lou-waves

foam:e 8 is online now

2011-03-26T09:19:00.002+10:00

Laurie Duggan has edited this edition of foam:e

Poetry and reviews and an interview...worth taking a look and spending some time.

This is the 8th Issue of foam:e

The annual online launch is March of each year - so let's have some celebrating now.

on another kind of roll - some new work

2010-09-02T11:29:00.004+10:00

I am pleased to say that Famous Reporter 41 June/July 2010 http://walleahpress.com.au/41.html (which does not list me as a contributor, yet Ralph assures me includes me in the journal) has published one of the longer sequences from my (working title) Shack Life Fevers collection I'm developing at my Verona Sands beach shack/cottage in Tasmania.

The work in Famous Reporter includes two different sets of the ongoing (i hope) series Figuring shells with Mahler. I have an extensive collection of classical instrumental and opera records. It is very comprehensive. I've always enjoyed all kinds of music, but gain a particular pleasure when I'm in the mood to listen to music less contemporary. My three children heard many of the great composers during their most fractious periods as babies and toddlers, it having a great calming and unique stimulus of the 'good mood' kind on them and me.

As I have not yet got hold of a copy of Famous Reporter 41, I'm wondering if I might be a little delusional and it's possible (even though I've been assured that the work is really there) that it has disappeared...or is not present. But it is really, isn't it...

As it is now September, spring and all, I'm sure that Ralph won't mind me including the work on my blog, so that any of you who haven't yet read it in Famous Report 41, might get a chance to read it here. Apologies in advance for any disruption to the formatting in the first sequence, but I couldn't complete the copy on the pdf version, so copied from my own files instead.

Figuring shells with Mahler

in three movements

first

water leans the view/an open mouth

that drops ideas

dazed under sun/under cover

(think) hairy men and overweight women look better in clothes

even when clothes come off as easily as breath blown

ignoring elements of stress in life/is life

the asylum? how so (and) why is it

better to behave?

age responsible age so suburban and good neighbour

now/you/mow/you/turn the music down

when did surly depart/the edgy

love's black ops?

eat anathema

eyes prised open

on drug art/looking glass assets

all kinds of woes and bliss interrogate

people storms vent/you can buy roses in dream street (whoever

plays me she winks that) the characters the monochrome

paintings/such sweet

laneways

restless

Q&A's into soft parts/pressure points

a wooden bowl yields/incomplete

lights halo/loose sheets inkless at bedtime

come to sleep sleep

ideas/cured in some distance

second

when Fairweather left Bribie

his raft made land made somewhere

pacific

what did he want/what

did he really? and find

he grew silence

painting

he grew old

(do the raft thing) cross this channel south

pass Bruny (in a day or a year pass

in an hour) Antarctica

a whitepatch/a whiteout/somehow make notes

another history and what's not there now

is here maybe? all heroic or mad doesn't matter much

leaning/the view

time ungrounded time (there is the ground)

sealed in

outstanding moments quicken or slow

/raftless

third

all day long yachts pass and smaller craft jetty the sand's breathless lip

in survey/gulls net the ocean's pull/the island's long reach

days after dark after light after words slip out and touch

something

deeper

(a native bee loose in the house)

keeping its own rhythm

on the near shore small waves fold/music enough

it's hard to finish or start

(a note here for those who may think my research on Fairweather is skewed or wrong...I know that when he was alive, he took off from Darwin on his famous raft journey towards Bali where he successfully made land and lived and painted for a number of years before locating to Bribie Island in Queensland...my referencing of Fairweather's raft leaving Bribie is not referencing the living man but the one who died)

