Smoke

When the mountains stared at our backs,
it was my mother who read the sky, its cobalt
glass full of moisture. The clouds formed

a necklace at the summit. If I could remember
the smell I would describe this as well. Though
I do recall the smoke trying to join with the clouds.

Each tendril plume learning to fly. These birds
of smoke released themselves from the dung
hut chimney as my body rested on her back.

Braced in the sling of her shawl she sang
in a language I no longer recognise from thinking
but can identify from sight. It sounds like water.

Posted in AFRICA | Tagged

Michael Farrell Reviews Philip Hammial

Asylum Nerves: New and Selected Poems by Philip Hammial
Puncher & Wattmann, 2015

Poems don’t need condescension any more than we do. If we pick up a book and the poems come to life only at a certain page, maybe it’s our brain that needed a refresh. Philip Hammial is certainly up for a refresh of everyday culture: of foodie-ness, for one, such as in the high school project scene of ‘The Float’, where food is garbage and his art teacher gives him an A; or the vegetables of death in ‘The Vehicle of Precious Little’. There are enough stories in his poetry – represented here through a selection from twenty-five collections – to replace a whole bookshelf of novels.

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Brigid Magner Reviews Gregory Kan

This Paper Boat by Gregory Kan
Auckland University Press, 2016

Iris Wilkinson (also known as Robin Hyde), a pioneering poet, novelist and journalist, has influenced many New Zealand writers since her death in 1939. Hyde’s writing has been extensively mined by scholars – especially her diaries and letters – due to their immense readability and colourful subject matter, including details of her struggles with mental illness, her love affairs and her two children born out of wedlock. This Paper Boat is an homage with a difference. Gregory Kan, a young New Zealand poet whose background is Singaporean, traces his own history through that of Wilkinson.

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Phillip Hall Reviews Connie Barber, Meg Mooney and Jenni Nixon

The Edge of Winter, by Connie Barber
Ginninderra Press, 2015

Being Martha’s Friend, by Meg Mooney
Picaro Press (an imprint of Ginninderra Press), 2015

swimming underground, by Jenni Nixon
Ginninderra Press, 2015

These three poets, who exist outside university creative writing and humanities faculties, have ‘chosen’ a publisher independent of Australia Council arts funding and have been somewhat neglected by critical attention and awards recognition. All three poets collect richly lyrical and narrative poetry that praises the natural world and interrogates different aspects of our ability to live in it respectfully. All three collections are beautifully presented and feature stunning cover artworks that reveal each poet’s preoccupations and intentions.

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Submission to Cordite 56: EXPLODE

Explode

Poetry for Cordite 56: EXPLODE is guest-edited by Dan Disney.

[[EXPLODE from ex– “out” + plaudere “to clap the hands”]] the spectacle Oculus Rift the α in their brickveneerdoms howzat Omid Fazal Reza Hamid Leo Lucky Country megafires Maulboyheenner form is never more than an extension of hot pies oi oi oi love a TPP sunburnt big data hot pies colony [[EXPLODE (verb) “to reject with scorn”]]ruddockvanstoneandrewsevansbowenoconnorburkemorrisonduttonetal stop the DeepDream boats not in our Terra Nullius and form is never more than a revelation of owyergarnmate girth by Pacific Solution bleaching the Ω history wars [[EXPLODE (synonyms) shatter thunder kablooey convulse]] amid sapphire-misted mountains tie me razorwire down Buckley’s hope tie me God Save Our Protectorate AlphaGo down form is never more than relaxed and comfortable the singularity Tunnerminnerwait toxic dump [[EXPLODE (antonyms) fizzle collapse implode]] and “only someone who knows how do something with it can significantly ask a name”?

[[EXPLODE (noun) “action of driving out with force and/or noise”]]
Explode: lyrical interference writ loud.


Please submit only once, with a maximum of three (3) poems (visual and concrete welcome) or works of microfiction (500 words maximum) in one (1) document … but first, please read the submission guidelines.

