Ruby Street

It will have all been said now. .

It’s the grass, you don’t notice but it’s uneven. The life under a tough sun. It’s been too easy to lie down, not take any of it. A smoked out clarity as well. And loud music always carries in these times. Fire sits inside the wood, but it dies at some time. There’ll be time, risen in air, breath of desperate ages. For knowledge, you can still go there. How I found out is skin, and underneath. Nerves flower out bare need. Sun sits on the air. A day slowly wears and is moved by turn. Clouds don’t need to know. Raw being which moves. Welcome to a new overlay. And out there the valley knows nothing.

We may be afraid of need the very sound of the portal between the ever and this reality. Perhaps you feel there’s something jerky about the music inserted at horizons though it once had been sedated. Perhaps the trees will stand willingly sounding strange wind-up notes like strings as midnight specials to remember, again.

Below in passages, the shadows are shuffled The moon was full but now discounted, falling What are the benefits of living underground If I touch your breath will it release me Sand replaces sand, and water …? The birds fall out of the valley Perhaps it’s because I’ve become excess The freedom to empty your mind has gone Careful even laughter is falling Some days just holding up Oh my beloved grass, you are like the sea Within the ear lies the difficult pearl The crow becomes a small episode See how stars waver before falling

Métropolitain (includes a poem by Boris Vian) - Emmanuel Santarromana Olé - John Coltrane Plays the Blues - John Coltrane Le Pas du Chat Noir - Anouar Brahem DJ Kicks - Daddy G

I've added a few things to some pages at off the street .

Blue lifts from the horizon fish hide in the eye of the sun. Travelling back over, closing. The dark water's mouths whisper at the bow white songs. So wave cuts story in green sea, cross currents. Salt stings our vision oil spreads surface with shadow slippery, memory's taste. Journey sticky with scale pattern shaded with weed. And always moving away.

The city is itself a walking, which the poet merely traces, trying to stay on its trail. The city is always something going on ahead, something that just turned the corner, that just slipped out of view. - Cole Swenson on poetry as city. I often (though not as often as is made out) write the city, take the poem for a walk. Mostly, people here sneer at the idea - I think I'm supposed to write about gum trees, or 'relationships' or 'the sea', or something. I've given up worrying about it. Swenson doesn't say anything new, but nice to read.

The Spring/Summer issue of The Drunken Boat is now online. It includes a major feature on Chinese poets from mainland China (including poets from minority groups), Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and Singapore ... and an interview with my good self along with a sonnet series, "Traverse" , and a collaborative project with my partner, photographer Annette Willis , called "Breath, the hours" . Many thanks to The Drunken Boat's editor, Rebecca Seiferle, for inviting me to contribute and for working with myself and Annette to get the poems and photographs online. We are honoured to be a part of this latest issue.

Two tireless workers in the fields of feminism and literature, sisters Gail Hewison and Libby Silva, were recently honoured in the Queen's Birthday Honours list. Among many many things, through the Feminist Bookshop , Gail has sponsored the Perverse Verse poetry readings held during Sydney's annual gay and lesbian Mardi Gras festival . Congratulations Gail and Libby!

Chrétien Breukers and Ton van 't Hof have started Headlines Poetry , a feed from the latest poetry blog entries. It's updated several times a day. When too much poetry is never enough. Bring it on!

I have had nothing interesting to say for months, which is why I've been hidden away. The train this morning made an alarming clunk coming into Central. I am supposed to go shopping tonight and have rid myself of a heavy a load to carry. Just yesterday - yes, much late because this is Australia - I actually found two decent poems in The New Yorker , one by Adonis and one by Rae Armantrout . I am suspecting that Mark Young is getting all my mail and I'm getting someone else's bills, with my name on them. People kept bumping into me near the turnstyles, like planets, like that poem I once wrote. I was enjoying the Sydney Film Festival until I got a sore back from the bad seating and, thus, am not a fan of the State Theatre because of that, lovely art deco palace that it is. I am coming to the conclusion that we in Sydney must be some of the rudest people in the world, let alone the least curious. My BPPV is backing off but they say I may just look up again, in an instant...

I am being inundated with press releases about films, as it's film festival time. I realise they are fabulous templates. Here's one for the next [book/film/whatever it is you do]: The book/film/etc is a sharply original, amusingly [dark ... or whatever ...] take on what is ultimately [whatever your book/film/etc 'ultimately' is] . The book/film/etc is full of [let's say ... "obsessions, compulsions"] and presents a darkly [comic ... or tragic, if you wish] alternative to [whatever ... anything, really] . The [whatever] ... dealings with [let's really go for it ... 'sex, death and authority'] make it appeal to [whoever] like their books/films/etcs laced with a taste of the [whatever is the flavour de jour... in this case 'the dark side'] .

