Ten Zen Poems

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Doug Mason

a bird in the garden below –
the fan spread
as it put to wing
______________________

a kangaroo
bounds silently across the far end of the field
a penny in motion
______________________

a single-syllable bird call
shadow waves ripple
across the white wall
______________________

I love the western world
every morning I get to stand
in warm rain
______________________

morning
afternoon
evening

bird song
chain saw
bird song
______________________

the double yellow
two caterpillar tractors
sleeping in sunset light
______________________

a tree with half its branches gone
left handed
like me
______________________

strutting black-white magpie
lord of all he surveys
an empty picnic ground
______________________

wood bridge over still water
a rising wind
annoys the trees
______________________

one slow afternoon
a death adder graces our garden
all our hearts stop

Posted in LEE MARVIN | Tagged ,

Night Works

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Steve Brock

moon
where do you come from?
a half slice of orange
about to be dunked
in a chocolate sea

you are always there
moon
behind midnight clouds

I come outside
to listen
to the wind in the trees
but find you instead
moon

& soon forget
the wind
& the hour
as I watch you tipping
45 degrees

before the clouds
spill their ink on you
so you disappear again

I stay a little longer
& watch you born again

you could even be
a full moon!

but no
you’re a slice of orange
dissolving above the horizon

embers glow now
the wind may coax
you back to life

but not my breath
destined for deeper
rhythms
of sleep

Posted in LEE MARVIN | Tagged ,

(Failing)

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Kelli Rowe

In the beginning, sometimes, I wrote “I love you” in the street.

I dipped my finger in a puddle and wrote you a love letter, of sorts.
Although I don’t believe you ever got to read it.

The I evaporated before I got to the you, you see.

I wrote other messages, as well. Once, it was “I am hiding from you.”

That was because I had taken a route specifically to not remind myself of you. I’m not sure that it was effective; I obviously thought about you when I wrote it.

Also, it gets hard in this city to take a route that doesn’t remind me of you. The city being not quite big enough to forget in.
Especially for a wanderer, like myself. Wandering being the best speed at which to remember things.

You didn’t find me, the time I told you I was hiding.

Which wasn’t surprising really, considering I experienced the same problem as the other times.
The I evaporating prematurely again.

So, in the beginning, I kept going back over the I. Over and over, so that my finger got dirty from being dragged across the cement. Sometimes it bled a little. I stayed to see if something would resemble an I, but nothing ever did.

So, I never quite got to write “I love you” in the street, now that I think about it.
No, that’s not it. I never got to finish writing “I love you” in the street.

Which is rather a different thing altogether.

I never quite made it to you. Constantly re-writing the I, as I did. And so I eventually just gave up, or the puddle evaporated. I can’t remember which.

Evaporating is a kind of forgetting, I sometimes thought.
And it was the I that evaporated, not the you.

No one stopped to watch me, incidentally, when I wrote messages in the street. Reading and writing are such private affairs, I suppose.

One time I had a very important message to write, but there were no puddles. I can’t remember now what the message was, and by the time it rained again, I had forgetten.

And then I clearly remember waking up one morning to the smell of chlorine in the air and thinking today it will rain.
And then remembering that there was something that I had wanted to write. But that I’d not been able to write it when I thought of it due to a lack of puddles.
But also not at that moment being able to remember what I would have written if there were puddles.
And not being able to wander, either, because of the rain.
Hopeless, I thought.

After that, I took to carrying water on me whenever I walked the streets.

I worked out the basic problem, however, after a while. It was that I could never be sure that I referred to me, exactly.

The other choice, or at least how I saw it, was to write Kelli.
But, if I couldn’t write I without it disappearing, how would I get through Kelli?

Not to mention that Kelli is far less specific than I.

Hardly use Kelli to refer to myself. Not being in the habit of speaking in third person.
At least when it’s only me around.

And really, I have no relation to the name Kelli. Except that I have to repeat it when asked if I have one.
Not that that happens much anymore.

And this inevitably involves me spelling it.
When asked about my name, and if I have one, I mean. It’s not that it’s difficult to spell, but best be thorough in these matters.

Always a drama.

Yes, Kelli with an I, I inevitably say.

So, I’ve found, it is just easier to name myself I.

And I is far more useful than Kelli, after all.

The constant monologue does get tiresome, I admit.

But I try not to think about it in that way.

Once, I thought I got lost while wandering through the city.
But then I remembered that the directions I wrote to myself had more than likely evaporated.
I ceased worrying after that.

Things evaporate, I wrote.

Which really meant that I stopped getting lost.
Or to be more precise, I realised that where I was had ceased to matter.

Since then, I’ve stopped thinking about that too.

There was a time when I thought I forgot about you. I hadn’t seen you in my messages for quite a while.
Things evaporate, I thought.

But having never written you meant I wasn’t quite sure if that happened or not.

I want to touch you, would be what I’d say if I met you on the street. Probably, I’d try to be more polite: I would like to touch you please.
I’ve taken a lover, being the other alternative.

Things become awkward, in situations like these.

Words are just failed sounds, anyway, or so someone once said.

Words are failed sounds and sounds are failed meanings. I don’t know which is better, when I take the time to think about it.

I would like to poke little failures into your meaninglessness. The most eloquent way of dealing with the confusion.
To say that if we met on the street.

Seem to have such trouble with pronouns, these days.
It being much harder to use the first person in situations like these.

Sometimes, in the beginning, wrote something in the street.

Someone once described writing as bleeding. Can’t remember who, but I am sure they are quite famous. Or were quite famous. It’s best to be accurate with these things.

Something must be bleeding now, yes?

And was that really what was happening when the messages were written in the street?
Surely not.
Why wait for rain, then?

In the beginning, don’t remember the blood.
Seems a normal thing to forget.
Must have been a lot, in the beginning.

Remarkable what can be forgotten.

Best not wander in circumstances like these.

Try not to watch what hands are doing.

Sometimes

Tiring things disappearing all the time.

Another message.

Fingers bruised from writing too much.

Nothing left inside the head.

No more puddles.

Forgot the water.

Things heave quietly.

Why does it bleed so much?

It

Lies there. Doing nothing. Saying nothing.

Write

Finger dips into wound.

Writes
I love you.

Posted in LEE MARVIN | Tagged ,

The Lives of the Writers, their Vicissitudes, Proclivities, Highs and Lows

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Yolande Sharpe

CHRISTINE COLLINS is sometimes seen as almost an interface between Bruce Nauman and Christine Brooke-Rose, a troubling entity to conjure with—and an eagerly awaited presence should it ever manifest itself. Early in her life Collins featured in Let Numan Write My Epitaph, the curious, late Jodorowsky remake of The Missouri Breaks in which Wayne Knight — ‘Numan’ in TV’s Seinfeld — is substituted for the bounty-hunting Marlon Brando. Collins’ character was thought remarkably ‘forward’ at the time.

SHANNON BURNS featured in the all too brief pilot series entitled Where’s Thursday. Many of you will remember that it used to begin with the character Frank Thursday, his head (Burns’ smiling head) under a yellow safety helmet, about to disappear down a manhole. Burns would smile, give a thumbs up, grab his lunch box & disappear down the hole. He was an electrical engineer. Down there he would travel back in time to various eras & help with the wiring. But more than that, he would become involved in small domestic issues & crises & lend a hand, often becoming good friends with the ancient Britons, or Romans, or 18th century Londoners, Ming Dynasty Chinese he had dropped in on. I always found it reassuring that he never went forward in time. Down there he would sometimes go past a big circular door labelled, ominously, ‘TOMORROW’. The camera would pause on it. But he never went in. So he’d be there back in the past, offering handy advice on some young Roman daughter’s betrothal say, & fixing the wiring. People often remark on how advanced Roman plumbing was. The electricals were way ahead of their time! Shannon’s head would appear above ground usually just as the foreman had yelled “Where’s Thursday?!” And that’s how it would end. I used to love that show. But it was dropped.

Burns featured a little later opposite Lara Bingle in I Married a Mobster. His was almost a non-speaking part—consisting of grunts & growls & sneers—tho weirdly he appeared to understand more of Bingle’s dialogue than she did. But as a fluent speaker, in fact almost desperately ratiocinative, it was better all round I suppose that Shannon ended up in the university: words are his forté. Though it must be said, one does miss Where’s Thursday.

TIM WRIGHT is currently mostly on location at the moment, in the long drawn out filming of Thirst for Dust, a kind of sandals & robes epic made after the model of El Topo and, indeed, directed by the great director Jodorowsky. Actually, it’s ‘sandals & loin cloths’ — so we get to see Tim Wright pretty buffed up.
Jodorowsky is, by repute, quite a bit past it these days and Thirst for Dust is rumoured to lack a strong narrative thrust—to say nothing of character development and a clear moral message. Or indeed, a beginning, a middle, or an end. Kevin Foley is about to step in, both in a starring role and as producer, in an attempt to get the movie ‘in the can’.

ELLA O’KEEFE starred in Harlot Be Wise, a film of extraordinary but touching ineptitude telling a tale of the casual rise and rise of the cheerfully feckless but readily opinionated good-time-girl, Francine, who, for free cigarettes, becomes a social worker then advisor to the Anglican Synod on social affairs whom she embezzles before achieving an epiphany and a kind of sainthood in the arms of her idiot boyfriend, punk rock singer with Danny Iscariot & the Lumpenproles.

