Paul Mitchell on Sleepers at Next Wave 2004

Posted on June 4, 2004 by Paul Mitchell

“Sleepers Prevents Bad Poetry”
Next Wave Festival (Festival Club)
Monday 24 May 2004

This event was presented at the Next Wave Festival in a bar venue – after a big crowd had finished fawning all over American cartoonist, writer and film director Harvey Pekar (American Splendor). It's probably a top movie (I haven't seen it yet), but, as I was saying to Zoe beforehand, if you put the word American in front of bloody anything people will go see it – American Beauty, American Graffiti, American Pie, American Idol – let's make a movie, call it American American. Double the box office returns …
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Posted in FEATURES | Tagged ,

India vs Australia 03/04

Posted on May 26, 2004 by Nick Whittock

I

life in the pitch
a jaffa
of a
ball & a
fork from cooma like
my wife dd slasher size
4 she loves her
pronged attack
rain delays the groundsman
warns the umpires
be tentative be tentative

II

approach the pitch with
trepidation the delays
are prolonged
attack the weather
men be tentative for
nail polish
manoeuvres barely
visible i cannot
see marto barely visible
healthy eating baby
tentative

I

is it is true as it seems
ganguly reads
in the weather
3 orange
flowers shadows
the nice ones claim that
proust is a find he has
the best hands in the game
attacks the pitch of the      ball
art aspires to the condition
of sport seam barely visible

II

___________
________________s
t________
eve Waugh is not is
black orange 3 was
orange is not is 3 white
young adults on
the train weep into
a full page ad feat.
steve Waugh
                  for     super

 
match drawn

 
 

adelaide oval

 

I

i practice my drives
as i walk down
king william st
this whole city exists only
so that the adelaide oval
may exist time shreds away
and runs
are just a consequence
of being
seagulls score
poddy mullets out glenelg

II

channel 9 the
tv knows everything
dravid sinks australias heart
there are were
wolves on the hill at 3rd slip
langer has a laconic stance drive
a bullock dray into dimboola
uber mullets seagulls
on the big screen remember
how they will occupy the
crease in the end

I

laxman sinks
into the crease laxman
is long & stretchy
dravid is all crouchy and
bent perfect angles
his arms make a perfect
diamond his wrists are gold
drive into dimboola
attacked the pitch camp
like god overnight
batted like god

II

as williams gladiates
across the field
there is a base instinct
in me that cannot bare
to see the team lose the tv
remembers everything vvs laxman
sinks like an australian heart
into the crease a superstar
his bat
orbits him in perfect arcs
from 2nd slip

 
india by 4 wkts

 
 

mcg

 

I

at tura beach for boxing day lunch
faith shreds away in no time the tv
knows nothing of the games syntax
man a kierkegaard knight
on the second
morning late order batting
succumbs to
ford
pressure
kierkegaard
air ford ford

II

loves her fords &
her cricket the wickets
will fall when the ford logos
are on display
the ads are in the
atmosphere over my left breast
there is a temporary tattoo
of an australian flag you can
feel it in the free air
the wickets will fall when the ford
logos are on display

I

matthew hayden drives
into ford territory
a boy in speedos plays
a cover drive off the back
foot a new stand takes root boy
in brightly coloured speedos
drives on the up
off the front foot he is a syntax man
a distribution of elements that
form sense and well being
at the crease a boy

II

a distribution of antiperspirants
ford sense & the games syntax
creased takes guard sets
it up for the decider
in sydney at the end of
an era ford & rexona
like my wife justin
langer has the most
beautiful face there is already
a century floating in her eyes a
new members stand takes root

 
australia by 9 wkts

 
 

sydney

 

I

lights go out
____
cold out
_______
_______
played
_
at nighttime nothing thin nighttime
laxman is long
10 is not
is longer

II

is steve waugh playing
i didnt even know steve was
playing im just here to
see the cricket tear
their flesh & rip their
bones apart amid a sea
of red bunting macgill
is sleeping or thinking of horses
territory marked out in chalk
strange ads take root
in the atmosphere

I

marked out
in his eyes justins
hundred was good
from the start ganguly
reads a hundred in
the feet of simon
katich cover the territory drive
at the boundary rope sheds
a tear for a pierced cricket field
& a futile chase after a thin thin
nighttime

II

50 50s seagulls & mullets
45000 small red squares
circle the field repeating
the boundary rope
the innings syntax is
super steve holes out to
tendulkar on the boundary
rope i don’t want the world
i want you but at nighttime nothing
steve waugh is not is
no longer

 
match drawn
Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

Cow Spew

Posted on May 22, 2004 by Konrad McCarthy
Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged