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged ,

Weather and Cinnamon: Late Changes in Major Poems by Barbara Guest

BG

I grew up in Brisbane where the sticky weather of a summer day resembles something like a bell curve. Predictably cool in the early morning but the sun rapidly burns this away so that by 9am it’s already quite hot. At midday it is hottest (and given there’s no daylight savings there are no hi-jinks) and from there the warmth lingers in the street and the structures. The air, though humid, will gradually cool as the afternoon comes on, perhaps with a westerly breeze offering a little respite in the evening (that is if there is no booming afternoon tropical storm to mark a transition to a cooler late afternoon).

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Poetry of the Eye: The Visual Aspects of Poetry


Image by Tim Grey

Presented by Cordite Publishing Inc. and Australian Poetry, and hosted by poet Toby Fitch, this workshop at the 2016 Emerging Writers’ Festival will open your eyes to the potential of the poem on the page. By tracing historical examples of visual and concrete poetry — from ancient Greek to early modernist to recent local works — and then by assembling a visual poem of your own, you will learn to explode your poetry across the page, and not just from top to bottom or left to right — in any direction. Bring text (your own poem, another’s or whatever you like) to reshape during the workshop.

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Review Short: Mike Ladd’s Invisible Mending

Invisible Mending by Mike Ladd
Wakefield Press, 2016

Adelaide poet, Mike Ladd, is best known for his long-running Poetica program on the ABC’s Radio National (eighteen years all up before its casual destruction in 2014). The breadth of taste and openness to a wide range of influences Ladd displayed in Poetica is also to be found in Invisible Mending, his first poetry collection since Transit in 2007.

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NO THEME V Editorial

Wright Sakr

I must admit that I ventured – no, sauntered – into this guest editing position on feet of clouds. Such a fantastic opportunity to peek behind the curtains of one of Australia’s best and most prolific poetry publications was not to be missed, I thought. In fact, it seemed almost too good to be true. How many other publications would give this chance to an emerging poet of colour, even with the steadying hands of the enviably skilled Fiona Wright alongside? I’m hard pressed to name even one. It took great trust (and, I think now, sadism too) to entrust my judgment with the work of hopeful hundreds.

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Virginia Woolf’s Incidental Pilot, Marianne Wex’s Legroom and the Dancing Man

As I write this, my son is flying over London. He will then catch a train to Exeter. I have knitted him a two-strand black hat with a raised asterisk glyph on its slouched boho crown.

I first read Virginia Woolf’s short – just six pages – essay, ‘Flying Over London’ (Selected Essays, Oxford University Press, 2009), in a café in Sydney. The barista deftly worked a rising swan into the frothy surface of my coffee.

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The Organising Mind: Discipline and Austerity in Jackson Mac Low and Art After 1960


Image courtesy of Festival of Fantastics archives

I am speaking of the organizing mind, the quality of mind we encounter in all of Mac Low’s work,
whatever its ratio of intention to procedurally eventuated “nonintentionality” may be.

– Joan Retallack (1997) [italics mine]

A system became necessary; how else could I see more concentratedly,
find some interest, continue at all?

– Hanne Darboven to Lucy R. Lippard (1968)

Introductory notes

It was the question of the quality of the ‘organising mind’ (in the above epigraph of Retallack) that began this little inquiry, an inquiry that, as Retallack puts it, is certainly based around ‘procedurally eventuated nonintentionality,’ but will go beyond that. I wanted to know about organisation as a quality of mind. Having myself been immersed in procedural practice, I now want to ask a different kind of question: What is the organising mind in poetry and poetics? Extending Joseph Conte’s critical notion of ‘procedural form,’ what is a procedural sensibility? Continue reading

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Remnants: 12 Photographs by Annette Willis

Abandoned spaces, places and objects are central to my photography. I am drawn to the obsolete and discarded and am fascinated by the dichotomy between the original function and aesthetics of old structures and what remains, in its abandoned beauty. Among other things, this fascination has resulted in a long exploration of the discordant application of 19th Century British building techniques in the Australian landscape. I am not documenting but rather interpreting built spaces within the landscape.