Ron Silliman's blog pointed me to a review by William Logan of some recent poetry books. I make no comment on the books, as I've not read them, nor do I have a set against the poets reviewed - indeed, I have enjoyed some of their specific works - but I will pluck some comments as they mirror a little some of my general unease about current poetry I find around me - and suit a winter sheen of 'illbience'. The comments also made me larf, with their smoothly-turned 'grumpy old man' stuff, Logan being a conservative critic (well, that's what he seems like to me). As well as rolling out the same-old same-old against soft targets (and some of the below are such), savvy conservatives can neatly pick off the mild middle ground where it lives - and, of course, mess with our own personal likes. On bad days, I think one could get in first with the 'bad review' of one's own work by doing a properly 'bad review' of the actual work, not the poet or th...

News of poetry sites with downloadable readings: The iPoems site has yet to get up and running but there's plans. And my owen publisher, Salt Publishing now has some downloads, apparently. Nothing of mine, but some from the newer titles.

1. You cannot separate it and say this startling sunlight attached to clouds, the rain, the moon cyclones, atmospheric pressure intensity if you are a woman on the street a man in the mountain the girls, school dreaming future naked under cruel fixed glance. You draw with startings you break even a filament and form part of destiny the leaves are unhappy, tomorrow. No wonder it obtains thunder. It’s easier to cry for finished innocence and the newspaper. To cry harder.

Pastures still drink in resistance they begin and progress beyond singularity there’s wanting in the midst. But come, assemble for burial, taste lights the roughcast water filled from our roots in the sea swept by the emptied wind What type of knowledge is this that continues its being until full of cancellations and windows — that type of intensity? Didn't a track barely leave pain behind? What is the first colour of enchantment? The prosperity of the unburied lies in the allure. Here on the hour that ascends gradually there’s a disturbance of glass in the thickness there’s desire in melting honeydew. The present of the city doesn’t exist as façade so where is the other extremity of the chain? Grass still downs a dispersion of abundance. Stood shivering in a night at the other end of the line. Once there was plenty of time to drink up as usual, as though afraid of being heard. Would I be bored by a drained windswept pool? What more could I eat beside it? What am I responsible for:...

... although it's autumn, I've been doing a little spring cleaning and general tidying up. Especially of links. A number of sites were moribund, had disappeared or things had changed. Also, I found that a few sites are exceptionally slow to load these days and/or seemed to hang - the wick in my computer engine only burns so hot and then it's useless. Have also added some new sites and updated the vagabonds. By all means, contact me if anything's been lost in the mix or there are still errors in addresses, etc. Or if something really ought to be listed.

Some more about Rakiura from Martin Edmond who was at OBAN 06.

the day span as it passes wrist flick and ancient pencils aside fuzzy horizons at angles inside and somewhere beyond delayed aching bones swivel hours on out of the box into the night where a dream of unlimited perspective hazing pixels dance amongst the drops golden breath fleshes the street's leaves

Anny Ballardini has just posted some information about works she has selected for the Wood of the Poets project in Italy. Below is the beginning of Anny’s note. The full press release in English and Italian can be read on her blog narcissus works . “I accepted the kind invitation by Lorenzo Menguzzato, in art LOME, to contribute to his Wood of the Poets with eight chosen Authors taken from the Poets' Corner. The gathering will take place tomorrow [5th June 2006] ... The work Lorenzo Menguzzato has been bringing forth is unbelievable. Last year his effort was awarded with the Telecom Prize and a notable amount of money he spent in tractors and trucks ... "I finally translated the press release I sent to Lome; to follow the original one in Italian. Foreign Poets Section "Upon the kind invitation of Lorenzo Menguzzato to open a new section at the Wood of the Poets dedicated to foreign authors, I chose the following poets: Douglas Clark Jon Corelis Joel Weishaus Fan Ogilvie ...

To my knowledge, I have never had a poem written for me nor dedicated to me until Mark Young wrote a poem for me, which he posted some time ago on his now-resting blog pelican dreaming . That is something I am still chuffed about. The poem appears in Mark's new book, Episodes , which I've had for some time but am now just posting about. (You all know I'm behind-hand due to some physical troubles - vertigo is more than a disease named after a fillum.) Here are two poems from Episodes .amongst so many wonderful (and often funny) works. fast amulets parrakeets anneal the landscape he changed the room around five metres of mud lay between the path & the water the last vestige of light was a yellow butterfly - Mark Young switching over/ switching off come in from the garden tea flavoured with fresh-picked lemon sink into the chair Miles - Mark Young If you haven't got it already, get this book. Not only is it the best of reads but it feels good in the hand. Books ar...