Ruby Street

Waiting, waiting, waiting ... blogger can be a real blooper sometimes. All these posts into thin air and then they'll arrive on the screen in a gush, days later maybe, as though I'd been pouring out the words continuously. But I'm doing other stuff. Sleeping, eating, working, coughing a lot (that's tedious). I've collected my bodies as they sleep all of them given to a little man and he will presume to speak because I am not … a goddess? … his horn indignant, the passages simmer I stoke the hot walls everybody knows better than me Hope is the violin they play at my death rout but I’m still clicking and this body that ... Keep moving!

The dog out the back, Zaa, keeps howling. He's just lost his mate (ie buddy), an older dog called Ashka, who had to be put down (I'd been watching her for years from our back window and felt close to her - what, through all that glass and distance? yes, I guess so). He's a younger dog, who would naturally have been top dog (he being he) though he never was, as it turned out, and now he only dog. Warm, lazy and slow today. I have to get to a book launch (a big double one) but my sickness keeps me fuzzy and strange. Had I been faceless I would not have felt the colder rain flocks seek me like air if I had risen once ongoing after the quiet

Having some blogger problems ... again! What you see is not what you should see. A sudden change to italics all over the place is not anywhere I could find in my coding. The refusal to publish my latest posts (including this one, frustratingly) seems to take hours and days, not instants. Does anyone else have these constant issues? I'd be interested to know.

Hey, check out Chris Murray's excellent texfiles this week as she's featuring some various works by me as the texfiles Poet of the Week. I am much honoured by this and just love the thought of my poems emanating from Texas, USA.

I've been busy the last few days helping my partner, Annette Willis, with her photography exhibition. The opening night went very well - a bit too well for some of us. So I haven't had time for much else. Also dogged by a persistent flu which antibiotics can't seem to chase away. Annette and I did go for a walk this evening after closing up 'shop'. The gallery is in Clovelly and a short walk to the sea. High seas this week in Sydney. Monster surf. All spray, spume and splash. There's a haze all along the coast and the air has that joyful, scary cool boil of sea cloud and wave boom.

"Coming around the curve of the avenue My thoughts are happy. Yet simply thinking this makes me glum, For if they weren't happy, there'd be more variety: Instead of being happy and glum They'd be joyful and happy. What the heck. Thinking bugs me, like walking in the rain When the bus goes by, a huge wind splattering greasy water. Ambitions and desires? My head's wet. Being a poet isn't an ambition, it's a version of being alone." - Erin Moure , from 'What, me, guard sheep?' in Sheep's Vigil By A Fervent Person , a 'transcreation' of Pessoa/Caeiro's O Guardador de Rebanhos ( The Keeper of the Sheep ).

Two Views of Withens Above whorled, spindling gorse, Sheepfoot-flattened grasses, Stone wall and ridgepole rise Prow-like through blurs Of fog in that hinterland few Hikers get to: Home of uncatchable Sage hen and spry rabbit, Where second wind, hip boot Help over hill And hill, and through peaty water. I found bare moor, A colorless weather, And the House of Eros Low-lintelled, no palace; You, luckier, Report white pillars, a blue sky, The ghosts, kindly. - Sylvia Plath , Collected Poems

Aah, the full blog is back. Thanks to quick response from blogger, or the angel of blog was kind.

Someone has stolen my links and archives! I've emailed blogger. Fingers crossed. It feels kinda naked here at the moment.

"It's kind of true, you do disappear off the planet if you are a middle-aged woman," says Keaton. "But that has some advantages as well. Because too much of my life was spent waiting to be seen. Hoping to be seen, hoping to be picked. Once you realise that you aren't looked at that way any more, other things start to happen, and you have to depend on other things to get by." - interview with Diane Keaton , The Weekend Australian , 21-22 Feb 2004, Review, p. 4-5 "The dream of being invisible ... When I find myself in an environment where I can enjoy the illusion of being invisible, I am really happy. The exact opposite of how I feel when I have to talk on the television, and I feel the camera pointing at me, nailing me to my visibility, to my face. I believe that writers lose a lot when they are seen in the flesh. In the old days the really popular writers were totally anonymous, just a name on the book cover, and this gave them an extraordina...

People ask me what my book is about I say 'nothing' as I call it 'broken/open' that seemed to be words for the nothing I know which goes out into and is patterned in language It will become a book you can hold and turn like a poem a place to mark something that can be opened? Dissolved in doing? I'm going with perception which may be 'going on your nerve' jumping in the midst of the flow, experience in language underway But I have found I need more tenderness to pick up the pieces everything is broken - systems, gods, engines now it's more fun perhaps against method/perhaps no project and going without some 'reader' that's been made-up feeling my way again and the importance of wings the lake, rock and sand it all runs on the pink sexed skin a landscape like sound drips from my edges asking questions about how the pieces don’t fit shards alter meanings these shards are the parts...

"Writing has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come." - Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari , A Thousand Plateaus (trans Brian Massumi) Something to argue with but I tend to agree - about the surveying, mapping. (Just redipping into this one today before the temperature climbs and thought and reading become impossible again.)

