Ruby Street

The memory temple being the fiction of memory. Remnants in the words after the words.

It seems weird to be talking about the process of words. I say weird because there is something of the uncanny in it, that words link to old things, happenings or lineages, maybe some thing you may have learned early, that someone may have passed on to you. But you don’t remember – did they, how did that happen? It is about passage, just as with the dead, they need to be companied until they go over. We don’t know what will happen but we believe the words and the shadows and harmonies, what resonances they leave. This says a lot about voice, but there’s a lot to say about space, about where and how the words are placed. Words have been placed a long time, on walls, and surfaces that will take them. No surface is flat and to add words, adds dimension. Tenses have dimensions, it’s to do with timing, not just the length of vowels and syllables, though that is an important part of it. There is also a colour that is hard to decipher. Though it’s not really a code, but a way of looking, a sc...

If you're in Sydney this Saturday, come on down to the launch of the latest edition of 4W . November 17th: 2.30 pm at Gleebooks Derek Motion will be there, I will be there. I'm sure there'll be some nibbles, as well as some poetry n things.

My laptop is about to cark it (a funny grinding noise emanating from the hard drive) so I may not be able to post much until I get this sorted. It's the second of my computers to get to near death over the last few months. They are both 'of an age' so I guess it's not completely unexpected. But a pain nevertheless, especially in the wallet area one suspects. It will ensure a very early acquaintance with Leopard, among other things.

There's much new work at the constantly renewing nthposition , including some things of mine .

While I was in Paris I caught up with Nicholas Manning, of The Continental Review fame. We had a coffee and a great chat about poetry on the Ile St-Louis and then, on this rather cold, windy Paris autumn afternoon, he videoed me reading some poems. You might enjoy them, and the sites and sounds (such as the motorboat that chugged by in the middle of everything and the saxophonist on the bridge between the two islands). Nicholas has also kindly written a short appreciation of my work on his lively poetics weblog The Newer Metaphysicals .

Mascara #2 is now on-line with poetry by Margaret Bradstock, Adam Aitken, Jill Jones, Ravi Shankar, Judith Beveridge, Todd Swift, Koh Jee Liong, Yeow Kai Chai, Andrew Slattery, Tammy Ho-Lai Ming, Gareth Jenkins, Jane Kim, Kate Vinen, Heng Siok Tan and more ...

Sometimes it's easy to write while travelling, and sometimes it's hard. This time wasn't easy. I made some notes with the old pen and paper, but it was intermittent. And I blogged very little. That was partly due to relying on free hotel internet access, which usually blocked sites such as Blogger, having to deal with non-English keyboards, and waiting for other guests to finish their emails. Now I'm back and writing still seems hard. I do wonder what is going on, as I actually have a lot to do. I'm still slightly jetlagged. For the first day back Australia seemed too blue and sunny and green, the sky too high. Our garden was lushly overgrown and covered with purple jacaranda flowers. The money looked strange. Now it's wet and cold and tonight on the train there were two people speaking French and another lot speaking Hindi. That seemed more like it. I'll get slowly back into it.