Josephine Bonaparte at Malmaison

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Jennifer Chrystie

A cure for a sick house in a sick country
is a garden throbbing with exotic life
I have brought the Antipodes to Paris
to heal and intrigue, to take my mind
off the sharpness of death

Kangaroos abound, their deer-like heads
cresting the foliage and cockatoos
flaunting golden crowns screech
to a halt on eucalypt boughs
Water moles burrow in secret mud

The swans are black as the natives
of Terres Australes or the trunks
of fire-ravaged forests
Some expect them to moult
to their natural white

Mimosa and boronia mimic sun and stars
hark back to my tropical childhood
They thrive in the hothouse like embryos
in the fecund womb I would love to possess
If only Napoleon could reproduce

by bud, cutting or runner
With gentle secateurs I dead-head the roses
This pink and cream with foxed petals
reminds me so much of my first husband
beheaded in full flower by his country

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Interior World

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Richard James Allen

She is singing Stormy Weather in my interior world.
How did she get in there with that ancient fathomless voice?

Has she always been there, crooning one song or another?
Maybe it’s not even my interior world, but hers.

Or some place we share.  And eventually we all find her
here, waiting for us – the fat old Queen of the Night.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

I’m Jack

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Tony Grey

My head shaved
I look around
catch the mirror
outward bound

Picks me up
to look inside
with my hair
old image died

Born again
sharp new look
cover picture
Nazi book

Short and prickly
hair comes back
not like migrants
I attack

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

How to Love Bronwyn

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Bronwyn Lovell

Don’t try too hard.
If it requires effort,
if it is difficult for you,
this is not for your portfolio.

It must come naturally,
like holding out your hand to test for rain,
and if you should feel something,
put away your umbrella.

Surrender to the pitter-patter
of unexpected kisses,
and if you get the urge to run
when they start to come hard and fast,

please do. This job is not for you.
I need a detective
to find the logic
behind my contradictions,

who will explain them to me patiently,
so I can come to better know myself.
I need a curator who won’t ignore
the chips and cracks,

who will study them,
run his fingers along their length –
an informed buyer
who knows the condition of his prize.

I need a break wall
to protect me from the storms
without and within myself.
Someone who will not ebb and flow,

who won’t come and go.
I need a man sure enough
of his own two feet
to anchor us both.

I am a body of water.
You need to know enough
of drowning
to know how to love me well.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Honey

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Greg McLaren

Walking home along New Canterbury Road
I pass under a eucalypt I can’t name – the rumour
of honey, the frayed brake lining of magpies –

and I think of our walk
around Manly Dam the first week of summer,
the day heating and finally loosing its energy
in a brief drizzle,

cooling the water dragons curious as we are,
as they retreat only the distance
we approach, and the shower

so short that after your father calls
your mobile, worried about Christmas plans
before you leave for Darwin,
and then puts on your mum,
the shower’s passed –

then there’s something we’ve already left behind,
we stop and turn back a few paces, sensing
we’ve missed – what? a hum
like a distant generator,
                                           or a narcissist’s sigh –

and two yards above us, a swelling
in an ironbark, inhaling and exhaling bees:

and knowing next to nothing about bees,
unsure if they’re natives
or feral imports, we watch –
                                                   some of them
burnished as museum medallions,
classic sheened bands of black and gold
pure as a home brand,

and others, their hive-sisters,
muffled stripes of dusky and tarnishing bronze
mixed with brown the colour of shit,

and, behind the honeycomb in the air
with summer dirt’s tang as it lifts, glowing
with the sun’s penumbra as it dips
behind the hill and trees –
                                                the after-image
that lasts, as we look away again,
is another thing gone from sight.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Glad to be Unhappy

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Liam Ferney

Tell me Martin –

I remember the tutorial,
(on who? Hewett?)
about Stalin’s midnight
Mandelstam phonecall,

but as the grey sky marshaled troops
for another assault on the swollen creeks
I did my best to forget
public service selection criteria.

Settling down to nicotine and the Pepsi Prince,
& I find that line:
there is room in the room I room in.
As startling as a parent revealing a disguised adoption.

Tell me Martin, did you tell us the line was from Berrigan?

Logging on to Soulseek
searching for Eric Dolphy tracks
because I’m still not sure

why anyone would be glad to be unhappy.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Five O’Clock at the River

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Graham Nunn

The approaching dusk could be anybody’s dark lover
but here you are by the river, begging for spare change.

