letter to a friend

Yes, your story rings true
there is no here there
the night has completely cured me
or just behind closed
doors, I shudder to think

look forward to frosty trees
southern light sounds fine
I'm working something
old themes happened
will probably see me
box again, happy

maybe I mentioned it
becoming real, in the hand
glad book, be interesting.

the slippery thing - prose poem

A new issue of Mascara has hit the intertubes recently, and is focused on prose poems. It was edited by Keri Glastonbury. Includes two of my own prose poems. I write them from time to time - most of my books contain a prose poem or so - and at one stage a short ms of them was going to be published in a chapbook. However, I changed my mind and the chapbook became Struggle and Radiance, a different set of poems altogether. One of the poems in Mascara is a slightly revised version on a poem from that unpublished manuscript. I have been thinking of bringing some of them together, the published and unpublished, but had supposed the prose poem was not a fashionable item. Maybe there is some interest, still, in the form. Of sentences and paragraphs as poems. For instance, I liked the rhythm of Jen Crawford's and Tim Wright's sentences. And how Michael Farrell interrogates punctuation and makes you think of space in the paragraph. An issue full of interest.

'mashed with'

Michael Farrell has just posted some comments on a couple of my poems on the Jacket2 site. He points out that some recent poems, such as these two, 'Leaving It To the Sky', from Dark Bright Doors, and 'Misinterpretations/ or the Dark Grey Outline', recently published in Overland, are, in his words, more 'aggressive' and 'rawer, rougher, more "live" '.

I hadn't thought of the newer poems in those terms, exactly. And another reviewer has pointed out the 'violence' in some of my work, overall. But it's apparent that Michael has noticed a newer mode in my work, that there are things 'up with which I will not put' any longer. A new assertiveness, rather than the previous assertiveness (which is there, if you look). He says: "It's a broader, more assertive platform for Jones's brand of projective verse, and one that bodes well for a midcareer future."

Parts of the poem, 'Misinterpretations ...' certainly were written out of a frustration with some not-well-thought-through ways critics were taking with my work, that, for instance, what I've been recently writing was a form of comfortable ecopoetic with some fancy philosophic or metaphysical flourishes. Living inside and out on the planet, where you are, and writing it, isn't easy, and it involves some thinking and some emotion - gee whiz, how hard is that to divine? But I'm not interested in being obscure, amorphous, or hermetic (though when did that become a negative?) - then, language is never straight forward (and, hey, isn't that kinda PomeWritin 101?).

As an aside, it's something I've noticed a bit with some poet reviewers, that they want someone else's work to be as clear as, easy to 'get', while they themselves, in their own writing, are difficult, in the good sense. But Michael has got how I am working on a new level.

Frustrations can be good drivers, I'm learning to use the good side of that. Couple that with, mostly, the benign (or other) neglect most poets experience, and it means you can be free-er to move around language, and be bolder amongst the messiness of it all.

Best Australian poetry 2011

The latest version of the annual Black Inc poetry anthology, The Best Australian Poetry, has been finalised and will be heading into print shortly. And, yes, yours truly has a poem in it, which originally appeared on Jeremy Balius' site, The Diamond and the Thief. The poem gets a different title in the anthology, but the rest of the words and lines are as is.

This year's editor, John Tranter, says in the foreword (one presumes): ‘What a rich, strange and diverse lot these poems turned out to be … I suspect that these baroque and potent imaginings can only have come into existence as fragments of dreams or nightmares.’

This focus from the editor indicates that this year's anthology won't just be the sameold sameold. A look at the list of contributors also indicates that the spread of poets offers more of the newer and more innovative writers on the scene, as well as a number of anthology regulars. The anthology also picks up on work that has either been published overseas or was fresh but unpublished, an organisational model that can give a sense of what is happening now in a broader, more realistic, sense. The other, now defunct, annual anthology issued by UQP for a number of years modelled itself on the US Best American series which only took poems published in journals for the year in question. This meant that the UQP book would always miss work that did not appear in Australian literary journals. In the 21st century when publishing models have changed and online international venues are often where the more interesting work is being featured plus the focus of many Australian-based poets being not so parochial, this was starting to look very old school.

