David Prater Interviews Arjen Duinker

Posted on August 31, 2009 by David Prater

Arjen Duinker, by David HowardPoet, raconteur and cryptogrammer Arjen Duinker may be one of the few writers living in the Dutch city of Delft. Cordite editor David Prater caught up with him recently for a wide-ranging discussion about books, writing, festivals, travelling and Australian Customs sniffer dogs …

DP: Arjen, the first question I wanted to ask you is – obviously, I'm interviewing you today as a representative of an Australian magazine, so for our readers who maybe have no idea what it is to be a poet in Delft, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your connection to the place where you live?

AD: Well, I was born here in Delft. Delft is a small town let's say between The Hague and Rotterdam; Amsterdam's just a train's hour away from here … so it's the west of the country. I was born here, I was raised here, my school was here – okay, I studied a bit of psychology and philosophy in Amsterdam and Groningen, but I came back and I have lived here ever since.

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Matthew Hall Reviews Les Wicks

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Matthew Hall

The Ambrosiacs by Les Wicks
Island Press, 2009

In Les Wicks' The Ambrosiacs visual and tonal senses, shown through a series of relentless escapes and endscapes, create a striking depiction of the poet's perceptions and observations. The fundamental basis of Wicks' collection, and the manner in which the reader is encouraged to approach them, is as an elegy: a series of memories and dedications aiming for the preservation of the instant, even if the instants are acknowledged as fleeting. The elegiac is not only the thematic directive, but plays out an effect of the visual, referenced from the first glance at the obscured palm trees packed densely on the book's cover. The ambiguity produced by the image on the cover references a loss to see clearly, and elides the demarcations between the trees and the sere, as the temporal space between them vanishes into the depths.

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Moya Pacey Reviews P. S. Cottier

Posted on August 10, 2009 by Moya Pacey

The Glass Violin by P. S. Cottier
Ginninderra Press, 2008

This debut collection by Canberra poet, P.S. Cottier, is striking in its eclecticism. Nothing much escapes this poet’s perceptive eye; her world is crowded and busy, and her poems reflect on and respond to a wide range of mostly contemporary topics and ideas. These include, among many others, injustices (big and small), the marginalised and forgotten, environmental concerns, as well as the nag of the everyday such as how to dispose of a tea bag responsibly or how to take care of one’s teeth. The poems in The Glass Violin are presented in, what appears to be at first reading, a random rush of responses to the arbitrariness of life in the 21st century. But a careful reader will soon discern that there is a sharp, ordered poetic intelligence at work in these mostly short, accessible poems.

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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Whip and Tongue

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Charles D'Anastasi

There's no comparison, I know, but sometimes
it's not enough, I lick the underside
to get a taste of how the other half lives;
the salt rising to the surface.

It's not enough, I lick the underside
to pirate, treasure, flag and farm
the salt rising to the surface,
heart voided, albeit briefly,

to pirate, treasure, flag and farm,
words stooked, hand-tied, and lined in rows,
heart voided, albeit briefly,
a silent song, approaching the throb within,

(words stooked, hand-tied and lined in rows)
hums its music, just as slowly:
a silent song, approaching the throb within.
A hungry stethoscope, tucked here and there,

hums its music, just as slowly,
to get a taste of how the other half lives.
A hungry, stethoscope, tucked here and there –
there's no comparison, I know, but sometimes-

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

anecdote

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Christopher Brown

lid

dose

riposte

and

key

lions

Yours

Blink

like

pieces

save

is

glyphs

like

as

I

bandiera

'poem'

of

motive

like

salt

&

trousers

i

binder

he

thing

ouch

moratorium

bulge

god's

we'll

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

In one tidy [snickering bookstore] package

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Cameron Fuller

I'm waiting for someone to count me in.
You can see a faint candlelight.
I look away turn to it, check
you have that white chocolate
and the heat surging through it.

Falling for you, or at least in front of you,
I take your hand in these last nights and wait.
How silly it all seems, lines from special-k
and the floor with blood and honey.
It's always the edges that get blurry.

Perhaps – if I may hazard a simile –
while the sunken lounge swallows me.
Your head like a mixing bowl
gentle on my arm, like breath that stirs
stars suspended beneath the ceiling.

There's no escaping physics or
the unbearable rumbling of the sun.
We must wear our ornamental
emergency siren and blinking high sensitivity
fashions of cruelty.

In this new composition I work
the spaces between breaths,
a library of untranslated prose
leaving an eerie absence
that might have been engine or radio hum.