I have a pocketful of Kleenex and the key to my mother’s house.
At your feet: top hat, a crow feather, broken glass.

Your drunken tongue is thick with history.
We forget some things, lose some, throw some away.

The song says, it only ever turns to dust
and this limping figure is surely not the one you remember.

It is true, the past never ages, as if it were yesterday
it throws itself at your feet.

This poem is comprised from two Maureen Scott Harris poems, ‘Ghazal 4: For the Clover-Strewn Verge’ and ‘Ghazal 9: Winter’, that first appeared in her collection Drowning Lessons

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Fathers

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Joran Monteiro

Cornelis

owned the smallest farm in Loosduinen
next to The Hague, now swallowed up
had my grandmother, his daughter,
walk the goat to the Malienveld
and graze it
she walking it through the city on a leash
once slaughtered a goat
maybe the same one
because it ate a ten guilder bill
killed it
and retrieved the money from its stomach
the bill worth more than the goat
drank his piss in the morning
but made my grandmother eat
from separate dishes
when on her period
died shortly after his wife
from a broken heart
having lived through two world wars
and the hunger winter

August

owned a plantation in Java, Dutch Indies
growing kapok
hunted tigers and other big game
bought new cars with cash
knocked up one of his planter girls
decades his junior
his daughter born in the kampung
until at age seven
when his mother found out
he formally acknowledged her,
a Dutch legal requirement,
retrieved her to live with him
her mother as well
whom he did not marry until
Indonesian independence was a fact
now or tomorrow
so he could take her with him to cold cold Holland
where she grew smaller until she disappeared completely
once hit my brother
a story oft repeated
my father, my mother telling him to never do that again
the felling of a giant who
just before the Japanese came
lent a friend ten thousand guilders
a veritable fortune
he saw neither friend nor money ever again
leaving the young republic broke
his possessions fitting in a few crates
after years in a camp during the war
to cold cold Holland
the mother country he had never seen
plummeting down the class-system
like it had no bottom
cold-shouldered by post-war Netherlands
which got rich of people like him
a nuisance
a painful reminder
of an inconvenient past
died unacknowledged without thanks

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Defrocked Priest

Posted on February 1, 2012 by John Upton

This clockwork day he joins the congregation
gathered outside the lunchtime T.A.B.
He smokes and watches the open-sesame
doors wink at punters, touting quick salvation.
He knows the truth of hope, tamps out a careless
smoke on a post; then, thoughtful citizen,
he puts the butt into a small throat-lozenge tin
he carries for the purpose. This is holiness.
Beside the twitching doors, out of the sun,
are footloose angels with nowhere to go
holding religious newspapers marked in biro,
scuffing toes and waiting for their race to run.

At two minutes to two he presses Four,
ascends with Paul McCartney in the lift
along with Mother Mary. It was swift,
a bishop’s summons showing him the door,
rage not that he’d lost his faith, but that he’d made
liaison with the Mayor’s wife, “a known nutter
who, whether it’s men or horses, loves a flutter”.
The search for this low-paid temp job’s been a shit parade.
The lift doors open with a magic ding.
He puts his password (pony) in and glances round
at Alison; thank God that he has found
another who can only hope, and cling.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Cafe Paradiso

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Steve Brock

I got a job
behind the bar
at Cafe Paradiso

I can tell you it was no paradise

I worked with this guy
who liked to make short blacks
with a rind of lemon

he told me
that if you see someone
walk in
with a tough face
& maybe a scar
you make the coffee
nice & strong

he was only young
but already had a scar
himself
& I got the impression
that if he walked into a cafe
& I was behind the bar
he’d want me to give him
a double shot
without so much as asking

I quit the job
after 3 weeks.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Bright Star

Posted on February 1, 2012 by B N Oakman

The Sun Also Rises is an earnest movie but without
Papa’s text it’s not quite Hemingway. Flynn steals it.
By ’57 he’s not top of the bill, not Captain Blood, no
swash, not much buckle, not Robin Hood, tights too
tight, but a perfect washed-up playboy, boozy, broke,
sagging in the middle. Flynn cared nought for Method,
wouldn’t need it for his Lolita, but died before clinching
with Kubrick, when Beverly was 17 and one month.

