post fall

Some pics taken in Berlin earlier this year.

new things

Fresh November poetry at nth position.

New issue of Divan.

here and now

Best Australian Poems 2009 is fresh. See Robert Adamson's take on what is happening here and now.

investigations

under-done, undetermined, or under-determined

oversighted, or over-shot

mission, or misinterpreted

shadowing, or shadowy

attention, or attentive

gratify, or grace

regard, or regardless

refuge, refuse, refute, re-fuse

not so personal

What are the other intimacies?

positions

Prepositions and position: Placing in place.
Writing about placing, not place.
Is here a place? Pronouns and position.

" ... certain words of a sentence - prepositions, connectives, pronouns - belong up toward full consciousness, while strange and unused words appear only in subconscious. ... in dream the simple and familiar words like prepositions, connectives, etc. are not absent, in fact, noticeably present to show illogical absurdity, discontinuity, parody of sanity." Lorine Niedecker to Harriet Monroe

future-ish

No-one knows the future,
of poetry.

half-way house

The parrot hangs down from the bottlebrush,
everywhere there’s leftovers from storm.

The rain needs no actual photo, you smell
its rare, pleasant odour on the town’s skin.

There’s the awkward bow to music
you must not make.

There’s no midpoint, only angles between
streets, sightlines along garden paths

to hidden yards

where citizens have no need today
to sneak water from the failing wells.

out of

Sometimes you feel like hedging bets.

Sometimes you want to get things out of the unfinished.

But what keel is ever true or even, flexing at horizons?

At least a vote of confidence,
to be shipping seeds without contracts.

Let us anticipate our emergency release.

green wire

Too many things are bad, you can only transgress
your own unpopular culture.

What is missing shines, lovely allure,
a partly-closed door, chasing window,
half-tongues of music budding ear,
green wire, grass.

Each awning offers branding, water beads
on Segafredo, and you smell it
or a body’s brief cerise.

13 October - a little birthday 'I' piece

I am known mainly
by my breathing
even among all
the other signals
I steer my time
in a part of the air
the tolerant
collaborative air
is it possible
rather than corrosive
everything drops down
eventually
then flies
smaller and smaller
the huge receding sound
so long ago
if you knew me
in, around, then out
speech
and then the signing
of the sound
written, traced
on the wall
my crystal spit
and the breath
to get there

questions, questions, questions - lyrically speaking

Some hot discussion on the 'new lyric' in Australian poetry over at Pam Brown's new place for talkin' about poetry.

Questions Pam put up for discussion:

• How much does the concept of the new Aussie lyric have to do with formalism?
• How different is this new Aussie lyric from the earlier notion of lyric as an instrument of personal expression?
• Is the new Aussie lyric consciously engaged in thought and its processes in language?
• Is this re-emergence of the lyrical a trend against/an escape from recent movements and influences in poetry?
• Could the new lyrical engage with notions of authenticity (originality/faking), appropriation (copying) involving the persona of the poet?

Someone added an extra question backchannel which Pam placed upfront:

"I wondered if an extra question could be added (which you imply up front), about the gendering of this new eruption."

and Pam proposed a further question in the comments:

"I wonder why there is never any wit, anything funny or (dreaded term) humorous in the poems of other new lyricists?"

The debate has become somewhat sidetracked by discussions of prizes and awards (yours truly confesses to have been a part of that) but maybe the comments will again look at questions, questions, questions.

ecopoetics is fresh

The latest issue of ecopoetics has appeared. It includes a selection of Australian poets, edited by Michael Farrell.


ecopoetics 06/07 2006-2009

Emily Abendroth, Fatho Amoy, mIEKAL aND, Kristen Andersen, Karen Leona Anderson, Stan Apps, Robert Ashton, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Christine Boileau, Timothy Bradford, Pam Brown, Julieann Brownton, James Bunn, Andrew Burke, Bonny Cassidy, Louise Crisp, Justin Clemens, Jon Cone, Jack Collom, Matthew Cooperman, Gregory Day, Tyler Doherty, Thom Donovan, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Theodore Enslin, John Estes, Kate Fagan, Michael Farrell, Alec Finlay, Lisa Fishman, Benjamin Friedlander, Forrest Gander, Jody Gladding, Liberty Heise, Krista Ingebretson, Jill Jones, Patrick Jones, Michael Kelleher, John Kinsella, Kyhl Lyndgaard, James Koller, José Martí, John McBain, Ray Meeks, Graeme Miles, Stuart Mills, Peter Minter, Luis-Aguilar Moreno, Derek Motion, Jesse Nissim, Alistair Noon, Lucas North, Antonio Ochoa, Peter O’Mara, Isabelle Pelissier, Carol Quinn, José Rabéarivelo, Daniel W. Rasmus, Joan Retallack, Sarah Rosenthal, Linda Russo, Kate Schapira, Andrew Schelling, Jared Schickling, Jonathan Skinner, Gary Snyder, Juliana Spahr, James Stuart, Alf Taylor, Angélica Tornero, Rodrigo Toscano, Lauren Tyers, Erica Van Horn, Stephen Vincent, Damian Weber, Simon West, Les Wicks

$17 Postage included; outside US & Canada, add $5

notes from a talk (including stein09)

Non-compliant. Disloyal. Not making exclusive claims. Non-singular vision. Inconsistent. Non-hierarchical. Non-categorical.

