Ruby Street

What is an environment in poetry – maybe creating space for things to happen, even if that be small, let alone associative/expansive, or even rhapsodic, or taking in other 'data', big and small. In doing this, I consider the spaces in the poem, the associative if you like, as wave forms, intersections created by words, phrases, iterations and reiterations as words double-back on themselves, as a mapping of territory, the sense of both looking close (the micro) and looking out to and beyond a horizon (the macro). The effects multiply and affect each other, there is a sharing of being.

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...

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....

In the March issue (no.23) of Cottonmouth , which you can download here along with many other issues, contains one of my recent untitled poems. Up till now I have always given a title to my poems but late last year I wrote a whole series of untitled ones. It's not a permanent approach but I enjoyed the process. The poems are gradually getting published in various places. That issue of Cottonmouth also contains poems by Tim Wright, Rachael Mead, Graham Nunn, Corey Wakeling, Liam Ferney and others.

I seem to have written a small book of poems in the last few weeks - maybe - there's a touch over 40 pages worth. All done in the thin cracks of a very busy time - I made myself do it. But the problem is, none of the poems have titles. One almost did but the title came down into the poem. Now, I've always been someone who'd said that titles are important, as important as the poem in one sense (well, they are part of the poem, part of the visual as well as the textual). I'm usually quite good at them. So, what has gone wrong? Am I just being titularly lazy? What to do? Overturn years of well-established practice? I feel a wee crise washing across me. I've read a lot of poems without titles, sure, we all have, but leaving these ones as they are doesn't seem quite right (and I wonder why I think that). Neither does numbering them nor calling them all 'poem', or suchlike. Nor could they become one long poem - that is not right either, in this instan...

Something new, finding poetry in all corners of the net .

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.

And just some bits and pieces before the year ends, mainly a bit of skiting. 4W 18 , which was published in November, featured the winner of the Booranga Prize for best poem in the issue , which was none other than me, myself, I. To read the winning poem, The Beautiful Anxiety , you'll have to buy the mag for the moment. But here's a taste: ... and distinguish the cold of it, dropt on sun shadows within the petrochemical hum it’s erotic scent, a ghost of ash passing stars, and a kind of subliminal speech among legends of flowers and birds, roses ... - from 'The Beautiful Anxiety', Jill Jones *** Also, the annual Newcastle Poetry Prize was announced in December. No, I did not win that one - the winner was Mark Treddinick for his poem Eclogues - but two of my poems were included in the anthology. Again, you should get the anthology for the whole nine metres, but here's a line or nine from mine: ... The birds do not care which is why we watch them. Rather than knot u...

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