Ruby Street

I recently put together a sequence of poems around the idea of rivers and memory for two friends of mine, the sound artists and composers Solange Kershaw and Damian Castaldi, who were working on a project called Memory Flows . The result is a sound installation using contact and gravity, where the words of my poem flow randomly in time with the swinging back and forth of three diamond shaped acrylic water pendulums, each filled to a different capacity with a blue toxic liquid, triggering a different memory, dripping into the muddy waters of the Parramatta River. Damian and Solange have put up some visuals of the installation on their website, which includes mp3s of their interpretation of my poem . The installation can be seen at The Newington Armory, Sydney Olympic Park, Newington NSW, until 20 June 2010.

I'm off to Sydney tomorrow to take part in, and taste the harbour-side salt of, the Sydney Writers Festival . I'll be involved in the following events, so would be great to see any of you who'll be around, at one or more of them: Late Nights at Number One Thursday, 20 May 2010 9:30 - 11:30 pm At Number One Wine Bar , Goldfields House, 1 Alfred Street, Circular Quay, Sydney Enjoy a drink or bite and listen to Jill Jones, Lionel Fogarty and Pasha Malla read their poetry at the Quayside wine bar, Number One. Your host: Patrick Muhlen-Schulte. Poems To Share Friday, May 21 2010 6:00 - 7:30pm Heritage Pier, Upstairs Pier 2/3, Hickson Road Walsh Bay Eleven Australian poets – Kate Fagan, Lachlan Brown, Adam Aitken, Lindsay Tuggle, Greg McLaren, Elizabeth Allen, Fiona Wright, Joanne Burns, Judith Bishop, Andy Quan, Keri Glastonbury (plus a surprise guest - hint, hint) – come together to celebrate the work of the Red Room Company . The audience is seated at tables with poets, to hea...

no smooth requirements step rocks, or words during pressure within twilight or rain, the fine moon into the winter or as vagabonds untied where weeks wander tapes of memory in the ignition in lines of information wake up in the morning that is not a conclusion to heavy nights a dove sprinkles other movements of birds

in shade, surface shakes skins cold, deep closed under curves and covers degrees key to clouds fresh air releases you a dreamy target for memory and lines of work become music within a footstep

As well as taking part in events at the Sydney Writers Festival next week, I'll also be doing a quite different gig in Sydney on Saturday 22 May, at the Carriageworks. I will be part of some readings organised by The Red Room , at an event called TEDx, which is taking place in Sydney at CarriageWorks on Saturday 22 May 2010 and featuring, as the website claims, a selection of Australia's leading visionaries and storytellers showcasing their Ideas Worth Spreading LIVE to a group of thinkers ... as well as ONLINE to the world at large"." It's part of something called TED which is described as "a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design" . As for the poetry part it will include Johanna Featherstone from the Red Room making a presentation about the role of poetry in Australian society. To complement Johanna's talk will be rea...

Monday 17th is International Day Against Homophobia . One focus this year is on homophobia in sport. In conjunction with this, there's going to be a reading of poetry (not a sports event) hosted by Friendly Street Poets on Sunday 16 May, here in Adelaide (amongst other events, including a rally for same sex marriage on 15th). So, here's the details: The Sport of Anti-Homophobia Poetry Event - Speaking the Silence Hosted by Friendly Street Poets Guest poet: Jill Jones + FSP poets + open mic Sunday 16th May Aids Council of SA 64 Fullarton Road, Norwood. 2-4.30pm $4 conc/$5 waged, wine & nibbles

Some fresh new things to dive amongst at Snorkel . Includes Jenny Bornholdt, Kate Fagan, and Tricia Dearborn, among others. Otoliths is breezy and suitably autumnal. (It was reportedly 6 degrees here this morning.) Includes Michael Farrell, Adam Fieled, Tim Wright, Kristen Kashock, Michelle Cahill, and many more, plus special features, including poems by Michael Rothenberg & David Meltzer. On the northern side of the world, it's spring, so there's a big new issue of Blazevox for delectation. Includes Stacy Kidd, Jim Bennett, Sam Silva, Geoffrey Gatza, and many, many others. There's a new issue of Mascara online. Includes Cath Vidler, Indran Amirthanayagam, Greg McLaren, James Stuart, Adam Aitken, Jenny Lewis, Eileen Chong, Anindita Sengupta, and Johanna Featherstone, amongst many others. And last but absolutely not least, here's a new journal, Polari , which features writers with affiliations to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) co...

There's a strong editorial from Sophie Cunningham for the latest Meanjin , pointing out that the gains(not) for women over the last decades are something to keep in the forefront of concerns, that feminism is not something to be shunned as a quaint old seventies marker. She concludes: "Last year not a single female lead singer was included in Triple J’s hottest 100 survey. Catherine Strong explores the implications on this in her essay ‘The Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time 2009 and the Dominance of the Rock Canon’ on p. 124 of this issue. I could go on. I won’t. I’ll just say this: either women can’t sing, paint, write or think as well as they used to—certainly not well enough to offset their tendency to become less beautiful with age—or we live in a culture that does not like the things women say or does not know how to hear them when they say it. In other words, Irigaray is right. Women sit outside language." I read this just having listened this morning, as it happene...

Here is the first longer review of Dark Bright Doors at M/C Reviews . Obviously, it is a review to be happy about, but not just because it is positive. The reviewer, Alison Clifton, engages with the form of the work as well as the aboutness of the poems. That is one thing you hope for in a review.

Much to ponder on in Kris Hemensley's discussion of the current swag of Australian poetry anthologies , in a broader context of contemporary Australian poetry. Kris and I talked about some of this when I was in the Collected Works shop in February, whilst on a flying visit to Melbourne. I still have not fully digested all he has raised now, especially the preamble and history, the stuff that gets forgotten when the new and recent are discussed. I know Kris has been pondering this awhile. There was some brief commentary on his Facebook page, but this post of his is the product of lengthy thinking. Kris points to one interesting fact - Dorothy Porter is the one poet that appears in all the anthologies under discussion.