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Mongolia

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Sam Langer

the rabbit world
where all wisdom is stored how it discovers
an English guard over the Seine.
Your lover has been made in Sri Lanka
Venetian, vertical – screen your calls
For the part about New York
In the main square in UB city
Mongolia

A Maoist is reading a map
behind us in the kitchenette.
beside the Styx on a green bank that runs to the wood,
plantations.
by a manufactured lake. It shimmers
India 14962 living
Sri Lanka 29755 living
The Philippines 25 living

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Wasn’t

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Michael Scully

The first day of her trial provided
A crude representation
Of a famous orator
Coming in on the radar

Every speech was moulded
In the thin place between
The word and the thing
No other documentation was required

The path to the sitting stand
Like the vacant blue sky
Lead me to her mind's architecture
Trying to draw meaning from the graffiti

Her audience waited hours
To hear the phrase
But professing to see the Blessed Virgin
She slowly removed the incisors

Now the gap between the beating and broken

Wasn't

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

moss y doona

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Tim Wright

seriously, come

back later

moss

y doona

raised

on mari

achi & sprinkler e

ffects public

ly more

Bangladesh! tidy

wheels!

lousy

though ap

parently glazed

rhythm lake!

hums duplicate

Kylie clock

slopes r

ed

kitchenette lec

ture & come

back later

thought texta

breakfast a

gainst puppy ducks w

orking class

ducks

scratching mossy

on the

metro bruised

plum

age

dishdrainer platz

cutely a

grees

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Mick’s Coos

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Ryan Scott

I.
all over again
the crescent curve of his back
written on your lips

 

II.
he'd idle behind
spilling over glistening stones
sometimes, not enough

 

III.
someone imagined him
inside the shell of a car
it looks nothing like you

 

IV.
crazy dumsaint and
a pronoun. It may signify
caution. albiet

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Erotica

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Lee Kofman

again a soft-focus filter between us
and i forgot where i was
beginning our descent into barbarism:
in ease of darkness
he peeled back the sheet and slid his hands
between shadows
and flickers of saints.
patiently.
the crescent curve of his back
And our breaths intertwine on the world's edge
Lashes to lashes. Sky's shades
his head angled backwards,
smooth neck reflecting the sky.
The light flickers,
we both flicker,
twitch.
to steal under closed doors
then find him, open-eyed and loving.
I don't believe there's anything to say
except, “I was alive like you. Back then.”
When he reads me, I'm reading him
I wish I'd written him

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Benjamin Dodds Reviews Carol Jenkins

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Benjamin Dodds

Fishing in the Devonian by Carol Jenkins
Puncher & Wattmann, 2008

Carol Jenkins's first collection of poetry, Fishing in the Devonian, has been identified as a body of great 'scientific' poems. Michael Sharkey's quote on the publication's back cover and Judith Beveridge's pick of the best books of 2008 in Australian Book Review both single out Jenkins's work for its strong use of science. Indeed, Jenkins's own blog refers to her work as 'science-based', and the collection was launched by Radio National's most prominent science reporter, Robyn Williams.

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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

an ordinary day

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Charles D'Anastasi

and tell me;
how we're
going
to breathe,
in a hallelujah
of blue trees;
go past
in a righteous
gaze, when
even with a
silent song
playing
in one's
veins,
something
approaching
a throb,
historians
cannot
be certain
of the
ephemeral
stuff?

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

made things

Posted on July 25, 2009 by Anne Elvey

bookbinder
atlas and fire
a medieval pronoun
makeshift engine

-Do not use boiling water-

skin pores. adjectives
on the underside of a kid
draw the cosmopolitan
in a tree.

this new composition
seasons
the word and the thing
on the unmasked pages.

wind touch
the paper the moulding
a manufactured
entitlement always somewhere else.

-The ghost in the plastic agrees-

breath stirs
old questions in new English.
I measure my length
of time or narrative

living
living
living.

that mercenary ethic
looks nothing, just ingredients
slowly made
from day to night.

what has gone missing
-the fine creation full of holes-
the unbearable rumbling
worse than a clock

you don't see are linebreaks
typed-The salt rising to the surface-
a short lesson
enjoining us to attend more closely

to weaving nothing
half a line
blunt pencils
inkless pens.

the smell of ordinary life
thick with resistance
troubles, leaving an eerie absence
to guide us reliant on reflection.

a path leads
out of these trees
Someone imagined
in the roaring library-

words hand-tied lined in rows
behind the small splinters
and wood grain, teasing out
flecks of leaf. I thought

recyclable materials
are subject to change.
tenderness guarding nothing
must be so hungry.