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Christy Dena Interviews Eric Zimmerman


Image courtesy of Juan Carlos

Eric Zimmerman is a game designer, academic and educator. He makes digital games, analogue games, installations, experimental narrative games, has written non-fiction books that are key texts in universities and is the founding faculty at the NYU Game Center. Continue reading

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Aden Rolfe Interviews Eliot Weinberger


Image courtesy of ABC

While the prevailing formula for the contemporary essay seems to be information plus thesis – a collection of facts held together by authorial intentions – Eliot Weinberger’s approach is striking for a deceptively simple difference. Rather than drawing conclusions for the reader, he lets information become its own argument, however oblique. The resulting essays are open-ended, riddling things, many of which gain meaning in aggregate, like those in Wildlife – whose contents correspond between the animal world and ours – and An Elemental Thing – which come together to create a ‘serial essay’.

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On a Hot, Wet, Kinky Evening in Fortitude Valley


Kinky Friedman and Sam Wagan Watson in Fortitude Valley, Queensland.

It was one of those typical Brisbane Sundays coming into storm season and Fortitude Valley was soaked by a magnificent volley of thunder clusters.

I was in a daze, still getting back to being me after some time-out / brain bleeds / loss of work / heart out of place … and basically bad writing! My partner had invited me to the Powerhouse on this afternoon for the matinee of a show, and in the shred of performance and storm we found ourselves dripping but not exactly ready to call the afternoon quits.

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6 Poems by Najwan Darwish

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Najwan Darwish has been hailed by the New York Times Book Review as ‘one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation’. Nothing More to Lose, superbly translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, is his first collection in English and it more than justifies the claim. Given his upbringing in Jerusalem, a city drawn and quartered along lines of identity, a city with multiple meanings, it is no surprise to find that faith, power, race and trauma are the dominant threads Najwan expertly uses to interrogate histories and weave his own truths.

Two years ago I walked through the streets 
of Dahieh, in Southern Beirut
and dragged a cross
as large as the wrecked buildings
But who today will lift a cross
from the back of a weary man in Jerusalem?

(Sleeping in Gaza)

Given the Israeli occupation of Palestine, it is by now rote to assume a Palestinian poet must be defined by resistance or rage or some mix thereof, but that is not the case here. Darwish skips where you might expect him to march, laughs where you might expect him to curse; always defiant of expectation, sometimes he’ll do all four in the one poem.

All these years you’ve been mourning the loss of your country.
Shame on you: Loss is a fabrication.

(Fabrications)

His vision is not so narrow, nor so insular, as to be defined by a border. Indeed, living in contested territory, among so many fault lines of self, no doubt ensured he would always look beyond it. His is a restless spirit, and this diverse collection reflects a global outlook. Darwish speaks of Jewish pain, of Armenian, Kurdish, Amazigh and Palestinian trauma too. Wherever oppression has stamped its foot, he seems to have visited in mind and heart, as if to say, ‘I see you here too, you cannot hide from me.’

He speaks not just with an eye to history, but to all histories, including his own, as with ‘In Praise of the Family.’

There is but a single sentence fit to praise you:
You are the deep quarry
of my nightmares.

Selected from his poetry over a 15-year period, the poems in Nothing More to Lose are exhilarating in their range and scope, offering deep cynicism, grief, hope and humour, as well as the language of faith, if not faith itself. There are few poets who can handle such weighty themes with such skill and brevity, but Darwish pulls it off with enviable ease, managing not just to write of life itself but also of himself.

I broke in the dream, became 
countless fragments, and no one
was there to gather me

(Tonight I Dreamt You Were Dead)

Given the tonal complexity and lyricism on display, it is a testament to Kareem James Abu-Zeid’s skill as a translator that he was able to carry so much across to English, and lose so little. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading Nothing More to Lose, I urge you to do so now. You won’t regret it. In the meantime, it is with great excitement that I can present six new poems by Najwan Darwish translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, and published here for the first time.