Figuring shells with Mahler 2

sonatas in D major

improvisatory

in his elegant loss
the bird no longer sings
in order to flee loss in memory
what breaks over meaning?
it's the jumble sale the dreamlike
maybe these realities peel
away the bird will

jarring chords are big gestures
mode this passion opposing/oppositional
a solemn march and trumpets
his new notes disquiet/overwrite
with calm resignation
to climax a prophetic theme
always/the bird sings

gawky and awkward

noise and the days too long in the too fraught
thought too much to discover equilibrium
how do the notes play out in changes and shifts?
not entirely all about sound
surely sound isn't the only reference
notes fractured by life/reconstructed
reason enough to progress

music/a thawed honesty/confessional
gruesome irony awakes the fragmentary
doomed man pessimistic on the doomed planet
debris on the far sand/beached
places where shells return on tides
specialised philosophy/these lines of poetry
defiance/hear it call now that clean sound

and errors

no gentle splash
becalmed in pleasure lost
forceful waves are silent
the satires and talk
a flatness that rushes
whose burning scorn?
and yearn/the other shore

a melody that shuns
our breath expelled/effusive
deeply self consuming
what else rises dancing?
a fair wind that catches
sand pounded/it delivers
diamonds/shells we turn

overland 200 - my poem 'on a role' and other interesting collaborative things

2010-09-02T09:34:00.007+10:00

enigma of a fever chart

not sleep or sleeplessness. fever an alphabet in my head. blocked

nose, slack mouth. push a weighted stretch into night's panorama.

time moves the air around my bed. words jiggle in books. two

hundred pages fall where the floor is. darkness paces curiosity

turns stars, disaffection, off. the twittering parts.

freaks play with dream and with fire. i churn its bulk, cross to the

window. earth's amber bridge glows. pops, sparks, yawns. loose

bits. how to measure its worth? other dawns exist, they settle on

other lips. you could chart whether i've drooled words all night,

or heaped a mouthful of ash sludge onto my pillow.

When Derek first mentioned this project, I was interested and quite excited about the prospect of contributing to a collaborative enterprise and I said yes immediately. I thought about the way to approach my ten lines a fair bit prior to actually starting the poem, and I admit that I did wait for some form of outside inspiration to edge me forward in the first instance. I desired to commence from a place, more loosely liminal than structured, at least in the first instance.

As the project required the twenty poets to give a nod to the idea of 'on a role' a past, present and future, maybe our own vision, maybe not visionary at all, I waited and pondered at a time when I was not well, but not sick enough to take to my bed, just not one hundred percent. I was re reading Val McDermid's Tony Hill books, being drawn into the strange and shocking world that character inhabits, both inside and outside of himself.

I had noticed that many of the books used quotations (in epigraph form or in titles) from the poetry of T.S. Eliot, specifically from the collection Four Quartets featuring the poems Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding. So I re read these poems again and then, felt I had a connection which would work for my 'on a role' the past. The T.S. Eliot poems are what got me moving into the poem, gave me the title and some re mixed lines within. Once I started, I gave myself time every day for ten days, forced myself on some days to go back to the poem and rattle it, and take it somewhere else.

One of the more successful aspects of the process, (for me as the author) was deciding early on to align the notion of 'on a role' the present, within my body. The body functions and the particular state of my body during the creation of my ten lines. Ideas began then, on the way to look at this poem from the viewpoint of 'on a role' the future, and it is here that I also had to travel back again, prior to gaining a sense of how the future might be a feature in my piece.

Before I left Queensland, to travel to Tasmania and live in Tasmania permanently I had to clear through so much paper, poems, notes, unfinished ideas and decided to hold a bonfire in the back yard and burn all of this work. The bonfire was lit each night for several nights, and I watched the work (which would never be good enough to satisfy me, or inspire me to keep) go up in dazzling flames. When I got settled in Tasmania, I dreamed about the process of this burning and thought about some of the poems and ideas that I'd burned - but thought about them in a different way, looking at them forward, rather than backward. Thinking that this burning, this dreaming, in fact was my 'on a role' the future.

An interesting part of this process, a personal 'tic' or viewpoint I have, is a conviction that most of the better work I produce, comes about like a fever. As I've now been in Tasmania for nearly a year, I've decided to put together some of the poetry I've written here under the working title 'Shack Life Fevers'.

I like the idea of approaching writing from different directions every now and then. Quite a while back, on the online discussion group Poneme (sadly now just a mere ghostly and sometimes icky presence compared to what it once was), a few of us developed work using unfamiliar processes, and then we included a series of 'studio notes' which outlined the way we approached the content of our individual work. This work was published in Haiku Review #5http://www.haikureview.net/HR5 and it situates well against the collaborative poem just developed for Overland 200.

