In April this year, Michael Farrell and US poet Andrew Zawacki travelled to the Queenscliffe Festival of Words, catching a dose of cabin fever on the way –
//0. Do you think Australian poets are a depressed lot?
By and large, the ones I've met, I don't think so. They seem less depressed than others. Australian poets don't romance melancholy the way, say e.g. Slovenian poets do – the weather's too good here to be depressed.
For five glorious, sweltering days each October, Newcastle plays host to one of the biggest youth arts festival in Australia. Under the umbrella of This Is Not Art (or TINA) not one but four festivals are held simultaneously in the steel city. Amanda Kerley directed the National Young Writers Festival in 2000. Carlie Lazar barely survived it –
Having recently worked as director of the Australian Poetry Festival (Burning Lines, April 2001), Martin Langford offers his contribution to the continuing discussion about how to present poetry to the public.
Bruce Beaver Tribute
Burning Lines Poetry Festival April 2001
Sydney, Australia
A tribute to Bruce Beaver was held as part of Burning Lines: The Australian Poetry Festival, at the Balmain Town Hall. I don't know Bruce well. We've exchanged maybe three or four letters and I've only met him once, but he has been kind and encouraging to me. His Letters to Live Poets is especially important to me and, I believe, to Australian poetry.
Since I am in Australia I have to talk, talk, talk and all I
see is not people but parties, parties, parties.
– Fay Weldon on promotional tour
The real profits went to the
publishers not the authors who
got tired and lost their smiles
and voices and the attending starving poets
were eating pat's and drinking
expensive wines and
became patently aware that their future
lied not in heavenly dark verse
but in devilishly light prose
Found Poem at Harold Park Hotel
The reader (a visiting American novelist) did not
read he took from the pockets of his suit pieces
of paper and said I did not think it would be
so casual here well unlike Maupassant I no longer
describe things that has been done before
I only give the bones now in other words the dial
logue as I trust my readers imagination they can
fill the gaps themselves and if you ask me why I
write I can only say I don't want to fall asleep
infront of my typewriter (laughter) and if you ask me
whom I admire it is Gogol right here and now his
Dead Souls are still alive today (laughter) for most
other literature present or past I don't care much
in my country people no longer read or never have
read if anything they like to do it is to watch a
writer on television it seems here in Australia
everyone is as Warhol has said famous for five
minutes (applause) you are a very appreciative audien
ce the kind we never have had in the United States
hurling the pétanque boule, her thin little arm
sandal coated in mud washed by the hose
late home for lunch — avocado on toast
beneath the magnifying glass, Scottish castle
above the bananas a bridge at Firenze
sharing his handkerchief — bridge on the video
the “lucky dog” silent in its box
watching a butterfly he shields his eyes from the sun
each time she removes her glasses the stem scratches her temple
stampede at the Temple — news report from India
after their busy day, quiet conversation
pleased with the day's work — his coastguard insurance
train jerk-sailing
through fairy meadow
woonona bulli thirroul
scraping and scrubbing
mind just clearing the tracks
how it feels again to crash
through slow barriers of minutes
afternoon towns
of the stale, crushed
public family
loud puppytalk
breaking glass in the carriage
ferrying me back to an afterlife
in my childhood room
after two broken marriages
with my mother and the ghost of my father
a gnarly old couple who've stuck together
faces clamped
finish their meat and bread and butter
from brown bags across the aisle
and fall asleep
the sea greysailing by the windows
looks like they've died
in a crumpled heap
parachute collapsed
in her corner of wall
he sitting straight with closed eyes
his open dark oval mouthway
to the dead
small metal scrapings
of CD leaking earphones
frizzled edges of the massive gloss
of sonic movies filling each head
beside other panes of glass
we ride like dolls
1 Tantra
Drinking evening star
blue green patterns before eyes
no meditation
no god visits to forgive
the sinning soul in quietude
2 Hanuman
Seven times he moves
round the vermillion god
under the peepal
sprinkles water to escape
the malefic saturn
3 Tattoo
They watch her bare back
to feel the body through crotch
thank engraving pen –
she loves the etching on skin
to enhance nudity
suggest green
places for pausing,
like commas curling
damp of earth they say,
this place is as yet
experimenting, , ,
on the edge
of clearings,
like football crowds in
green scarves, ferns watch
whirling picnics wave
their rugs like matadors, it's
the running of the ferns! but
a quick sprint with the esky
fails to halt the unfurling
of the horns, , ,
At last. A whole day to myself.
Just as I pull out my chair, though
I see them there, shorn on my desk-
two sheep burst like bladders
across a floor too bloody to be
known by time & place but now & here.
IT MAKES YOU WONDER WHY THEY
CALL IT THE LIVE SHEEP TRADE.