Another reason I am looking forward to seeing the poems that John has chosen is that we are being flooded with conservative (ie. trying to conserve, as well as the more perjorative sense of that word), historically and generationally focused anthologies which, it seems, almost deliberately ignore the fresher and more exciting work happening now. They seem to be caught up in some kind of mid 20th century idea of canon-making which I suspect even the Americans and Brits have left behind. Apart from anything else, there are so many poets now doing many different things with language that to pretend that a couple of, in most cases, old blokes, have some magical insight into what is 'best' in all of this, is faintly ludicrous.

I've said a bit more about this as part of a recent interview Mike Brennan published on the Poetry International website. And I speak as an anthologist. All an anthologist or editor can or need do is provide a focus, rather than make exclusive or hierarchical claims, which only sets you up for failure. I realise in the Black Inc case, and UQP's before, that the 'best' thing is a marketing strategy. It is an unfortunate one, but JT's apparent focus on (to quote the publicity blurb): "the vigorous, varied and interesting poems of the last year ... the phantasmagorical ... that range from the playful to the melancholy by way of exuberance and satire" certainly makes the 2011 annual seem like a poetry book worth reading.

Notwithstanding that, wouldn't it be great to have a couple of varied contemporary Australian anthologies edited by younger female as well as male poets, or a mix of generational and practice perspectives. And what about an anthology edited out of Australia or NZ that had an international focus on a specific form of poetry but came from here, not out of the north. OK, tell me I'm dreamin.

new poems: blackbox manifold

New work in Blackbox Manifold. Poets include: Emily Carr, Claire Crowther, Nikolai Duffy, Ian Ganassi, Julie Gard, Geoff Gilbert, Carl Griffin, Tom Jenks, Mark Johnson, Jill Jones, David Kinloch, Nathaniel Mackey, Anthony Madrid, Helen Mort, Rebecca Muntean, Burgess Needle, Ujjal Nihil, Aidan Semmens, Corey Wakeling, Duncan White.

Plus reviews, and a translation section, co-edited by Sam Ladkin, Robin Purves & Adam Piette.

My poems from a sequence entitled, Senses Working Out, a series of untitled poems which have been appearing all over.

or left it for morning

your hand counted on it
and if joy arrived
in flicker, DIY laser prancing
there was plenty too much

O summer hoedown
after the party run someone
delivered bitter crust
and for limp dicks, the gaudy

you miss the festering
the gear sings
as it climbs
a small city horn

jump guns, exciters
star blear and goon noise
bring you closer
each crack in the ether

cry cry green lichen
taking mould for comfort
into overcast hollows
back with sandstone night

fear of fire

Sometimes at night
burning among cautions
so when you wake
sufficient clouds flame
you were floating in

what you haven’t done
seek to tongue and carry
remembered chora
heavy moon
will not let you sleep

negative breathing

Maybe I was born among democracy under libertarians
on the lam. Maybe I was carted with mimics and homeopaths
to the tune of a trice bawdy ballad as exchange.

Then I was a debtor living in jalopies with some new kickback.
I know I swallowed piranhas, and something more confusing.
After that I didn’t speak about the libertarians for a long time.

The mimics wandered, catcalls were exposed.
When rampage reigned, I'd write in multiples. If they were
bad seeds, I couldn't tell, but they were absorbed.
I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.

There were votes in airships and trampolines, teacake
for dolphins and yogis. I did not lose out though the yields
were all under-reported. If the calories were faulty, it was always
blissful in negative space, and the heavy breathing.

mudstone

faint familiar
what sort of creature
extinct, quarry,
the way they are

anomola, lurks
from shales
mysteries
eyes of rock

could I be capable
of such patience?

the rear view

and lost, skimming
the tinkle on line
the benchmark is
a dumbcluck again

— wrong, it’s a coyote vibraphone
a layette, a kitchen filled with
fireworks and lobbyists

so, avoid the normal, the natural
it's not as if it's a subcommittee
of outcasts

they play, dudes, they play
at the roadblock again among
passersby, robins, leatherette
rampages, the essentials

of the lost, the sum
of being a superstar or
you’ve lost control again

AU/UA: two-way street

A publishing house in the Ukraine, Krok, have just released an e-anthology in English and Ukrainian featuring 20 Australian & 20 Ukrainian contemporary poets, plus a small selection of images by Ukrainian and Australian photographers. Called Contemporary Poetry of Ukraine and Australia, it has been edited by Les Wicks, Yury Zavadsky and Grigory Semenchuk.