O’Keefe’s ‘varied ecriture’ — Peter Craven quotes (with approval) Don Anderson as saying — ‘masks a strenuous, almost pietistic, tightness of focus on the problem of evil today’. Craven himself goes on to say ‘That this scrupulosity attains remarkable severity and sureness of judgment is but the corollary of their moral heft and the sheer muscle of their refinement.’ Writing at the very height of his powers, he concludes ‘Ethical to a fault, indeed! O’Keefe is prim yet elegant, suave, soignée, truly stupefying. If I were Dean Martin, I would proclaim ‘It’s Amoré!’ or even ‘Kiss Me, Stupid’!’

PAM BROWN, a lyricist ‘of fine but resilient tensile strength’ (Carl Harrison Ford), starred in June Fawn’s Afternoon opposite Simone Simon, with Cesar Romero, who played the part of Paul Valery, & Lee Marvin in the twin roles of Mallarme & Debussy.

Her own work, despite its oft remarked delicacy, was for a long time lumped with that of the HARD-MOUTH poets of the 1970s, yet broke through into critical acceptance. Dorothy Green, in one of her last reviews, detected Brown’s ‘lyrical astringency’. Gig Ryan observed a ‘fugitive charm’, ‘light yet tough withal’. Peter Craven remarked that ‘the poems have plenty of bang’.

JILL JONES’ entire celluloid career was ‘lost on the cutting room floor’ — excised from scenes in such films as, memorably, Barry Lyndon and Westworld. Her verse, too, is possessed of a fugitive charm, ‘light yet tough withal’, as Alan Wearne has remarked.

Famously, Jones bought the mobile phone (at a garage sale) that Peter Reith used to communicate with John Howard in the ‘Babies-overboard’ scenario. This purely contingent happenstance has been — as Adorno might have had it — both the flaw in the lens and the means of sight & objectivity in Jones’ work ever since. ‘Warped for good!’ as Ann Vickery advanced, in ‘All The Young Vixens’, her survey of recent women’s writing in Australia.

CATH KENNEALLY’s police description says ‘slight of build, a clear-eyed, knowing stare … a savage, aggravating, clawing style, a southpaw, a scrappy but effective fighter willing to go the distance: advise call for back-up before approach.’

For a time promoted as the Delphine Seyrig of the French B-Movie, Kenneally starred in a series that included the infamous Les Jeunes Filles Sans Morals and Vixennes Des Etudes Hautes & other films of the sort (the latter was a punkish take on the English ‘St Trinians’ formula but with a characteristically perverse and sly—French philosophical twist.)

This louche image has unfairly clouded responses to her work, which have found its chaste propriety difficult to reconcile with the film career.

LAURIE DUGGAN played the serial killer, opposite Anita Ekberg, in Screaming Mimi. His own work has baffled critics & poets alike: vigorous, unashamedly frank, yet hermetic in a way that Rodney Hall found ‘barbed’ & Peter Craven found ‘pointy’. Lord David Cecil dubbed Duggan ‘the Hulk Hogan des nos jours … but pensive, pensive,’ a remark that has been found hermetic itself.

DOUG MASON works in real life as a free-lance hacker and web-pirate for small multinationals & their smaller antagonists—and, on-the-side, has directed and produced a number of films: most notably one in which Tristram Tzara (played by Kevin Foley) explains to Albert Einstein (played by Doug himself: you need to imagine wig & glasses) how to tie his shoelaces & how—tho this is an inference Einstein draws himself—the shoelaces are a probable model of the universe. Which is a mistake, because if he’d paid more attention he wouldn’t be always tripping over his shoes. A lesson for us all.

People inevitably leave the theatre and pause, looking at their shoes & then up at the stars in the night sky. They sigh, shake their heads and move on.

STEVE BROCK, as many will know, featured in the the Alain Robbe-Grillet film, Last Year At Marienbad. Well, so it is usually phrased. In fact, Last Year At Marienbad reprises in a solemn & highly charged manner, the earlier avant-garde film Do I Know You?, produced & devised by Bertolt Brecht during his Hollywood years. It featured Larry, Mo & Schemp and is the sole directorial endeavour of Peter Lorre (Brecht’s own favourite actor). In it, all action & violence of the sort we normally associate with the Stooges, is eschewed. Instead, Do I Know You? presents a series of portraits, faces that appear as if out of a fog, & stare, wonderingly, stupefied, puzzled & exhausted, bereft of understanding — only to be replaced by another solemn, blank but hurt face — Larry’s, Mo’s, Schemp’s, one after another — in a style that anticipates that of early Bergman. Many critics regard it as their finest moment. Anyway, Last Year At Marienbad is being filmed again and now in a manner more akin to that early Brecht-Lorre endeavour. Steve Brock plays the part of the male lover. Jean Riley, former TV weather girl, is rumoured to be the principal female lead. Puzzling casting.

KELLI ROWE featured as one of the more demure floozies — oh, it says here ‘one of the more brazen floozies’ — in the vicious Nick Cave re-make of I Sailed to Tahiti with an All Girl Crew. A shocking movie, I gather, it ends with the boat idling into a small marina, with its sole occupant, Cave, drunk & singing sea shanties, surrounded by dissevered limbs and empty rum bottles.

We must put this from our minds now, though it’s an amusing thought. Perhaps Kelli Rowe was a fan.

Posted in LEE MARVIN | Tagged , ,

I May Have to See You Again, Charlie

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Christine Collins

Dear Teri


I am not really in love with Charlie, but
I think I am obsessed, but
I can’t say it is entirely pleasurable
It is not like wine or chocolate
It is more like picking off skin after a bad sunburn

He is everything
He is the Prince of Egypt, he is Moses, he is Marc Antony, Henry the VIII and Judah Ben Hur
He is John the Baptist, Buffalo Bill and Michelangelo
He is Captain Colt Saunders, Major Dundee and General Charles Gordon
He has the ear of Nefertiti, Pope Julius II, King Louis XIII, Jesus and even God
He runs the Cavalry and the circus, a ranch and a space craft
He is the Last Man on Earth

He tells me I used to be a nice guy, my contract has been cancelled, my wish is his will, my fragrance is like the wine of Babylon, my eyes are as sharp as they are beautiful and my intelligence service is excellent.
He tells me I think I can compete with a man’s work, saved him from a fanatic, plan ahead and take a hell of a long time to say goodbye.
He tells me I am the one, the lord, alright, a liar, a dream, a traitor, an honest cop, a would be cavalier and a hell of a piece of furniture.
He tells me I am as blind as the colonel, dead right, evil, not good enough, pretty when I’m angry, the last man that can answer and the only girl in town.
He tells me I am not as smart as Stewart, a man of mercy or worthy.
He asks me if I’m alright, can write, a policeman and eager to marry.
He asks me if I have hot water, a reason, a gun and a report.
He tells me I have gotta tell em, I have marriage all figured out, permission to marry, lived longer than anyone ever born and left out the main ingredient.
He tells me I should be careful, go down on my knees, glue myself together, have been less loyal and expand my vocabulary.
He tells me I can like who I want, buy some people, make jokes, file a claim and cut pieces out of him.
He tells me I can’t win alone, make deals, sweep the carcass under the rug or make that much money.
He tells me to tell him, tell everybody, try to get some sleep, take the camp dog, turn the air conditioner all the way up, wait and see and watch myself.
He tells me I shall drink bitter waters, get my cut, see hail fall from a clear sky and stand in judgement with the other sinners.

He tells me he is a Florentine, a soldier, a shepherd, a Jew, a scientist, a narcissist, a civilian and sick of me.
He tells me he is nothing, different, alive, immune, grateful, hungry, finished and gentle with horses.
He tells me he is sorry, lonely, afraid, looking for a wife, looking for a girl and a little boy and the only game in town.
He tells me he is not sorry, afraid, prepared to die or kneeling to a princess.
He tells me he is not the man, a religious man, a violent man, a loving man, drinking tea or Billy Graham.
He tells me he will be back, be alright, come back tomorrow, get the children, induce vomiting, paint the truth and have to kill me sometime.
He tells me he will not be here forever, give her up, obey, rest or leave a man to die in the mud.
He asks me for permission and something to drink.
He tells me he has orders, leads, proof, work to do, important things to do, business with Rome and the right to take me.
He tells me he has no wealth, wives, regrets, authority, king or official capacity.
He tells me he can live, imagine, hardly draw breath, get to the river camp and only tell me what he knows.
He tells me he cannot choose, leave it, speak the language, leave Khartoum, change his conception or give more blood.
He tells me he wants a horse, food and water, every prisoner, every European, volunteers, her and to be told.
He tells me that he may have to see me again.

Film Credits
Ruby Gentry (Boake Tackman) 1952
Arrowhead (Ed Bannon) 1953
The Ten Commandments (Moses, 1956
Three Violent People (Capt Colt Saunders) 1957
Touch of Evil (Ramond Miguel Vargus) 1957
The Big Country (Steve Leech) 1958
Ben Hur (Judah Ben Hur) 1958
The Greatest Story Ever Told (John the Baptist) 1963
The Agony and the Ecstasy (Michelangelo) 1963
Major Dundee (Major Dundee) 1965
The War Lord (Chrysagon) 1965
Khartoum (General Charles Gordon) 1966
Planet of the Apes (George Taylor) 1968
The Omega Man (Robert Neville) 1971
Soylent Green (Detective Robert Thorn) 1972
The Three Musketeers (Cardinal Richelieu) 1973
Earthquake (Stewart Graff) 1974
Midway (Captain Mathew Garth) 1975

Posted in LEE MARVIN | Tagged ,

What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Pam Brown

a revhead full of vodka slushies,
fading bling, the schlock of the old.
just don’t hand over the car keys.

sampling a fizz of schweppervescence
I think of us, you and me,
our lifetime lack of fancy salaries.
on a close and muggy morning
I muddled a muddled job interview,
their risible enquiries,
my irrelevant,
yet innovative, projects,
dah de dah

*

walking up through Erskineville
the florist’s mauve-tinged cabbages
remind me of Derek Jarman
and of a lover who stayed indoors
drawing plants
for years,
funny to think it now
but when she said it was agoraphobia
I visited her darkened flat
and gave her all my Neil Young records.