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

The Footing of the It

Posted on July 24, 2009 by Michael Farrell

The foot on the wood,
the heat surging through the It –
seems the grandeur to the fauna
(here with the public; here in the sauna).
the long way makes the hot top
the bitumen of the home.
the exile is no It, the fear,
the doubt that belongs here
in this, or at the most, the poems.
To be the conduit of the beauty,
to be the somewhere –
(between the dirt and the birdfilled air),
the song is surging through the you –
that is the pretty thing, that is the wish.
Even the silent know the song
the playing in the veins, the thong-
thing approaching the throb, the Beethoven
within the would-be okay.
The sharpening of the sense /
the perishing of the present tense.
The salt, the rising to the surface
of the body reminds the It
of the attention given the commotion —
the It having crawled from the ocean;
the ancient speaks of the secrets embedded
in the flesh. The body
has endured the shortness of the lesson
the how-to-be-here, the how-to-jettison.
But the It has changed the shapes.
The It has changed the song.
We found the few that remained of the drawings:
they spoke to the ancient of the loosening of the moorings.

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

How crazily

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Amanda Betts

No longer light years away
he sits on the suitcase,
no handsome visitor.

Nostalgia is a genre
forgetting time
(tell me)
and the colour in each petal.
But there's a taste-
(and tell us where we are)

It begins & ends like this
falling back on familiars
as if ideas settle
under the gaze of an unquestioning moon

– and how crazily it shines
testing the constance of stars.

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Not Just Yet

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Michael Scully

Identity

Dazzling
Heaving
Devouring

Warning

Rock Oysters
Scattered Dice
On World's edge

 

Standing on my suitcase
With stethoscope, searching for
Unfinished words from my practised monologue

 

$5 in pocket left

 

A manufactured lake separates
The lifestyle I deserve
And the ghost writer ahead

 

Country To be advised
Number of Deaths One Less
Cause Be

 

I am wearing my new bicycle helmet

 

And at the end of the day it's all good

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Do not place anything on top of your lover

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Dianne Cikusa

The light flickers,
And Derrida's graffiti

asks: when our eyes touch, is it night
or is it day?

Our tongues are now maple syrup
the colour of god's hair or something

I give him marks at least
for genuine attention.
the crescent curve of his back
had to swear loyalty
then up and go with the flow gyrating down
long legs spilling effortlessly

in deepest nebbia.

 
**
 

He slipped through the curtains
on a Friday night,
in techniques of surprise / and exited
To fill up the cosmopolitan

He was too shy to let me know
He grew in a bedroom the colour of prickly pear & it became
His favourite colour;

Except for the suitcase he has completely filled with unfinished words, he leaves
everything behind –
a familiar occurrence: ouch

confused now with appearances
He will draw a door closing, but to him it will just look like an unopened door.

There's no escaping physics or silicates
Beethoven, would be okay.
Buried upright in a tree.

 
**
 

you left i was lost
And I'm easy to store.

It changed our song.
Nails down a chalkboard.

When he reads me, I'm reading him,
until we meet inside the radio
Somewhere in the largeness of
the world,
in the thin place between the word and the thing.

But now, each day's another dictionary,
Domesticate words & consume
with an ironic detachment.
Guess that's why they call it – the morning
(knowing a book so used would not reply);
hallelujah doesnt come with
raisins

 
**
 

this ordinary life: cobra uncoiling is Kylie;
its jacket has been lit, man rolled back to ma

someone
from behind restores our tongues.
We apologise
for any inconvenience.

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Book Teaching

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Bonny Cassidy

i thought
you could
tell me
how to pick up or something
he mumbled, feeding that slim volume to the chute.

Outside, he looked back
at the Stacks inside the library windows
and saw a skirt flutter beside the 2nd floor duct.
I should've chosen one of the other drones, he thought,
and tucked a winking thumb behind his waistband.

Through its Ned Kelly slot, the Berryman watched. It shunted closer to the edge
of the shelving trolley, muttering. When he reads me, I'm reading him.
He's marred by adjectival spots he won't get rid of. Mine were earned.
I'll call him Henry, little wanker. Together we'll be (seriously) overdue? I think not:
spots accrue on his student record; I return wiser and count my pages.
We are using our own skins for wallpaper, but mine's rebound on the decade.
A 'poem' upon a book of poetry – it can be a sign saying: Go this way. Sure, or
it can be an unintended public act of worship – a lone letter from a young man:
that is fame.

