Ruby Street

Leaving for Canada tomorrow. Heavy heat today in NY. The Philly reading went especially well. What a great town that seems (hey, I spent a whole eight hours there! I should know?!?).

New York defined and avoided all the stereotypes. Basically, everyone was friendly. Basically, it's a fast and hard town. I liked it indeed.

Sunday in New York. Should be warm again, as it's been unseasonally warm, so I believe. And believe me, it's warmer than I expected. Phew!

And I am heading off to Philadelphia today to read at Robin's Bookstore. I arrive back late at night so it's a kind of adventure, especially for someone who's never been in the United States before.

Already, I've been to one reading here, at the Poets House for the launch three Marsh Hawk Press books, including Eileen Tabios' newie. I hope to get to a Charles Bernstein reading somewhere up at the Lincoln Centre tomorrow night.

I have no idea of the news back home. Internet access, curiously, hasn't been easy. Maybe the election has been called. Or maybe the PM is still foxing.

I know this is getting silly but I'll also be in Trois-Rivières, Canada, in a couple of weeks for a seriously big poetry festival, Festival International de la Poésie 2007, which runs from 28 September until 7 October.

There's a huge bunch of poets taking part, including 23 non-Canadian poets including my good self representing Australie, and others from places as such as Bulgarie, Congo, La Guadeloupe, Venezuela and Espagne.

If you're in the area ...

I'm taking off soon to do many things in many places, and that will include a poetry reading with some great poets in Philadelphia, just down the road a wee bit from New York (I'm told). Many thanks to CA Conrad for organising this one. And I'll look forward to being part of the Philly sound.

Here's details:

THE 4-J's:
Jill Jones, Jessica White, Jaime Anne Earnest, Joey Yearous-Algozin
AT ROBIN'S BOOKSTORE

SUNDAY, September 23rd, 6pm
ROBIN'S BOOKSTORE
108 S. 13th St., Philadelphia

Poets
Jill Jones [you know the rest].

Jessica White, a member of PhillySound, lives and writes in Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Temple University and has been published in Eratio and Ocho.

Jaime Anne Earnest was born on a Monday in June in the fair city of Philadelphia, where she still resides with a spoiled British Shorthair cat, Face. She will happily kick your ass at mahjong or Trivial Pursuit any day of the week. And you can totally feel free to call her James at any juncture. Eve…

Between the sky and my body
beyond the trees
a bird carries a small memory.
Days, hills, works
filled with earth.

Like someone breathing.
Then space
clings to appearance.
Like the bird, like light
simple and strange.

The hill, green and red
a day with white horizons
these necessities, this chance.
A song carries a great memory
like someone breathing.

What can be said

it was raining in the mirrors
in all the rooms
the doors were crowding
going nowhere

What cannot be said

water that shone on grass
under the world veil
sings through night
like a lamp

lights hang down
yellow on yellow
loaded with contradictions

rain starts to fall
between derelict factories
and summer dark

winter wind
unsweetened
cold hands

all night long
no particular tune

pretending to sleep
still unopened

sudden tree smell
rising from the book

looking
for something
thrown away

shape of the tree
a single cricket
nothing else out there

this shadow
going from
darkness to water

A young girl looks at the sea
the sea’s cold seed.

The body turns over
the speed of sand.

Of a rough and pure country
someone will say
‘but the book got lost’.

I listened. I imagined death.
A poem written with my bones.

I call to you despite everything.
A girl who looks at the sea.