- 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
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