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10 Poems by Joan Brossa

Born in Barcelona into a family of artisans, Joan Brossa (1919-1998) first began writing when he was mobilised in the Spanish civil war. During the forties he was introduced to surrealism thanks to meeting Joan Miró and Joan Prats. This led him to start writing sonnets, odes and theatre pieces (which he called ‘scenic poetry’) within a neo-surrealist framework. In 1941, influenced by Futurism, he produced his first visual poems. He founded the Dau al Set in 1948 and during the fifties his poetry took on a social engagement. The poems presented here are all from The Tumbler / El Saltamartí (1963), where the synthesis of these factors is evident.

Prelude

These lines, like
sheet music, are no more
than a collection of signs to
decipher. The reader of the poem
is a performer. 

But, 
today, I leave 
my spirit in
its natural state. I
don’t want it agitated by thoughts
or ideas.


Time This line is the present. The line you have just read is already the past —it remained behind after being read. The rest of the poem is the future, existing outside your perception. The words are here, whether you read them or not. And nothing on earth can change that.
Path The footprints of the bulls went thus: C C C C C C C C The block must have been on the other side.
Gran Méliès1 — Maskelini puts the deck of cards in a case; he drapes the scarf between his hands: it disappears into the case. He has the deck of cards in his hands. — Bah! Such shows are a little passé: the cinema has killed this genre. — But don’t forget that the cinema made its way thanks to these tricks.
Interlunar A black curtain serves as a background. The skeleton that I left on the table before writing starts to move its legs and arms. More skeletons enter and dance together. — Grandmother, what is a lover? — The old lady says: — Oh! Now I remember ... — Rising, she opens a closet and out falls a skeleton.
Poem It is certain I have no money and it’s clear that most of the coins are chocolate; but if you take this page, double it long-ways into two rectangles, and afterwards into four, then make an oblique fold along the four sides and separate them into two main parts, you will have a bird that moves its wings. To Pepa
Tumbler A doll that has a weight in its base and that, tipped from its vertical position, rights itself again. The people. To Lluís Solà
Diagram The fact is that thousands of wealthy men determine the destiny of the world, and do it with one fundamental principle in mind: increase the benefits. (How long will this structure last?)
Sneezes Referring to the Spanish Press law provisionally set down in April 1936, the minister said that the best praise we could offer was that it had remained in effect for so long. Achi, Achoo, Achi!
Intonation I notice so many changes in what I feel and what I see, that if I remember personal tragedies I light a cigarette and leave the poem.
Preludi

Aquests versos, com
una partitura, no són més
que un conjunt de signes per a 
desxifrar. El lector del poema
és un executant.

Però,
avui, deixo estar
el meu esperit en el
seu estat natural. No
vull que l’agitin pensaments
ni idees.


El Temps Aquest vers és el present. El vers que heu llegit ja és el passat —ja ha quedat enrere després de la lectura. La resta del poema és el futur, que existeix fora de la vostra percepció. Els mots són aquí, tant si els llegiu com no. I cap poder terrestre no ho pot modificar.
Camí Les empremtes dels bous eren així: C C C C C C C C A l’altra banda hi devia haver la quadra.
Gran Méliès — Maskelini posa el joc de cartes en un estoig; agafa el mocador entre les mans: li desapareix i passa a l’estoig. El joc de cartes, el té a les mans. — Bah! Espectacles així van de mal borràs: el cinema ha matat aquest gènere. — Però no oblidis que el cinema va trobar el seu camí gràcies a aquests trucs.
Interluni Un teló negre serveix de fons. L’esquelet que he deixat damunt la taula abans d’escriure comença a bellugar cames i braços. Entren més esquelets i ballen junts. — Àvia, què és un amant? — La vella diu: — Oh! Ara que me’n recordo… — S’aixeca, obre un armari i en cau un esquelet.
Poema És cert que no tinc diners i és patent que la major part de monedes són de xocolata; però si agafeu aquest full, el doblegueu pel llarg en dos rectangles, després en quatre, feu llavors un plec oblic amb els quatre papers i el separeu en dos gruixos, obtindreu un ocell que mourà les ales. A Pepa
Saltamartí Ninot que porta un pes a la base i que, desviat de la seva posició vertical, es torna a posar dret. El poble. A Lluís Solà
Diagrama El fet és que milers d’homes adinerats determinen el destí del món, i en fer-ho s’orienten per un principi fonamental: augmentar els beneficis. (I fins quan durarà aquesta estructura?)
Esternuts Referent a la ley de Prensa espanyola, dictada provisionalment l’abril de 1936, el ministre va dir que el millor elogi que li podíem fer era d’haver tingut una vigència tan dilatada. Atxim, atxum, atxim!
Entonació Són tants els canvis que noto quant al que sento i al que veig, que si em recordo de tragèdies personals encenc un cigarret i surto del poema.
Posted in TRANSLATIONS | Tagged ,

