- 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
Samuel Wagan Watson
In the orbital hysteria
A dangerous moon wades low in an empty sky, the magpie shudders… Frank Hull’s attempts at composing haiku were amateur. He was Aboriginal and the song- lines of his ancestry too fluent for the syllable breaks of a craft with …
Posted in 111: BABY
Tagged Samuel Wagan Watson
A Scorched Earth
All Aborigines from Sydney onwards are to be made prisoners of war and if they resist they are to be shot and their bodies hung from trees in the most conspicuous places near where they fell, so as to strike …
Posted in 104: KIN
Tagged Samuel Wagan Watson
A quiet garden-variety killer
It creeps along the fence-line, peeping through wooden slats … nonchalant without being bombastic of how deadly it can really be … a self preserving, violet creature, the vision of a fresh haematoma; suffused capillaries blooming a flower, procuring pain…this …
Posted in 103: AMBLE
Tagged Samuel Wagan Watson
Vanishing
In memory of my Father … For too long I have been a member of a vanishing tribe … We start using terms like; ‘going, going, gone …’ in our black and white mists; the shades and shards of grey …
Posted in 96: NO THEME IX
Tagged Samuel Wagan Watson
Sie semper tyrannis
In memory of Blair Peach… A message in a bottle / organic song in a can / coveted neo-fruit; hunted…harvested… hacked-over / our thoughts modified; Goebbels’-style / from the same tree of life / an olive branch robbed from humanity …
Posted in 95: EARTH
Tagged Samuel Wagan Watson
जादूनगरी? | Wonderland
Translated from the English to the Hindi by Subhash Jaireth मैं इस देश में जन्मा, ड्रीमटाइम से पोषित; परिदृश्य ऐहिक कथाओं से गुंजित; मिथकीय लोगों और अन्य अलौकिक जीव-जन्तुओं से रचित-बसित … बस ऐसी है यह मेरी जादूनगरी । दक्षिणी …
Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS
Tagged Samuel Wagan Watson, Subhash Jaireth
On a Hot, Wet, Kinky Evening in Fortitude Valley
It was one of those typical Brisbane Sundays coming into storm season and Fortitude Valley was soaked by a magnificent volley of thunder clusters.
I was in a daze, still getting back to being me after some time-out / brain bleeds / loss of work / heart out of place … and basically bad writing! My partner had invited me to the Powerhouse on this afternoon for the matinee of a show, and in the shred of performance and storm we found ourselves dripping but not exactly ready to call the afternoon quits.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Kinky Friedman, Samuel Wagan Watson
Conversation with a Decommissioned Electric Chair
Circa September, 2015 Powerhouse Museum, Sydney I first admired your arms, brown and unrefined like mine, the scars and veins unhidden. Straight back. Strong neck. An inanimate object that would never be caught slouching. I pay acknowledgement: you were always professional and executed …
Posted in 74: NO THEME V
Tagged Samuel Wagan Watson
Natural Selection: Ecological Postcolonialism as Bearing on Place
Australian poetry reminds us that we cannot encounter the natural world except by cultural means.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Andrew Lansdown, Caroline Caddy, Charles Birch, David Brooks, David Martin, Eric Beach, Gary Catalano, Jennifer Martiniello, John Kinsella, John Manifold, judith wright, Kevin Roberts, Laurie Duggan, Lionel Fogarty, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Phillip Hall, Romaine Moreton, Rosemary Dobson, Samuel Wagan Watson, Shirley Walker
Dust and Drag
*The American Express* Platinum Edge Credit Card application form makes for an ideal canvas to capture poetry. Section #1 Personal Details is easily followed by Section #2 Your Contact Details. But Section #3 Your Employment and Income Details, snags appear, …
Posted in 72: THE END
Tagged Samuel Wagan Watson
Some words no longer work
I tried changing the batteries on the word SORRY today, rubbed the terminals clean of the caustic build-up from the power source that used to run it, until it ran it dry. My neighbours only know me by shadow or …
Posted in 66: OBSOLETE
Tagged Samuel Wagan Watson
Duncan Hose Reviews Best Australian Poems 2014
Being in and of one’s time (in favour of it, in fact) means producing work that is sensitive to the discursive furies of the day – the atmosphere of mutating code that the poet must stick to poems in new and strange forms. All else is nostalgia and denial. No-one knows what it means that Australia’s imperial republic, whose god has finally been revealed as cosmopolitan capitalism, is, in the history of colonies, still in its infancy yet so impressively seems to be approaching an end of days. If you’ve got burnt chaps and a warm six-shooter (cowgirl), these are exciting times.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Cassandra Atherton, Duncan Hose, Geoff Page, Judith Beveridge, michael farrell, Samuel Wagan Watson
Against Colony Collapse Disorder; or, Settler Mess in the Cells of Contemporary Australian Poetry
Colony collapse disorder describes a phenomenon whereby worker bees suddenly and inexplicably disappear from a hive. It has recently been identified as a syndrome following the rapid vanishing of Western honeybee colonies across North America and Europe. Justin Clemens also uses the term to describe an aesthetic collapse, whereby poets can only demonstrate their existence as ‘being caught dead’ given the fragile conditions of poetry and the inevitable, deadly effects of the past.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Alex McDermott, ann vickery, Duncan Hose, Justin Clemens, michael farrell, Philip Mead, Samuel Wagan Watson
A bar of soap
For Darren Currie … Sometimes ANONYMITY is a fantastical doorway into the being of a writer; ANONYMITY is the passport of an unknown agent who knows no constraint to conduct acts of good and evil/ A signatory to the distraction …
Posted in 64: CONSTRAINT
Tagged Samuel Wagan Watson
JACKPOT! Editorial
Twenty years ago, I decided to leave university after five weeks into my first semester. I’d worked hard for a year in a pre-tertiary course and discovered a genuine spring of warmth that bubbled inside of me when my college lecturers praised my creative writing assignments. Later, I was accepted into a good university and took English Literature 101. An editor of a literary journal had suggested that my short story writing was lacking in momentum, but critiqued my misadventure with words as having a certain ‘poetic’ quality. His advice was to try my hand at verse.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged jackpot, Samuel Wagan Watson
Submissions Now Open for Cordite 39: Jackpot!
As with all themed issues of Cordite, we will accept up to five poems per submission. What’s the bigwig in the photograph telling you? Maybe, at some point and in some way, you have hit the jackpot. Perhaps you’ve only …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged issues, Queenie Chan, Samuel Wagan Watson, site news
Fade away … (Highway Patrolman)
We’re sworn by blood and how blood trickles away … one brother went to the middle east, another to track his own isolated sovereignty while I am just bound to stay … The night’s silence jars my joints; an owl …
Posted in 48: NEBRASKA
Tagged bruce springsteen, liner notes, nebraska, Samuel Wagan Watson, work