A month counts in a teenager’s life when her man’s
gone 50 and he’s got a wife someplace else, and
a heart that’s grown too big, and the old buccaneers
are all paid off, and Marian’s into a matron turned,
and tall ships rot on make-believe’s back lot,
and frost invades the merry glades of Sherwood.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Beachwalking

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Sharanya Manivannan

I let a man take me to the sea
one night, when the moon was
cut exactly in half. I held one
piece in my hand and threw the
other into the tide, watching it
shiver underwater as though it was
only a reflection of itself. It was
colder than it should have been, and
we traced the lip of the beach at the
point where it slipped into wetness,
the sand shimmering, and watched a
horse plough its hooves into an
ephemeral route, and fire sparking
from the stalls of corn vendors. The
church glimmered in the distance.
When this man took my hand, I did
not even notice if it warmed me;
too distracted was I by the piece of
moon sinking, hopeless, at my feet.

You have been gone a very long time.
And so I wear a dress the colour of
night, ornaments like stars, and I
sing down the sky as though I knew its
secrets, as though I knew anything at
all. I confuse the scent of my skin with
that of the wind breaching the stillness
of the morning bay. I watch men leave
the country on boats like floating
lanterns and return as the horizon
begins to burn up in cinders. I watch
them throw and seize in their nets,
what they capture glistening in the
fading light, and think of how you
didn’t hold up your end of the dream,
how you left me waiting with my piece,
pacing the length of a forgotten coast.

I go to the sea with man after man
and let myself be licked all over
by tongues of water. But what good
is it to stand in the ocean, to break
upon the shore, to look out at
all this all this gravity and darkness
and sea, such sea, and find not even
one single ounce of salt.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Albert Tucker’s Fitzroy

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Corey Wakeling

To sit on a milker’s stool in the entry
to your cottage, with the fallen carnations
and Fitzroy’s bitumen smell rising up like a cordon
between your disposal and your neighbours.
Here we are in fame state.
You turn the man in mustard trenchcoat away unmoving,
an interrogation on your constancy in this place
of a mode, this tableau of the spectres of Fitzroy lighting
their swollen heads lifted from the gutters
to haunt and doorknock once more. And would trams stop?
The storm of yesterday evening split the beech
at the edge of the garden beds, its slag remains,
bar the black stick, a vermiculate wool blanket and sparrow fluff.
Some are left that chirp above in the alcove
between gable and outside; frozen, you turn the man in mustard
trenchcoat away, this time snagging his shoelaces
which tangle through the hodgepodge paving of the sentinel’s station.
You’re an ankle-snapping dog in lieu of a dog leaving its catch
to blanch and encrust in the sun, and little wants burial.
Your mother says you look like a whale carcass, though to hear her
would mean to hear her over the din of Radio Fassbinder,
colluding where gas colludes,
replying where those whose abidance in silence is not revolutionary.
From the radio ebbs places confirming your stool
before the stoop, deaf to the fall of carnations
and the rising mists of roadwork.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Again

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Kate Middleton
Hansel
to
Gretel
It keeps coming, that night in the woods—
a strip of light among the trees,and each time the moon a different color.
It haunts me too.

It’s as if our small theory of happiness
had been irretrievably lost,
stamped out
just as our father stamps out the fire.

And it returns, electric.

Perhaps this, too, is a theory of happiness—
imperfect, damaged
as all our ideas of perfection are.

A cold clutch of unholy fear
marring that small lick of sweetness.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Adorno Gnomes

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Stephen Lawrence

Jazz is what it is used for
not what it is.

If you die in despair you’ve
lived your life in vain.

Thought is not solving problems:
this is perversion.

Thought is coerced by logic:
this is perversion.

Estrangement removes
the distance between people.

Every work of art is
an unacted crime.

Exuberant health
is a sickness.

Happiness is obsolete,
uneconomic.

Those with laughter on their side
have no need of proof.

The person who betrays love
damages the past.

Who matures early
lives in anticipation.

History uses language
and takes place in it.

Horror is beyond the reach
of psychology.

The weak see time left to live
as a brief reprieve.

Truth in psychology is
exaggeration.

Praise of the underdog is
praise of the system.

Intelligence is a class
of morality.

Life is the ideology
of its own absence.

Love sees similarity
in the dissimilar.

When in love, you show weakness, and
do not provoke strength.

If society’s not free.
a person’s not free.

Thought is a contradiction
without emotion.

The poor and hungry chew words
to fill their bellies.

Art contains alternatives
and so masters them.

Technology is and makes men
precise and brutal.

Culture counterfeits
customer reactions.

Sexual ethics: the accuser
is always in the wrong.

The gods look in pleasure on
penitent sinners.