3 Self-translations in 3 Languages by Marilyne Bertoncini

Souvenir – Ricordo – Memory

The grey Deûle flows
inside its greyish banks.
Dreams are reflected
within the water grass,
and changing fates
sketch and mirror
fleeting drafts
beneath the water clouds
where the sun hides
with the sparrows
in shivering silk
rustling like the rushes

*

La Deûle coule grise
entre ses berges bises
des rêves se reflètent
parmi les herbes d’eau
des destins fluctuants
ébauchent des histoires
miroitant un instant
dans les nuages d’eau
où le soleil muché
avec les hirondelles
a des frissons de soie
bruissants comme les joncs.

*

La Deûle scorre grigia
tra le sue bigie sponde
si rispecchiano sogni
fra le erbe d’acqua
fluttuanti sorti
tratteggiano storie
e effimeri sfavilli
nelle nubi d’acqua
dove il sole nascosto
in mezzo alle rondini
ha fremiti di seta
frusciante come i giunchi.

Posted in TRANSLATIONS | Tagged

5 Poems by Vahe Arsen

Vahe Arsen (Arsenyan) was born in 1978 in Yerevan. He earned his PhD in American and English literature from Yerevan State University, and is currently assistant Professor of the Chair of World literature at Yerevan State University. He is also editor-in-Chief of literary journal Foreign Literature.

Arsen translates poetry from English and Russian into Armenian. He has published two poetry collections in Armenian – The Flying Bicycle (2003) and The Return of the Green Gods (2007) – with the second book translated into the Dutch and published in Netherlands in 2010 and into the Russian in 2011 with the title The Sun Express.


Rimbaud
or Crucifixion of the Soul

The road is a barbed wire
and a magnet

the androgyne night reads a prayer
upon the city

a perverted and genius
and tormented youth
cross-nails his soul
on the virgin-roadside

and dreams of Baudelaire.


The Apple Under a Tree Means a New Flood

Soon after the flood comes a new flood
and a new creation – before and after the flood
a new tree
and the old Creator

In the new branches – the former Satan
in the rustling leaves – the Sun newly stiff and impudent,
and souls of new substance flying over the water
In the Old emptiness – a worn-out body with rotten ribs
under a new tree – an apple forgotten


The Hunter-moment

The birds had attacked
the walnut tree of my summer house
I ran into the house for the rifle
I ran into the house to save the walnuts
I ran into the house

I directed the rifle to the tree-bird,
to the coalescence of the twin
I stood still –
to catch the moment
but the moment was stronger
than my right forefinger

the tree isn’t mine
the walnuts are not mine
and the birds too,
only the rifle is!
which had coiled around my arm like a snake