Zoe Dattner: The Greeting Card Writers

Posted on May 20, 2004 by Cordite Poetry Review

Poets come in many different shapes and forms. I'm not about to give you my ideas as to what makes a poet because I don't think I'm qualified. What I am interested in however, is all the different subsets of humanity where poetry exists. Where individuals take it upon themselves to express something in words, something they believe is representative of the way in which we all live our lives, the similarities in the human existence that highlight the fact that we are all suffering from, laughing at, celebrating, the same things. And so it was that I began to develop an obsession of sorts, that has since become an affection, for those unsung heroes, the Greeting Card writers.
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Posted in ESSAYS | Tagged , ,

I ‘member

Posted on May 19, 2004 by Vernyce Dannells

I 'member we strutted down the street
ass to cheek — safety in numbers
chanting loud lyrics to a tune
we'd later learn was Ellington's “Night Train~”
-“Yo mama she don't even care
she wears yo daddy's underwea
Yo mama unh, unh, unh-”

Racing to the next insult
“hate to talk about yo' mama
she's a good ole soul
she got a humpback booty
and a rubber asshole.”

Perverting Pepsodent commercials:
“You'll wonder where the yellow went
when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent
'Cause when your teeth are turnin' black
You'll wish you had that yellow back.”

I 'member double dutch lyrics tastier, racier
escalatin' footwork, patchwork of rhythm and
sources, rhymes, syncopation, nation building
sisterhood, sibilance and early romance dancing

-A million versions of Miss Mary Mack and Jimmy
Crack Corn, later blues and news that traveled from
distant drums through footwork thrums, braids and
bellowing

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

A Little Kindness

Posted on May 19, 2004 by David McFadden

Let's please try not to be so barbaric.
If we must kill baby seals, cows or hogs,
let's just shoot them with tiny darts filled with
strong doses of the purest heroin.
                                                       If we must shoot humiliated children
                                          armed only with kamikaze belts
                           and pavement stones, let's do it with tiny darts
             full of a potion that makes them hungry
then open all the restaurants and offer steaks
carved from cows killed with wonder drugs.
And if we must bomb ancient cities such as
Belgrade let's do it with giant waterbombs
                      only after the advance uncover teams
             infiltrate the city and steal the towels.

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

A Very Calm Demeanour

Posted on May 19, 2004 by David McFadden

For John Lennon's 61's birthday Oct. 9/01

It's always good to be prepared for death
             because of course it could happen any time-
                           the Dalai Lama instructs us how the live
                                         as if we're shadowed by a sniper –
                           but with gangs of terrorists bombing the U.S.A.
                                         and Americans firebombing the Afghanis
                           with pneumonic plague breaking out in India
                                         and maybe China and Vietnam as well
                           traveling the airlines in the same way
                                         as bubonic rats get around on ships
                           and civil wars raging through Africa
             where everybody who's anybody's a refugee
or an orphan of refugees or of AIDS
             a very calm demeanour is required.

Le Devoir dit nous sommes tous am?©ricains
             and Putin says humanity's maturing
                           but as for me I'd prefer to say that I'm
                                         an orphan growing up knowing my mother
                           died of AIDS and not knowing my father at all
                                         except that he's a solider who raped mama
                           while she was trying to flee a bomb attack
                                         or we're starving and a humanitarian box
                           falls from the sky and lands in the danger zone,
                                         there's enough pasta to last a week
                           enough penicillin to prolong a life or two
             and we're crawling towards it and expecting
at any moment to be blown up by a mine
             a very calm demeanour is required.

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

Grass

Posted on May 19, 2004 by Emily Finlay

Won't you take my jeans off?
I feel like I'm sixteen again-
dark fields, the coldness of grass on my ankles-
I'd forgotten what it's like with nowhere to go.

I feel like I'm sixteen again-
I can sense your discomfort-
you've forgotten what it's like with nowhere to go,
accustomed to the privacy of your bedroom.

I can sense your discomfort-
although you're here anyway, it's just you're
accustomed to the privacy of your bedroom.
You'll get over it.

Although you're here anyway, it's just your
body, your mind's over there beside the fence.
You'll get over it.
Nobody's going to interrupt us-trust me.

Body?-your mind's over there beside the fence-
Focus on me now, come on-
(nobody's going to interrupt us-trust me)
I think I've had too many wines.

Focus on me now, come on-
this may be our last night together-under the stars.
I think I've had too many wines.
Am I starting to repeat myself? (it's important to know)

This may be our last night together-under the stars-
so won't you take my jeans off?
Am I starting to repeat myself? (it's important somehow)
dark fields, the coldness of grass on my ankles.