*

I wonder how it is for you, this instant,
like, today,
at your four days a week job,
a cluttered counter –
papers, keyboard, pencils,
‘On The Level Everyday’
stacked beside something intense, like
‘Living in the End Times’,
guarding a small corner of sapient activity
(sounds pretentious,
though to me, true)
charged with bearing, mien,
not temporal,
more the neurons’ frenzied,
although private, oscillations,
that some groover might call ‘vibes’,
going as fast as
or faster than
the Giant Hadron Collider
zzzzmmmmmmm zzzzmmmmmmm zzzzmmmmmmm
in the government-funded
intellectual art world

or

casual days, loafing with art theory,
worrying only that the bright summer light
might pierce the shopfront windows,
and fade the display

my memorylessness –
which direction does the building face?

*

something lacklustre about
lacking lustre
like the squarest greyest
block of apartments
always called ‘Liberty’

*

anyway
I feel it
going to my very shivering, clicking
axiological bones,
that palpitating measure, (what she say?
what she mean?)
that you have going there,
art critic.

Posted in LEE MARVIN | Tagged ,

More than a feuilleton

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Pam Brown

the experienced world
hasn’t been
the world itself
for a long time
now

& now we want
to see the world
as we want it to be

*

who’s speaking,
saying this
about the ‘world’?
what ‘world’?

*

a cute commodity
nestles
in my indifferent hand
as
I bend, or bow, really,
to sniff
a savoury crush
of peppermint and sage

a torn canvas awning flaps
in slow motion,
the herbicide’s
left dripping
on the fronds,
it’s picturesque, I suppose

*

can’t call the sentimental
‘sentimental’
when it’s very moving

the next step
is to explain it

the way you can
‘lose your self’
to a tear,
to a tremble even,
whenever that song
begins,
when that scent
wafts –
a prelude
to loss, to getting lost

*

seeking a way
back –
incapable
of turning to the classics
or history?

a minor chronicler
of moments?

hey, stop.

I googled
actaeon,

erechtheion
I’ve never seen.

I know the picture,
plus the concept
of the caryatids
(writing that line
way back –
‘carrying you out
like a caryatid’),
were they strong or subservient?

hard to tell
with a building
on your back

didn’t even

    thumb the index

of Larousse mythology!

*

a certain lassitude
in completing
the research
is not that funky

but

everythin’ I do
gonna be funky
from now on

*

maybe
leap
drop
slip and slide
like a penguin
on antarctic ice

*

over hoaxes

the trick
is
de-anonymisation,

get
‘better known’
is that what’s needed ?

doubt it

*

and the truth is scant

*

my week
is my weekend

my task –
reinvigorate ossified poetries
by adulteration

involve
the ‘always’ factor –

arguments
are always
a social event

boredom
is always
counter-revolutionary. always.
(Guy Debord
allows himself
a double ‘always’
& so he should)

who says ‘penned’
instead of
‘wrote’ or ‘written’?

always say
I data entered
that poem!

*

middle of the dark night
news –
suicide bombing
in Damascus
police teargas thousands
in Homs

messages from 2010lab.tv
in Dortmund
and galatea resurrects
in California

google galatea
or go back to bed?

no need,
you already know
that marble revenant

click on the link
or leave until morning?

sleep the computer
feel your way
in night shadows,
bump the bulky lounge chair,
bare feet
follow the rug edge,

the bedroom

the bed

*

the world
dreamed,
no better than
as is

*

who’s that
saying this
about the ‘world’?

*

hard to believe
now
but
every age will be lamented,
even this one

heard that
somewhere

Posted in LEE MARVIN | Tagged ,

Bin Ends

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Laurie Duggan

It says here that Tony Baker makes
‘sounds across the range from
free improvisation to rustic guinguette à la
moules frites’.

Refried boogie Tony?

*

Mohair

her suit
hirsute

*

nobody ever talks of their ‘wasted middle age’

*

Headers

JUDGE BURNT
IN CHARD
. . .

CAT
SHOT
BY
YOBS

*

Georg Grosz

a man with a mobile,
bent over laughing

*

disposable
chopsticks

*

poetry, once a potential cause of death,
has become ‘self-help’

*

The Generation Gap

‘hairbrush?’
‘no: “head-rush”’

*

American Poetry Shrink-Wrap

*

Responsibilities

I want to have written the review
so that I can read the book

*

Performance 2 (for Sean Bonney)

There are those who lean forward, into it
and those who lean back, out of it

*

At Lee Harwood’s

to be driven at furiously
by a yellow duck on a tricycle

*

Australiana

MUM RESCUES MAN
SAVAGED BY
WHITE POINTER

*

Ghost Writer

advice:
add
vice

*

the smell of new mown
pneumonia

*

The Thames Estuary

forks or
forts?

*

In Bloomsbury

‘a self-congratulatory glass of something is definitely in order’

*

A Note

it’s around 6
and I’ve gone
to The Sun

*

St Pancras

Old Speckled Hen
(for old speckled men?)

*

Life & Times

the usual
at the usual

*

60

the fucking enemy
disappears

*

subtleties
subtitles

*

Language Poem

alimony
al limone

*

‘the only hippopotamus in Montenegro is on the loose’

*

Winter Poem

whiteness, then
Guinness

*

these guys are the wrong people
to ask for a paper-clip

*

Epiphany

a cartoon dog
in a real window

*

puzzle dust

*

Mr [        ]urine Man

*

aphasia . . . that’s
the word

*

anti-poems are what poetry is;
poems are the real fakes

*

Virginia Woolf (on the wall)
wouldn’t enter a place like this

*

Estuary Haiku

a Lamborghini
in East Tilbury

*

The English People Pay Homage To Damien Hirst

1) collect dogshit in plastic bags

2) hang it from trees

*

animal
vegetable
minimal

*

A Salute to the Cambridge Marxists

If you’re not at the High Table
you’re not in the room

Posted in LEE MARVIN | Tagged ,

17 and 40

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Kent MacCarter

As Cordite Poetry Review approaches its 17th year and, in 48 hours from now, its 40th issue – atypical milestones – I wanted to scribble out a brief blog-post-moment to reflect on the stupendous and unlikely fact that Cordite is not only still around, but thriving. But was that so unlikely? Things began strongly with Adrian Wiggins and Peter Minter, then the publication was boosted into the stratosphere with David Prater’s astonishing eleven years on the joystick. Cordite’s history has accumulated an impressive alumni and current masthead, and it’s an honour to now be amongst that company. I’ll leave it at that before I descend into mawkishness.

Issue 40: INTERLOCUTOR is going to be the second-biggest yet (I think OZ-KO will retain the mantle of biggest for a while, although I suspect issue 50 will usurp both), and by biggest, I mean the greatest number selectable links for you to explore. Not a florid way to tout this fact, but so it goes. Unfortunately, our work with Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg planned for this issue will have to wait until January 2013 for publication.

Issue 41: TRANSPACIFIC is fomenting to make an intriguing statement of geopoetics. It will be a little smaller and of a more manageable size. But you still have time to submit! Issue 41 will feature our first two Cordite Scholarly articles.

Over the summer of 2012/2013? We’re going to once again shatter any confines of a theme-based submissions window with NO THEME II becoming wide open on 1 December, 2012.

What is most important on the eve of year 17 and issue 40 is that thanks go out to all readers of and submitters to Cordite Poetry Review. Full stop.

Posted in GUNCOTTON |

Angela Meyer Reviews Kristin Henry

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Angela Meyer

v

All the Way Home by Kristin Henry
UWA Publishing, 2012

Between the covers of All the Way Home is the life of a man called Jesse, up to middle age, written in clean, effective verse. The prologue explains that Jesse is looking back, his memories tangled like the roots of his plants: ‘If you don’t keep teasing out / the recollections / they get strangled’. We reflect first upon Jesse’s childhood on the road with his father, a travelling salesman, in the US. The image of his parents is striking: his mother’s hair ‘a blaze’, and his father’s the ‘colour of ordinary absence’. Later Jesse will fall for a woman whose hair is red, like the mother who died too young.

Continue reading →

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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

BAP Reps 2012

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Kent MacCarter

Four poems from the past three issues of Cordite Poetry Review have been included in Best Australian Poems 2012 edited by John Tranter.

Congratulations go out to Josephine Rowe for Atlantic City (Cordite 37.1), Cameron Lowe for Turkey in the Drawer (Cordite 38), Mark Roberts for Cameraman (Cordite 39) and Tiggy Johnson for Photograph (Cordite 39) … and the guest poetry editors who selected them the first time around.

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged , , ,

Rilke and the Buddha: 3 Translations

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Luke Fischer

Soon after dinner I retire, at half past eight am finally back in my cottage. Then before me is the vast blossoming starry night, and below, in front of the window, the gravel path climbs a small hill, upon which, in tremendous silence, a Buddha-portrait rests, in quiet reticence imparting the unsayable containment of his gestures under all the skies of day and night. C’est le centre du monde, I said to Rodin. And then he looks at me so endearingly, in utter friendship. That is very fine and a great deal.

–Rilke to Clara Rilke-Westhoff, Meudon, 20.09.1905. Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, Der Briefwechsel und andere Dokumente zu Rilkes Begegnung mit Rodin, ed. Rätus Luck (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 2001), pp. 111-112.


