created #fantasy-sci-fi #author-uk #5 stars #kindle-books-i-own #classics #dystopia #science-fiction-read-2016 #set-sail-for-disappointment #this-novel-is-a-cult-classic #sci-fi-fans #i’ve-been-saying-for-years-this-book-is-boring #those-interesting-in-bringing-down-the-quality-of-modern-lit #genre-sci-fi-that-i-own #discuss-this-book #technological-masterwork #humans-mankind #cyberpunk #androids-are-so-sophisticated #born-&-lived-most-of-his-life #i-have-a-confession-to-make #what-is-an-empathy-box #it-takes-five-full-pages-for-the-character-to-buy-a-goat #a-professed-episcopalian #the-latter-two-are-artificial-or-human #subsequent-dystopian-cinematic-fare #fallout #an-android-walks-into-a-bar #don’t-get-me-wrong-maybe-2.5-stars-far-more-bleak-i-won’t-go-into-details #is-it-really-possible #threatened-their-existence #ask-other-readers #this-question-contains-spoiler (view-spoiler) #by-2021-millions-killed #entire-species-into-extinction #those-who-remain #horses-birds-cats-sheep #radioactive-dust #most-live-creatures-become-extinct #artificially-created-mass-produced-identical-individuals #not-purely-electric #review-your-friends #may-be-it’s-a-contradiction-in-terms #dust #living-creatures #this-story-is-about-machines #this-book-was-so-amazing-in-the-beginning #then-everything-plummeted-downhill-it’s-been-a-long-time-since-i-watched-the-movie # rate-it
Standard Operation Procedure
manual handling is any activity involving the use of force. use lifts, trolleys, paths, stacks, breaks & avoid twisting, stretching & bending. take a two minute break. have feet level & well-planted on either side. assess the load & mechanism. clear the area. keep the back straight. don’t overbalance. be especially careful of fingers & hands. wrists & elbows should be stretched, moved & relaxed during downtime. any situation arising & leading to a development shall be reported to your manager for investigation & rectification. if you do not have language, engage the specialist. do not rush the task. relocate. turn your feet in the direction. keep the object close to your body. the machine will have a humanising influence. clear children. clear families. whale-crops should be monitored for bleaching. high consequence salinification incidents should be reported immediately. near misses should be reported. incidents include the following. immediate treatment shall be forthcoming. high-risk margins are conditional. incidents include. management of freedoms remain. curfews shall be enforced. work gradually. whenever possible, use the transport for dangerous or unwieldy loads. follow the guidelines. bend the knees, feet apart in the position. assess & plan the handling. be particularly careful of the device. tight doorways open to the area. signal & rotate staff. keep the back straight with the head looking forwards. utilise multiples. ensure you have a clear area in which to work. the program will demonstrate force.
V
Now I will walk again into this field of wreckage
which is my starting place—On its stone heaps the tussock
is dry stalks the colour of a scratch in glass and rattling fennel
tendrils from the root—A single cloud
now coming in over the motorway on slow dissolves of light—
Along the cutting’s side speargrass with a rain wind in it
moves through the shape of a catching fire—This
stoppedness before rain in which years I have forgotten
invent a landscape still in what I have named landscape—
ruinable, incandescent, piece by piece drawn
into that blank in thought which sets the names
in their array—tussock, speargrass, wild fennel—bright charges
hung upon abyss—Do you remember?
In head-high grass, its pale seedheads, the wind is massing
light, lights moving in place and scattering down—
At the level of my eye the grass untidy, touchable, steeply
its slant stalks narrowing back into their likeness—
A train which even now is sending its long cry back
out of the vanishing point it keeps discovering from the scene—
The rain is first a prickling sound and then hand hair eyes all
touch and does not know me walled in itself, its dazzling blank—
The road will come through here—

Content by Liam Ferney
Hunter Publishing, 2015
Liam Ferney’s Content is a book of poems largely composed out of memes, or slices of culture. The notes at the back of the book state:
Some of these poems contain allusions, sentiments, words, phrases, sentences and images that have been lifted from the culture. And Cordite’s comments. If you’re not sure, Google it. At this stage your guess is as good as mine.