Whilst still on the notion of collaborative experiments, I'd like to include another poem, developed by Jen Crawford and myself, during the hey days of the old poneme, and which Jen included in her book bad appendix published by Titus Books in 2008.

I'll mention the process we used first and then leave you with the poem. We both agreed to take a failed poem, one which we would not use intact, and work through that poem emailing changes and adding and shifting the work from two poems into one and expanding and contracting it until we both felt the work was done with us.

A surprise for us both, I think, was the discovery half way through the project process, that Jen had begun with her own failed Emily Dickinson poem and I had begun with my own failed Virginia Woolf poem. We did want to disrupt language and engage with its gaps and silences and I think we did that. And the poem...

something familiar about the way there are

air something wha tissue

issue that land. coul me there?

***

just there on the bank / this air catches leaves

here under hear silent mouth yes

something’s fa way there are

***

see?see?see?see?see? going

is bank / riverbed

bubbles

***

it still there? itstillFriday? star

tle about paid words any photos

no photos from that land. could it still be night time there?

***

the mouth’s issue is silent / going under

going and

no words left / can’t even hear / the

***

good. yes, the journalists are very well paid. anyway what

n’t I see? on the for coffee. it was

bank coff ee under

***

did I think I wanted to remember? see? corruption

core upt er

the Ouse / uneven air bubbles / and

***

mouth’s Ouse /

no/no/no on the silent

body’s

***

the

ideas /

***

body’s ideas / startle the riverbed

why can’t I see? on the Friday we went for coffee. it was

silent / I wanted to reme ruption

***

the

catches

it was the no the just the

***

good. yes, re very well pai

leaves

member? leaves there catches yes

***

there words

startle

the

***

on left /

/ good I to /left anyway it

can’t

overland 200

2010-09-01T16:42:00.002+10:00

I've just received my contributor copy (and a cheque!) for the 200th issue of Overland.

Congratulations to all involved - it is a great big number and a great big party happening in Melbourne for the launch.

...............

Launch Party for Overland 200

Feddish
7pm-9pm
FREE

View map »

Overland literary journal is launching its 200th edition, and will be marking the occasion with an evening of celebration. If you’re a writer or a reader, a friend or a well-wisher – or if you’re just curious about what one of Australia’s most prestigious literary journals is up to now – this is an event you won’t want to miss.

.............

Derek Motion asked 20 poets to each develop a ten line piece which he would remix into a 200 line poem. Derek's remixing "I forged the 200 line poem out of the raw material. I cut lines into tiny strips of paper and remixed..." is an interesting and playful poem titled 'Before Elapsing'. I think, in every instance, Derek kept individual lines intact and his original prompt to each poet was to look at each piece as" 'on a role'...the goal was to encourage poetry that looked at the role of the poet in the past, in the present and in the future."

You could do yourself a favour and grab a copy of the Overland 200 issue. Lots of interesting things inside and the poem is an edgy and charming way to feature the work of twenty poets, speaking within the confines of a solitary piece. It is more than suggesting a lessening of single ownership in contemporary practice, it is embracing a concept of community and collaboration which feels good and timely.

Poets featured are Adam Ford, Zenobia Frost, Rebecca Giggs, Susan Hampton, Stu Hatton, Kelly-Lee Hickey, Hal Judge, Dan Lee, Carly-Jay Metcalf, Scot-Patrick Mitchell, Derek Motion, Ella O'Keefe, David Prater, Jaya Savige, Bel Schenk, Andrew Slattery, Amelia Walker, Louise Waller, Benny Walter and Fiona Wright

shouting and whispering - paul squires

2010-08-08T13:48:00.002+10:00

Paul Squires is dead.

When I heard this news I was shocked and I was sad.

I don't have too many fans of my poetry, but he was one.

I have never meet Paul and now I will never meet him, but I did get to know him a little through comments he made on my own blog and on other blogs I followed.