Sad news. One of Australia's finest poets, Bruce Beaver , passed away in his sleep on 16 February 2004. His works are discursive and rich, meditative and welcoming, tough, honest and visionary. - from IX, in Letters to Live Poets , 1969 "No. I've not joined the bird-watchers though I understand their interest - their spring smeared and blurred with a sweat of death, distillate of the times. There is always death but not such a waste of living as now. And the birds themselves? They have nothing to learn from watching us. Do you want to acquaint the larks with the fatuous music of war? September and I send you a dove, a berry cluster, and these words." - Bruce Beaver - from XIII, in Letters to Live Poets , 1969 "I beg you to remember me as truthful." - Bruce Beaver

OK, I did the presenting of Sea Shadow Land Light , the multimedia presentation that Annette Willis and I did for the On the Beach conference in Fremantle, run by the International Centre for Landscape and Language, Edith Cowan University. No technical hitches, phew! SSLL was put together using Power Point on a Mac but it worked as well using the PC over west. Images and text, plus a little music. I also did an introductory paper which spoke of Annette's interest as a photographer in texture in the built and natural environment and our wish for the 'show' to work at different levels of scale and context. All the images were of environmental textures at La Perouse, a bay-side suburb of Sydney, on Botany Bay. The traditional custodians of the land were the Goorawal people. It was the major point of first contact of white expeditions (Captain James Cook 1770 and then Governor Arthur Philip 1788) and Indigenous nations on Australia's east coast. The name La Perouse ...

I work out of what is around me - ground, voice, thinking these words - from my surroundings, my days then find their way in disparate sentences weather reports slipped with news headlines or arcane paragraphs, they are letters from the past a few minutes, days, months, many years sometimes stacked, decks of an ocean liner sometimes as scraps or hoardings once they were approaches, ways of introduction now less familiar - hints, glances, ricochets or little dances with verbs __________ each place is a trail, a change an existence that is named looking closely changes a place out of context, within another context __________ expecting openings and closures to be heralded a woosh, an electronic handle drug with a dangerous name grievous monkey out of control treasures do the talking they report the crime trespass and knowledge

I've been busy over west in Perth, hence the streets of ruby haven't echoed with the sound of walking or poetry in the last week. More about the west soon, but in the meatime, here's a snippet related to my recent post about poetry and film. It's for film-makers who want to use a poem/s in their next film. 2nd ZEBRA Poetry Film Award July 1- 4, 2004 The literaturWERKstatt berlin invites all who have produced a short film relating to one or more poems to participate in the competition for the 2nd international ZEBRA Poetry Film Award endowed with total cash prizes of 10,000 EURO! The deadline for registration is March 31, 2004. The award is a joint project of the literaturWERKstatt berlin, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH (German Technical Cooperation) and interfilm berlin assisted by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the Goethe-Institut. It is the largest international viewing forum for short films relating to poetry. Films an...

walking is a habit to turn around laughing into this historical here, now can't help it, even the sadness count-off in used and material queues banks gear it's all drag, dressed a magnificent flounce of leaves over the slight avenue a tremendous rush in evening air cruising it's faded, make-do, streaky if not jumpy at times with carbon and crap blowing laughing, switching lights, sides it's a scuffle, a treadmill sexy, crumbling, unsafe

Well, the PERVERSE VERSE reading yesterday (7 Feb) went well. It seemed like a full house at the Writers' Centre, albeit very hot. But most people stayed till the end, 2pm until almost 5pm with just the one break. That's pretty dedicated. In the end there were 12 poets: Tricia Dearborn, Gary Dunne, Tim Denoon, Dash Grey, Jill Jones, Kerry Leves, Kerrie McGrath, Jenni Nixon, Andy Quan, John Rule, Neale Stewart and Helena Wong . The Feminist Bookshop set up a small book stall which seemed to do some business. Well, I sold a book or two. A great variety of readings and poetries but all were well worth listening to, otherwise folks wouldn't have stayed, they'd have headed for the nearest cool place. 'Community' poetry readings have the potential to be average or less than (I'm being kind), but this was tops. Some poets were more performance focused or flamboyant, could we say? I had to go last. I was supposed to have 'nerves of steel' and be able to w...

day in its habit night in disguise chanting wheels - from a train poem I'm doing a lot of travelling but not enough walking.

Days of busy and things get left, like poor old Ruby Street. Trying to get back on track.

I've taken part in the 'poetry and film' discussion more than once, both on-line and in person. The gist, on my part, is that you'd be surprised at how many films have a connection to poets and poetry. With the release in Sydney of Christine Jeff's film, Sylvia , much is being made of this all over again. Caroline Baum has written an article in the Sydney Morning Herald which covers some of the territory. I have a list of films which make connections to poetry culled from many discussions with friends as well as print and on-line sources. I haven't updated it in some time, however. I'll do so and, when I've done it, anyone interested is welcome to a copy and to make further suggestions. I liked Sylvia , by the way, with a couple of reservations, and gave it four stars in a recent review. I'll post the review in the next couple of days.

I love the particulars taken as ordinary it seems to me what world is made of rain as sticky or shivery cold beaten fine each day walks or salt crust tasted on the rock the grit I get down to

Been occupied with family business last few days.