I threw it away


The Walker on the Water

I love peasant’s hands like my own self
hands
with soil-web on them
thorny
with nacreous fingernails
each finger – a child’s backbone
monolithic
separate
amphibious roots

they chose three melons fusing with the fruit’s roundness
the watermelon’s cavern rang
the sunburnt tomatoes became hand-corns
the eggplant – a family of black rabbit kits,
who filled into the shabby sack hindering one another
then the peasant plunged down into the sack of sharp-ended peppers
and reached the nucleus of the globe
split the mocking darkness of the outer space
and pulled out a half-red splendid pepper
pulled out with more creed than Pope towards life and
Resurrection
and put in line with other peppers waiting in the sack
and wiped the death on his muddy trousers…
he thrust the money in his shirt pocket until the packing was torn…

the cigarette burnt like the Sun…
then he breathed in the luminary and leaned against his car
the metal of it was long ago gone…
mixed with the soil…
and now sprouted…

and I and my son both loaded
start our walk on the water…


The Arrival of Fairies

At this hour of the day,
when your senses prompt that you are the son of the Moon and
your love takes the shape of non-essence – emaciates and leaks fluid-form or unformed,
the city prompts you,
that the times of hopelessness begin for love

the times of drugs that replace everything,
that will smoke the troubles of the day
together with the day
impassable for sensation and
very safe,
desirable like the unborn embryo

avoid foreigners at dawn
you can suddenly love two of them or One, and those who die in the news will not soothe
the silent coffee hour at daybreak

and then the universal reality begins
the hurry-scurry of vanity splits the daily rite of your expectation and
you covet new sites in which the times and history of others rule
but at the same time something dies inside you and is not reflected in
the morning news
and you do not find solace in your dying and the dying of others
besides the time there are flows in your veins which can also linger and
stop
useless mirrors in the renewed cave that watch you and
do not want to see themselves never ever
useless visions and seers – before the bombs and after the bombs
visions, and visions and again visions … without those who look and see
kingless thrones
deaths without the departed
resurrections noiseless and inqueit
and even invisible

statues washed by rain
souls washed by statues
souls without masters and silence,
immobility more than presence and starving worms which have no wings to migrate and
no fancy to stretch a caravan
just then the fairies are born and blooming in harmony with drowsiness of the trees in woods
and the silent and serene nature of the plant becomes complete
and again something visionary is born
and becomes more real, urgent and moveable
and discerns the Seer from his own pupil

Posted in TRANSLATIONS | Tagged , ,

Michael Aiken Reviews Duncan Hose

An abundance of impudence

Bunratty by Duncan Hose
Puncher & Wattmann, 2016

The bio of Duncan Bruce Hose describes the Australian poet as coming from ‘the softslang line of the chansonnier, whose reference points range between Trefoil Island, Melbourne and Coney Island.’ In Bunratty, his third collection, that ‘softslang line’ delivers a suite of deftly composed (post)modernist folk songs, characterised by a highly idiosyncratic orthography and a preoccupation with sex and booze. Continue reading

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Review Short: Love, Sex and Death in the Poetry of Bolesław Leśmian, Translated by Marcel Weyland

Love, Sex and Death in the Poetry of Bolesław Leśmian
by Bolesław Leśmian
Translated from the Polish by Marcel Weyland
Brandl & Schlesinger, 2015

In this new collection of translations, Marcel Weyland acquaints contemporary readers with Bolesław Leśmian (1877-1937). The book makes us witness to the self-construction of an early twentieth century ‘outsider’ poet who won’t hesitate to invite you into his world. Weyland has taken up the heady task of translating a poetry that is difficult in its original form. Leśmian is celebrated for his creative morphing of language, playing with rhythm, and inventing of words in Polish. Continue reading

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Done

Her sadness sits on the couch in a burgundy floral nightie, one button missing, and eats a jar full of chocolate covered peanuts that were meant as a present for her tutor who was always so nice.

She wonders how long she can stay like this, on this couch, stuffing every pocket of her brain (each a potential source of pain) with shouting housewives and ordinary people with really great singing voices.

While she waits, she folds up her small self, her smallest self, tucks in questions (why? And aren’t I good enough?) and smooths angry creases.

When she’s ready, she will unpick it, with thick dumb fingers, and maybe she will learn or feel or remember the character of her sadness.

Posted in 74: NO THEME V | Tagged

The Girls of Goat Island

Goat Island is a secluded beach west of Ardmore, Ireland that can be found via a windy lane signposted for Goat Island. It was awarded the Green Coast Award for 2015.


