Ruby Street

I’m not sure why there is always this flurry of best-of lists for the end of each year, and usually not even at the end of the actual year, thus simply being wrong, in all senses. Overall, my year wasn’t a good year, but that's another story. Suffice to say, I realised confirmed a few too many things about a few too many things. Nonetheless, the year, on a broad rather than exact scale, began and ended with two best things, for me. My last but one book, The Beautiful Anxiety , won a prize in late January . Well, I prize it anyway, plus they gave me money. It was the work of a number of years. And my most recent work, Breaking the Days , was published in late November. It was work of a different sort, a shorter term project, but it was a good thing. So me, myself and I raise my/our glass to these two, my little 2015 bests. And recognise it’s more betterer than what a lot of folks got this year. So, to myself I say, stop yr sobbing. As for other things, specific things of interest...

My latest book, Dark Bright Doors , published by Wakefield Press. To be launched by Debra Adelaide Saturday 10th April 2010 3.30 for 4pm Gleebooks 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe This the first west island (Australian) launch. Dark Bright Doors has already been welcomed into the world in Auckland and more welcomes are afoot closer to my current abode.

There will be a lot of debate for some time to come about the recent recommendation from the Productivity Commission to lift restrictions on parallel importation of books into Australia. Will such a move actually make books cheaper, or is it the death knell of Australian literature as-we-know-it? I won't rehearse it all here ... .... but: who isn't a little bemused, if not disturbed, to read the following from Chapter Six of the Commission's report: "Specifically, the consumption of culturally valuable books, and the ideas they contain, can help diffuse social norms. Where more people come to understand the unwritten rules of a society, their actions become more predictable or ‘trustable’ to others, facilitating social and economic exchanges. Further, as more people read works that reveal and effectively promote aspects of group identity, other members of the group may benefit insofar as the effective membership of the group is widened. More generally, the reading of ...

As many of you will know, poetry publisher, Salt, is feeling the effects of the economic downturn (or GFC if you prefer). Their three year funding from the English Arts Council ends this year. Spring sales were down nearly 80% on the previous year, and despite April's much improved trading, the past twelve months has left a budget deficit of over £55,000. So, Chris and Jen Hamilton-Emery are asking for some help - a small ask to save this important international poetry list. JUST ONE BOOK 1. Please buy just one Salt book, right now. They don't mind from where, you can buy it from Salt or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. They need cash now to stay afloat. You could go to their online store and help keep them going, or buy from your favourite online or real world bookshop. Salt UK and International store Salt US store Say, you could buy one of my Salt boo...

At last, the final book of interviews: E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S: The Final XIV Interviews + One contains interviews with Ernesto Priego, Catherine Daly, Karri Kokko, Jill Jones, Javant Biarujia, Barry Schwabsky, Peter Ganick, Joseph Lease, Stephen Vincent, Alan Davies, Noah Eli Gordon, the late Mary Rising Higgins, Jessica Grim, & Tom Mandel, plus more than 100 pages of poetry from the interviewed, much of it new (certainly in my case). The interviewers were Tom Beckett, Bruce Holsapple & John Tritica, Thomas Fink, & Sheila E. Murphy. The + One in the title refers to an interview done especially for this final volume by Nicholas Manning with Tom Beckett, the creator & curator of this important resource for contemporary poetics. My thanks again go to Tom for asking and engaging and to Mark for all the book stuff. I haven't yet received my copy, geographical distances being what they are, but I know it will be good.

Talking about the reading experience (which may well segue into the 'poetry reading' experience), there's always good things to read from Christy Dena at Cross-media Entertainment . For instance, there's this post about portals not walls . And there's even more stuff on this site, Writer Response Theory . Of course, there are things that concern me. I am still a text person and I know I wouldn't work well with vlogging as opposed to blogging. I just ain't that gorgeous for da movies. Of course, with an avatar it could be a different story. But, but, but ... things will happen in all kinds of unexpected ways, despite or because of some overheated pundits. You learn as you go, using your own resistances and possibilities as you may.

Coming real soon, David Prater's new book, We Will Disappear . As the blurb (moi) says, David Prater's work in We Will Disappear is speedy, accurate, satiric, tender, intense, visceral, engaged. It's formally inventive whilst also dropping beats of pop media jargon and all the transitory idioms we live in. This is a new language for all tomorrow's aching parties. Exciting, highly charged, and affecting, is wot I reckon. Do yourself a favour ...

Well, E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S: The First XI Interviews , curated by Tom Beckett is now available from Otoliths Books Mark Young, who must be the busiest publisher in the world at the moment, says: "In response to popular demand, Otoliths is releasing one of the books from its next round of offerings early, E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S: The First XI Interviews. Tom Beckett's E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S website has become, since its inception in 2005, an important source of information on contemporary poetry and poetics. This book brings together the first eleven interviews from the on-going series, augmented by bionotes and almost one hundred pages of self-selected examples of the interviewees' work. The interviewees (some of whom later reappear as interviewers) are Crag Hill, Thomas Fink, Nick Piombino, Sheila E. Murphy, Eileen Tabios, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, K. Silem Mohammad, Geof Huth, Barbara Jane Reyes, Paolo Javier, Stephen Paul Miller and Jean Vengua.The other ...

Some of the many interesting things Brendan Lorber of LUNGFULL has to say . The Weightlessness of any Anthology in the Last Few Decades: Their sheer abundance negates any anthology’s authority to define a movement. Each new anthology is like the person on The Price Is Right who bids $1 higher than the last guy on the dinette set. To the extent an anthology is successful, it points to the decentralization of poetry and the impossibility of any one boss or singular vision. It rides the air between poems, placing the extreme connection ahead of being a supreme collection. He won't remember but I met him many years ago when he was here. I still have a very old copy of LUNGFULL somewhere around here.