Idle Talk Letters 1960-1964 by Gwen Harwood
Edited by Alison Hoddinott
Brandl & Schlesinger, 2015
The letters in this illuminating and entertaining volume, written by Gwen Harwood to her friend Alison Hoddinott (the collection’s editor) and her husband Bill Hoddinott, cover the period leading to the publication of Harwood’s first book of poems. 1960-1964 were the years in which Gwen Harwood’s poetry was coming to light in literary magazines in Australia, sometimes under her own name, sometimes under one of her three nom-de-plumes: Walter Lehmann, Francis Geyer and Miriam Stone. Continue reading

O Sonata: Rilke Renditions by Chris Edwards
Vagabond Press, 2016
The Bloomin’ Notions of Other & Beau by Toby Fitch
Vagabond Press, 2016
Chris Edwards’s O Sonata dwells in the vortex of the underworld, plumbing the depths of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth and resetting the entrails of Rilke’s Sonnette an Orpheus into a crossword puzzle ready for consumption. In the eponymous sequence, Edwards offers up a renewal of the Orpheus (also known as ‘the futile male’) myth to signal his reconsideration of repetition and originality as the basis of a literary revision – releasing a suite of renditions that purposely misinterpret, transliterate and obscure. Continue reading

Unexpected Clearing by Rose Lucas
UWA Publishing, 2016
In ‘Balancing,’ Rose Lucas describes how Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist made famous by his walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, ‘launched into a fitful middle space.’ With a ‘steady grip of muscle,’ Petit is imaged as a ‘machine riding air and sky,’ defying gravity as he dances ‘from element to element.’ Continue reading

words breathe, creatures of elsewhere by Nhã Thuyên
Translated by Kaitlin Rees
Vagabond Press, 2016
The relation of place to identity and self-making is central to much poetry, indeed to writing more generally. It won’t be lost on the reader, therefore, that Nhã Thuyên, writing from Hanoi (‘river within / inside’) – a city built on lowlands; a city of lakes situated in the Red River delta, where rainfall is high – makes an impassioned plea for poetry (and thinking) that is fluid, unbounded, borderless.

Diurnal by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa
Grey Book Press, 2015
Jane Joritz-Nakagawa’s Diurnal is a slim chapbook of 24 numbered poems of seven two-line stanzas, which by my reckoning makes it a sonnet sequence. The cover of the edition I received is reminiscent of silver gelatin, with stark tree branches visible in the glooming (the chapbook comes in a series of three colours). The image is evocative of the tone of the poetry and while the title evokes the daily, it suggests that there are long, dark days of the soul, as well as nights. What of the noir of the day?

Drowning in Wheat: Selected Poems by John Kinsella
Pan Macmillan, 2016
The poetry of John Kinsella will need little introduction in a forum such as this, though with the recent publication of his Drowning in Wheat: Selected Poems, aspects of Kinsella’s biography move more meaningfully into focus. Author of over forty books, Kinsella’s writing career spans three decades. What with the wealth of material available to him, Kinsella and his editors might have been spoilt for choice; though how to bring this wealth into a general coherence? Continue reading

On Violence in the Work of J.H. Prynne by Matthew Hall
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015
Violence and poetics are the key poles in Canadian-Australian critic and poet Matthew Hall’s new scholarly release. Hall charts how the British late-modernist poet, Prynne, responds to violent events of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries – from the Holocaust, through apartheid, Chernobyl, and Australian colonialism, to Abu Ghraib. These affective sites of violence are linguistic, too: chapter two takes its subject as the ‘the sociolinguistic war’ which takes place under ‘the strain of economic factions and the reach of the multinational resource sector’. Continue reading

Exhumed by Cassandra Atherton
Grand Parade Poets, 2015
Dazzling, vibrant and terribly witty, Cassandra Atherton’s Exhumed does not give itself over entirely to the horribly serious, gruesome images invoked by its title. Nor of course does it travel down to the desperate depths of its epigraph’s hero, Rosetti, who (in)famously ‘recovered’ the book of poems he had buried with his wife. Yet Atherton’s collection of prose poems is nonetheless morbidly fascinating and even darkly exhilarating, with some of the more raw, emotionally-fierce poems evoking similar queasy feelings in the twenty-first century reader, perhaps, as the nineteenth-century poet might have experienced recovering writings from the grave of a loved one. Continue reading