A good man is modeled on
material power.

When they imitate humans
humans are humans.

The task of art is to bring
chaos to order.

Thinking checks at each moment
whether one can think.

Self-consciousness is knowing
that one is nothing.

True thoughts are those which do not
understand themselves.

That deliverance will come
is illusory.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

“A hundred mute gods”

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Peter Boyle

(A hundred mute gods, their eyes all put out, crowd together on a stone altar. Starved of blood. Lingering on in their hunger for one more sunset. A Sybil dozing lightly in an iron lung prophesies.)

It may be a day of lunar celebrations in Lhasa but kindly don’t treat me as a pretext for gnawing on ravens. Manage your own indigestion with diligence. Not every household fire needs more ghee.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

A Field of Wild Grass

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Todd Turner

It was a field of wild grass between two stations on the western
line; a dusky acreage where the barn owl plucked the field-
mouse from its ditches. There was a lone tree on the far side

of the field that I gazed at from the pop-out windows of the train.
The wire fence perimeter sagged between dry wood posts and
roadside ground. There were miles of this, and from the train

my eyes would follow the dipping fence wire and I’d tune out
to the percussive clack that rattled and shook the carriage as
common as days. On colder mornings I remember rubbing frost

from the glass so I could watch the field on approach. Crows
and barn swallows would linger there, crows in the bare tree, barn
swallows in rings above the tips of the grass. And walking

the edge of the fenceline I’d sometimes hear the scrummaging
sound of a hungry feral. Sometimes I’d come across an ant-ridden
black snake that was stuck like a bullwhip to the side of the road.

And I remember the splintered debris among the roadside scrub
and a broken branch that I dragged along. And how I’d always
turn to see the wind rip through the plots of open ground.

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Freethemetry

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Maxine Beneba Clarke

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Coming soon: Cordite-Prairie Schooner Fusion!

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Cordite Poetry Review

Visit the Prairie Schooner website

Cordite is very excited to be involved in US journal Prairie Schooner’s Fusion series; in fact, we’re the first cab off the rank, with a special WORK co-feature due online in February 2012.

The feature will include fifteen poems from each journal on the subject of work, plus interviews and artworks, as well as editorials from Prairie Schooner’s Glenna Luschei Editor-in-Chief Kwame Dawes and Cordite’s Managing Editor David Prater.

As an adjunct, and reflecting Prairie Schooner’s Nebraska roots, Cordite will be producing a special feature of its own.

More details soon – in the meantime, check out the newly-designed Prairie Schooner website.

Posted in BLOG ARCHIVES, GUNCOTTON | Tagged , , , , ,

Ali Alizadeh Reviews David Brooks

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Ali Alizadeh

The Sons of Clovis: Ern Malley, Adoré Floupette and a secret history of Australian poetry by David Brooks
University of Queensland Press, 2011

‘Ern Malley? Again?’ asks David Brooks at the outset of this new reading of what is, arguably, the central event in the history of modern Australian poetry. Brooks’s account is an engrossing, at times exhilarating journey through the landscape of early-mid twentieth century Modernist poetry, but it also leaves the question of the need for yet another volume about the infamous hoax more or less unanswered. This avoidance may be the result of unwillingness rather than inability on the author’s part; he perhaps wishes for the reader to reflect on the enigma of the hoax’s enduring appeal, while he himself goes about the task of unravelling the mystery of the famed poems’ origins and allusions. Brooks’s enthusiastic detective work and his explication of the poems’ notoriously abstract mechanics and symbols make for a fascinating and thoroughly readable work of literary scholarship; but he also leaves his reader unsure of the intentions and implications of this ‘secret history of Australian poetry’.
Continue reading →

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , ,

Fiona Scotney Reviews Michelle Dicinoski

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Fiona Scotney

Electricity for Beginners by Michelle Dicinoski
Clouds of Magellan, 2011

Electricity for Beginners, Michelle Dicinoski’s first poetry collection, has been dedicated in its title and opening pages to “beginners”. Dicinoski has been published previously in a number of publications including Meanjin, The Australian and The Best Australian Poems. So while this is a first collection, it is also a mature book of poetry and much more than a beginner’s exercise. The poems traverse different states of being and explore shifts in time in order to tell stories of love, family, friendship, and childhood, and often change focus and move seamlessly from momentary observations to future possibilities or predictions.
Continue reading →

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

HNY 2012 to our contributors and readers

Posted on January 5, 2012 by David Prater

On behalf of the Cordite editorial team and the world’s bison population, I’d like to wish all of our contributors and readers a (belated, but) happy new year, and a glorious 2012! I hope that the new year brings you peace and prosperity and, just as importantly, creative inspiration.

