Ruby Street

Louise left me a comment about the emerging/submerging issue. She suggests "the merging is ongoing and never gets further than a series of mergings over a whole career series of mergings". This makes sense to me. I emerged this morning still unwell but needing to consider merging into day's tasks. Rain continues and now is a steady dripping onto paths and, one hopes, into ground and towards the catchment area. Despite it being winter, you can feel a humidity, cold and heat together on skin. Parts of the world continue to be filtered in via two different radio stations in separate areas of the house. The light is low outside but this screen kicks out the light as I type. rain and cloud and the travelling down the colours bright and then grey light windows that don't depend on these words that merge morning's dream that grows with any time

I am interested in forms of writing and so have been intrigued by the wooden tablets which were discovered at Vindolanda, an old Roman fort in northern England. The tablets are of postcard size and charcoal was used to write on them. To me this is beautiful and moving, that such day-to-day correspondence still survives. That such a simple technology still survives. The charcoal inscriptions are still able to be read, partly aided by infra-red photography and digital imaging. The script is known as Old Roman Cursive which slants to the right but is mainly formed of capitals rather than lower case letters. There are few word breaks and no punctuation. Here is a letter from Claudia Severa to Sulpicia Lepidina asking Lepidina to visit for Severa's birthday and sending greetings from husband to husband. It may be the earliest known example of writing in Latin by a woman. This would be AD 97-105. The Vindolanda Tablets Online site is part of a larger project, Script, Image and the Cult...

Talking about the reading experience (which may well segue into the 'poetry reading' experience), there's always good things to read from Christy Dena at Cross-media Entertainment . For instance, there's this post about portals not walls . And there's even more stuff on this site, Writer Response Theory . Of course, there are things that concern me. I am still a text person and I know I wouldn't work well with vlogging as opposed to blogging. I just ain't that gorgeous for da movies. Of course, with an avatar it could be a different story. But, but, but ... things will happen in all kinds of unexpected ways, despite or because of some overheated pundits. You learn as you go, using your own resistances and possibilities as you may.

Left field musing. Reading Ron's discussion of a reading he did with Jessica Smith . Being intrigued I checked out the references he gave about Smith. I'll follow up on her work, indeed, and her blog is worth reading, especially on what Ron was discussing, which was 'the poetry reading' . But ... here's my sideways not-to-do-with-any-of-this thought. Smith is involved in a press that is, among other things, publishing an anthology of 'younger' poets (ie under 40). Fair enuff, a publisher needs to be publishing whatever. To state the obvious, it's their passion, especially in a profit-free zone such as poetry. But ... ... the implication is that only 'young/er' equals 'emerging'. There are those who emerge 'older' and, thus, never get to engage with such projects. And there's an assumption that 'older' somehow means either you've made it, or your way of writing is 'set' and that you don't continue to ...

Interesting discussion about online v print media , about posting as opposed to publishing , how the material conditions of reading either online or on paper yield different forms and reading experiences, about dissatisfactions with online if it's just trying to do what the printed book does. About bad poetry, maybe.

Maybe we will all have to say something 'positive' when we review books in future in this country. A recent judgement of the High Court supported the idea that a restaurant review that was negative could harm a business. The Court overturned the decision of a jury which, obviously, held the opposite. The majority in the High Court supported the reasoning of Beazley JA in the Court of Appeal, who said: "The food served in any restaurant is its essential business. If the food is 'unpalatable' the restaurant fails on the very matter that is the essence of its existence. This is especially so of a purportedly high class restaurant. To say of a restaurateur of such an establishment that they sold 'unpalatable' food injures that person in their business or calling and because of that, is defamatory. In my opinion, no reasonable jury properly directed could reach any other verdict." The one dissenting judgement, from Justice Michael Kirby, said: "Citize...

Looking forward to The Mix Up , an all instrumental album from The Beastie Boys as I'm a big fan of The In Sound From Way Out! . The new one is supposed to be more post-punk than jazzy. I'll be interested in its chops but hope it's still got some swing. My tolerance for rap is variable and sometimes limited, for all the obvious reasons, but the music, yeah, I can dig. Interesting, it seems a lot of people don't like instrumental music and will diss this album because there's 'like, uh, no lyrics, man'. Yeah, I guess that's why it's an instrumental album.

Coming real soon, David Prater's new book, We Will Disappear . As the blurb (moi) says, David Prater's work in We Will Disappear is speedy, accurate, satiric, tender, intense, visceral, engaged. It's formally inventive whilst also dropping beats of pop media jargon and all the transitory idioms we live in. This is a new language for all tomorrow's aching parties. Exciting, highly charged, and affecting, is wot I reckon. Do yourself a favour ...

Many good things at Bob Marcacci's i-outlaw , including a poem being read by my mate, Androo of da West (aka Andrew Burke ). The good things are a mix of sound and visuals. Have a look and listen. Anyway, I have been fluffing around with a microphone so you might hear more of me soon.

there's a hole in the air flashing the cold wind burns it furrows and cancels illuminated faces from ignited thunderclaps the intercepts of photography grab at it far above the standards of a light bulb

what is to know about ... to be above ground the constitution of clouds forecasts, weathering, instincts sound carriages, sky high the make of air predictions, warnings, messages to say, to share breath whisper, all forms of speech the blur lines sky-pink on the leases

How close can you get to the page? It's a matter of feeling the line and how your hand holds it and moves it, if the line follows the hill or the sky.