Rilke wrote three poems on the Buddha that appear at different places within the two parts of his New Poems (Neue Gedichte), which were published in 1907 and 1908 respectively and include some of his most cherished poems – among them ‘The Panther’ and ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’. The first two poems in these translations are contained in the first part (Neue Gedichte). The third poem on the Buddha assumes a special importance in that it concludes the second part (Der Neuen Gedichte anderer Teil) and thus the collection.

Bei RodinPhotograph from Georg Treu, ‘Bei Rodin’, in Kunst und Künstler 3 (1905), p. 17.

These poems instantiate a significant cross-cultural and intermedial dialogue between West and East, Europe and Asia, sculpture and poetry, the founder of Buddhism and a Modernist poet. Rilke’s interest in the Buddha was stirred by an Indonesian statue in Auguste Rodin’s garden in Meudon, which the French sculptor had procured (along with other Buddha statues) from the 1900 World Expo in Paris. From September 1905 until the spring of 1906, Rilke lived in a cottage in Rodin’s garden and worked as his private secretary.

Translation continues the process of intercultural dialogue. It engages in a conversation with the original text and calls for interpretation and sacrifices. Unlike a prosaic or scientific text, every aspect of a poem contributes to its meaning: diction, images, rhythm, form, tone etc. Due to the unique complexity of a given poem, its translation cannot render a perfect equivalent in the target language.

Rilke’s Buddha poems, like most of his poetry, are written in formal verse (a sonnet and rhyming quatrains). Translations that aim to reproduce rhyme schemes and meter at any cost generally relinquish semantic precision and introduce additional material. We have chosen to translate the form of the poems more freely while accurately seeking to convey other distinctive qualities of his verse.


BUDDHA

Als ob er horchte. Stille: eine Ferne …
Wir halten ein und hören sie nicht mehr.
Und er ist Stern. Und andre große Sterne,
die wir nicht sehen, stehen um ihn her.

O er ist Alles. Wirklich, warten wir,
daß er uns sähe? Sollte er bedürfen?
Und wenn wir hier uns vor ihm niederwürfen,
er bliebe tief und träge wie ein Tier.

Denn das, was uns zu seinen Füßen reißt,
das kreist in ihm seit Millionen Jahren.
Er, der vergißt was wir erfahren
und der erfährt was uns verweist.


BUDDHA

Schon von ferne fühlt der fremde scheue
Pilger, wie es golden von ihm träuft;
so als hätten Reiche voller Reue
ihre Heimlichkeiten aufgehäuft.

Aber näher kommend wird er irre
vor der Hoheit dieser Augenbraun:
denn das sind nicht ihre Trinkgeschirre
und die Ohrgehänge ihrer Fraun.

Wüßte einer denn zu sagen, welche
Dinge eingeschmolzen wurden, um
dieses Bild auf diesem Blumenkelche

aufzurichten: stummer, ruhiggelber
als ein goldenes und rundherum
auch den Raum berührend wie sich selber.


BUDDHA IN DER GLORIE

Mitte aller Mitten, Kern der Kerne,
Mandel, die sich einschließt und versüßt, –
dieses Alles bis an alle Sterne
ist dein Fruchtfleisch: Sei gegrüßt.

Sieh, du fühlst, wie nichts mehr an dir hängt;
Im Unendlichen ist deine Schale,
und dort steht der starke Saft und drängt.
Und von außen hilft ihm ein Gestrahle,

denn ganz oben werden deine Sonnen
voll und glühend umgedreht.
Doch in dir ist schon begonnen,
was die Sonnen übersteht.

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Posted in TRANSLATIONS | Tagged , ,

David McCooey Reviews Peter Rose and Ken Bolton

Posted on October 3, 2012 by David McCooey

Rose and Bolton

Roseland and Boltonia …

Crimson Crop by Peter Rose
UWA Publishing, 2012

Selected Poems 1975-2010 by Ken Bolton
Shearsman, 2012

The opening poem of Peter Rose’s Crimson Crop – which recently won a Queensland Literary Award – brings together illness, noise, and madness in a powerful vision of human frailty. In that poem, ‘Prelude’, the poet relates seeing a man at the Rome Railway Station banging his head on vending machines, while his countrymen ‘rushed to their trains, / fearful, cashmered, blinkered, / avoiding this glimpse / of what their brother had become’.

Continue reading →

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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , ,

Siobhan Hodge Reviews Eileen Chong

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Siobhan Hodge

Burning Rice
Burning Rice by Eileen Chong
Australian Poetry, 2012

Eileen Chong’s Burning Rice is steeped in images of food, family and connectivity. The poems thematically span geographical and chronological distances in order to make links between cultural and ancestral origins. Culinary references combine to create comforting images of solidarity in the face of isolation and anxiety. However, this is not a chapbook wholly steeped in nostalgia. While diasporic tendencies can be identified, Chong is predominantly focused on establishing new spaces for her speakers and their family members, while also preserving what has been inherited. Historical boundaries are blurred as Chong’s speakers engage with close and distant family members, literary and historical figures alike.

Continue reading →

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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Ukulele Ekphrasis: Prudence Flint and Ania Walicz

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Prudence Flint
Bird Park

Bird Park 2011

Bird Park 2011 | Prudence Flint | Oil on linen | 127cm x102cm

I don’t know what happens I what happened like that I ring her and ring her but she won’t ring me or ring me back or ring me or bark me or answer me why do you do this to me why do you do this to me I said to meet and greet but she won’t do me must have been some thing I said to me must have been what I said or how I said or what I said to her I so liked coming round and sit a kitchen bit messy mouldy but I was nice and chatty wetty and betty do me and mumsy but it was nice to me and class classy and I said can I come over now and now she won’t do me why not do me and why not invite me and anwser me when I ring me and answer me and buy me and take me and love me and like me and be like before now we were such friends she wears check trousers now she wears me out I don’t think about you now and I think about me and I think about you every every every why you do me like that now why not why not ever ever ever ever why never why never more raven why that why not why no edgar allen poe why no why bird why miss bird why not now why friend and then no more I don’t understand now why did you do this to me why not now exo eplain now ox and oxo and oxo and lexo lux luxo like so like so and so and so you so and so I swear now she said I swearand I swore to be true to me tell me what happens top me tell me what happened now tell me how you saw me tell me what she thought about me what did you think about how did you see me how did I sound what did I say what you think about please explain me now what t what happened to me and me what happened to you now tell me why didn’t you see me or wanted to or not wanted to I rang and rang now and she didn’t she didn ‘ answer me I didn’t answer I didn’t say now I didn’t know how or where or who to tell me me and I didn’t know now for I was blind and I was so blind that I didn’t see what you did to me now I am angry you hurt me you cut me

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Posted in ARTWORKS | Tagged ,

Laird, Bufton and an Interlocutor Prelude

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Kent MacCarter

Sadly, I begin this post by announcing the departure of Emily Stewart from GUNCOTTON, and I’d like to thank her for the great posts during her time at Cordite. But the world of editing and publishing calls for Stewart with some exciting opportunities, and I applaud her success there.

Laird

Laird

So now, with pleasure, I welcome two additional people – a producer and editor – into the Cordite Poetry Review  fold: Site Producer Benjamin Laird and Blog Editor Melinda Bufton.

As Site Producer, Benjamin Laird will add his considerable experience in helping to keep the current (and any future) Cordite site running smoothly, operating with a logical architecture and dynamic enough to engage with developing media. Laird is a web application developer at Loop11 and performs a range of technical site duties at Overland literary journal. He’s interested in digital poetry, metadata, the Semantic Web, Python, literature, publishing, ergodic literature and open source hardware.

Bufton

Bufton

Melinda Bufton has enthusiastically embraced the role of Blog Editor, picking up where Stewart left off. She is a poet and reviewer, and currently completing Honours in creative writing at Deakin University. She has also worked for many years in education, and for a while ran a careers consultancy where she specialised in creative work and creative workers. Poetry is important to her brain, her heart and her social adventures. Contact Melinda Bufton.

Libby Hart, poetry guest-editor for Cordite 40: INTERLOCUTOR, has made her selections and I look forward to publishing the results. Artwork from James Bonicci, a member of the Dark Horse Experiment as fetaured on ABC’s Artscape: Subtopia  and new work by 2011 Glover Prize finalist, Melanie Scaife, audio from Chris Mann, Annea Lockwood and more, essays from John Mateer, Juan Garrido-Salgado and Geoff Page, interviews of North American poets/editors from Oscar Schwartz and Graham Nunn, translations by Luke Fischer and, hopefully, our first piece for Cordite Scholarly.

Calliope

I will also be introducing Calliope, a human-computer interaction (HCI) avatar developed (currently in beta phase) by a team at Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg. Cordite has advised the team led by Diana Arellano on speech patterns, pace and elocution for poetry recital and its (her) anthropological / emotional facial response when engaging with a given poem. Responding to spoken word cues, Calliope banters and responds with an appropriately themed poem. Video clips of her recitation in action feature poems from Kate Lilley, Carol Jenkins, Jane Williams and Jo Langdon. UPDATE: this will now not appear online until January 2013.

Now, back to orchestrating all of this to go down/up/off on 1 November 2012 …

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged , , , ,

Enter Cordite Scholarly

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Kent MacCarter

Cordite Scholarly is a new section of Cordite Poetry Review devoted to peer-reviewed research on Australian and international poetry and poetics. Essays published in Cordite Scholarly are reviewed by at least two members of Cordite’s Academic Advisory Board (or see below) and are also eligible for Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) points.

Essays published in Cordite Scholarly will be available in both HTML and PDF versions. The author retains copyright of their material.

Research should not exceed 6000 words, must not be previously published, nor should they be submitted for publication elsewhere while being reviewed by the Cordite Academic Advisory Board or any external reader.

