Ruby Street

Yesterday, at Brighton Beach. One of the first continually sunny days for a while. Spring, almost. I don't really know Brighton, it's possibly only the third time in my life I've been there. Still, it's only a train journey away from home, so there I went, walking about, taking a photograph, writing a note or two: afternoon sunlight turns silver on Holdfast Bay clouds tack behind the hills days are what tracksuit pants are for another octopus pulled up onto the jetty babies are simply babies, phones are for taking pictures of the dog pig face, beach reclamation, vanilla or something more, he's yelling instructions at the kids, 'head for the sandbank' if you were here, or I was young in early spring with stupid hats, dogs' bums, eternal prams fishing tackle, without breaking like a wave having the moment's recurrence like a breeze through the gulf

This coming September I will be doing at least one, if not two, poetry readings here in Adelaide. The definite gig will be Tuesday, September 29th 2015, at the terrific on-going series of Lee Marvin readings curated by the indefatigable Ken Bolton at the Dark Horsey Bookshop, part of the AEAF in Adelaide's West End. I'll be sharing the stage with my colleague, Brian Castro, among others. As soon as I know details of the other reading, I'll post that. I'm also scheduled for a reading in Sydney in late November and I'll post details of that if and when they are firmed up. I used to do more readings. I've always liked doing them, especially in the company of other poets. I believe poems and poets need to be heard as well as read. Presumably because (a) I live in Adelaide not big smoke, (b) I am (ahem) not as young as I used to be, and (c) I don't hang around in gangs or coteries, I rarely get interstate gigs (even if I pony up with cash/FF for flights and can...

lists flutter in the social breeze of course, all the tribunals, modern tribes a coast dark blue with them, somewhere I go down to the gulf one day join the breeze and I don't know anyone tide has washed in pieces of broken brick the gulls dive for fish if that means I don't care though I pick up a piece almost circular, red, mineral-specked I could skim it I put it in my pocket it's still rough there seems no point in keeping it it's in a bowl on a low table today is a grey day I felt it just now

violins or guitars grip onto a version of rain it’s from another epoch rather than a fool’s paradise rather than now even if it’s a lonely experience do you think it’s exceptional or merely blue, or the way this day is until it changes

The 'what I've been doing' conversation could go on for a while, especially given that, in this space, it's been a long time between drinks. For the nonce, I'll narrow it down to one small corner of 'what I've been doing recently'. One version can be seen in a few poems that were published in March this year in John Tranter's new Journal of Poetics Research . Here they are: Five poems in Journal of Poetics Research The older poem is 'Free Hand: A Kind of Thinking'. As well as, obviously, being a kind of ars poetica, it's length and its syntactic energies are different to the other poems, especially the first three. These may, or may not, appear in print later this year. I presume you can tell they are more stripped back, obviously shorter, full of questions and even imperatives (not so much in these but in others I've been writing), less image-driven, impatient. Whether I'll continue in this vein much longer, I don't know....