Australian poets include Susan Bradley-Smith, joanne burns, Michelle Cahill, Susan Hampton, Andy Jackson, Kit Kelen, Cath Kenneally, Anthony Lawrence and Peter Minter, and photographers include Cath Phillips and Annette Willis. Ukrainian poets include Serhiy Zhadan, Pavlo Hirnyk, Iryna Shuvalova, Natalka Bilotserkivets, Kateryna Babkina, Vasyl Makhno and Yuri Andrukhovych.

The book is available as a pdf download. It's free, it's easy and it's good.

runnin' amok in po'try

Here's something straight outa Eire, the first issue of RunAmok. Poetry by Michael Kindellan, Robert Sheppard, Gerry Loose, Jennifer Matthews, Joe Luna, Andrew Spragg, Giles Goodland, Jill Jones, Simon Howard, Amanda Ackerman and Juha Virtanen. Criticism by Mandy Bloomfield and Aodan McCardle. Edited by James Cummins, Sarah Hayden, Niamh O'Mahony and Rachel Warriner. You can buy it online.

I have yet to see my copy but caught a glimpse online as it appears to have had a first outing at the Sound Eye festival among some other terrific publications, as shown on this blog. I had hoped to act on an invitation to this year's Sound Eye but fate had other things in store for me.

-- but not Enclosure

I could not stop for that - My Business is Circumference - An ignorance, not of Customs, but if caught with the Dawn - or the Sunset see me - Myself the only Kangaroo among the Beauty, Sir, if you please, it afflicts me, and I thought that instruction would take it away.

Emily Dickinson - letter to Thomas Higginson (July, 1862)

Whitmore Prize shortlist

The shortlist for the Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize 2011 have just been announced. The following poets, listed in alphabetical order, have been shortlisted for the prize:

B. R. Dionysius

Paula Green

Dominique Hecq

Jill Jones

Jo Langdon

Laura Jean McKay

Eddie Paterson

Nathan Shepherdson

Lucy Todd

Corey Wakeling

The organisers say: "With 116 entries received, a number of other very worthy submissions did not make the shortlist on this occasion. We found the entries to be of a very high standard. ...."

Part of the condition of submitting to the award was to only put forward unpublished work of up to 150 lines and to have a longer work, for the complete chapbook, in mind. As Anne Kellas points out on her blog, these conditions may be what resulted in the 'very high standard'.  

The winner, whose work will be published in a limited edition chapbook in early 2012, will be announced before the end of September.

the nerve of

There are many ways to lose your nerve. Let's not count them.

If you can accept working the flux, and not being branded.

Disregard may save you. If you have the nerve.

the misinterpretation thing

This recent poem of mine in Overland is partly about the inbetweeness I've felt, partly about working life, always about language, but also contains a bit of a riposte to some recent reviewers who have made odd statements about who I am and/or what I am writing about or into.

Though it's of little matter what people think anymore - recent events have got me beyond the whole 'Australian poetry' thing - but to note that all kinds of irritants are good for getting the poetry machine working.

no titles

There's a couple of newish poems of mine that have been up for a little while at the OzKo edition of Cordite.

Both are, essentially, untitled, but a 'title' was needed for publication. Oh, the limitations of coding. They are part of a longer series of untitled poems I've been working. It's odd, as I've always championed poets paying close attention to their titles but for this series I have simply capitalised the first three words of each poem. Magazine editors, either online or in print, really don't like it. Interesting.

the flight of poetry

One thing I have missed, and will miss, living here in Adelaide is the physical presence of poetry 'stuff', the talking, reading thing. I am surrounded by books of poems, in my office at home and my office at work but that's not quite enough, I am finding.

There are poets on line. There are poets I know, a flight or two away.

Poetry things, poetry 'stuff' happens here - quite obviously - but it does not seem to synch with my stuff, with how I get with poetry. This is not a criticism or, if it is, it is a self-criticism.