All essays submitted for consideration in Cordite Scholarly must comply with Cordite’s styling and rights requirements. Read the full submission guidelines for Cordite Scholarly and our House Style Guide. Published research will be unpaid. There are no submission fees.

Please note that Cordite will continue to solicit, accept and commission other types of work – including poetry, other creative works, features, book reviews, interviews and chapbooks – that do not require peer review.

If you are unsure as to whether your research essay requires the peer-review process, please send us an inquiry using our contact form.

Cordite Academic Advisory Board

Dr. Hilary Clark – University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Professor, College of Arts and Sciences

Research interests: critical theory, women’s writing, life writing, literary modernism, encyclopedic discourse, contemporary poetics and poetry, especially Canadian and American.

Dr. Dan Disney – Sogang University, South Korea
Assistant Professor, Department of English

Research interests: poetics (antiquity to contemporary theories); the aesthetic avant-garde; the theoretical avant-garde; Australian and contemporary English-language poetries.

Dr. Christopher Funkhouser – New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
Program Director, Communication and Media

Research interests: contemporary poetry, digital literature, electronic media, computer writing, digital literature and technology and society.

Prof. Paul Giles – University of Sydney, Australia
Challis Chair of English, Department of English

Research interests: American literature and culture, theory and practice of trans-nationalism.

Dr. Perri Giovannucci – American University in Dubai, UAE
Associate Professor, Department of English

Research interests: globalization, cultural studies, anti-colonialism and post-colonialism, historiography and historical materialism, psychoanalytic theory, feminism, issues of human rights and social justice.

Dr. John Hawke – Monash University, Australia
Senior Lecturer, School of English, Communications and Performance Studies

Research interests: Modernism and Australian poetry, ethnographic sources of Modernism, modern and contemporary literature and poetics.

Jill Jones – University of Adelaide, Australia
Senior Lecturer, Department of English

Research interests: Arts and culture, poetry, creative writing, Australian literature, publishing, digital writing.

Dr. Danijela Kambaskovic-Sawers – University of Western Australia, Australia
Assistant Professor, English and Cultural Studies

Research interests: medieval and Renaissance studies, Renaissance lyrical poetry and drama, Shakespeare, semiology, religion and Reformation, history of ideas, literary theory, genre history, philosophy in literature, feminist criticism, Australian literature

Prof. Christopher Kelen – University of Macau, Macau
Associate Professor, English Department

Research interests: place-based poetics, poetry translation and pedagogy, collaborative writing and art practice, community publishing, comparative studies of anthems, nation and nationalism, anthropomorphism in children’s literature, storytelling and lifewriting.

Dr. Helen Lambert – Unaffiliated, Oxford, UK

Research interests: Australian literature, experimental literature, representations of humanity and animality, literature and place/identity, translation and adaptation of classical myth in literature.

Dr. Kate Lilley – University of Sydney, Australia
Senior Lecturer, Department of English

Research interests: gender and genre, American and African-American poetry, seventeenth-century literature, women’s writing, elegy, feminist theory, queer theory and rhetoric.

Dr. Paul Magee – University of Canberra, Australia
Associate Professor in Poetry, Faculty of Arts and Design

Research interests: between aesthetics and epistemology. They include poetry, its criticism, and psychoanalytic and Marxian thought.

Dr. Philip Mead – University of Western Australia, Australia
Chair of Australian Literature, English & Cultural Studies

Research interests: Australian literary and cultural history, Anglophone poetry and poetics, trans-national poetics, Shakespearean institutions in Australia, literary education, digital humanities.

Dr. Peter Minter – University of Sydney, Australia

Research interests: Aboriginal literature, poetry and poetics; Australian literature, poetry and poetics; transcultural ecopoetics and ecocriticism; modern literary cultures and aesthetics.

Dr. Nathanael O’Reilly – Texas Christian University, USA
Instructor, Department of English

Research interests: Australian literature, post-colonial literature, twentieth-century British and Irish literature, contemporary poetry, suburbia, expatriation, diaspora, nationalism, belonging.

Dr. Felicity Plunkett – University of Queensland Press, Australia
Poetry Editor

Research interests: Australian literature, film and poetry.

Chris Price – Victoria University, New Zealand
Senior Lecturer, International Institute of Modern Letters

Research interests: Contemporary New Zealand poetry, fiction/non-fiction hybridity, life writing, science and technology literature.

Prof. Lisa Samuels – University of Auckland, New Zealand
Associate Professor, Department of English

Research interests: Poetry and poetics, critical practice, literary modernism, digital arts theory, experimental and trans-cultural writing.

Dr. Susan Schultz – University of Hawaii, USA
Professor, Department of English

Research interests: 20th-century poetry in English, American literature, creative writing.

Dr. Andrew Taylor – Edith Cowan University, Australia
Emeritus Professor, School of Communications and Arts

Research interests: Australian and American literature, poetry, landscape and language, eco-criticism, translation, visual arts, science.

Dr. Ann Vickery – Deakin University, Australia
Senior Lecturer, School of Communication & Creative Arts

Research interests: poetry and poetics, modernism, Australian literature, feminist literary studies, theories of literary formation (collaboration, coterie, community and network), literary archives, mid to late nineteenth and twentieth-century women’s writing and cross-disciplinary creative partnerships.

Ania Walwicz – Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia
Lecturer in Poetry, Short Story and Myths, Professional Writing and Editing Program

Research interests: prose/poetry performance text, spoken word and sound recordings, visual art.

Dr. Timothy Yu – University of Wisconsin, USA
Associate Professor, English and Asian American Studies

Research interests: modern and contemporary American literature, contemporary poetry, Asian American literature and culture, the avant-garde, race in American literature and diaspora.

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Falling Angels: A Chapbook Curated by Anna Couani

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Anna Couani

Birth of the New Universe
Birth of the New Universe | Suzanne Bellamy | 2010 |acrylic & fabric on canvas | 2 x 2.4m

Contents

Birth of a New Universe | Suzanne Bellamy
Installations 1 & 2 at Queen Street, Glebe, NSW | Hilik Mirankar
Angels | Yota Krili
(untitled) | Kit Kelen
Day in the Mind    of the Life in the Garden | Kit Kelen
Lilies on the Dam | Anna Couani for Carol Archer
Reading Old Diaries | Antigone Kefala
Time with the Sky #6 | Carol Archer
5th Intergenerational Report – Betterment All Round | Les Wicks
To a Friend who Also Lost Their Car | Song Zijiang
Gestures in Dreams, No. 1 | Debby Sou Vai Keng
Bluebottles | Virginia Shepherd
Game with the Wind | Debby Sou Vai Keng
The Excised Heart | Jane Skelton
Happy Place | Anna Couani
Core Explosion | Suzanne Bellamy

Curator’s Note

The title of this anthology was suggested to me by Yota Krili’s piece, ‘Angels’. At first, I thought her piece referred to all of ‘us’ who’ve had various struggles, but she explained that she was thinking of the heroic freedom fighters of Greece in the past. It didn’t fit, but it’s a nice connection.

In curating this collection, I asked the writers to provide pieces that are short, edgy, and I’m happy that they have fulfilled that very loose brief. The disrupted texts they’ve produced – whilst having interesting formal qualities – also have poignant emotive qualities. The term I use for what others refer to as prose-poetry is experimental prose because I find that term broader and more inclusive. I asked several visual artists to suggest works that I could take or requested particular works I had already seen.

Some of the contributors are both visual artists and writers. In this instance, most contributors chose to submit in only one form, except for Kit Kelen and myself. My world traverses the visual arts, text, film, education and seven of these contributors are (or have been) teacher-practitioners. That means they’ve had to articulate what they’re doing as practitioners and also present ideas about what other authors and artists have done. As well as grappling with education, many of them have worked in small press publishing, translation, writers’ organisations and/or have been activists, working to enhance the fields they work in. I see most of these contributors as transcultural and hybrid in various senses.

I have come across and worked with most of these contributors in various contexts – in writers’ organisations, in Greek cultural forums, in women writers’ groups, in small presses and in transcultural translations. Carol Archer, Kit Kelen, Virginia Shepherd and I are currently involved in a collaborative visual/text postcard project called Elsewhere.

The sculpture of Hilik Mirankar is familiar to me because we live in the Queen Street Gallery that is a street where all our neighbours house his works on their front balconies. His studio is also part of our home.

Anna Couani 2012

Posted in CHAPBOOKS | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Submissions for Cordite 41: TRANSPACIFIC Now Open

Posted on September 1, 2012 by Kent MacCarter

Poetry for Cordite 41: TRANSPACIFIC will be guest-edited by Michael Nardone and Josephine Rowe. We will accept up to four poems per submission. This includes text, sound, image, video and other digital forms of poetry. We will once again be publishing 30 Australian poets and up to 30 from around the world, forming a double issue of sorts (you do not have to be living in a Pacific region to submit).

Please see the full submissions guidelines. Also note, Cordite 42: NO THEME REDUX with poetry guest-edited by Gig Ryan is next.

Rowe

Rowe | Melbourne

Nardone

Nardone | Montreal

Josephine Rowe writes fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, mostly at a small table in Melbourne, Australia. Her writing has been included in Meanjin, Best Australian Stories, Best Australian Poems, Dumbo Feather, The Iowa Review and the forthcoming issue of Harvard Review. In 2011, she attended the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. Her most recent short story collection is Tarcutta Wake (UQP, 2012).

