- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with 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
liam ferney
BABY editorial
We released the call-out for BABY on 30 May 2023. We were thinking of baby projects, the spark of something new, thinking of the person who we call ‘baby’, thinking of Liam Ferney, bard of the bubs, who writes the best baby poems this side of town.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged liam ferney, Shastra Deo
Submission to Cordite 111: BABY
Send us your babies. Nobody puts poems in a corner.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Kent MacCarter, liam ferney, Shastra Deo
Genuine questions about Pet Semetary
**Spoiler Alert!** First, what put that road there? Sure, stuff’s gotta get somewhere, but mostly someone’s gotta want it when it gets there, right? Semi-trailer gotta hurtle along some trail. Second, what are the odds of friendly ol’ Fred Gwinn …
Posted in 109: NO THEME 12
Tagged liam ferney
A Toll
Buy a rugged lawnmower to caress domesticated grass. According to Ibid, I suppose; but not before we’re runover, stumped by a snap in our trump quiver. OK buy the Beamer not to notice more strung strings = $ for shamus. …
Posted in 106: OPEN
Tagged liam ferney
34 Weeks
March was a crazy year. After the rains we were safe or so we had assumed. The era of weather as pleasure is past and I spent this day mooning over the poems I squandered when I left the laptop …
Posted in 101: NO THEME 10
Tagged liam ferney
It’s Challenging
i.m. christa mcaullife Folks I don’t plan to change my plans. It’s mourning in America. Melania and I are given to meme the tragedy of the challenger. We share no pain with no one. This is truly a national loss. …
Posted in 95: EARTH
Tagged liam ferney
Jack Kelly Reviews Liam Ferney’s Hot Take
In a review for Cordite, Stu Hatton commented that the reader will need to google the obscure references in Liam Ferney’s poetry in order to keep up.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Jack Kelly, liam ferney
Liam Ferney Reviews Kate Lilley and Pam Brown
In 1915, H G Wells published Boon, a satirical novel that featured long passages pastiching the literary style of his erstwhile friend, Henry James. It kicked off an epistolary barney over what art should be about.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Kate Lilley, liam ferney, Pam Brown
OzPo(st)
our rock music might be shit but we invented the 21st century out of our favoured delusions. mid-thirties & the weekend’s dopamine costs more than the coke. we are the shrinkage & our favourite movies don’t come true, instead we …
Posted in 86: NO THEME VII
Tagged liam ferney
But Why Am I Telling You this? You Are Not Even Here: Against Defining the Suburb
When I was 17 and finishing my high school exams the petrol station around the corner from our house exploded. I didn’t hear it but my twin brother did: he jingled the keys and we drove in his Subaru ute to check out the damage.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Alex Griffin, Bruce Dawe, David McCooey, Dick Diver, John Ashbery, liam ferney, Marcel Duchamp
Sunburnt Jukebox
‘We can write what we want to write.’ John Farnham, ‘You’re the Voice’ I want to tell you a story I come from a saltwater people Waiting on the weekend, set of brand new tires Is running in your veins …
Posted in 84: SUBURBIA
Tagged liam ferney
Liam Ferney Reviews Cassie Lewis
Based on the poems in The Blue Decodes, Lewis is an artist who values silence as much as noise. The book’s ninety pages, which include a number of poems published in her chapbooks, represent well over two decades’ worth of work which provides an interesting purchase on the question of why write poetry in the first place, particularly if it seems like an adjunct to an already full life?
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Cassie Lewis, liam ferney
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Seriously, spree killings are part of the furniture. Once you get used to it you’ll hardly notice, besides that new paleo place is. the. bomb. Don’t mention the free advice you get from strip mall shonks, just relax into your …
Posted in 77: EXPLODE
Tagged liam ferney
Review Short: Liam Ferney’s Content
Liam Ferney’s Content is a book of poems largely composed out of memes, or slices of culture. The notes at the back of the book state: Some of these poems contain allusions, sentiments, words, phrases, sentences and images that have been lifted from the culture. And Cordite’s comments. If you’re not sure, Google it. At this stage your guess is as good as mine.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged liam ferney, Stu Hatton
Stampede, the Many Small Big Men of History
“It’s Time, It’s Time” retranslated and the smell of her obese slander and propaganda. A republic of disappointment. We may never escape our consumption, a tractor beam of destiny. The optimist says he bulls-eyes womp rats in a T-16. The …
Posted in 70: UMAMI
Tagged liam ferney
63 no
Play suspended for rest of day due to PJ Hughes’s head injury at 2.23 local time A day as deadly as the bulletin’s Cassandras broadcast. It hits home like a windshield spidered on the SE Freeway. Macca’s sign erased/ lead …
Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN
Tagged liam ferney
Review Short: Ania Walwicz’s The Palace of Culture
Ania Walwicz’s first book in more than twenty years, Palace of Culture, confirms her reputation as one of Australia’s leading conceptual poets. It consists of fifty (almost) prose poems, each between two and five pages length. The poems use the suggestion of narratives as a key organising principle. But suggestion is as far as any of the narratives get.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Ania Walwicz, liam ferney
Guernica
obviously “I was born on the day they dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.” She says that in the pool room as though she wanted to avoid a conversation about war. There is nothing left of his night. Jarred empathy made …
Posted in 59: GONDWANALAND
Tagged liam ferney
David Gilbey Reviews Jordie Albiston and Liam Ferney
Jordie Albiston’s the Book of Ethel and Liam Ferney’s Boom illustrate two dramatic obverses in contemporary Australian poetry. Both are cleverly crafted; both have levels of subtlety and manifest strength; both are linguistically sinuous and inventive, taking liberties with conventional style and syntax; both use local vernaculars in contexts of global cultural pressures; both focus, often minutely, on particular individuals caught at moments of historical change and significance and, therefore, articulate and explore ‘political’ consequences and issues; both play – gloriously, ironically, iconoclastically – with language registers as a way of exposing implied ‘bigger pictures’. And yet these two collections are worlds apart in focus, style, nuance, framing and poetic affect.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged David Gilbey, Jordie Albiston, liam ferney
that thin mercury sound
after the fire escapes and security guards it is good to be beyond CCTV amidst the howling sirens whipped wind the thin mercury sound sculpted on sand the base jumper poised like a civilisation on a precipice of wasting military …
Posted in 56: NO THEME II
Tagged liam ferney
AUSFTA
borne witness to the names of the 60,000 Republic dead stickyfooted at the monolith equal parts David, Goliath before windsurfing down the runway of democracy the Capitol (mistaken for the White House) triumphantly crowning the National Mall compare our bush …
Posted in 56: NO THEME II
Tagged liam ferney
The Viceroy’s Subservients
Thou doth detesteth too much & so it begins with the ants marshalled like Ukrainian cannon fodder spread across the aprons of the Volga. & They Will Not Be Overcome! Not by powder or spray or the diligence to daily …
Posted in 55: RATBAGGERY
Tagged liam ferney
Listening to Maggot Brain for the First Time
– on a Dodo broadband connection for ND Freeways are never exactly that. Changing lanes with Maria Wyeth in the rearview like a tail. The headstones marched around the bend. The pool where I learnt to swim offered up to …
Posted in 55: RATBAGGERY
Tagged liam ferney