To make meaning work - not tied up, and definitely living in the world (not a closed loop): ‘A composition of the prolonged present is a natural composition in the world’ - Gertrude Stein. [The ‘prolonged’ is as much the point as the present, to me. As is ‘in the world’.]

perilous

being in the yard
and looking down
onto the yard
late in the weekend
when rain sits
behind
the hour calling

there’s something of it
you played real
under trees
a light at the top
of your head

when you enter there
you will not come back

la vida loca

‘I wanted to get lost in the city’

someone came up the drive

‘I guess you two know each other’

it’ll take time

we’ll make a long story even longer

going to sleep stretches the night

enjoying the acrobat music

needing to move, ‘to do nothing’

it was a lot of work to finish high school

one day I picked up the phone

I flew to Mexico City

next Friday I debuted in this show

in the first six months I realised

‘talk to me yeah baby'

‘like, every woman in history’

after the show I hopped a plane, went to Italy

living la vida loca

imagine the press release

‘I stopped for a second’

I'll die and think about those days

I need to play with my dogs

I look in the mirror in a Japanese hotel

what became of the weeklong party?

to persist

in a life crowded
with secrets
and hours open
to them,
windows with too
much movement,
strange airs, unbalanced
directions,
particulars, graces,
oceans

they are athletic
keeping watch
on night thinking,
they're not sure
who they love most,
does it matter
if a kiss doesn’t arrive
on time,
take off its text,
hide it in quiet,
if no secret
still persist

quarantine

Where did that truth go?
Off maps,
cut at edges

The carpet, too, is shaking
It also has blood,
is closing on ground

Lines to read
a picture of death
and wood bones crack

All I have, my feet
and thin palms
as morning stamps my back

Lost map,
lost stars,
soul’s spine

the elements

How clear is the night air,
its wings are corner of the eye stuff,
falling, primordial,
as you talk to yourself,
why did we part, friend,
when did the dust come?

Be careful,
do not walk home alone,
but where do you belong?
Backwards and forwards through time,
in what’s lost, weather patterns
won’t leave me alone.

We need to see the photographs
before we choke
on flowers, on flames,
quartzite energies.

What is wrong with the elements,
who has locked the door,
what is that rain,
is it ancient or televisual?

Drowning in the air
you need a drink.

animalia

I'm heading over east this week, first to do some things in Sydney and then heading up to Newie, en train, so to speak, to do a panel discussion and a reading for the critical animals gigs at TINA.

Sat 3 Oct: 9.30am – 11.00am
CONTEMPORARY POETICS (LOOKING IN): THE PLACE OF THE EXPERIMENTAL IN CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN POETRY
City Hall: Banquet Room

Is experimental poetry now the norm in Australia and what does experimental mean in 2009? Who makes up the audience for experimental poetry? Does the diversity in Australian poetic practice entail a progressive, permissive playing-field? This engaging and exploratory panel discussion includes readings by the panellists.

Featuring: Stu Hatton, Derek Motion, Michael Farrell, Jill Jones

Facilitator: Aden Rolfe


Sun 4 Oct: 9.00 – 10.00am
BREAKFAST POETRY COLLAGE READING
City Hall: Banquet Room

A selection of Australia’s most interesting experimental poets read their collaged and cut-up works. Come and join us for coffee, a croissant and some radical language play.

Featuring: Michael Farrell, Jill Jones, Stuart Cooke, Jal Nicholl

miasma

Smoke died in the air

my cavities taste it

higher than hidden waste

sight under lids

blisters flame rock

scent distances air

still more miasma

mistakes

What if there were no signs, and you took a wrong turning and made a mistake?

What if signs were no longer important?

reading; mothers and others

Motherlode Reading/Adelaide launch
Saturday August 15th, 2.30pm
SA Writers Centre, Rundle Street

Readers:
Jude Aquilina
Jennifer Harrison
Jill Jones
Jeri Kroll
Kate Llewellyn
Jan Owen
Kate Waterhouse

Motherlode: Australian Women's Poetry 1986-2008, edited by Jennifer Harrison and Kate Waterhouse (Puncher and Wattmann), is a 342-page book featuring 126 poets on subjects relating to motherhood and family: from colonial experience and the world at large to pregnancy, children, loss and death. It includes poems by Judith Wright, Gwen Harwood, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Dorothy Hewett, Kate Llewellyn, Dorothy Porter, Jan Owen, Jennifer Maiden, Joanne Burns and many other well-known and newer poets. The readings include South Australian poets featured in the book plus the two editors.

all the amounts

“no-one knows
what is
going on”

words to that
effect

figures stocktaking

expertise
shaking heads

we are un-
certain

that is what is
going on

eating more books, cheaply?

There will be a lot of debate for some time to come about the recent recommendation from the Productivity Commission to lift restrictions on parallel importation of books into Australia. Will such a move actually make books cheaper, or is it the death knell of Australian literature as-we-know-it? I won't rehearse it all here ...

.... but: who isn't a little bemused, if not disturbed, to read the following from Chapter Six of the Commission's report:

"Specifically, the consumption of culturally valuable books, and the ideas they contain, can help diffuse social norms. Where more people come to understand the unwritten rules of a society, their actions become more predictable or ‘trustable’ to others, facilitating social and economic exchanges. Further, as more people read works that reveal and effectively promote aspects of group identity, other members of the group may benefit insofar as the effective membership of the group is widened. More generally, the reading of books of cultural value may help individuals to feel more connected to, and to be more productive within, particular social groups or the wider society, to the benefit of all:"

Indeed, you only had get as far as 'consumption of culturally valuable books', to realise where this is going. Personally, I read books, I don't chow down on them. And 'trustable'? To what 'others'?