Michael Nardone is Poetry Editor for Hobo Magazine, Managing Editor for AMODERN, Assistant Editor for Jacket2, and Co-Editor of performance / MACHINE. His new work, O.Cyrus & the Bardo, a collaboration with artist Jude Griebel, is now available from JackPine Press. Recent writings appear in The Coming Envelope, Matrix, The Conversant, n+1, Poetry is Dead, The Incongruous Quarterly and Lemon Hound. He lives in Montreal.

Rowe and Nardone have ‘discussed and settled upon two central approaches for TRANSPACIFIC: toward curating a geography of a Transpacific, and toward mapping a content of a Transpacific. The two are, of course, relational by degree and inseparable. Their interest lies in reading of the experience (and the idea of) a Transpacific in regards to land and city, archive and document, tradition and change. In this pursuit, a diversity of poetics and practices – translations, lyric work, sound, dialogues and experimental poetries – are welcome.’

The issue will embody the ‘Trans’ aspect of the theme. Individual works might be situated anywhere in the Pacific; geographically, ideologically, linguistically, etc. We encourage you to address that span – covering some physical or conceptual distance within the work – as we aim to spatially contrast works which are firmly rooted in specific geographies.

But an ekphrastic piece on Paul Gauguin’s paintings from Tahiti? Perfect. Maybe you’re a poet doing some freaky stuff with language poetry and tidal level recordings? Polemicist poetry on Nauru detention centres? This post was written on a California-designed, Chinese-made laptop in a park while ‘borrowing’ the wifi leaking out of a Japanese sushi bar in Perth, Australia … while wearing blue jeans made in Mexico. Now there’s a thought.

Please see the full submissions guidelines.