The Subject of Feeling by Peter Rose
UWA Publishing, 2015
From the beginning of the latest work by Peter Rose, the reader is given the impression of an unfolding tableau or score, the creases and outlines of which to be generously shared. A sense of intimacy is engendered from the outset: we are let in on the scales and arpeggios that a musician practises, as if each poem, or note that it reaches, ‘might lead somewhere / or fail to ascend.’ The seemingly off-hand candour of such admission serves as an indication that one is in for a special experience from a master of the craft.

Report from a Border by Dan Disney and John Warwicker
light-trap press, 2016
The book starts with a full stop. It orders me to stop before I begin. On the next page there is a font that looks like a zebra crossing. It straddles the page spread, white shapes on flat black. I stop, looking hard at the letters to make sense of them, and then realise what they’re saying: WALK WALK STOP! I’ve followed orders; how biddable of me. I move on, turning the page. There’s another black expanse: it says WALK in the same font, followed by a full stop. I guess I have permission to move on. So far, so good.

The African continent, being home to thousands of languages and hundreds of varying cultural identities, has richly diverse forms of poetic tradition. The world’s growing focus on the varied African cultures has created new platforms and new avenues open to African artists, writers, poets, musicians and filmmakers, etc. These platforms – largely made possible through the internet – are introducing the complexities, diversity and beauty of African expression not only to the rest of the world, but to other Africans as well. Whether it be through song, proverb or folktales – through oral tradition or literature – one thing that unifies this diversity is that the utmost significance of poetry is evident and embedded in cultures across the continent.
When I was approached by Kent MacCarter to put together a small collection of contemporary African poetry, I knew the task would not be a simple one. Whatever the end result might be, it certainly could not encompass or represent the countless powerful voices emerging from not just the continent but from it’s Diaspora population as well. Much of Africa’s cultural wealth, especially in forms of poetry is still not largely experienced by the world outside the continent. Though names like Kofi Awoonor and Chinua Achebe are recognisable to those familiar with African poetry and literature, contemporary works of young Africans making an impact may not be. What was possible with this collection, and what was important about this endeavour, was the opportunity to give a possibly unfamiliar audience a taste of Africa’s burgeoning voices.
This collection features poets from Botswana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. In the following works, you will find writers exploring the past, the future, identity and the present. Yes, some these poems also address war, and injustice but not in the same narrative usually offered about Africa. These topics are frequently presented in a way that unjustly paints this vast place as a place in perpetual turmoil. In these poems, we get the voices of people who have borne witness to history and change. We see the poets’ powerful connections and love for their respective places of origin, we see a process of coming to terms with the past, and we see criticism and hope both from those who live on the continent, and those whose lives have taken them away from it.
Some of these poems attempt to reconcile history and consequence, identity and environment. Some are indicative of a changing Africa, one that struggles with democracy, and the changes that come with growth. These depictions offer a glimpse into a varied yet connected experience. These stories are personal, in the voice of those who have experienced and inherited them.
Fagia the remnants of my chaos fagia-Sweep
The first spurt of fearful thought
Ili niweze kukueleza kwa kina So I can tell you in detail
How I’ve fallen, where I’ve stolen
Hatuwezi fukia maovu kwa ‘kazi tu’ We can’t bury crimes by ‘work only’
Yabidi pia tupooze makuu We must drop the ‘we got this’
Sending our egos flying, without the truth
Of sincere observation, on how we got here
The history that’s delivered a people
Who throw garbage on the streets?
Build haphazardly, with no links
Of function and space, beauty & substance
In accelerating the cry ‘Hapa Kazi Tu’ ‘Pull up your sleeves’