Reading went well, so most of you missed a good one. Quality poetry and great coffee, and a coupla friends did turn up amongst the crowd (thanks Pete and Josie). Perhaps a tad cold (it was outside, tho' under cover) but very congenial. I sold books. I had to give out prizes. Went for a drink afterwards. But I've got the vertigo back a bit and I notice that it's affecting the way I read or present myself. I feel not quite there or not quite balanced. This is the second time I've felt it to be so. A touch of a worry. --- Finally collected my TAB race winnings. A whole $11.60 from a layout of $24. Thank goodness I only do that once a year. I've had a reasonable track record of picking the Cup winner (ie I've gotten lucky) but this year just missed by a whisker. --- And now for a coincidence. Annette and I have been discussing the latest green card lottery business (why not, I say). And she told me that the US Department of Labor (not Labour) has a job code for poet...

I should tell you about a new book, The Moon Sees the One , by Candice Ward. It's been produced and published by Randolph Healy's wonderful Wild Honey Press , based in Ireland. As with all Wild Honey books, it is made with care and love, hand stitched and beautiful to read. The book holds the ghosts of nursery rhymes and old songs alongside the ghost of theory. There's also the ghosts of various poets and singers, many of which are quoted or gestured towards. There are ekphrastic gestures as well. The book is full of delight as well as shadows, and there are lines that will make you laugh with their punning fervour. Candice, of course, knows how to use the line which, in this chapbook, is deft and dancing. And overall I felt, as I read it, a form of ecopoetics, of speaking beyond the self, a restless entanglement with both the intimate and larger things, as well as a full immersion in the language material. I'll quote this following poem, which I published in a much ear...

As anyone who knows me realises, I'm not a one for any common or garden poetry anthology, but I picked up one today which is quite intriguing. It's called The Thunder Mutters: 101 Poems for the Planet edited by British poet Alice Oswald . The fact that its selections are from poets such as Ashbery, Marinetti, Ponge, Popa, Beckett and Bunting as well as Auden, Hopkins, Clare, Heaney and Burns as well as the prolific Anon, is of interest. I suppose you could call it an anthology of 'nature' poetry. I am always wary of the concept of 'nature' - I ask 'what is natural?' and then get into political debates, or wonder why people point at 'nature' away from human. Nonetheless, I was interested in the 'ecopoetics' of this selection. And the more obvious anthology pieces (say 'God's Grandeur' or excerpts from 'Leaves of Grass') work along with Aboriginal song cycle poems. Or John Barleycorn, as interesting as any a work of eco...

Also a pleasure to catch up again with Ivy Alvarez . Last time (indeed, the first time) Ivy and I met was over a hot chocolate in Dublin. A mighty fine hot chocolate, I must say. Ivy currrently lives in Cardiff now but she's back in Australia for the Poetry Picture Show , another project from the indefatigable Johanna Featherstone and her Red Room Company . Ivy gave me a copy of her chapbook, 'What's Wrong?', another mighty fine thing. We definitely agreed that sometimes you need to make your own stuff (a chapbook, a zine, or whatever) - just do it and get it out there. I have some ideas, but nothing to show for them quite yet.

I also caught up with Michael Farrell , who was up this way for the Critical Animals component of TINA (This Is Not Art) in Newcastle, and also was staying in Sydney. In fact, some of us toasted his birthday while he was here. Another Libran, like yours truly. Michael has a new book out, BREAK ME OUCH, which is a poetry comic book (or 'poetry cartoons', Michael says) in a neat A4 black and white format, funny, zany, cool. He put it together himself with the help of 3 Deep , but I can't find a direct link to it on their site. I'm sure Michael would direct you to where you could get copies.

Richard Lopez dropped by a few days ago and left interesting comments about translation and internationalism. Like him, my translation projects aren't necessarily in languages I know well, or at all. I only really know English but rely on other versions, transliterations, dictionaries and other aids. Yet I also feel that much of the poetry that interest me is in languages other than English. One of the first books of poetry I ever ever bought was a selection of Montale's poems in English - one of those Penguin Modern European Poets series. For instance, at the moment I am reading translations of the Cuban exile poet José Kozer, a volume entitled Stet: Selected Poems of José Kozer , translated by Mark Weiss and available through Mark's Junction Press. I had heard of Kozer, specifically but not only from from Mark, but had never read much in translation. Now I can and am loving what I am reading so far. And, like Richard, I get something from the old Chinese poets, I have t...

Nearly 90 poets from around the world have contributed to Babylon Burning: 9/11 five years on , an anthology of poems on the Twin Towers atrocity and its consequences. But they aim for more than pious hand-wringing: the anthology will be free, but readers are asked to donate to the Red Cross. nthposition, the site behind the anthology, wants to maximise the money raised by listing it on iTunes as a PDF. (Only a handful of publishers are putting PDFs on iTunes, and they tend to be techie rather than literary.) Fourteen per cent of internet users visit iTunes. Though sales of poetry books are flat, online poetry is booming, poetry downloads rose by 40% last year and DEF Poetry Jam on HBO introduced a vast new – and young – audience to poetry, which nthposition wants to reach. Critic Marjorie Perloff recently remarked that the internet is "more fluid, flexible, and much more accommodating" than print for poetry. Todd Swift, nthposition poetry editor, agrees: "Auden said tha...