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

Robertson Panegyrical

Posted on May 19, 2004 by Kate Fagan

for James Fagan

Out where sun-sweet grasses bat their stalks
at stumps and living trunks of silver gum
slender leaves in susurrating fall of blooded green
and grey, where piney hulks are switching
misty arms to fencing sky and cockatoos

break succour from the scratch of sappy cones
before shrilling departure, whump of wings
and flash of jewelly comb, where jumping jodies
teem cyrillic etchings over littered bark
and dew's unparalleled horizon softens

even raking steel that hunkers idly
by corrugated rounds of wisdom's error
roofless and raw, where treelings bend
as sails to weather's lick and all description
loosens in its scaly bed to fly

uprooted from the facing page of this
encyclopedic echo and assay, my brother
humming for the sake of things and hurling
twigs and lichen stones far into blue
as he imagines reels to catch the crash

of matter's weight in foliage and field.
You sound he says like a bloody angel.
On as cloud comes scudding from hills
toward the coast with metal salt
fizzing upon our tongues, adventure

promised in broken bough and ragged sheer
of wire, riffing on every sighted rook
and keeping step for step to contours learned
by rote or road, wheeling drift of flies
robbing focus as they hug his wake

billowing as smoke in glancing light,
on to cross alchemic ground between
this paddock and the next where diesel
slops from cans and technicolour pesticides
seep colloidal ruin, on as evening's rain

begins to deck the slickening posts
and polish knotted iron enfolding
nominal lines of residence, as startled sheep
retreat in jerky trot to safer quarters
only to start again with bleating stutter

and gallop, on as shadows gather
palming lumps of rock from hand to hand
never stopping neither seeking home
but circling displaced and distant,
ever close, the cool world closing in.

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

Single Line Poem

Posted on May 19, 2004 by Kate Fagan

after Tom Raworth

Poem on a single line beginning poem on a single line

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

Girls on the Avenue

Posted on May 17, 2004 by Alan Wearne

Waddayamean you've never seen 'Pure Shit'?
A titles-to-credits rampage of black Melbourne wit

meets the scorers and the scored: so so so beyond bewdy
seeing it's near enough to a patriotic duty.

And here's where the girls come in: permed, waxed, douched and flossed
once the avenue's crossed

they'll be slippin' up o-kay! (There's a fortune a day
just pulling cocks!) Whilst here, in that washed and grainy way

we are just are, the story so far: I'm alive you're alive,
and if this isn't '74 this sure is '75,

the dawning of The Age of Near Enough Victimless Sin
( which is, as I've said, where the girls come in).

Don't But but but but me sport. It's obscene
you've never caught 'Pure Shit'-waddayamean?

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

Bev Braune Reviews Pam Brown

Posted on May 13, 2004 by Bev Braune

Textytext thing, by Pam Brown
Little Esther Books, 2002

My topic is local. The poems rarely leave whatever street I'm on. They are as mobile and as mutable as my daily life. (from Pam Brown's Statements on poetics) [1]

The art of looking for the text, the thing it's in and re-thinking it, is Pam Brown's forte. In reading this collection, I find myself thinking of Brown's development. She is a poet who reads, travels, observes and re-thinks her own backyard.

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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Bev Braune Reviews Melissa Ashley

Posted on May 13, 2004 by Bev Braune

the hospital for dolls by Melissa Ashley
Post Pressed, 2003

Melissa Ashley brings us a collection of stories considering realities, mythology and personal experience. While a veneer of the strange wraps her images, the translucence of their reality is distinctly prominent. This is a book about definition, about who defines what and how. The poems in Ashley's first volume of poetry are seriously concerned with corporeal actualities and female self-definition. Readers are called on to understand that the happenings referred to are relevant and real. We are asked to see, feel, talk-about and (perhaps) understand. She takes a Lacanian approach–comprehending experience is a slippery rhetorical matter.

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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

DJ Huppatz Reviews No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry

Posted on May 13, 2004 by DJ Huppatz

No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry
Edited by Alvin Pang and Aaron Lee
Ethos Books, Singapore 2001

At Changi Airport's arrivals hall, you're greeted by the sound of birds, which is quite disconcerting at 2am. This simulated birdsong is symptomatic of the city-state's attitude to nature. For Singapore, it seems, nature is dangerous and unpredictable, better replaced with more predictable, more aesthetically pleasing technologies. Former Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew once famously asserted that the greatest invention of the 20th century was the air conditioner. Thus it is more than just an urban condition that is constructed in Singapore, it is an aesthetic condition that incorporates all aspects of life.
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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , , , ,

James Stuart Reviews Robert Adamson

Posted on May 13, 2004 by James Stuart

Inside Out: An Autobiography by Robert Adamson
Text Publishing, 2004

From his earliest involvement, Robert Adamson has been an iconic figure for contemporary Australian poetry, both as a “post-symbolist”, lyrical poet, and as an editor and publisher. His achievements are testament to this, whether one is reflecting upon his 17 odd collections of poetry, and the consequent awards, or his various engagements on ventures such as the editorship of New Poetry and the founding of Paperbark Press. He has also played a significant role, along with many others, in bringing contemporary American and other poetries to the forefront of Antipodean awareness. Perhaps what is less known is the life that made this contribution possible.
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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , ,

