Adam Ford



Choosing Sides: 7 New Poems by Adam Ford

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Adam Ford

Dog Day Afternoon! Rom Spaceknight #6 (May 1980) He sits quietly, his hand still warm from electricity drawn out of the single naked bulb that gently swings from the pasteboard ceiling of the small-town garage. The hidden photovoltaic process continues, …

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Arrival!

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Adam Ford

—After Rom Spaceknight #1, December 1979 It’s classic meet-cute. He’s a seven-foot cyborg on a quest to rid the galaxy of an ancient evil. She’s a small-town girl on her way home from work. She swerves to miss him. He …

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Adam Ford Reviews Rae White’s Milk Teeth and Anders Villani’s Aril Wire

Posted on June 27, 2019 by Adam Ford

Poetry debuts are not necessarily juvenilia. The vagaries of poetry publishing mean that by the time a poet’s first collection is published they often are, at least by some standards, emerging fully formed, able and ready to demonstrate their skill to a willing audience.

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I’m Worried That My Increasingly Complex Shower Masturbation Routine is Unethical Because of The Amount of Water I Use

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Adam Ford

I use thirst as a guide to how much to drink. You absorb more toxins breathing in a hot shower than you do by drinking tap water all day. Evening seems fine. Nothing else has changed. I’m good now. The …

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The Moon Is Not Talking to Us (after Adam Ford)

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Gregory Mackay
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The Moon is Not Talking to Us

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Adam Ford

The Moon is not talking to us. That light is light that the Sun shines on the Moon. We are simply eavesdropping. Moonlight is an echo, a reflection. It is pre-loved light. Nothing that comes from the Moon is intended …

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Adam Ford Reviews Thirty Australian Poets

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Adam Ford

Thirty Australian Poets is a new anthology out of UQP that focuses on the work of poets born after 1968. It’s an intriguing conceit that invites comparison with the work of the Generation of ’68 without actually issuing a challenge per se, but at least prompting a ‘look where we are now’ conversation. Since this constraint naturally excludes both poets who make up Australia’s vibrant live poetry scene (who tend not to be as widely published on the page) and also talented poets whose work may not have yet been collected, the poetry on offer does tend toward the formal.”

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Adam Ford Reviews Fiona Wright

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Adam Ford

Knuckled is the debut collection from Fiona Wright, and can I just start by saying that ‘knuckled’ is a great title for a book of poems? It’s a word that’s easy to understand, one that immediately brings images to mind (hands, fists, gnarled trees, walking-sticks) but also one that you don’t hear that often.

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Mea Culpa

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Adam Ford

In the morning all that’s left is a clutch of feathers by the watertank, another by the front gate and one more on the verge. The door of the chookshed stands open, the lock unfixed for more than six months, …

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The Ern Malley Finger Puppet

Posted on December 1, 2010 by David Prater

Download today! (PDF!)

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Adam Ford Reviews Joel Deane

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Adam Ford

Magisterium is the second collection by Joel Deane, following on from his debut collection Subterranean Radio Songs and his debut novel Another. In an interview with Paul Mitchell published in Cordite in 2006, when asked about the interplay between his work as speechwriter for the Premier of Victoria and his other life as a poet, Deane cited American poet Eleanor Wilner, who said of poets that, 'We need to take back the rhetorical high ground from the politicians who degrade it'. Deane went on express the hope that the poems contained in his next book might approach 'the kind of apocalyptic public language' hinted at by Wilner.

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Adam Ford Reviews Alan Wearne

Posted on August 25, 2008 by Adam Ford

It seems to me that a poem should – in general – be a self-contained unit, either easily understood or a puzzle that contains the key to its solution. I'm happy to make exceptions for poems written in different eras or countries – such poems might need annotations to compensate for unfamiliar historical or cultural contexts.

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Adam Ford Reviews Michael Farrell

Posted on February 14, 2007 by Adam Ford

I've been puzzled by Michael Farrell's poetry for a long time. Sometimes I think I get it; but his writing is mercurial, and for every one of his poems that I've understood or enjoyed, there's another that leaves me cold or just confuses me. It's impossible to decide whether Farrell is doing something incredibly formal and intellectual that I'm not smart enough to understand, or whether he's tricking his reader into thinking that there's something deeper taking place when he's in fact only mucking around and playing crazy games with language.

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Are You Searching For Me?

Posted on January 13, 2004 by Adam Ford

I've played about with rule-generated writing once in a while, trying to find something within the genre that resonates with me. Early last year I combined a section of text taken from a dinosaur book with the track-listing from Frank Zappa's Strictly Commercial and ended up with a prose-poem called “The Third Fruit is a Bird” that I'm really happy with.

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"i have seen the fish"

Posted on January 1, 2004 by Adam Ford

fish-based depression drug seen on market – have you seen this fish? to enter click here. sepa noswa esw wosw. have you seen this fish? email us! email us! i have seen whole schools of flying fish become airborne as …

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Super Gas Power Attack

Posted on January 1, 2004 by Adam Ford

you may designate which power binary will use regardless of what base you attack. you may use either or both of your powers. there are dozens of power-ups that make it into the gas guns. use them to discover methane …

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First Incision

Posted on August 3, 2003 by Adam Ford

BIO: Adam Ford is the author of a novel called Man Bites Dog, a collection of poems called Not Quite the Man for the Job, a zine called Jutchy Ya Ya and at least one comic called The Lives and Times of Jerry the Nerky Lizard. He also edits Going Down Swinging. Today he made a cartoon of a bouncing ball and it excited him so. Visit his homepage.

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Peter Savieri Reviews Going Down Swinging 20

Posted on April 14, 2003 by Peter Savieri

Most people can barely speak, let alone write. So it follows that mastery of the written and spoken word is a rare qualification. This does not, however, prevent an international swamp of hacks from turning contemporary culture into a poorly realised historical theme park of rehashed, diluted, ripped-off high points from an overly romanticised 20th century.

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Adam Ford Reviews Dog Lovers’ Poems

Posted on March 12, 2003 by Adam Ford

This collection features over a hundred pages of poetic platitudes about dogs and their loyalty, their friendship, the cute things and the cheeky things they get up to. The anthology was compiled by ex-Premier of Victoria Jeff Kennett, who put out a call for submissions while he was working at Melbourne talkback radio station 3AW.

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Adam Ford: Damn & Be Published (Part 2)

Posted on April 24, 2002 by Adam Ford

My printer ran out of ink yesterday and wouldn't accept the refilled cartridge as legit. The ink light kept flashing until I spent sixty bucks on a new cartridge. A curse on the head of cartridge manufacturers and retailers. Ink is a valuable commodity, and we salute those who choose to use their ink to put their work out there, somewhere where people will read it.

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Adam Ford: Damn & Be Published (Part 1)

Posted on September 23, 2001 by Adam Ford

When I go to second-hand bookstores and look through the poetry shelves, it's the books with staples, as opposed to spines, that catch my eye. To me the staple is the mark of the self-publisher, and self-published work, in my mind, is more likely to have that spark, that frisson of passion that really lets you see into the mind of the poet. Here's some reviews of some of the staple-bound gems on offer if you know where to look.

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A Rare Talent

Posted on September 23, 2001 by Adam Ford

The ability to recognise samples, to pinpoint the source of a sound the slides from left to right speaker under the drum track, under the bass, weaving between the snare and the hi-hat and is gone in an instant, the …

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