Oscar Schwartz



DIFFICULT Editorial

When people say ‘difficult’ and ‘poetry’ in the same sentence they are usually referring to the experience of reading a certain type of poem.

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Review Short: Oscar Schwartz’s The Honeymoon Stage

Confession: I should not have read Michael Farrell’s launch speech for Oscar Schwartz’s The Honeymoon Stage before attempting this short review. I had a large attack of Bloom’s anxiety of influence, but I simply couldn’t help myself because I truly appreciate Farrell’s wit and (worldly) wisdom. And now the damage is done.

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Submission to Cordite 87: DIFFICULT

Poetry for Cordite 87: DIFFICULT is guest-edited by Oscar Schwartz and Holly Isemonger. Says Holly: Poems can be spiky, sassy, cutting and frustrating – difficulty is built into how we perceive them. Probably as a result of schooling – a …

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Ghost Flowers in the Word Machine: Poetry, Pessimism and Translation in the Age of Technology

I once read that the word ikebana (生け花), denoting the Japanese art of flower arrangement, can be roughly translated into English as ‘living flower,’ or ‘bringing life to the flowers.’

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Tell Me Like You Mean It: New Poems from Young and Emerging Writers

‘Emerging’ is a strange word, and ‘strange’ is probably a cop out. It is often arbitrary, sometimes condescending, frequently empowering and often carries with it an incredible sense of community.

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I’d Like to Take a Minute of Your Time to Discuss Short Cuts

my main argument is as follows: the purpose of a short cut is that it is a shorter distance to the destination and it takes up less time to get there in this sense a short cut is objectively good …

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your new diet

i met you just after you started a new diet every day you would eat only that which was related to a food memory sometimes you would tell me the story behind your diet for the day for example there …

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unAustralian English: Oscar Schwartz Visits Chris Mann in NYC

I went to visit Chris Mann in his apartment in Manhattan at the beginning of July 2012. Half of his apartment was covered with plants. There were trees, ferns and flowers hanging from every landing. Mounted on the walls were wood-framed bookshelves, completely packed. The other half of the apartment had a wooden table, kitchen, grand piano, and beyond that, some rooms for sleeping.

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Wandering through the Universal Archive

One of the sequences produced by the collaborative entity, A Constructed World, renders the phrases ‘No need to be great’ and ‘Stay in Groups’ in a range of media – silk-stitch, screen print, photography and painting. One of the painted versions of the image shows a naked woman covered in yellow post-it notes overseen by a hulking, shadowy male. These figures represent the artists Jacqueline Riva and Geoff Lowe. The image appears again in the form of a photograph and the installation was staged in various places around the world – as if the only way to get the message across would be to subject it to constant repetition in as many different formats as possible. Indeed, a number of the collective’s performances and installations attest to the impossibility of communication – even as these take the form of images that can’t fail to deliver. Avant Spectacle A Micro Medicine Show, 2011, features skeleton-costumed performers inexpertly singing and playing instruments while six knee-high wooden letters – S, P, E, E, C and H – burn like small condemned buildings at front of stage.

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Th E Ma N Fr Om Sn Ow Ri Ver

Th E Ma N Fr Om Sn Ow Ri Ver | (16:53) [audio:http://cordite.org.au/audio/farrell_schwartz.mp3|titles=Th E Ma N Fr Om Sn Ow Ri Ver – Michael Farrell and Oscar Schwartz] Michael Farrell and Oscar Schwartz

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Cross Country: An Interview with Del Ray Cross

I meet Del Ray Cross at a bar lounge in Downtown San Francisco, in the middle of afternoon rush hour. He orders us both a Blue Moon: an American beer served with a slice of orange. We sit at a table opposite the bar, and Cross tells me that he only started enjoying beer after a recent trip to Japan.

Earlier today, I visited City Lights bookstore. I get the sense that to be a poet in San Francisco is to be a poet in the centre of the world.

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