While we’ve already done our run-down of the top posts of 2011, Cordite’s philosophy is not necessarily all about winning or being the best. Having now published over 1,000 poems on the Cordite site, not to mention oodles of feature content, reviews and other stuff, there’s always something new, or perhaps old, to read. That’s why we’re so proud of the two big issues – Cordite 35: Oz-Ko and Cordite 36: Electronica – that we published in 2011, and why we’re even more excited about our nifty random post feature. Go ahead, click away!

This year promises to be a huge one for Cordite, not least because thanks to the generosity of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, we’ve been successful once again in securing funding for the publication of three issues of the magazine in 2012. So, all the more reason to head over to our submissions page and get your poetry submission on for Cordite 38: Sydney, due online in May!

Before we get to Sydney, however, in February we’ll be publishing our thirty-seventh issue – an issue without a theme. We look forward to presenting forty new poems selected by our guest poetry editor, Alan Wearne, as well as some special surprises. Until then, thanks once again for your support of Cordite, and here’s to a poetry-filled 2012!

Posted in BLOG ARCHIVES, GUNCOTTON | Tagged , ,

Simply the Best: Cordite’s 2011 Top Thirty

Posted on December 31, 2011 by David Prater

Well, this is starting to look like a tradition. We’re proud to present the fourth installment of the Cordite Top Thirty, following humbly in the footsteps of 2008, 2009 and 2010, this time with added bonus commentary.

Oh yes, it’s awn.

1.
Submissions now open for Cordite 37: No Theme!
So, the people have spoken – after ten years of themed issues, the instant we announced that submissions were open for Cordite 37: No Theme, the post rocketed to number one position and stayed there. Go figure.

2.
Recuperating Malley (Dennis Garvey): Uncouth days will never abolish gravity
The poems published in Cordite 34: Children of Malley II had something of an advantage this year, given that they were all published in December 2010, and have therefore had thirteen months to quietly accrue hits. This poem, by Dennis Garvey masquerading as Recuperating Malley, managed to out-score all other poems in the issue, and represents a masterclass in the MS Word tab function.

3.
Corey Wakeling reviews John Tranter
It’s nice to see a book review attain such a lofty position this year, if only for the fact that thanks to the hard work of our reviews editor Ali Alizadeh, we’ve been publishing one book review each fortnight for years now.

4.
Lucina Kathmann: Destination Kurdistan
A perennial favourite, Lucina Kathmann’s Kurdistan travelogue has been one of our most popular posts of all time, and in fact made it into two of the past three Top Thirties as well, even though it was published way back in 2005. That’s Cordite for you: depth.

5.
Shane McCauley: Impressions of Modern Korean Poetry in Translation
It’s great to see one of the feature articles from Cordite 35: Oz-Ko placed so highly on this year’s list, especially as McCauley’s piece is a great introduction to Korean poetry. I strongly recommend that you check out some of the contemporary Korean poetry in the issue as well!

6.
Gema de Malley (Cameron Griffiths): The sea alone is so irreverent
Another Children of Malley II poem that appears to have completely bamboozled all of the commenters attempting to guess the identity of its author. Bravo, Cameron.

7.
John Malley (Corey Wakeling): Soil of Brie
Corey Wakeling is probably feeling pretty pleased with himself at the moment: two posts in the Top Ten!

8.
김소연 (KIM So Youn): 고독에 대한 해석 (Interpretation of Solitude)
Quite apart from the fact that the poetry selected by Eun-gwi Chung for Cordite 35.2: Oz-Ko (Hanguk-Hoju) was uniformly sensational, we’re particularly proud of our success in formatting the poems in the issue to allow side-by-side Hangul and English versions. KIm So Youn’s poem is no exception.

9.
Simply the Best: Cordite’s 2010 Top Thirty
Cue irony sound effects.

10.
Submissions for Cordite 36: Electronic(a) are now open!
The popularity of this post was reflected in the quality and range of submissions for Cordite 36: Electronica. Read Jill Jones’ editorial for the issue.

11.
A.D. Malley (Michael Sharkey): A New Ballade of the Words of Yesteryear
Continuing Ern Malley’s dominance of this year’s Top Thirty, this poem had commenters coming out of the woodwork, with absolutely no success in guessing A.D. Malley’s identity. Again.