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged ,

boy, what god couldve done if only hed had money

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Chris Mann
[audio:http://cordite.org.au/audio/chris_mann.mp3|titles=boy, what god couldve done if only hed had money – Chriss Mann]
boy, what god couldve done if only hed had money (1:long) | by Chris Mann from The Use blahblah, i mean like you are of course but my Unconscious .. a pleasure unknown, Particularly to me, a definitive Surplus Value (which is not Quite the same as its interrogAtion (if only for the dimension its distinction), but pretty damn close. imean Fairs fair, Fuck is just the threedownfouracross for What, so unlike Form (that which suffers from its explanation), are you then my Redemption, a twobob Eachway medium .. (and how do you prove its better than Logic, by being Right? (and if Forgiveness is then a science, is Context so its perfect fiction .. oh, you mean Learning as the polite form of Forgetting ..
the beautiful thing about the world is of course that its impOssible. and coz truth is the model of redundancy, a sort of After science, or bigamy, where Yes is basically somesort Rite of Passage, a virtual Almost, we get proof of weknowwemustbegettingsomewherecozweknowwe’re Bored, an idEal (and sweet) Opportunity cost .. (those old epiphany blues ..
Dyslexic Empathy A (there being of course some subjects that just dont have a name (iknowcoziwasthere (a semantically deviant sentence both true and false))), a caricature of Maybe, a deja vu in Pants (dont they always wear pants?) or Pathological Association (though guilt has of course nothing to do with Fact (asif we needed homeland security to prove That, an epileptic credit of the BeingofaSubject, Or (imean what came first, the Waltz or Neurosis? (Asymmetric Warfare begets Inappropriate Intelligence begets .. (Hypnosis (imean when the pentagon regrets Inappropriate intelligence you know youve been obsessing with the colour too long) is a Process (museums being but the most obvious side effect of conceptual art) with a Faux sort of focus that sets up moreorless succEssfully what mostofus would Guess: to wit, the Rest. (that money is a means of surveillance is a surprise only to those who dont use Cash (the data in this part of the noun updates more slowly than the average refresh experience of pattern. Why, we dunno. just Coz. though imean what else they got to worry about but who got there first, a sort of executive bingo version of provenAnce .. or you just watching yourself Type?
and while Looking is def a form of pious mutilation, it does but mourn for what its lost with something of a hijacked inflAtion. fuckin philistine. (and like the protocols of some client intuition do they suck and bleat a nicely sponsored instrumental uSe (as detailed by the Teach or professionally amnEsiac. (is this what youd call a Symptom, a celebrity connivance in fraud, or is mere understanding deemed to be enough, a form Of (indeed generic) Camouflage? .. (and coz god can make a number so refined he cant reMember it, and coz this inability is not just some sort Noise, and coz the job is neither true nor false but rather sticky, its spOsed to give you an immUnity, but again how this exactly works we just dont really know. and coz explanation is a public space ..
and while Ignorance is now employed as somesort Social worker (the Academy being the plot of land judas bought when he traded Out (Consciousness, a form of therapy for those too, too Shy to work .. (on being a guest (of space, of idunno, of Notyet (as if the subject was just an agent of legitimation, a form of decadence (imean its clearly not a Friend .. speculation, Maybe .. so which is more dangerous, Learning or Teaching? for the Fact, i mean, for the Fact .. (and if Art is just an attempt at learning English, whats the logical response to Cards? like, Luck? (and coz its impossible to think Illogically ..
a Fact, a judicious mix of Universe and Particular (at least One of each), arranged as simply as possible within A Deductive Frame, will get you Two (one of which of course is Redtape (or dont you know who youre talking to? i mean All images are of the invisible. (imean theyre Images ..
(ok, so, a gerrymandered grammar of what it is we’re trying to explain: Memory is Prosthetic. and as a Fact survEilles its clients, does recAll or Reference or any other Actoffaith (its the Middle class are of course communicative) aesthEticise itself with Hints and other pinks like, like ..
and while a subject is a peculiar form of its generic Truth, it has to work Hard to earn our Pity (or any other vaudeville turn, come to That (Name being but just a button for a number .. so what could be meant by Definition, the fetish of equivalence, Price? but in an economy of something Other than scarcity, the problem is rather Whatdoyougivesomeonewhohaseverything apArt from change (that sumes that code is sufficiently Object-Ish to pass. as What, itSelf? like Yes in this proposition will function less as some semantic sugar and more like blackbox Hardware .. So? so those in the know are condemned to being right? like cant they just Rent? (dialectic being the german metric for Choice.
and if the present was less obviously a Pet, we could more easily contract out the test .. (of whether its an object yet .. (or dregs. i mean dont forget the Left .. (its where you let the stress fall tells you what it Is (or what it Said .. a subject then but just a Filter or some Semantic Transport (no mere meme machine, but rather partly what data bank you wouldve thought it Was ( .. this question has meaning so long as we’re ignorant of whether there is an experiment that could reasonably decIde (definition being only of course necessary in relation to a Theory (that is Aggregates or Packs of data subscribing to some law of Consequence (the Rather set of Nyets ( .. imean, do we Havta get a prize becoz we’re right? like at least a private or autographed Copy of the Law, or, or, even Coroner? (and as the market costs obviously More than the goods it services, and as Yes is merely a distributed form of No, an audit trail without numbers, a set of ad hoc functions that produce the object only when its Need ..
and coz reality is both flexible And invisible (and coz this defines Any system as both an ArtofMemory And its Pious Wish (that language is just an economy of means is afterall what makes it attractive both to invEstors and those who mere wanna get stuff Done (asif abstraction was its Closeup, the Object (the unresOlved (object, Duh)) as mere Context for the nexus that one gets when looking for a word for, for Name .. (so is there anything more .. or cometothinkofit Less (whatever) than a Question? (you mean it should be what, Generic then for Name? something like, if Question is a divine term, is It a divine term then for, for What?
imean do we really Need to look at it again? like we missed something the Real time round and somehow its got Better in our ignorance? like maybe the view is Nicer in the other dimension, more Reasonable? and what is it exactly we trust the winner to do, imean apart from win, reWard the diagnosis with a souvenir of some sort, one that Conjugates? (though while the banal is a perfectly honourable way of learning english, imean it wont save you from SignificAtion ..
Translation and other delinquencies of, of Faith (the WhatsitabOut Serial Syllable (as in, its not that its Modern, just that its badly plAyed (Pathos, economics for Profit .. and coz they (youknow, They, the neocons), coz they want to manufActure facts, they discourage those who just want them to Grow. and while its true that copyright is, is True .. (imean Face it, a Fact is a Queen, uninterested in anything wont get him reelected (and All facts as we know are Hymns .. imean ask anyone with an mp3 of what they havent heard: Compression allOws for the Listener (and in a way that freud Doesnt ( .. and coz we’s only two percent, we all hafta have fourtynine gubbas as friEnds, thats Each, and thats Way too much ( .. the sentimentality of betrayal, of price, of .. , of Therapy, a sort of sticky autism .. or superstitious awkwardness, a bully grudge, all coy and paradox, a Talking as a way of avoiding the Cops, a Jemmy (and thus a Pleasure (on what the words Were before they were Mine (on what you Sa-id: .. oh, so it was a respOnse, a dialectic of the Tongue (One,
a name is a technique for rhyming Times together (continuity being one of those classic side effects, a mouth yoga Whatsit (oh you mean a names a Blow job, both complacent And .. (though not Exactly equivalent to Undiscovered Public Knowledge (why not? looks like a perfect map of a You Economy to me .. imean, Social Capital by Mail, the Aesthetisization of Theft (imean while Arts trafficking is still marginally less than Arms or Drugs, its the Art-as-model-of-Indifference pic is where the Real money is .. There, and the invisible itch .. (on the science of wishful thinking, the uses of agreement (names having been declared Inhumane (like why rent a fact when you can bribe one? (imean all Its is Altruists (Art, with the christian name of Mister.
so, how to think about Stupidity such that context has the opportunity to chAnge: first, Buy a context (though if its urgent, a repetition will also do, the distinction between art and news being purely academic (the Kitsch List syndrome, Favours with a bias that protect All cept those ignorant of the law andOr their Lawsuit Futures cliches .. (asif Cognitive Dissonance oneohone was a pun on Wonder (the past, an automatic puppet Whos who thumb Jumper of a past, a .. (economics (some other algebra) had its first romance in the bogs of eire, and while the brits colonised the world from the diminishing horizon of the caf, and the yanks retreated to the corporate welfare of Defence, English was left spread over everything from Shit to Soul. the Net then is a chapter of music wedged somewhere between schoenberg and freud and christian rock, a themeless Talking Cure in four Four .. the Minimalism of theft, the Stress of the waltz, the Positivism, the Empiricism, the Indifference of the twist .. though without art it would have been Possibly more difficult .. (and on Capital as a Category Mistake (on the power of Positive Thinking (or did you really think duchamp pollock rauschenberg were into Creative Visualisation? (or, Being the change you want to See, the picture of relevance, the perfect Notyet: a Purpose is a Piano with a Doubt. i mean, its not a Doughnut .. i mean does english even Have a word for Hole?
so, whats a Spy, a something that reports its Use? and while surveillance is def Cheaper than the market (and not Only coz the market is a slave to Optimists (though its usually the Conspiracy-as-a-form-of-meditAtion, a sort of Hypochondria that employs the body as a means to talk about Something Else (fuckin profiteer .. like, like the art of Provenance, that picture Taken by the law, as if its punctuation was a Chorus or Refrain or Autopsy of the self. (and if You’ll but do the fAct for this abstraction .. (the listener as middle management Functionary. no longer a seasonal worker, but more the Epileptic Executive, with Tics ..
Logic is, obviously, Aesthetic. so Obvious indeed that many think of it as Pathos. and this is what you call Trite, the notion of Idea? (i mean when missus gephups copyrights Idea, she has before her a postcard of what she Means (and, bizarrely, Youre not It (i mean the generic for Word is a specific Aspiration .. (imean whats transparent about the word Look? that its Theoretical and is As such an attempt to run the Perfect Crime? (imean ornette, osama and doctor seuss are all proof of birthdays and while Dark Matter does indeed describe ninetyfourpercent of the universe, its only when you define it Debtor Confetti that the bureaucrats pay attEntion. (Behavior, then, is a Super Saturated fact, Stuff, its rather obvious Pollution. imean if It is just in some rather awkward superposition to Fact, we’ve got a Runner ..
so think of this as the Anti song. there being no obvious or Insured Shape. more like Space. and while conspiracies are run by Whisperers (who therefore of course miSunderstand theirselves .. (asif thInking just a coping mechanism for thOughts (usury owning the idea of Interest .. (i mean i’m not Lending you an idea of what it mIghtve been, a sortof Surrogate or Beta existence .. though of course not All facts is Catatonic (Some imean can at least concEive of trAnsf’rence (you know, how the Child depends on the the adults Lack (of focus, of purpose, of other words that end with es .. like, like Pics is just fixed Light Traps (with of course a List (though not always on a string (and that not always Latent (i mean you gotta Practice ignorance .. and anyway, theres the anxiety of the Fact to contend with, condemned as it is to Endless reproduction punctuated by only the occAsional fuck ..
This then is what we might think of as a Self. which is of course a mechanism for Not Thinking (Being Right is that form of ‘vOidance therapy that only has a Name (and like all names exhibits Envy Early, a catalyst of Same (which at least attEmpts to make the complex ‘cEssible: the BigBang as my, my Pet (imean its clearly where something Was .. a holding of a paradox without it needing to resOlve, a sort of Pain without Suffering .. or, Threat .. like i mean Language is so so Beautiful, imean some my best friends are kitsch ..
(One, the Ordinary BeautifulBaby (requires a postpartum depression in order to say Boo (though whether Boo is yet a Subject .. Two (to say nothing of About .. (Ode to the vanity of Bout (Teaching as, as Therapy (cept of course for that whats Taught: .. i mean if it hears you Listening, does it Cringe? and how anyway do facts think of Therapy? as More or Less conscious? i mean do they Hear, or rather Overhear? (and coz Surveillance is the Best Suburban Science (and coz And is forever kibbitzing on But (and coz But was recently Rationalised (i mean it gets confused with serial transformations and splits and dislocations, Resolutions .. (which doesnt Yet mean that its a sadist ..
actually, i’ve been wondering whether grammar is Always this depressed, or is it just to do with being an expEriment, being Lost for words? like, are the dead on piece work or on Holiday? i mean theyve lost their Suspended Disbelief, and Still .. so is this where fiction presses the advantage (coz it can spell GiveUp? (Ulterior. with a U. i mean whats Luck, an experiment in Learning?
and the psychopathOlogy of listening, or is listening just talking with your mouth full, a sort of stringtheory Miming of (i mean the Price is not copyright and as generics only exist in the domAin of price (i mean take the branding out of taste ain nothing There)), a miming Of, of where the Stress falls (though stress is not invAriably dyslExic .. i mean Speech as we know is just a way of catching up on what you Mightve said (and as Maybe just the other word aesthEtic ..
(though Transfrence they say is not Contagion. i mean there are Two words. so which is Wrong? its always the First. you Know, coz One is not a Number. only has potEntial to be one. and its This (as opposed to your hIstory, clIckstream, whatever .. i mean the metaphor is neither Shadow then nor Twin ( .. a metaphOr for for is at the dOor or or, dont let him In in in, just becOz .. so whats Butter fr Shudder?
kind of Creamy is the gaze .. and as the object but a tattoo upon the Air (though the air is not (anyway, Obviously) Naive), and as Look and Field both rhyme with clOse .. or cloSe, or clOthes .. a modest prose is all you see ..
(and on the heresy of Yes, the institUte (like what sort of dialectics comes with a lisp? and other mindless (Test Test) .. i mean i prefer your narcissism of Me ..
and coz an stuff bEnds light, is a Lens, and coz superpositions is exclusive to the View, the evEnt .. (you mean coz it Is does It explAin?) and coz logic is a Group, its therapeUtic .. like the psychoanalysis of logic will get you through to pAyday (or some other psychotic narrative) .. like its like the same as Hearing Voices? i mean whats more schizphrenic than a Pause? (a sort of sick Cure (for .. (the future being but the most convenient defense against the present, its own Failure (whIch (semi furtively) submIts, a sort of occult Ego (that always in excess of its object (that passive regressive .. episOde .. and being the worlds first Ideal Object, Agreement (or indeed Negation .. and as knowledge a more or less banal benign (all those B words) attempt at self deception, and as knowledge a more or less Blunt form of confrontation (or Autistic Grace), an almost covert experiment in Being Wrong, (like ask Any name, its not Easy being dead .. i mean, the psychology of Pain, of being Right .. is something of a Sport .. so, does knowledge invariably think of itself as Patient? or even Prose (i mean its addicted to itself, and its this Dependency means the subjects unreliable, and coz the subject is Jealous of the object (i mean gossip always gets back ..
so, on how to instrumentalise Doubt (doubt is to debt as not is to Yet (its a matter of Course that its only in Fiction that language is considered a fiction. and as Fiction is either right or wrong or paranoid or schiz, a passion play on the heroics of Price, the TakeustoVegas model of I’d (i mean Being Wrong is Language Beyond Use, and while knowledge is a Charming form of cowardice, it remains of course without either Consequence or Risk, a classic Decadence. and so, by Literalising the silence of the form, she gets its Own .. (in other words, a Same, and coz the past is unrepEatable (that being what we Know) its easily dispOsed .. (the Tech, that is, the local violence of identity, the slumlord claim that has abstrAction as Not Natural (coz as the subjects prOgress so do the objects rEgress (as if the Name but the Sublime part of the event ..
i mean is there anything more bougeois than the demand that reason map onto reality, youknow the artistslaShentepreneur (the stress is on the Shh, the liquid fart that parses as a shit of paper (though while the past has great potEntial (as a Currency, or Bank (Data, generic for Ta (as if subjects could be other than their exploitation .. (i mean the first thing we know about the system is that it Dont Blink. its administered. this is of course Positivist (though Being Wrong is not Necessarily a fiction. i mean it Speculates (much like any Other decisionist ( .. as a portrait of indifference .. Diagnostics and the pEtty despAir .. (romancing the Known, and other Standard nonos: So? i mean self criticism is not exactly a tax return ..
you mean an It just a way of Thinking Out Loud? (as if the capacity for language was entirely Forged .. (on only understanding Syllables (Language being too depressing a thought (Other Disorders of Thought include, the Subject (even though or in spIte Of the fact that the subject may well map on to Satisfaction (andor the evacuation of Bad objects (knowledge being psychotic for Learning (Object, the liason of Conscious to Unconscious (Google, the Library of Intent (though their Termsofservice require you be atleast contractaBle), as if memory was a question of Discretion, a limp lame pink Listlessness (, a sort of madam to the busybody knowitall on crack. and back.
dear sir, id like to propose adolescence as a work of art. i mean its pure Subject-as-other-than-its-mere-existence. in other words, it can only exprEss, or Be, what its Not. which is not the complEte version of its commercial potential, but .. and as logic is a more or less Selfless patient (no Doityourself axioms Here (a bad faith bad taste Lateness of Event (as if All events were exclusively internally unnameable and therefore Failed to exist (like Two could Think itself a Matheme .. ), and as the market the idEal mechanism (for the calculation of effEct (and as economy Articulates objects, and coz money (unlike sense) is the Record of its use (i mean its the anonYmity of logic which is of course most wearing (like i mean Being Right (or what heidegger abbreviates as Being (i mean he had trouble with the right)) is a pretty Vindictive form of therapy. essentially a Stalker (though this anonymous assumption is also obviously its Gift (to (or Of) its Given .. (its the Process of being Something Else thats Sticky (i mean virtual photons got Rent issues Too ( .. though no reports of Change blindness (in Milk or any Other adverbs) have been ficially received ..
so, yes, the phoenecians invented money, and yes its a shame they didnt invent more of it, but theys now Dead so theys in the Museum (which like money in latin is just a declension of Music, a data tax for Mnemonics (and since bureaucracy only has to (minimally) remember itsElf (a client being of course a thing of the past (which is not to claim them as apocryphal, but rather.. whatever ..
an invoice then is that which measures Change. with Precision. that it itself fails to exemplify or participate In what it measures, is of course rather poignant (a Four on the the p p, Poignant Pecuniary index), and coz events excEed their context (the maths the decisionIstas (truth being Orange for Knowledge (see, i told you itd rhyme))), the Subject being a polka dot or Hole in being, a (mastercard) Hypothesis .. and Coz the subject is this Suicide of context, Coz its quasi Quoteable, Coz it only counts when it Moves (or as oedipus says somewhere, rent me your ears ..) and Coz Stuff is both the same And different (in short, is Cash (and as Interest is a Born Again from the suicide of capital .. (Meaning being of course the (penny-on-the-tongue) invention of Scarcity), and as True Value but a metaphor both concrete And transparent ( .. to its Wants, its Impotent Display .. (i mean if you mortgage a joke by the punchline, what can you raise on Doubleentry Bookkeeping, How Much? .. and being as it Is but Congealed Labour, and Epitaphs, Cliches, Names being those parts of speech we take Seriously, Symptoms, of being Right: .. sorry, what was the question?
.. questions date from the early bronze age. which at first blush seems strange as Answers had Long been in evidence (though its also possible that some of this evidence has been corrupted (not least, by being deployed As evidence .. and coz the market is a distributed agreement about equity, what you Own maps exactly what you Owe (though what now with compound interest, who knows), and as grannies invent Culture (i mean what else they gunna do?) and as euros get to be grannies First (surprise surprise (and just when the poor had caught up with the fashion of being kids (i mean have we discussed that sixtyfive percent of the population of iraq was under the age of consent?) and coz Use, or Dimension, is its own Case (i mean if you cant answer yes And no its obviously no real question .. (and as Not is a not-so-closeted Instrumentalist,
truth operates as an algebra without any strict equality, so its States andor Values are Real Objects, indicated here by arrows (an object being perforce a measuring device (and therefore Ideal (Time being the limit condition of, of, of .. a Triangle .. my place the space .. (that it needs a zero element is of course another incredulity, but we’ll let that lie (i mean we have no idea of how thick this zero needs to be .. and as negation is intErior to the set (an object being something that looks like a Real number, so there is then neither Context nor Proofbycontradiction (which is probably not too steep a price to pay (like we do score truth as some sort of Side Effect .. and as an It Is its own shortest description .. a witness then Yes is def an impEdiment, as if its only quantum messy at the Edge, the Possibilityofnegation a quasi Tissue wrap, something like the proposition If .. (agreed as it is that If is not symbolic. (the names though stay the same .. as though it had the option to be tactical. or even Ground (ground being the only part therefore thats truly System Dependent. and coz dimensions can only obviously Agree to representation, we can conceive of the Edge for example as somesort Class Action .. (or Axiom, or .. (the unknown being of course uncanny .. local being a motive for (Translation being the language prior to sanscrit (All descriptions being therefore True)) for, for, Set .. or anyway its Proof, esque ..
so, the more money moves, the More it Is (which is how god invented Compound Interest. Money then is Pure memory, metaphor squared, a rented Proxy (adam smiths Invisible Hand, or what wed call a Wank), with Leverage. on an old style State of Nature. and Theres the rub. money is the metaphor that builds the Past (the story within the story, anyway the one that consequently Rhymes (poverty being the only cop you need) with, with more or less the model of the, the, the Lost Sock .. though lost is not in any way analogous .. to What? (.. and as Coz of course fails to be a Job .. i mean Cash is the early samp of Mass Production .. i mean before we occupy the past, shouldnt we at least ask the dead if they Mind? or at least Fetishise the brIbe? (as if it had the exclusive capacity to be more Than itself, a Headsiwin Tailsyoulose addition to the dialectic. and as a commodity always needs to invent a Market, it manufactures Change (though change is just some failed analogy, a designed dysfunction or misunderstanding Of, the Set, the This the That the Bet ..
i mean its not that i objEct you understand to words, and All words were just Words, Once, anyway til they were repeated and were thereby Understood .. and coz All versions of a second language is always adolEscent, a both moreorless the Same (repetition being the incest that it Is, a form of suicide or being Right (or Suicide (the advantage that we have over a word being its repetition (which is not to say that its a refugee from repetition, that its a Panic, but rather that it gives us Time (to pause, smell the flowers, have a drag .. i mean entertainment is one of the Nicer forms of understanding (though its not only Search is a cognitive capitalist (Two forexample Prides itself on being profit .. isnt this where And came in, the Bank? the Witness, the floating eS? .. so what would it be to be a plEasure principle? and how would it differ from being Known? a Twin? imean, idunno, ask mum
Diagnostics onetwothree (two being the Symptom (i mean its clearly no gift to Rationality (logic being the poor melancholic sacrifice to what you Know (hedge fund songs of definItion)) .. it is however also therefore equally clear that its the Contradictions, paradoxes, Agreements that make sense, the double versions of the Same (the sceptic with her feet in the air .. (jokes but mnemonics, duplicates (of Things (id like to have Said (coz watching someone Think (the banal sort of bloodsport that it is) is still unutterably Big. domestic. somewhere in the Debt Death interface. a rhyme that both defines and cons its Ignorance (i mean youre in strife if you need to use Language as a measure of stability (names being but Classic speculation (though, interestingly, the mad aint Dead (though maybe bored to death (boredom, the aggressive form of being afeared .. )). least i dont Think thats what im saying (No being one of those words translates readily into english (as if it were some type of Cure .. youknow, the subject being parallel to the object andall .. and anyway what was the tactical advantage of inventing numbers (the narcissism the bornagain)? just to give those with too much time on their hands some retail on which to reflEct, some Zero Coupon Bonds or Preferred Stock or Adjustable Rate Participating SubordinatedDebenture fractal PayinKinds? ( .. may All your listeners be so eloquent ..
so, which lie would you like me to tell? im Late beCause? i mean Coz is to Gossip as, as goss is to ToldyouSo, a quasi Dialect (or Research), and coz meaning is a (porno) pun on Stuttering, an awkward (decadent) echo of the beginning of the utterance or economy of explanation, a compensAtion .. fuckin schiz .. i Do ..
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Cross Country: An Interview with Del Ray Cross