I found that Paul had gone through the back posts of my blog and left a trail of comments.

He was like that, he did things like that.

And if he liked something he would say so, and if he didn't like something he would say so.

Kept his heart on his sleeve he did and he pulled up his cuffs often.

One of his comments which appears on the comments stream of my post below this one -

" I am not good at whispering, Louise, sorry. Shouting across the room with a slightly drunken slur, more my style, I'm afraid. Now that I am rich I am thinking of paying people to make comments on my blog. I have completely lost the ability or desire to take Australian Literature seriously enough to type it with unironic capitals. One word from you over there saying anything would be worth more than a thousand Government grants (haha). Friday, poet's night, have a fantabulous one! I am off to offer Pam Brown and John Tranter an apology on the behalf of the working class, sorry we didn't mean it."

Just a perfect example of the kind of comment he would make.

He was a strange man/author and his echo of thoughts which he shared on the blogs he visited and on his own blog, showed what a true individual he was.

Two of his poems are up in the current foam:e click on the foam:e link on the post below this one if you want to read them.

Wherever you are Paul, it is probably beer o'clock and I'm sorry that I didn't send you more comments.

May at Booranga

2010-04-23T10:57:00.002+10:00

If you are in Wagga in May come and visit with me at Booranga Writers Centre from 6th - 20th May. I am really looking forward to the residency. I've been told that I will have time to write as well as meet with local writing groups and finally get to catch up with the Director and well known blogger, twitterer and erstwhile poet Derek Motion

I'll be able to catch up with my beautiful son Jasper also, who is graduating from his Avionics course on the morning of the 13th before he moves on to Nowra to work with the new Navy helicopters there.

The Wagga library will be hosting a wine and nibbles event at 5pm on the 13th May, with me as their guest. I'll be reading some poems from my first collection Slipway published in the book Swelter and I'll also read some from my latest collection holding Job's hand Maybe I'll have a chance to chat and share some small 'p' poetics.

This will be my second poetry outing since leaving Queensland. I attended one of the Republic poetry readings in Hobart late last year and read a poem there, so I'm feeling excited to get another opportunity to perform some more.

I've only been to Wagga once before, in Aug/Sept last year on the way to Tasmania - I went to Wagga beach and waited for two days in a row, trying to catch the five o'clock wave with no luck.

It seems that the local joke caught me instead.

foam:e 7 is live!

2010-03-22T09:18:00.002+10:00

I'm really pleased to announce that foam:e 7 edition is online now. Just a little late but worth the wait I think. This edition is the second one edited by me, foam:e 5 being the first.

Editing is a wonderful experience full of angst, joy and some special ah-ha moments that come along. I know that my own poetry continues to improve as I take some time discovering the large and diverse range of poetries on offer.

Contributors for this issue include many well known Australian and International poets and also some not so well known. All of the poets contributing to this issue are actively involved with making and supporting poetry and that involvement (can we call poetry involvement love) creates a fresh and vibrant poetics.

Michael Aiken Stuart Barnes Hugh Behm-Steinberg Iain Britton

Chris Brown Sam Byfield Julie Chevalier Jennifer Chrystie

Stuart Cooke Mark Cunningham Alison Eastley Angela Gardner

Patrick Green Stu Hatton Matt Hetherington Jill Jones

Peycho Kanev KJ Natalie Knight Kent MacCarter

Clyde McGill Siofra McSherry Adam Moorad Derek Motion

Kristine Ong Muslim Jal Nicholl Mark O'Flynn Sergio Ortiz

Lyn Reeves Ian Seed Nathan Shepherdson Paul Squires

Yassen Vasilev Vlanes Les Wicks Jena Woodhouse

Angela Gardner has put together a special feature on Irish poetry, including poems, interviews and reviews. Read more about this feature and discover Irish voices with a charming lilt...

Edna Coyle-Green Cherry Smyth Edna Wyley

A real surprise for contributors.

The next issue of foam:e will be edited by expat Aussie poet Laurie Duggan, now living in England. Laurie will bring a lifetime of professional poetics and experience to his edition.

