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- 111: BABYwith S Deo & L Ferney 110: POP!with Z Frost & B Jessen 109: NO THEME 12with C Maling & N Rhook 108: DEDICATIONwith L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik 107: LIMINALwith B Li 106: OPENwith C Lowe & J Langdon 105: NO THEME 11with E Grills & E Stewart 104: KINwith E Shiosaki 103: AMBLEwith E Gomez and S Gory 102: GAMEwith R Green and J Maxwell 101: NO THEME 10with J Kinsella and J Leanne 100: BROWNFACE with W S Dunn 99: SINGAPOREwith J Ip and A Pang 97 & 98: PROPAGANDAwith M Breeze and S Groth 96: NO THEME IXwith M Gill and J Thayil 95: EARTHwith M Takolander 94: BAYTwith Z Hashem Beck 93: PEACHwith L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong 92: NO THEME VIIIwith C Gaskin 91: MONSTERwith N Curnow 90: AFRICAN DIASPORAwith S Umar 89: DOMESTICwith N Harkin 88: TRANSQUEERwith S Barnes and Q Eades 87: DIFFICULTwith O Schwartz & H Isemonger 86: NO THEME VIIwith L Gorton 85: PHILIPPINESwith Mookie L and S Lua 84: SUBURBIAwith L Brown and N O'Reilly 83: MATHEMATICSwith F Hile 82: LANDwith J Stuart and J Gibian 81: NEW CARIBBEANwith V Lucien 80: NO THEME VIwith J Beveridge 57.1: EKPHRASTICwith C Atherton and P Hetherington 57: CONFESSIONwith K Glastonbury 56: EXPLODE with D Disney 55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUSwith M Chakraborty and K MacCarter 55: FUTURE MACHINES with Bella Li 54: NO THEME V with F Wright and O Sakr 53.0: THE END with P Brown 52.0: TOIL with C Jenkins 51.1: UMAMI with L Davies and Lifted Brow 51.0: TRANSTASMAN with B Cassidy 50.0: NO THEME IV with J Tranter 49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH with M Hall and S Seita 49.0: OBSOLETE with T Ryan 48.1: CANADA with K MacCarter and S Rhodes 48.0: CONSTRAINT with C Wakeling 47.0: COLLABORATION with L Armand and H Lambert 46.1: MELBOURNE with M Farrell 46.0: NO THEME III with F Plunkett 45.0: SILENCE with J Owen 44.0: GONDWANALAND with D Motion 43.1: PUMPKIN with K MacCarter 43.0: MASQUE with A Vickery 42.0: NO THEME II with G Ryan 41.1: RATBAGGERY with D Hose 41.0: TRANSPACIFIC with J Rowe and M Nardone 40.1: INDONESIA with K MacCarter 40.0: INTERLOCUTOR with L Hart 39.1: GIBBERBIRD with S Gory 39.0: JACKPOT! with S Wagan Watson 38.0: SYDNEY with A Lorange 37.1: NEBRASKA with S Whalen 37.0: NO THEME! with A Wearne 36.0: ELECTRONICA with J Jones
Les Wicks
Taking Liberties
Another heatwave, the plumber pauses for prayer then (like us all) back to roots & excrement. Three canny Buddhists next door wave their golden cat, as if it was astronomy. Deities should never be an inconvenience, the bell-ringers & muezzins …
Posted in 83: MATHEMATICS
Tagged Les Wicks
Review Short: Les Wicks’s Getting By Not Fitting In
Is Les Wicks afraid of love? Yes, Les Wicks is afraid of love. I start this review with a swift homage to Charles Simic (1975) because of the feelings, affects and question marks I was left with after first reading Les Wicks’s Getting By Not Fitting In (2016).