In recent times I've been somewhere else to talk poetry (Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland) but can't, quite, get to what's here. I'm too much of an alien, an east-coast klutz, with no history here. I am in the midst of accepting that.

unter den linden?

A sequence I wrote, 'The Linden Tapes', has been shortlisted (though being part of a list of 23 poems suggests a very lo-o-ong list) for the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Essentially it means I will be in the 2011 anthology, which is neat. The prize presentation thingie will happen in Newie in a couple of weeks. I could go, but I am planning an overseas trip (slightly postponed) so can't really afford to. And clearly I'm not a winner or runner-up.

But my real point is that the poems are very much out of living in this place (ie Linden Park). I would have called the sequence 'The Linden Park Tapes' but I wanted to keep a little mystery in these essentially suburban songs (yes, all 14 liners). Linden Park is a very suburban place in a very suburban city. I feel as though I am back where I started, the very suburban Australia I was born into. Unsettling.

I'm not sure if there are any linden trees here. I presume there must be, somewhere. Plenty trees, plenty birds, however.

the 'where?' thing

I have been away from the blog for some time. One reason, only being articulated as I type, is that Ruby Street (the physical place) is not mine any longer. I've finally sold up. I've finally left Sydney.

It raises a lot of questions about place - physical and virtual. And writing, too. Writing involves place, where you sit, where you write or type, what's out the window or down the street.

I don't know where I am at the moment.

It's not a bad thing, it's not a good thing. It is simply 'the thing'.

poetic infiltrations this july

I will be involved in the Poetic Infiltrations program being run at Bundanon on 23 July. The day consists of a workshop, readings and conversations with leading Australian poets, artists and visiting Chinese translators, followed by the launch of Wombats of Bundanon — Anthology of 20 Australian Poets.

Participants include: Jill Jones and Annette Willis, Patrick Jones, Kit Kelen, Chris Song Zijiang, Leung Ping Kwan, Iris Fan Xing, Heidrun Lohr, Yvette Holt, Chris Mansell, Johanna Featherstone, Andrew Slattery, Amanda Stewart, James Stuart.

Saturday 23 July
Boyd Education Centre, Riversdale

Poetry workshop with Jill Jones, 9.30am–1.30pm
Cost: $65 (includes morning tea and entry to afternoon event)

Poetry Readings, Conversations and Book Launch, 2.30–6pm
Cost: $20 per person

Lunch available for purchase

Bookings 02 4422 2100 or programs@bundanon.com.au

new in cottonmouth

In the March issue (no.23) of Cottonmouth, which you can download here along with many other issues, contains one of my recent untitled poems. Up till now I have always given a title to my poems but late last year I wrote a whole series of untitled ones. It's not a permanent approach but I enjoyed the process. The poems are gradually getting published in various places.

That issue of Cottonmouth also contains poems by Tim Wright, Rachael Mead, Graham Nunn, Corey Wakeling, Liam Ferney and others.

sleep

bitter trash flower
you can't pick
clean morning swallow
smile talk enters

breaking foam(e)

Hey, ho - again, I'm late bringing this to your attention but not all that long ago the latest issue of foam:e hit the inter-tubes, guest edited by Laurie Duggan and featuring work by a plethora of poets including Ken Bolton; Jenny Bornholdt; Pam Brown; Joanne Burns; Michelle Cahill; Murray Edmond; Michael Farrell; Denis Gallagher; Katherine Gallagher; Philip Hammial; Gregory Horne; Jill Jones; Kit Kelen; August Kleinzahler; Sophia Kraemer-Dahlin; Michele Leggott; Miriel Lenore; Cassie Lewis; David Miller; Gregory O'Brien; Vaughan Rapatahana; Margaret Ruckert; Pete Spence; Corey Wakeling; Tim Wright, plus reviews and interviews.

Laurie says he was aiming for "Australasian poetry (and this included expatriates and constant visitors)", so it's certainly a bi-ditch affair, plus others.

late news

And as you may have picked up from the interview mentioned below, or other sources, Dark Bright Doors has gotten a shortlisting in the NSW Premiers Literary Awards for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize, along with quite an array of other Australian poetry books. The business is now in the lap of the gods but I will get across to Sydney to toast whatever happens with the other poets. To poetry!