I know you will send him some really special work.

So...seven cheers for foam:e 7... poetry to puzzle, query, celebrate and enjoy!

canola days

2010-01-12T13:17:00.003+10:00

light something

2010-01-12T13:03:00.002+10:00

near water

2010-01-12T12:40:00.001+10:00

2009-10-28T11:50:00.001+10:00

pink notes

thanks to Cunningham we can cross. we can drive

through what must have been almost impossible

to trek, on horseback or on foot. we can move

into an unknown west, heading through clouds

with homemade sandwiches, a thermos and a map

in his yard at every chance. is he working to prove

or disprove luck? hard work made asset rich and not

just another Asian immigrant. from the house behind,

can i say how much pleasure i have, watching his

beautiful garden grow on the Deep Bay waterfront

2009-10-27T09:53:00.001+10:00

pink notes

the wireless internet drops, the journey's

pulse is smaller with a night light

and a book, we're snug and spooned, and

sex is rocked, arched, in a small bed

where bodies find no better place to hide

a mountain doesn't wake beneath each

varied sky, and, though, the rocky mounds

shape lips, today, Sleeping Beauty lies

unmoved by myth, or image, that

rocks are somehow kissing clouds

2009-10-26T14:12:00.002+10:00

pink notes

touch this end of the sun, a glance on fern shaped

weeds beside roadway bends, fuchsia tops sprout

from gravel, clay dust and the highway's sealed grey

bloom turns rainbow blurs of light, i camera,

these engines moving faster than dark

barefoot in Cygnet, wait in the car, keep the window

down so the smoke drifts out, "why do i talk so loud"

says one as they laugh, on the footpath, beautiful

cheeks flushed, it's so un avant garde this art,

wears beanies and scarves and youth

changes

2009-09-06T16:42:00.002+10:00

I have been moving over the last week. And for the next two weeks, will be on a road trip of sorts with Ray. Southern Tasmania will be our end (new ) destination.

We were wanting to make this move for some time and both feel really good to be in the middle of it all now. We've sold our house in Queensland. This aspect is just starting to sink in.

My email has changed because I have no landline and for some reason, probably, I will need to attend to changing things on the blog. In lieu of fixing and fussing with it during the journey, I'll just post my new email here: lawaller{at}hotmail{dot}com

If you can't make comments, just drop me a line. I'll try to post something when I can.

Wish me/us luck...

one thousand more

2009-08-23T12:24:00.003+10:00

I have been dipping into things slowly, clearing my head for other things, learning to notice...

...the fumbling edges of idle moments.

one thousand petals to toss

2009-08-23T11:14:00.005+10:00

It's a good time to come back for a little while.

Did you miss me while I was gone? Found so much on.

Small details load don't they? I've kept up with favourite

blogs, just not my own. A wordless offering by way of...

2009-06-10T12:48:00.001+10:00

flow chart sopranos

geodesic angles/cache of goods
flaw personality on talent
rising in water
failed sacks words

air bubbles flow as if
in errant purpose
speak rivals stay
concrete feet steady

stay down
sing these bad stains
ill-fated and sweet
orchestrations

2009-06-07T10:39:00.001+10:00

mulga

for Michael Sharkey

sage prof he said

more should get out into

it’s not about where

once you’ve been

places rate

heading back

notice years, that thing

only, just, not scenery

where the thing is set

rubbing my head off

burn notebooks

finger another lift

ash wind, scatter it

it comes back

2009-05-25T09:12:00.000+10:00

half way home story

is patience making, tat ocean collars.

unit dwellers inner city notwithstanding

“it’s alright” yearning.

not only masculine go fishing

trout, great career -- fear is hair

falling away, not calm -- can’t tat

that moderate weather, too forgotten

underneath sunset, storm, daydream.

a hand made ‘best of’

year nothing is here belly up and panting.

skin watches, new tat gravitas.