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Dominique Hecq, Les Wicks
Phlogiston
A nonexistent element. The theory of phlogiston was devised as an explanation as to why some things burned. Materials which had lots of phlogiston were supposed to burn well, releasing the element during combustion. Disproved with the discovery of oxygen. …
Posted in 77: EXPLODE
Tagged Les Wicks
Ward
The 75 year old ladies’ man is all cut up in the hospital bed beside mine. He loves his dog, brags he once slept with a woman & her 30-year-old daughter at the same time… some kind of summit for …
The Redactions
2014 intercepted electronic communications, DOD… aphorism identified as a threat to national security. The aphorism envies the novel, the novel, of course, envies the haiku and the haiku envies the brief life of the leaf. – Gen PJ Burke, U.S. …
Posted in 63: COLLABORATION
Tagged Kevin Brophy, Les Wicks
Notes from Medellín, Colombia
Since it began 23 years ago, the Internacional de Poesía de Medellín has grown to become a major poetry festival in the world, in a country riven by 50 years of civil war. This year’s Festival (6-13 July) coincided with a new round of peace talks in Havana between the Colombian Government and FARC, and FARC rebels reportedly fighting security forces in the mountains. The Festival featured Australian poet Les Wicks, who reports on his experience below. The Festival has also ‘grown’ up alongside seismic changes for the city of Medellín, Colombian’s second-largest and once described as the ‘most violent city in the world’ (Time, 1988), due to its brutal cocaine drug-cartel culture.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Jacinta Le Plastrier, Les Wicks
Review Short: Terry Jaensch’s Shark
You stare into the water, starkly aware of the ambiguous shadows there. So many of us are anglers in the Australian poetry scene; looking for something new, something fresh. Having landed this fish on my desk I will confess to a certain hesitancy to come too close. It’s not a large shark, some 60 odd pages generously spaced. There is more than a little empathy for this distressed, vibrant life. But I’m careful of the teeth.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Les Wicks, Terry Jaensch
The Code
In untidy light criminals bud on manky branches Singapore, London. Ayn Rand’s underpants smoulder as the stolid farm workers are buried with their wills. Healing via austerity, Orchard Rd (bypass pity). Five tattoos. Those summer clothes pass this merry chaos …
Posted in 56: NO THEME II
Tagged Les Wicks
Falling Angels: A Chapbook Curated by Anna Couani
In curating this collection, I asked the writers to provide pieces that are short, edgy, and I’m happy that they have fulfilled that very loose brief. The disrupted texts they’ve produced – whilst having interesting formal qualities – also have poignant emotive qualities. The term I use for what others refer to as prose-poetry is experimental prose because I find that term broader and more inclusive. I asked several visual artists to suggest works that I could take or requested particular works I had already seen.
5th Intergenerational Report – Betterment All Round
Got the job zombie, corporal us seniors are the new forever we shuffle through the operating rooms, parliaments our breathmints snipple in the hungry dawn our eating, the fibre, those mellow sauces dance dangerously close to the chilli snuggle down …
Posted in FALLING ANGELS
Tagged Les Wicks
Matthew Hall Reviews Les Wicks
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.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Les Wicks, Matthew Hall
WOMEN RISE ABOVE THE NOISE OF MEN
Observe the crescent curve of his back – cockroaches are the hieroglyphs. When our eyes touch, is it night or is it day? Stitching sinners into dishonest possessions Crazy dumsaint and Barthes' kleenex box intricately constant as they eject cometary …
FORWARD!
We write beneath the noise of men in our choice of cell. Wrath and keyboards perpetuity and fashions of cruelty. Lies are by nature brittle (I hope this thing) written on your lips. white paint is medicine. Welfare on wheels …
Posted in 35: CUSTOM
Tagged Les Wicks
DEARLY DEMENTED at the SUNDOWNER NURSING HOME
1. BIRTHDAY DAY Pollock lipstick vagabond slippers, the snug imprisonment of tracksuits smeared with 11:30 soft-diet lunch. Begin to hope the progress behind pharmacological ramparts. The real medicine is touch all other expertise unnecessary. I am now a fixture here …
Posted in 25: COMMON WEALTH
Tagged Les Wicks
Nameless
An almost accidental smear of yellow beside the strident gold of our more important streets, almost like a break in colour lines, the street directory derailed. Between Port Botany and the Gateway to Australia pedestrians are by definition suspicious no …
Posted in 25: COMMON WEALTH
Tagged Les Wicks
Frank Malley: Cheese Roll & Living
FRANK MALLEY was born suffering from an affliction of money. He was a self-made major figure in the Australian literary scene mainly through self-publishing. His self-written obituary describes him as working selflessly for the common man.
Posted in 24: CHILDREN OF MALLEY
Tagged Les Wicks
Rob Walker Reviews Les Wicks
Iconic Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa (director of The Seven Samurai (1954), remade by Hollywood as The Magnificent Seven; and Yojimbo (1961), remade (or is that ripped off?) as A Fistful of Dollars) is frequently feted as an artist who elevates the common man to hero status in his phenomenal catalogue of work. Reading the work in Stories of the feet made me wonder if Les Wicks is an Australian poetic equivalent of Kurosawa.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Les Wicks, rob walker
Set Free
Les Wicks' latest collection is Appetities of Light (PressPress, 2002)
Posted in 12: TEST MATCH
Tagged Les Wicks
Give It a Try
Les Wicks' most recent collection is Appetites of Light (PressPress, 2002)
Posted in 12: TEST MATCH
Tagged Les Wicks