Every morning in every season
they come to swim
the southern coast
of Goat Island.

From spring jackets and skirts
they emerge in blue bathing suits
bare legs skimming across
a cavernous beach,
heads capped in white.

Like a bevy of birds
they dip in the tide,
stroke imperceptibly out,
circle back to themselves
these girl-women.

Their shape takes the form
of the sea,
sinuous as an eyelid,
sharp as a forgotten sound.

Without a white cap, I stand out—
bare-haired, American.

After a swim they strip naked
powder breasts and towel
bottoms, hover inside
limestone hewn before time
was a word or an abstract.

They huddle close,
dress and laugh,
at ease with their bodies,
each other.

But the vigor of May
makes me shiver:
this soft Irish rain mixed
with talk, bare limbs
and wet rock.

Posted in 74: NO THEME V | Tagged

Recommendations for a Western Australian Coastal Pastoral

  1. I am thinking about limits.
    1. The gaps between limits. Liminal, littoral spaces.
    2. The most fundamental part of ‘human’ consciousness is defined by lack of limits.
    3. Unless it is limited by life and death which are themselves littoral rather than literal
  2. The beach, we say, is a littoral zone. Do I repeat myself? I repeat myself.
  3. In WA the beach is our playground, where our children grow.
    1. A playground is a fenced space.
    2. Putting a fence around the yard strikes us as being the easiest way of achieving order out of chaos, says Wallace Stevens.1
    3. When we grow into our consciousness we find our own limits and no longer need the playground.
    4. But Stevens is, of course, talking about America.
  4. In the language of early settler Australians, there was no way to describe the landscape. Even the colours were limited.
    1. To paraphrase early accounts, yellow, yellow, yellow, desert, death, where is the green?
    2. Unsurprisingly, the fields in the WA wheat belt are many shades of yellow, none of them green.
    3. The most obviously green thing of WA is the ocean.
    4. So it rolls like fields and is most fertile.
    5. But there are no sharks in the wheat fields.
  5. Flaubert says that thing about being ordered in our dailiness to be violent in our art.
    1. He is also not Australian.
  6. The US shore lyric is defined by Bloom as one of confronting limits of existence through the impassable borders of the ocean (death)2.
    1. WA literature is defined by being in the ocean, out past where your feet can touch the bottom.
  7. After the second fatal shark attack at Gracetown, people stopped putting their head under.
  8. If oceans are fields, then when you dive under the surface you are in essence burying yourself.
  9. At the panel on sharks, the audience was asked who among them had ever had a profound experience in the ocean.
    1. Everyone put their hands up.
  10. The beach must be protected, said the Premier of WA, it is our way of life. It will be our children’s children’s way of life.
  11. 11. On a clear day with your head under water everything looks green.
    1. On a less clear day, it’s the more familiar yellow.
  12. From space, two things about Australia are visible: the clearing line–a yellow chevron through the wheat belt, and the Barrier Reef–dark green in lighter green.
    1. The Reef is slowly lightening.
  13. In the 1870s whipping was outlawed in WA, the wheatbelt was cleared and Australia entered the age of enlightenment.
    1. A man’s soul might be disciplined separately from his body: rational man can be relied upon to protect his own.
    2. Aborigines continued to be whipped, often for not recognising fences.
    3. After failure to assimilate they became subject to the Flora and Fauna Act.
    4. A man can beat an animal any which way he likes.
  14. A country built on genocide is not going to preserve its intact ecosystems says the poet from the wheatbelt.3
  15. The colonial Australians we are led to believe suffered from an exile consciousness.
    1. The ocean bought us. It is how we try to get back.
  16. To catch a shark you bait a drumline and wait.
    1. If the shark is three metres: shotto to the head.
    2. Drag it past the limits of where the shore.
    3. Sink it.
  17. Pregnant sharks do not feed for months. A green moss grows in each of their seven rows of teeth.
  18. Around our bays we will place shark nets.
  19. Fences.
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