I’d like to understand, what I’m working on
Uprooting the cause, by accepting the blows
Of bad governance, links of close-minded
Leadership, that began with the chiefs
Who let African skin go as cargo?
White men, who decided we’re savages
New ‘independent’ governments, that re-do
The ‘me first’, the patriarchal quirk …
Ndio tuna kazi, Kazi ya kuondoa dhamira hizi potofu
Yes we got to work, work in removing these false beliefs
I & you aren’t machines
But sophisticated beings, so moods aligned
In undoing our mess, let the intent be, true progress
1.
Sometimes the chimney was hot or alight.
They sent us up anyway, mostly naked.
At night we, sleeping black,
dreamt of the bakers on Lothbury,
of tight flues and endless winding.
The first time Jonny went up,
there was not even four years behind him.
He was up while the chimney was cold,
before the morning fire was lit. His skinny limbs,
cramped, waited for the mason’s cutting tools.
Luck for the bride who sees us perhaps.
But we are black and blind with falling soot.
We are burnt and scraped, our knees
set to fire with brine and brush
to harden our small hearts.
In the fairy tales, the sweep finds love
with a porcelain shepherdess.
After May day, we are turned from the table
to which we return, for the world gifts us
only sack cloth and ashes.
2.
there is no cap coarse enough
to keep the soot from eye or mouth
No talisman of brass cap badges
to shame the master who sends them up
to fall from roofs and chimneys
to lodge in flues and suffocate
Whose son has fire set under him
his heels pricked to mend his pace
This is the cold fate of he who is alone
whose mother has died, left his body
for the world to take and make coal
and whose back is bent in youth
his scrotum set to eat itself away
we die knowing what is denied us
air and love, a clean wanting
we fall, we hope, to something warm
that union that sought us out
first as fire now as ash
has left us invisible, sooty faced
only grace lets us fall
and where is the point
at which penance comes knees bent
with your name as absolution on its tongue
we can only hope for something that
knows, perhaps when we do not:
the taste of clemency
when the sentence is done
something familiar and new all at once
that tempts us, shows us
these seams are easily undone
that ink is the hangman with a forgiving noose
each one of us is born sensible
his heart incensed then falling
we know the white space left
for our open mouthed cry
then the slow babble of delight
but now and then we forget
here is the point
a place to reckon with
where beneath a crown heavy with words
is a seat of acacia and hawthorn
to say choose carefully the weight
of each syllable upon the tongue
I was named after a well
my sister, too
after holy wells
distant from each other
we are distant from each other
our mother didn’t intend it
war is the frantic wet-nurse
running between us
we are both thirsty
we are all thirsty
there is no divine child
to make our waters holy
our waters heal no affliction
who would supplicate
at our bases, seek our waters
in parables
girls are never divine
only their mothers
but like Abraham
I ask God to show Himself
I ask in the plains
I ask in the desert
He answers me with light
He answers me with metal
tea with an iron flavor
we sell it town to town
migrants in our own wild bush
gunmetal sweat
weapon oil in the life
and luck-lines of my palm
we traverse the land
we move with shadow
we are guided by water
I ask God to show Himself
a prophet quartered birds
and waited for God
yet another was given
a hoopoe that spoke
some have war birds
they, too, look
they, too, make reports
we live in a time
machines have emissaries
but like Abraham
it’s not possible to destroy me
they try by fire and by sand
they try by metal and by verse
still I traverse my land
without a sister
with no family
not even a man
who no longer accepts
a hand on his chest
when frantic
myself, strange women
strange girls traverse
in this parable men and boys
attain godhood
they send war to run
hill to hill
well to well
war runs so fast
she loses a shoe
there is no holy child
war ran with empty arms
an empty shawl
when men and their boys
come to a frenzy
they can’t submit to anything
no thing is a kindness
nothing is a kindness
don’t touch me,
don’t look at me,
with their whole persons
no one supplicates
to frantic gods
their command has no end
it can never become story
it can never become ritual
She would tell me
In the space between heartbeats
Feel the punch from earth
Coursing through feet to your fingertips