I don't vomit, just feel like vomiting.
Those soft-boiled eggs for breakfast.
I cover the sheep with a sheet of A4
but find I can't not look at them.
When I do, I only half-see mutton
in a skein of gristle & red gravy.
It's worse than seeing or not seeing.
I fold the sheep in a manila folder &
go for a brisk walk around the block.
Cats. Two dogs, one dog-owner. No sheep.
Rounding myself up for home, I know
I'm not re-entering an abattoir
despite washing my hands in the
COLD tap's water, the HOT tap's blood.
I unfold the sheep from their folder &
impale them in red on the white wall
directly in fromt of me. Slow blood
glugs, oozes & then drips dripping.
I sit in my chair trying not to stare
at the redbacks & the red centipedes.
I want the animals to die as quickly
as this animal would want to. If
they go down in a quick fix, though
there'd be no live sheep trade &
with no live sheep trade, more farmers
would have to leave the land &
more sons of farmers have to die by
coronial enquiry. Still, if the sheep
are not to live but die by slow drip
does it matter whether or not they die
in Riyadh or at Gepps Cross? Anyway
so that two carcases can slump & stiffen
across the proverbially large desk of the
Federal Minister for the Living & the Dead
the RSPCA trusts me with a 45 cent stamp.
Not for long but for too long, I think
about soaking off the 45 cents. In blood.
Before I manage to post the postcard
the phone rings. Baa-aa-aa, baa-aa-aa.
1
he walks past once
twice
again
& again
now he hovers
clenched fists
sweat pouring
ears pricked
mouth agape
his eyes bulging
staring into every house
every window
his head darting back & forth
like a clown at the show
he walks up the driveway
shoots out
walks down the street
looks around
then back there
this time he goes straight for them
one over his shoulder
one under his arm
& takes off
like a vulture with its prey
he makes it home
panicking about that bloke
he spotted too late
watering the lawn
he burns the passport
the tickets
anything with a name on it
so he can't be
2
usually it's sloppy service
& looks of revulsion
but the new clothes
with the funny names
change all that
looking like one of them
acting like one of them
feeling like one of them
he likes to brush shoulders
with the sportscasters
newscasters
footballers
politicians
'pitiful' pitman buying milk
anne wills browsing
george donikian getting a haircut
amanda vanstone
standing aside for him
in the aisle
but there's always the fear
of being tapped on the shoulder
where'd you get that jacket?
or the shoes
or the shirt
or the jeans
3
he says
the risk is worth it
he like unley
but he knows
unley
doesn't like him.
burn through cliches / a pack a day
smoker / soon your smile will burn
like paper / curl & disintegrate
simultaneous / soon
you'll become thin
as a whisper / cough up a cast
iron lung / soon you'll have
nothing / to lose sleep over / become
nicotine / inhale a chain
of signifiers / desire comes
with cautionary tales / when the
man wrote / I can't get no satisfaction /what
did he expect.
They grow cities on these flowers,
she told me.
I have seen faces emerge
from the arms knotted behind a man's back.
Sleepers;
wings sprouted from the web of fingers.
Dragon wings and a pterodactyl foetus.
It's all there
she said.
The dorsal fungus
and inverted smile.
That nascent web.
The whirlpool.
They grew the family on these,
she said.
That swell,
that family of lies,
that war.
They grew that family of seven,
she said.
That five,
that three:
muddle, fuddle, thistler and brothel –
no thistler, three brothels.
That family three,
she said.
That family tree three thee fee fine for fume.
That smell.
She sniffed.
They grow cities on these flowers.
She arched her back
and split.
Pollen puffed away
on the sea of grass.
You hardly moved
lying like a sea slug
in sepia,
dreaming of sky fluorescence.
As if reading braille
you ran your fingers
over tiny shells,
a trail of ornamental bones
on bleached sand.
Hours later the moon rose,
full breasted,
white Godiva,
flaunting it
for the green tipped
crowd,
for bleeding eucalypts
& saffron-sprinkled
lichens.
At dusk we left the
gossamer bay.