If you're no different to me than this and the next leaf ordinary, lovely in our genus, species our fingers and toes mine being shorter and my leaves lighter than storm sky or years via Africa mine different seas but it was a lot of water connected at bight and strait and those deltas, canals languages and their lost libraries and if yours was Alexandria or Rome or an island of columns and mine the inscribed lost from standing stones they were within some lovely and terrible time differently unaware, those mountains but here we are besides and both played in shaking wind in the weirs and passages blowing over the gardenia over there the sea and its passengers sails, dream boats, coracles and kayaks a thousand miles from care we wish that's how we are here

even this infirmary brightens to travel on only ticket here

What are the conditions of making? To go back into past work. The work builds upon work and takes it apart. The conditions are, in part, singing - phrases such as birds or wind touching across planetary surfaces. It's hard to escape likenesses even if each surface or forehead is different, or difficult. The existential or the communal doesn't seem like a choice. The conditions are like weathers, weathers for winning, or losing the thread or for calling up possibilities, might rather than should. It's hard to see bits of the past that stick, until, maybe, they can be written out, even imperfectly. Written out then set beside. If time isn't linear, it keeps coming back but changed, ever changed. Ink sometimes is just fleck marks. Change it to pixels and they, too, are unreliable. That nothing makes sense, like making, and you can make sense of nothing. And that vowels and consonants have feelings: feel them in the medium.

to shout towards outside through the painting

does the street draw you to walk echoing it to propagate from threshold to echo

the heaviest secret of night is the matter which my opening re/sounds

of the winter advancing the thin calm skin the game of welcomes movements of the gate armour of rain the memory question

the question of memory to transmit marks

thrown the end to believe the rig, the matter opening the way that one smile in the air blues storm cloud microbe to method disorder of air, the escape, nevertheless designs direction’s release of question’s load perform language in all, that writes

One of the events I missed at the Sydney Writers' Festival in Sydney while I was 'doing' the Sydney Writers' Festival in Newcastle was The Red Room's Occasional Poetry event, conjuring the ghost of Gwen Harwood, poetry and various garb, costumes, what have you, and Pam Brown's mineslec (mini essay lecture). The indefatiguable Johanna Featherstone tells all over at the Red Room blog . James Dean is there, not surprising as Sydney can be like that, and Pam's text will appear soon.

Did the state change softly shutting us into time frame the porous veil? Windows have the story. Something still takes the eye in aviation dream the breath’s whereabouts near silent work. When does a movie bake its valuables into the destruction in the background? These questions fluctuate. But they could become hot light for us attached to normal something. Why not. How did the partial houses escape? Or take the shadow balance whose accident opens collaged understanding. Time’s robust angel pours fording kindness down river. There’s a place where calms increase a blue continual colouring. When you had to open inside the marks of a sketch of that beginning where fire leaves the form parts with glances allows their disposition to cross all the loading merchandise freely with each possible. There are: damages between interests that worry movement tigers connecting oranges and crusts. We take history rather than equilibrium. There’s no solution to images but we part with their looks.

Check out Andrew's hi-spirited disclaimer .

"seconds: a virtual treasury of verse" is an irregularly updated web-zine edited by Andrew Lundwall and has new work by C.S. Perez, Jane Rice, Mathias Svalina, Eileen Tabios, Scott Keeney, Alexander Jorgensen, Sheila Murphy, Tomaz Šalamun and Andrew Demcak.

A new literary journal has just started up in the UK, The Warwick Review , edited by Michael Hulse. The first issue has just been published with features on Turkish and Australian writing.

I've just been in Newcastle to read as part of Poets Paint Words. Thirteen Australian poets were commissioned to write a poem inspired by an Australian painting in the Newcastle Region Art Gallery collection. The poets include Robert Adamson, Judith Beveridge, Luke Davies, Kate Fagan, Keri Glastonbury, Martin Harrison, Jill Jones, John Kinsella, Peter Minter, Les Murray, Dorothy Porter, Jaya Savige and John Tranter. The exhibition was curated by Peter Minter and Lisa Slade, in conjunction with Sydney Writers’ Festival. You can read an article in The Australian about this or go to the Newcastle Region Gallery's site to read some of the poems . The weather was good and a lot of people came and listened at the various sessions. I lingered for most of the weekend, though my gig was over by Friday night. I caught some kind of flu bug but luckily it didn't strike till Saturday. As someone said, it was a 'boutique poets' event'. And a cool idea.

the interval flames, matter opening winds change the road you laugh, in order to feel the air the bird of the thing blue origin of colour crawls through the loess forms dull you, you think your fusion can hope to escape force of breakdown with which we worried take a number to the left of the eye insane life, a strange ugly place comes as liquid from a germ of method means spillage on the track these: the pouch of language in violent space the feed of soil which formed sun’s rivers, chamfered the muddle of air, collapse of topography the end of output yet dark manuscripts escape the interior animal a tentacle writes to you from within form, from spirals from designs which tear through the whole load questions in the tongue’s worm hole take a walk in all directions, write them