overland - review bias?

not to diss on the excellent overland or its blog discussion http://web.overland.org.au/?p=1058 - but came across the link on derek motion's blog typing space (sorry derek, tried to get the link to work but it won't for some reason keeps going to wordpress main page - so trust people know your blog well enough to have it in favourites or they can just google you and find it) - and so responded with a comment on derek's blog and a mention that i had done so on the overland blog comments.

please link to derek's blog comment on this one for what i think, as i am too lazy now to retype it all, but happy if any want to challenge me here directly.

i can't think of anything or anyone who warrants a blatant 'running interference' as i said on derek's comment stream - this sort of thing silences true and healthy discussion of poetics in ozland (or i said it in a longer and more detailed fashion).

just doesn't seem right to me and i feel it needs to be addressed more completely by the editors of Overland, than what appears to be the rationale offered in the Overland blog comments stream.

mistakes are ok, but to defend them as being ok, seems not too cool and a little lacking the rigor required for independent discussion. i myself, prefer not to write a review if there is nothing positive to say, let the work go unreviewed - but for those brave enough to challenge with a not so nice review, go for it - but watch your back.

Guided by poets - Queensland

Graham Nunn's wonderful blog Another Lost Shark http://grahamnunn.wordpress.com/ is full of interesting encounters and poetic exchanges. In a recent series he calls Guided by Poets, Graham has challenged poets to contribute a poem and then pass on to another poet, until a total of five poet/poems are reached. His first grouping started in Western Australia, (and interestingly stayed there) - the second group (newly posted) started in Queensland and headed southwards, grouping Nathan Shepherdson, Angela Gardner, me, Derek Motion and Nathan Curnow - well worth the visit.

exploratorium

waters the unfortunate waters

float bitter bits of missed

& all that
lip spitting really
leechs along
blown & churlish

herd-like
reviews from the
not really herds
& people




clear the toxic
floating off shore

odd tips

flint

the same things
pissing into
falls

the blood seepage gun points
all over
to make good for you?

all of this




in the garden
& free spider things
birds & weather

underneath the worms
rosegreen colours touch




they go many ‘ologues’
in the loungeroom
wavy bits
bent out grins

& mean it
in the new
that boom & bust

mistranslation - David Shapiro

multivalent? shock of polysemy?
this collection of tensions
the audience (an allusion to harp).

meanings are not
stable. for art
from Meyer, that
pluralism, eclecticism
cannot contain the
advantages of,
of purity. medium
changing centre,
margin, iconography?

a surrender, a delay
and not lured me less
because
he teased me
with seagulls.

that i think the past was better
(never repeat that)
is alive somewhere
a sentimental lie?
touched
you are not going to
die. art is still
a gift.

draw what you see
love good paper
poetry is cheap go
crazy trying to.

collaging the present.
not to starve.
that most art is
utterly
is who came in
in sandals. the (un)
important thing.
save everything (at
least) see a pattern.

some of
that stuttering
is your own.

they love to dance those americans

there is no way
no way this is happening
this is to say how
in the gaps
how to get to
i can't begin
i can't begin to imagine

in polis in hybrid
all s p r e a d out
a tribute a dying another
this is to say say talking
say talking is how is how
to edit to edit it out

writing the verses vs stuff
explaining the gaps this is to
say say nothing say
how to begin to begin
to imagine no way this
is this is happening

foam:e issue 6 goes live

Issue 6 of foam:e http://www.foame.org/index.html is live online. A great issue edited by Angela Gardner. In this issue you will find an amazing new poem by Laurie Duggan, as well as an interview with him.

Plus new work from the following poets; Michael Aiken, Ruth Arnison, Andrew burke, Sam Byfield, Ashley Capes, Anne M Carson, Kristina Marie Darling, Alison Eastley, Claudia Grinnell, Matthew Hall, Philip Hammial, Jill Jones, Heather Matthew, James Morris, Mark O'Flynn, Maurice Oliver, James Owens, Joyce Parkes, David Prater, Stephanie Radok, Brenda Saunders, Nathan Shepherdson, Jenny Sinclair, Elizabeth Kate Switaj, David Trame, and Jena Woodhouse.

One of my poems is also included, developed as part of my RADF concept grant to explore issues in the Shoalwater Bay area of Queensland. This particular poem is informed by resonances with the work of visual artist Dieter Irving's paintings completed during his Shoalwater Bay residency a few years ago.

The reviews in foam:e are excellent and thoughtful reading, offering interesting perspectives on the poets under review - Derek Motion reviews Michael Farrell's a raiders guide, I review Karen Knight's Postcards from the Asylum, Jena Woodhouse reviews MTC Cronin's Our Life is a Box./Prayers Without a God as well as Lyn Reeve's The Ink brushed distance and Angela Gardner reviews Jordie Albiston's Vertigo / a cantata /

I hope you take an opportunity to browse this issue and would like to invite your interest in the next issue 7 which I will edit. Submissions will open for that issue in July and close in November this year, for publication in March 2010.

So foam:e 6 is alive and kicking and I'll drink to that.