Ruby Street

..... ... leads me to long dark places ..... where … and the fronds ..... uncurl ..... … green … water falling ..... my thoughts and million-year ..... limestone

... err, uncontrolled blackouts as well. We lost power suddenly last night. Literally we and the neighbours were struggling around in the dark. Sure, the street lights were still on but, as it was still well in the 30s, no-one was going to stand around outside in their jim-jams and shoot the breeze. Any poetry in heat? Not sure.

We are now having 'controlled blackouts' due to the heat. And the train lines are buckling. Still days of this to go.

Here’s to an art of costume! We should be out partying Forget the barrel of failure Spleen overcomes despair Whether you’re inauthentic, an imposter If you’re neither inside nor outside Seizing the hyperbolic mode Here’s to “fanatical faith in exaggeration” Or here’s to provincial mendacity Don’t be sad It’s un-Australian Do not worry about the truth It’s un-Australian Do not use your voice [quotes from Soren Kirkegaard and Thomas Bernhardt]

Another catch up. I did a broadcast later last year of some new poems, for Writers Radio , which has been run for years by poet Cath Kenneally in Adelaide. The studio is just across the road from where I work. You can hear the broadcast here , with me first up.

On the difficulty thing, there's some good comments over at jen crawford's blue acres blog about this. That poems aren't for 'understanding', in the sense that they have to be 'solved', but can be read for what they are, combinations of words, combinations of sounds.

There’s a new anthology of Australian poetry just hit the decks. I think the official publication date was early January, but there were plenty copies in bookshops before Christmas. I bought one in one of my favourite bookshops, Kinokuniya, in Sydney, in December. There’s some discussion about it going on Laurie Duggan’s blog , especially about the cover. I’m not so keen on the cover but others I know think that it’s fine. And there is always going to be the usual argument about who is in and who is out, and why. I've been left out of enough anthologies and been in a few (I'm in this one, for instance), and have said my piece on that a few times too many in the past, so perhaps it's not the place to join that discussion for the moment. I’m more interested in John Kinsella’s comment in one of his introductory essays (you can read all of this essay on the Penguin website ): “The publication or presentation of innovative verse-novels, prose poetry, hypertextual poetry, multim...

By the way, it's just tipped 45 degrees in Adelaide here today (that's Celsius, which is about 113 Fahrenheit). My eyes melted when I went out to lunch. Actually I began to resemble something from a Dali painting. But it is a dry dry melt. The air smells as though it is burning. In Sydney, I'd be a humid little puddle in such heat, here it's like being blasted with fire. Just thought it worth a mention. Tomorrow will be a positively balmy 41, as will the day after (update: tomorrow is predicted to be the same as today - urrgh). Still, it's 2 degrees in Paris France and -11 in Paris, Illinois. I'm not sure who's having more fun.

First bit of catch up. Late last year, Steve Tills over at Black Spring did a close reading of my poem ’Cowboys’ which was published in Shampoo . You can read Steve’s reading and our discussion on his blog (and many thanks, Steve, for the close reading). In my comment, I pointed out that the poem was based around something I saw just before Easter in Oxford Street, Sydney some years ago. I suppose I wanted to add that, to me, it's a ‘gay’ poem (if you can say that) but in a very broad sense. However, and obviously, it may not be read as that by others. All of that commentary from me, however, makes me contemplate how much being from one place and/or culture affects how you read work made in another place/culture. It sounds very obvious, sure, but still you get surprised. I had the same feeling last year when someone mentioned, with regard to a poem of mine which makes reference to (fruit) bats published in The Australian , that when she’d shown it to another friend (in Adelaide, ...

I feel I've been behind everything for a while. I don't have continuous access to the internet as I once did (long story), so blogging has not been so easy to keep in the 'now'. I will be playing a little bit of 'catch up' as I press on into the newish year.

OK, I don't ride a bike. Tried. Failed. But I do like to watch the Tour de France on the telly each year, and not just for the scenery. And, because I'm currently living in Adelaide why wouldn't I go and watch the last stage of the recently completed Tour Down Under last weekend, which was 18 circuits of North Adelaide's parklands? What I was not prepared for, as I stood on the side of the road with no barrier between me and the cyclists, was the extremity of the pull of the peleton as it passed. It was almost as if I would be sucked into the ongoing stream of energy produced by the swooping mass of men and wheels. I only had my happy-snappy with me so, as you can see, my photographs are crap. In the one below you can see Lance Armstrong - I only know this as he always wears black socks and he was wearing a black and yellow helmet. I met a woman who was standing next me as the race whooshed past who had met Armstrong at the Women and Childrens Hospital which he was vis...

And so swings the sun the wing tip the car on the gravel the day, forth, forth to shadow, in each mass, the thinnest of leaves the invisible plot Forth, forth, even when it moves back behind itself the light runs into the sea as if depth contained its meaning in the stormy pelagic otherland grey upwelling flow wandering

thinking about green liquidity, comfort scarcity, one foot following the others into the common and ancient pool ferny footholds the kids slide leaf lichen yellow light splashing on signs of life - Ohau Falls

The air is full of salt and souvenirs, mountains disappear in the rain, recycled books, caravans, and shells are the barter, traffic is heavy at lunch-time turn-offs. It’s the old-fashioned pressure drop, even cars drift into the oncoming lane, ‘honest, officer, I didn’t realise’ … The beer garden is a natural smelling of wedges and a light hoppy taste, the hits of the 70s, hey, the 60s, the sun ain’t gonna shine anymore until tomorrow’s front, northerlies over the seaward alps. You can vouch for the rain, it’s authentic, cold, not as sticky as beer, and here’s to the long grey cloud hiding the sun today, the hole in the ozone layer that makes the light clear and slightly lethal like blue cod in batter and grainy salt on the chips you’re unwrapping idling into new year.