Your body heaving,
breathless from exertion
wanting to break
the shackles
wanting to enter
the spirit
of all these forms.
you dress me in brown suede boots
& mini skirt
say you’re bored of your husband
of suburbia
hand me half a pill
promise me fun without misgiving
i’m the serious one you’re streetwise
we drive to the nearest club
where tonite they play retro
silk curves sway
inside your blouse
your smile white as mercury
we strut & flick in the grimy light
of the cubicle
friends don’t sleep
but when you leave
night inhales
Givenchy & trumpet lillies
you burgled me
while I was busy
blagging you
it was a riot
sure
that hit home
like a baton round
when you took off
when I got remanded
in my own custody
see you, see if
I ever see you again
I'll deck you
with kisses
I'll plant you
in my breast
up like a Lilty at the scrake of dawn
his haunting uhuhuh ahoohoo wafted
round us getting ready for school
we watched him agog in the evening
squeezing into his karate jumpsuit
kicking and chopping in anticipation
ready to cast his sequins and burst
his buttons amongst the swine
by God that man could handle a mike
my da lived like The King and he died
like The King, breeks round his ankles
hamburger in hand on his porcelain throne
now I see him at the window
of a Graceland only in my mind
tubby silhouette in his quaking pose
now I flail, dippy groupie drowning in his wake
imperfectly executing lunges of my hips
longing to feel his perfect curl on my lips
What did he think, while I was gone
he’d done time in his head, was he still a mirror
did he waste his brain dancing in the abstract darkness?
Pain comes and goes, I notice things
I hadn’t before, in the city the ibis stitching his voice
to the wind between the carpark and George Street
I think of shopping the supermarket with him
as under the blue trees in Hyde Park
bogong moths flutter in shafts of sunlight down Elizabeth
Maybe maybe maybe
and pain numbs you after the laughter
pain only exists to fill the empty holes his jokes made
Was Sydney Harbour real — did it still exist
after his murmuring late into the night when he drank
until his voice rustled with ribbons of blood and smoke?
Was this the end of those
dusty by the side of the road
women in pinnies times? his
good-natured laugh and smile
climbed out from behind
the steering wheel of his
grey bull-nose truck.
Cuts of cloth and baby clothes
sold with been-around ease,
he'd resume his country town
round with dust rising from
behind the wheels. Our sense
of remoteness trailing along
in the camphor smells.
A memory lost now
to the bar-coded blip
of check-out aisles.
But, hey. In these times
of economic rationalisation,
soon the week's shopping'll be
moused out on computer screens.
Delivered by the company's van.
Look! Coming up your street!
The past pulling up outside your house.
. . . we live without
feeling beneath us
firm ground . . .
— Mandelstam
Perhaps I could write like Bukowski, probably
do
sometimes —
only one problem
with writing like that
is the possibility of writing
like that
forever —
it would go on well after everyone
has gone to bed
(not necessarily to sleep)
it would go on even when the trains
have stopped for the night
it would go on stage like cosmetics in some late night theatre
& never come off
it would be po’s 24 Hours being read
from the Departure Lounge at Tullamarine
but never arriving at any destination
it would journey through every breath and drunken thought
with minor variations on imagination
dependent on degrees of alcohol consumed
and endless relay or Mexican wave around a stadium
which never closed or dropped the baton
Allison says, He couldn’t write all the time
He’d have to sleep, shave, shower and shit
So you don’t have to write all the time
to write like Bukowski
but
what kind of poem would I write
if I did write like Bukowski?
It’s Winter — the air-conditioner
is set
too high
& I can hardly
breathe.
I’m writing on top
of an old Gregory’s
(Holden HQ-HJ 6 cyl
service and repair manual)
kept the book
though I sold the car
Bukowski’s The Last Night of the Earth Poems
1992
is sitting beside me
on the hand-carved in China sandalwood chest
the book is open
on the first page
of the last poem
I read
before I’d had enough of
before I felt as if I could write like
Bukowski
the dark
coat winter
one sleeve
full of stars
the other
thrown over
a shoulder
like a glance
as the wind
blows diamonds
Central to Suburbs to Central to Suburb: an extra $4.50
Forgotten Briefcase.
In the descent of angels, nothing matters.
*
Each Station lit with bayonets of
fluorescent light, empty train, stomach, head,
benches, head and still the whistle blows
the long day's end
challenging vagrant men
to roll over, stick a digit up
the sphincter of night's crow-black
arse.
As the train rolls my head bounces with a
do-do-do do-to-do do; a la Lou Reed
and the coloured girls, a glass
woodpecker hugging
a briefcase full of work.
I rub my neck and shoulders (check for the
stubs of my new wings)
see my breath
alive as frost on the glass
fashion wings that beat, breathe, erase,
design/redesign
with the stump of my fat finger,
I scratch inside
a whale like Jonah
wanting to fly,
excape
that sinking
feeling.
going for the eggs in the middle of the night by Cathoel Jorss
Self-published 2000
I received an early Christmas present last year: a book by Queensland poet Cathoel Jorss, sent in the post for me to review – but no one could consider the arrival of such a beautifully executed collection as anything but a gift. The volume of 20 poems is self-published, designed and illustrated. Poetry aside, the quality of paper, printing, and the reproduction of Jorss' artwork stamp her as a curator of great merit.