Alerting you to the whisper of touch
Beckoning you to listen for the precision of creation
Is there peace in Africa?
Amidst the dirt roads of cities with confused architecture
Gusts of wind carrying you on rushed mosaics of function,
Aboard the ‘teksi, matatu, daladala, or bodaboda’
With smells of sewage, fried plantains and exhaust fumes not a bother
Still… there’s a bird of unified victory flying high
He would tell me
Look for it, in the rhythm of our gait
The creativity of our food
The clicks of our tongues,
The resourcefulness of the calabash
In the kitenge, kente, indigo and batik sash
Pinpoint her wings
So you always know you can look up
To draw inspiration from the majesty of the clouds
Resting in the assurance of traditions
That paid attention to the whisper
An afternoon indoors but for sunbeams flecking
the audience of relatives, it could be any evening
any century before ‘Nigeria’ was coined to group
the villages, the hundreds of thousands of families
gathered where the wind is low, the rumbling forest
paused for the passing Griot/Storyteller/PopStar
of the time. My uncle tells a joke in this tradition
risen before the hushed cluster of us. An American
Businessman, he says, thumbs tucked in his belt,
stomach puffed out and you can picture so perfect
the TexasOil/GunToting/WarOnTerror/NewMoney
Rich who counts out 5,000 in cash and throws it
in the coffin of a deceased colleague – a Ghanaian
uncle adds, us, laughing. The English Businessman,
not to be outdone, uncle says, stiffening his top lip,
his nose pinched and you can picture so perfect
the Old Etonian/ForQueenAndCountry/OldMoney
Rich who counts out 5,000 in cash and throws it
in the coffin of the recently deceased. Both regard
the Nigerian, uncle says, relaxing now to his Casual
Slouch/AfroBeat/HalfDancing/RoughMoneyRich.
The Nigerian shakes his head at the new world order,
shrugs at the old, writes a cheque for 15, throws it
in the coffin, gathers the cash and leaves to applause,
rolling laughter, the CrazyTrickster/MoneySwindler/
FastTalking/SlipperyPalmed/Stereotype/Everything.
All this is fact /
That Jebo had a knack for melodrama.
That his slight weight barely marked
That boarding school ground.
That he was teased for his fair complexion.
That he’d skim most crowds in search of me.
That his left arm crowned my shoulders so often
That some thought us more than good friends.
That we walked to dormitories after classes.
That we were gathered out in the cold courtyard.
That we were lectured on theft and property.
That Balla was nabbed with bags of stolen food.
That our knees knocked in our short shorts.
That a storm roared over the fields.
All this is feasible /
That Balla was Goliath to Jebo’s David.
That a visible tension lay between them.
That Balla ate rice laced with rocks.
That these were the building blocks of his muscles.
That once he picked a senior clean off the floor.
That we called him Spartacus, a hero to us.
That Balla wasn’t guilty of theft.
That he was too thick to master such things.
That the prefect chose the toughest canes.
That lashes flashed down with such force
That Balla could make no sound at all.
That Balla chose to make no sound.
That the prefect so hated his show of strength
That he broke two canes on Balla’s back.
That another ripped a cable off the wall.
That its sparks hugged air for a second.
That he touched this to Balla’s wet skin.
That Balla shook like a bird on fire.
That Jebo smiled when Balla screamed.
That Balla broke free, ran for a window.
That the search party never found him.
All this is fiction /
That I pulled Jebo’s arm off my shoulder.
That I joined those who taunted him.
That Balla lost all diction that night.
That when he landed, he ran for the mountains.
That the storm struck the last of our Titans.
That often when lighting strikes those fields
instead of thunder, something / someone screams.
The gate-guard is at special attention
positioned in highland chill
new gold buttons and a collar
hand-twined blanket in a
dejected corner
on the tables, reserve is hung
and the meat devoured with the
finest whiskies teasing the men teasing
supple women; spitting and spilling
archaic laughter
on a plush bed, the bride to be
cries over a set of pearls
and a dress of silk bred in caves
is smeared with salt and kohl
and the glasses bubble in the hall
a relief for the risoriis as the guests
whip to amnesic strings
streaking soil over the marble
for a fortnight, the house will scramble
eat for days lest the good flesh spoils