Brentley Frazer Reviews MTC Cronin

Posted on May 13, 2004 by Brentley Frazer

beautiful, unfinished: parable, song, canto, poem by M.T.C Cronin
Salt Publishing, 2003

WOW! I had to read beautiful, unfinished 16 times before I had enough courage to even begin thinking about reviewing it. Cronin wields language like an ax with scented blade, its hits your brain with a squishy sounding clunk but it's so pretty you want to make out with it.
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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Adam Aitken Reviews Philip Hammial

Posted on May 13, 2004 by Adam Aitken

In the Year of Our Lord Slaughter's Children by Phil Hammial
Island Press Co-operative, 2004

Who is Philip Hammial? If you read Hammial's 16th book of poems, it will strike you as surprisingly biographical without sounding too auto-biographical – after all it's Philip Hammial poetry. Who is Philip Hammial, the poet? What's his world?

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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Matt Hetherington Reviews Dan Disney

Posted on May 13, 2004 by Matt Hetherington

Dan Disney, The Velocity of Night Falling
Hit & Miss Publications, 2003

It's reasonable to suggest that we live in somewhat Tragicomic times. A well-known satirist (whose name I forget) recently complained of being completely unable to mock the American government, since those running the country were already effectively satirising themselves by saying and doing things more absurd and laughable than anything he could come up with.
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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Komninos Zervos Reviews Papertiger #3

Posted on May 13, 2004 by Komninos Zervos

Papertiger New World Poetry #3 (CD-ROM for PC)
Paul Hardacre & BR Dionysius (eds)
papertiger media, Brisbane, 2003

The third CD-ROM of poetry has been released by Papertiger Media and yet again presents the work of many of Australia's finest contemporary poets. As well, the Editors have included an eclectic array of international contributors from Canada, Finland, the UK, the USA and Australasia. More interestingly it is the expanded use of the new digital format of this collection i.e. the CD-ROM.
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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Scott Thouard Reviews Liam Guilar

Posted on May 13, 2004 by Scott Thouard

I'll Howl Before You Bury Me by Liam Guilar,
Interactive Press, 2003

I'll Howl Before You Bury Me is a title that suggests an emotional reprisal. The poems in this collection protest the repressing of individual vitality in favour of congenial surrender to the beige touchstones of contemporary life.
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Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Lament: The Chicken Rice Hawker, Penang

Posted on May 12, 2004 by Adam Aitken

And when you discover they lie
those siblings in the mother country, those parasites
who spend every hard-earned cent of your remittances
on Mao Tai and Fan Tan
and still beg for more –
when you see the opulent mansions of your cheating ancestors
and smell the simmering pots fill with your own cash and sweat
your never laying down the cleaver – well, you can imagine

on their dog's paws a single piece of jade will turn black with the years
you pay off the mortgages on their graves
and yours are dug in the slagheap of mines – well, you can imagine

the ripping of photos will commence
the forgetting of their names.

How a singular duty has led you to this –
your shop full of dragons in a year of crying tigers.
You say: 'This is my wealth, my friend, a secret duck sauce for two dollars
but when I think of our ancestors – ahh you can imagine
worse than the bloody government!
Museums are full of lies!'
The burning of their boats shall commence!

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

Fin de Siecle

Posted on May 12, 2004 by Luke Beesley

The people
drank each other of love

                             Until

The teeth lay alone
as a history of love

Wet sails fell along the spine
made the boat sleeping
rather than its
      careful
or its
    soft.

      A curl. A bracket.

A whisper

            the quiet work to soften song.

The people move and love
between the slap of waves,

                        Semen mixes with the sea.

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

N

Posted on May 12, 2004 by Luke Beesley

Really to dip words in erotic drive
rinse them and place them on a lovely towel

In the sunlight, the pieces then, no longer actually
erotic, sometimes sensual, stripped of subject or person

But sun washed, completely human, Cavafy's wish
for outlines, a tender letter, punctuation

Dressed in qualities then, of raspberries
and pink, of wine and other spills

Apostrophes and stops, immediate plays
delicate and full, clever and long

Elegant rest, soft scarves, poorly held
and lively in the bright world.

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged

credo

Posted on May 12, 2004 by rob mclennan

not everything comes when its supposed to,
a feeling of open-endedness

three days threat of rain, just
sick of it when it comes

he holds his head & squints, william hurt
in until the end of the world

the metal windmill rusts the field,
& hasnt turned an age

the memory of tire swing

when hannah was three fingers old,
now three plus a day

strewn presents follow suit, yellow wrapping
in the yard

do not believe anything i tell you
abt narration

we drive a drink past mulligans,
& it rains it rains it rains

Posted in 18: ROOTS | Tagged