12.
Blinky ‘Bill’ O’Malley (Adrian Wiggins): F#!* Yeah
Our personal favourite from Children of Malley II.

13.
Gi Hyeongdo: 오래된 書籍 (Old Book)
We were very honoured and excited to be able to include four poems by Korean poet Gi Hyeongdo in our OzKo issue, thanks to a serendipitous meeting between Terry Jaensch and Gi’s translator, Gabriel Sylvian, in Seoul in May 2011.

14.
Cameron Lowe: Text and Paratext: Ern Malley and the Function of the ‘Author’
Heavy stuff from Cameron Lowe, proudly putting the ‘p’ back in ‘poetics’. As if it ever really left.

15.
Terry Jaensch: Gay/Poet/Korea: An interview with Gabriel Sylvian on the poetry of Gi Hyeong-do
As mentioned above, Terry Jaensch met Gi Hyeongdo’s translator Gabriel Sylvian in Seoul in May 2011 as part of the Cordite OzKo tour of Korea. This is a great interview, and I’m very happy it made the list.

16.
Aurelia Schober Malley (Stuart Barnes): So I Was
Another bizarre CoM II poem that had some of our commenters in a dither.

17.
Heather Taylor Johnson reviews John Foulcher
John Foulcher obviously has more than a few fans out there.

18.
derek motion: Michael Dransfield’s Innocent Eyes
This one surprised us a bit, given that it first appeared on the Cordite site in 2007 but who are we to argue with the stats.

19.
Jal Nicholl reviews Best Australian Poems 2010
This one was also surprising, in that it scored so low – usually when we post reviews of “Best of’ anthologies they attract hits the way road kill attracts flies. But #19 is still a very respectable position for any post.

20.
Who are the Children of Malley II?
In which we put our loyal resident commentators out of their misery and revealed the true identities of the contributors to Cordite 34: Children of Malley II.

21.
Ivy Alvarez: Zombie 2.0
Belated but well-deserved props to Ivy Alvarez for her witty and entertaining Zombie 2.0 editorial!

22.
Zenobia Frost: Warning
The opening salvo from the multi-headed hydra that was to become Cordite 35: Oz-Ko.

23.
David Prater: Oz-Ko Envoy (Editorial)
Aw shucks.

24.
‘King’ James Malley (Stuart Barnes): Genesis
Stuart Barnes gets amongst the runs again, with his second poem from CoM II to make the grade. Props once more.

25.
Simply The Best Australian Poems – Ever
Link bait FTW. Heh heh.

26.
Ali Alizadeh reviews Maria Takolander and Claire Potter
Ali shows us how it’s done. Another great review.

27.
Peter Minter: Vale Dorothy Porter
Peter Minter’s interview with Dorothy Porter is as vital today as it was in 1997 when we first published it on the Cordite site.

28.
Sally Malley (Matt Hetherington): Trunk
The ninth and final poem from Children of Malley to grace this year’s list. Will we ever see such a clean sweep again?

29.
Gi Hyeongdo: Four poems translated by Gabriel Sylvian
Gi Hyeongdo sneaks in again for his third honourable mention, and why not?

30.
Cordite seeks a new Managing Editor
And so it ends, just as it began. We were really chuffed that our advertisement for a new managing editor gained some interest, and we’ll be making an announcement about the results of the process early in the new year.

Thanks to all of our editors, contributors and readers. Each of you has made 2011 another sterling year for Cordite. To put it bluntly:

You’re simply the best
better than all the rest
better than anyone – anyone I’ve ever met.

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Cuttlewoman Reviews Stu Hatton

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Cuttlewoman

How to be hungry by Stu Hatton
Self published, 2010

Stu Hatton’s How to be hungry is predominantly a charnel house of modern, urban, party-going, substance-abusing youth. Hatton crams in the details of the worst of youthful socialising — friends as necessary accessories, drugs, sexual frustration, disappointment, aversion to boredom, lies, stealing, compulsions, addictions, the highs and the lows, even the consumption of adverts rather than proper food. In poem after poem layer upon layer of detail is accumulated like so much sediment, perhaps by way of a barricade against drug-fuelled forgetfulness. At their worst, these list-like poems are perhaps drafts of better poems — hasty, truncated, raw, a bunch of punch-lines tangled together, unresolved. True, there are many finely gnomic observations, but Hatton links them together fuzzily.
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