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Label the Provinces

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Gary Thornell

Label the provinces: She
floats and evades
and conforms to British Quality Standard BS1970:

Country Number of Deaths Cause
crowd on the plate
one blind step to each beat

alone at a Sydney restaurant, a whole plate
alarm clock emergency siren and blinking high sensitivity 360° telescopic antenna
all to himself.

Zhai radios from the vastness of space, 'I am proud,
to hear her private singing from the bathroom:
and shot with liverspots like extra moons

or clock stopped 20:07. I step to the cliff edge-'
Those rare tickets illicit lure of the cubicle
voice like a field of unreturned

stars suspended beneath the ceiling
used his pale skin as metaphor.
Lies are by nature brittle.

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Speedy Syntax

Posted on July 20, 2009 by Carolyn van Langenberg

the crescent curve of his back
when flame touches skin
stitching sinners
he peeled back the sheet and slid his hands

with the speedy syntax of channel surfing.
Recommended temperature should not exceed 42 degrees.
the time we got the hypertext working wed run out of blue
and cockroaches are the hieroglyphs of home.

This insect has a protective coating
China 12 touristing
surreal but you a suitcase. his grace stank. the tone like an
(all) together from other things

Chairman Hu, people of China, mission
carrying the bag
he will draw two knives, and one lettuce leaf
visitors will bring food and gifts

wealth flows backwards as well to
behind us in the kitchenette
and who, for all his troubles, failed
each line along his brow.

tree snake coiled itself like a stowed garden hose around
rectangular down pipes supplied with fitting instructions
coffee slurped smoke in-out the salt rising to the surface
flecks of leaf and breakfast smudges and wattle pollen

a time of mood plantations
a thought, unheld, to be forgotten
a lash, hardly at all. And Derrida's graffiti
the monk replied.

jingle & follow protocols after
your chaos-theory, the snickers wrapper
Bertolt Brecht noticed something similar
dusted on his writing desk

was forced to grow vegetables for soldiers
for the moulding in the starch
by a manufactured lake. It shimmers
there'll be no billy ocean

spilling over glistening stones,
all green thought flattery by this
gazing at the decor a glass too tall
of a stereoscopic image. There's no comparison.

written on your lips
in clay? Or scratching them in polished stone?
tell me
sorry, it's conclusive

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

We did a few drawings

Posted on July 19, 2009 by Dianne Cikusa

Can you remember our guest
in this empty house?
the room humid
with cooking cotton,
Its illusions are fully furnished,
since the windows filled with milk

blast of glass waste banking up
for airless weeks.

The money spider crosses a hand.
saint, witch, schizophrenic

If a picture could talk we could not understand it.
We write beneath the noise of men
a library of untranslated prose.

Look up and smile; the coffee drinks the cup

And our breaths intertwine on the world's edge
trees shaped like trees, the idea of water

Sight has its own methodology. Hearing too.
move solidly through public streets

Please recycle
old questions in new English.
the spaces between breaths.
I don't believe there's anything to say

Every day Abba Paul plaited a new basket,
charging $5 for audience development

displayed in a place where ducks
stop traffic and families picnic

Now, that's what I call art.

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Neighbours

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Zoe Deleuil

It's not often I see
you in front of me. Those heavy eyes
that shift from left to right
through public streets.

Back home, you tap the wall
with bare hands that slide
down and let you in –
tapping and spilling
into my private bathroom singing

You tap again.
Just the same, just
as patient.

Who knows what stirs behind
the splinters and wood grain
between us? Endless days
piled like knots on top of each other,
dry bird-bones, a bruised
apple, frayed lino.

Posted in 36: MADE | Tagged

Here in the Public Sauna

Posted on July 17, 2009 by Gary Thornell

1.
'Then go ahead and put your nothing in my basket,' Paul offered.
We begin our evolutionary strategy in earnest:
Here in the public sauna before you

so that you too can, in parks with
department store catalogues, the ghost unlit,
eye another thousand works.

 

2.
A bee once stung me on the nipple there
it was classically trained
to the sounds of the same music I do.

An Apostlebird greeted his return, its grey fantail
needles in his sleep but reindeer willing that wont happen again. How
do i know theyre genuine? how do they know about bank accounts?

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