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 J

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.