2009-05-22T10:19:00.000+10:00

blah blah critics, blah

yeah, don’t get it, but

see what isn’t here now

holds dimensions, awareness

of the thing that is not present

but is, in all aspects, a whole

thing within a known, and

context should be considered

as if it is

by the window in this room

it or he or she or the he/it dog

the she/it cat, maybe a budgie

young and unsexed, hanging in a cage

near another window, a bookshelf

a good chair

can’t see a thing not known

unless it runs into

the flat forehead

right about now - so conceptual

in gestured loops make it such

everything known is post

/after - real or not

2009-05-14T09:52:00.000+10:00

doubting lotus, grasshopper

to be careful enough

to hold a life or a thing

a flower, a child, a teacup of

fine bone, and to hold

as if this had no weight

in hands, even as

arms ache with the pressure

to not let go, hold lightly enough

to touch, knowing where gravity

takes the weighted fall

2009-05-13T12:34:00.002+10:00

real estate odes

by accident found Seymour

could be this then, and meets

all requirements

so that each need

is forward of the wildest hope / it’s just there

on its own, as a picture

and this picture holds what a future haunts with

this picture is you, walking six fur animals

he is welding made things in the shaded distance

sounds of fixing or making / a suitability this space

running out to catch up

people smiling / in the picture

flash / life scenes taking place

2009-05-01T10:25:00.002+10:00

they were not friendly birds

(after cronin after rumi)

searching for forms and plans to run out the words
trail the hand and the hand's pen
that seems today to trek over sand towards
somewhere, maybe it's a place with water
or more sand, in this place caught, in a desert
with only the heat burning up from the feet and down
from the head until the hand is all that's left
holding a pencil that trills like a rainbird
or wails curlew into the deep end and dark
when the hand with a pencil or a pen is awake
is around and is present and the other hand holds
some unlit thing, waits for a turn, for some focus
because the hand is moving too fast to stop
even for seconds and the lighter or light is lost

in a later frame is a future, a delayed gratification
and it's better to finish this movement through sand first
wanting to speak without a mouth, wanting to reach facts
to push dreams, in a small room, an insistent hum that surrounds
reminds outside is what overwhelms perceptions, not this
comforting beat where one hand is praying, is caressing
all that's not known and tender is praying the other's heart
with the lightness of each fall, each adam and his eve
in each first garden clutching the only thing worth taking
and each desire, uncompromised by threat, the hand takes
and moves in this slowed path, finds a light shifting
the placeless, signs blur or sea mist or fog or caress
in shoals in a valley or high on a mountain top and the hand
believes this is all worth knowing, a valley a desert a sea

the hand not sharing absolutely all the facts, and the facts
are in buildings, or forest groves or out at the edges of pages
only not this hand and not this story where forms are like birds
and they are crowding and pushing hard at the silence praying
in a small room, with a large door and outside is a future
wanting to take all this back into itself, and the hand moves
on using whatever history, whatever the past says now

2009-04-16T10:45:00.002+10:00

zen and poetry hand in hand?

who'd have thought that enlightenment could fall like that
a series of answers as a surface with question marks

provocation flows on through the first
as a self begins and becomes itself a selfless

as a jolt mid line it falls
the unmarked the intuitive

2009-04-14T11:53:00.002+10:00

real estate odes

2

someone does something with poles elsewhere

a path stops its neatly placed concrete
at stage two the developer bankrupt

off the pathway's tangent
grass meets mangrove edge and jetty spot

the tasteless rape of a lowland finally ends

***

in the wetlands in an un dredged lake
as reenactment from the african queen

barely at my knees
on sanded banks
movie vivid
further years back
waist or shoulder depth
depending on tide

***

why build these monsters here?

the way the jetty edges out
is house enough

the undeveloped
an intact hope

2009-04-13T10:21:00.004+10:00

real estate odes

1

what some need
(and what they can't do
for themselves)
is rip it out take it off strip it back
to bare and pristine lines
what it is then all exposed
is not just a place where time is spent

***

so this is your home?
a rare concept
something to hold
your heart says

***

it's on display an owner's taste
(and so many with none)
bad carpet a cluttered domain
the less than verdant lawn
takes a practised eye for
the place place place
(it's everything) they tell us
starting with the view
and the land?
it stays faithful if you do
if you love the land
a home comes next

