liam ferney



34 Weeks

Posted on May 1, 2021 by Liam Ferney

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

Never Be Alone Again: Hip-Hop Sampling as a Technique in Contemporary Australian Poetry

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Liam Ferney

One of those most important battles of hip-hop’s first two decades wasn’t waged between two MCs at a cypher. And it wasn’t a couple of b-boy crews popping and locking at a block party. Instead, it pitted a hip-hop clown against a puffy-sleeved Irish balladeer.

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It’s Challenging

Posted on February 1, 2020 by Liam Ferney

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

Jack Kelly Reviews Liam Ferney’s Hot Take

Posted on May 15, 2019 by Jack Kelly

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.

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Liam Ferney Reviews Kate Lilley and Pam Brown

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Liam Ferney

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.

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OzPo(st)

Posted on May 1, 2018 by Liam Ferney

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

But Why Am I Telling You this? You Are Not Even Here: Against Defining the Suburb

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Alex Griffin

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.

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Sunburnt Jukebox

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Liam Ferney

‘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 Reviews Cassie Lewis

Posted on March 22, 2017 by Liam Ferney

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?

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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Liam Ferney

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

Review Short: Liam Ferney’s Content

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Stu Hatton

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.

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Stampede, the Many Small Big Men of History

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Liam Ferney

“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

63 no

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Liam Ferney

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

Review Short: Ania Walwicz’s The Palace of Culture

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Liam Ferney

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.

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Guernica

Posted on December 1, 2013 by Liam Ferney

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

David Gilbey Reviews Jordie Albiston and Liam Ferney

Posted on November 18, 2013 by David Gilbey

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.

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that thin mercury sound

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Liam Ferney

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

AUSFTA

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Liam Ferney

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

The Viceroy’s Subservients

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Liam Ferney

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

Listening to Maggot Brain for the First Time

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Liam Ferney

– 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

Q&A with Liam Ferney

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Cordite Poetry Review

Liam Ferney is a Brisbane poet. He works in politics. His collections of poetry include Career (Vagabond Press, 2011) and Popular Mechanics (Interactive Press, 2004). He is a former Poetry Editor of Cordite. Can you describe your typical day at …

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Knocking Shop

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Liam Ferney

it’s like a Hiroshima of fun then instead of buying scones from the CWA ladies spruiking at Camp Hill State School we turn our attention to the candidates and I remember I collected how-to-votes for Hawke’s second or maybe Ahern’s …

Posted in 47: NO THEME! | Tagged

Glad to be Unhappy

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Liam Ferney

Tell me Martin – I remember the tutorial, (on who? Hewett?) about Stalin’s midnight Mandelstam phonecall, but as the grey sky marshaled troops for another assault on the swollen creeks I did my best to forget public service selection criteria. …

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It’s Time, It’s Time (지금이야, 지금이야)

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Liam Ferney

New Year clocks on over fog valley, temperate Tibetans account for contributions. Suburbs struggle and sweat through a summer scented with mumbles and deceptions. Fat detractors and software spruikers expire, the paddockbashers steam from the load. The thin mechanic massages …

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