Kris Hemensley



Essential Gossip: Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan and U.S.-Australian Poetics

In 1985, when the bulky anthology Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania (first published in 1968) was printed in a new edition, it was advertised with the curious dust jacket recommendation: ‘hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the hundred most recommended American books of the last thirty-five years’.

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Three Elegies

TOPOGRAPHY (31-10-20) Westgarth 11-25 a.m. “change here…” (for yesteryear —broad brush cliche but aspects-of OK —argue forever the truth of ‘here & now’ —a grounding apparently without air — [REVERSE Separation St —> Westgarth as tho ‘elsewhere’ & ‘before’ banished …

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Direct Action on Things: Harry Hooton and Artist Film in Australia

A line from 1855, first published by Walt Whitman in the poem ‘Song of Myself’, appears again at the beginning of a film produced during a Creative Arts Fellowship at the Australian National University in 1969

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20 Poets, a Free Anthology from Cordite Books

The geographic barriers that can, at times, hinder Australian literature are no longer relevant, and poetry communities around the world must be enlightened by the commanding, demanding and exciting trajectory of contemporary Australian poetics.

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Introduction to Kris Hemensley’s Your Scratch Entourage

How can one write words about a poet? Last year, Kris Hemensley and I considered Émile Chartier (Alain)’s assertion that ‘men are afraid to complete their thoughts’, on our way to visit Greta Berlin, whom I had first met in Zennor as a small child and whose father, Sven Berlin, had enthralled a young Kris Hemensley in 1963 with the accoutrements of the artist and his first taste of red wine. And down by the harbour in Weymouth, we had already discovered a shared admiration for W S Graham. A framework was emerging.

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Divertimenti: Hemensley on the Time of Vleeskens

In memoriam: Cornelis Vleeskens, 1948-2012 Reading Cornelis Vleeskens’ divertimenti on random days (Earthdance, 2010), has me thinking of Franco Beltrametti, as occasionally I do. We almost met, courtesy of Tim Longville and John Riley, who’d advised that Franco, our fellow …

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I walk in this World

Kris Hemensley has been on the Melbourne scene for about 40 years as a performing and publishing poet. He coordinates the “poetry & ideas” bookshop, Collected Works. He's published twenty or so books & booklets since 1967, and has a collection in the works from Salt (UK). He was the 2005 recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award.

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