- 114: NO THEME 13with J Toledo & C Tse 113: INVISIBLE WALLSwith A Walker & D Disney 112: TREATwith T Dearborn 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
Mike Ladd
Prove that you are human
Select all squares with crossings. The blue wheel goes round. This park looks familiar and I had a bicycle just like that. I wonder where the motorbike rider is going? Maybe to his long-lost mother’s house. They’ve only just rediscovered …
Posted in 114: NO THEME 13
Tagged Mike Ladd
Aubade of the repaired spine
It’s nearly dawn. Pain, against my will, makes me a bore giving too many details over the phone. There’s a loneliness to it though it’s the most common thing in the world. At least it’s brought me this stillness. I …
Posted in 112: TREAT
Tagged Mike Ladd
A Poet’s Progress in the ABC: Reflections on a Life in Radio
On my job application to the ABC in 1983 I mentioned that I was a poet, even though the job advertised was for a purely technical position as a trainee sound engineer.
Haze
The prime-minister’s words fill the air – they hang over the bays, obscure the roads to the little towns, drift between the bridge’s cables. His words turn the sunlight a dirty orange. You need a breathing mask to get through …
Posted in 97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
Tagged Mike Ladd
Paleontology Archeology
At twelve, I wanted to be a paleontologist digging up bones in the paddocks round here, easing a scythe of jaw from the creek bank – not Diprotodon, but horse. Still, I remember the thrill carrying it home through that …
Posted in 89: DOMESTIC
Tagged Mike Ladd
Sonic Twin? A Poetics of Poetic Radio
When I reflect on the last decade of my engagement with poetry, I hear a presence shadowing many of my encounters. ‘Hear’ is an apt verb, because this presence is aural.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Amanda Stewart, Andrew Crisell, Daniel Albright, Linda Cropper, Mike Ladd, Pejk Malinovski, Prithvi Varatharajan, Robyn Ravlich, Vicki Viidikas
Echidna
Undulant pinecone, needle-nose sniffer, I imagine you mountain-size, monstering a city. You are harder to pick up than Hungarian, more stand-offish that a stylite saint. Little high judge in your wig of thorns, its pattern complex as a deal in …
Posted in 86: NO THEME VII
Tagged Mike Ladd
Plasticland
At the edge of the caryard the bunting in cloudless air framed by two poles triangular flags clap in the wind lift, flutter, clap again: petro-chemical colours the retina loves the shape, feel and hue of our times styrofoam grains …
Posted in 84: SUBURBIA
Tagged Mike Ladd
Botero
This curvy horse will gallop in your dreams. The fruit so fat, the watermelon splits with its own weight. Can that parrot even fly? The squishy hands pluck the strings of the guitar? The dancers’ heft makes a slow music. …
Posted in 79: EKPHRASTIC
Tagged Mike Ladd
Review Short: Mike Ladd’s Invisible Mending
Adelaide poet, Mike Ladd, is best known for his long-running Poetica program on the ABC’s Radio National (eighteen years all up before its casual destruction in 2014). The breadth of taste and openness to a wide range of influences Ladd displayed in Poetica is also to be found in Invisible Mending, his first poetry collection since Transit in 2007.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Geoff Page, Mike Ladd
Heather Taylor-Johnson Reviews Mike Ladd
I find it a rare and lovely treat when a poet can become androgynous, or cross over discretely from a masculine voice to one that is feminine. While some of my favourite poets are steeped entirely in one gender or the other and that, indeed, can be their strength, I do want to draw attention to Mike Ladd.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Heather Taylor Johnson, Mike Ladd
Magdalena Ball Reviews Mike Ladd
Mike Ladd's poetry works best when it traverses the line between prose and poetry, creating meaning in the face of irony. Simultaneously satiric and poignant, Rooms and Sequences takes the reader to a modernised first century AD through the eyes of an anachronistic Roman functionary, a Kerouac inspired look into life via various hotel rooms `on the road', pain and loss distilled through portentous animals, a series of short stories which look into the heart of loneliness, the human side of politics, and a series of self-referential poems about the writing process.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Magdalena Ball, Mike Ladd
Pattern
One gets sick, the other follows — and drag out blue irises and lines by Tennyson, the only one that really fits: “We know nothing.” When they call for a minute’s silence there’s always some chicken truck roaring past, or …
Posted in 06: NEW POETRY
Tagged Mike Ladd
Fishing Shacks
A shocking mismatch of colours, a love of galvo, these bachelor beach pads say “eternal boy” in the boofiest way, sometimes edged with shotgun warnings — the skull and cross bones on the cubby door. A total lack of tizz …
Posted in 06: NEW POETRY
Tagged Mike Ladd