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Oscar Schwartz


Image by Del Ray Cross

I meet Del Ray Cross – poet and founding editor of Shampoo – at a bar lounge in Downtown San Francisco, in the middle of afternoon rush hour. He orders us both a Blue Moon: an American beer served with a slice of orange. We sit at a table opposite the bar, and Cross tells me that he only started enjoying beer after a recent trip to Japan.

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Mark Roberts Reviews The Best Australian Poems 2011

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Mark Roberts

Best Australian Poems 2011
The Best Australian Poems 2011
John Tranter, ed. Collingwood: Black Inc., 2011

I am old enough to remember the K-Tel LP records (vinyl) of the 1970’s – 20 Hits of Summer, 20 Sizzling Hits of 1976 and so on. They were relatively cheap and covered a large range of pop music styles, from Slade to Kiki Dee and back to Deep Purple. The task of deciding what to include in each release must have been relatively simple – each song had to have been on high rotation on the major AM pop/rock radio stations – and the aim was to get teenagers to spend their pocket money on a cheap album rather that a number of singles. Judging by the number of K-Tel collections my friends had, it was a successful strategy.

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GIBBERBIRD Editorial

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Sarah Gory

QPF

‘Gibberbird: Of Birds and Other Strings’ is a poetic conversation between a source poem and ten poems found from within its lines. It’s a refraction of language and image through poetic prisms, an intersection of the familiar and unfamiliar, blurring the edges through the 11 authors’ interpretations.

angela rawlings – a.rawlings – is a Canadian poet from Iceland, currently spending three months in Queensland as the 2012 Arts Queensland Poet in Residence. ‘GIBBERBIRD‘ was written during her first week, a poetic response to the newness of place and an exploration and ordering of the unfamiliar. The ten Queensland poets in this chapbook have, by invitation from the Queensland Poetry Festival, written a response to a.rawling’s GIBBERBIRD, creating a poetic conversation, a dialogue of interpretation rather that literality.

While a.rawlings is new to the flora and fauna of Queensland’s landscapes, each of the poets in conversation with her call Queensland home. The unfamiliar as seen through her eyes is their familiarity rendered anew.

The result is a poetic refraction of experience through language, as these ten poets read the remarkable ‘everyday-ness’ through a foreigner’s eyes, reinterpreting her response in a layering of reaction, reflection, response and recall. This is a conversation of birds and other strings.

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Launch of John Foulcher’s ‘The Sunset Assumption’

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Robyn Rowland

The Sunset Assumption

The Sunset Assumption Pitt Street Poetry, 2012
Adapted from the launch speech on 19 July, 2012 at Collected Works Bookshop, Melbourne.

At Pitt Street Poetry, a new poetry imprint in Sydney, the venture begins with the production of John Foulcher’s ninth book of poetry, The Sunset Assumption. I fell in love during the reading of this book – so strong were my feelings. But ‘in love with what?’, I kept querying. Not the expressions of love itself: human love is an assumed thing in this book.

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