***

inside the circa
the sturdiness of cedar and pine
(you hear it clear) how "your furniture
would look good there"
(even if there is presently
an other's place)

***

lotto fails and fails to convince
it's no good counting on luck
when luck is always what it is
no luck today but
not so hopeless
another chance

***

did i pray once?
(don't make me admit
the unbelieving side of my brain
will sneer and offer a cruel quip
a blatant snark)
in my boots i have
yes i've prayed for it

***

so settle settle for less
just doesn't cut
change is afloat
and what change is
is something
less complicated
walking away from
what should be
almost enough
change keeps things in flux
it's perspective and timing
(more than anything else)
if it would help
on my knees again
to have that

***

it's the nature of me to favour risk
toil with a purpose touching the ground
the seedlings look good in the garden
herbs and rising colours in rock beds
fragrant flower heads climbing everything
that's upright or curved or bent on a fence
romanticism not lost in this post modernist
prism (and you don't want that? really?)

***

feeling out weather
what weather conveys
once spent a whole day walking
in a cold climate town
shooting image on image of chimneys
the houses abut and these rising
in a clear blue paddock
brick and stone monuments
told me more than a quick check on bom
weather knows itself differently where i am
structures have tin slant rooftops
the blue has only sky rising and sun

Some Shoalwater

2009-04-08T13:47:00.005+10:00

In 2007 artist Dieter Irving produced fifty limited edition prints of five of his 1996 Shoalwater Bay residency paintings. Dieter developed this project as part of the 2007 Peace Convergence in Yeppoon. A local protest during the military exercises held every second year in the pristine Shoalwater area. During this period I purchased a set of Dieter's prints (all the original paintings were sold for hefty prices to local art collectors) - and I was lucky enough to get set 50/4 (with 50/1-50/3 being allocated to Dieter's and partner Penny's three children.)

I have known Dieter and Penny for as long as I have lived in this area, participating with them in many cultural events and sharing much in common with them in our varied areas of creative interest. In 2008 I received a small grant to develop poetry based on the Shoalwater area.

During the time I was writing about and visiting the area, a coal port was being suggested as a further burden to deplete the natural value of the area (this would be on top of the military presence and much more damaging) - and before I completed my series of poems, the coal port was vetoed by Peter Garrett, who is also a staunch supporter and campaigner for Shoalwater Bay's environmental significance. During the mid/late nineties he assisted in campaigning to stop sand mining in this same area.

I find it just as difficult to write overtly political poems as overtly nature poems , and the on again off again nature of the coal port proposal made it doubly hard to refine my own terms for creating work I would be happy with. I made many notes, visited the area and wrote many lines, some will not be published, but they did assist me to refine my own terms eventually.

I had, prior to starting my project, asked permission to base some of my poems on Dieter's paintings. The first of these poems to be published is in foam:e #6

A slide show of all of Dieter's Shoalwater residency paintings can be viewed here bottom right of the main page.

2009-04-08T08:07:00.001+10:00

no ground holds

it's almost an aspect
insects sting and timing
a level of attitude
steps on the chartless

2009-04-07T09:44:00.001+10:00

it falls into place

it's a blessing
dim in the cold wind
roof off the place
some notes change up
progress clouds and above
the sun where it has always sat
(the sungod from a primitive past)
clouded up (a modesty
not wanting to blind who
gaze on)

overland - review bias?

2009-03-25T12:15:00.007+10:00

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

2009-03-24T22:25:00.002+10:00

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.

2009-03-20T08:59:00.003+10:00

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

2009-03-18T11:05:00.002+10:00

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

2009-03-18T00:21:00.002+10:00

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

2009-03-05T22:15:00.002+10:00

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.

2009-02-16T11:10:00.002+10:00

when i'm not drinking australian wine

'i like the way she
breaks her (her) lines' the way the

music introducing no repeats for house (the tv
with cello sounds) like like how the mind can conjure

i like the way curtis teases how curtis makes me roll roll
how blogpost armantrout

her third third way i i like the way she takes her time
(is it the bach?what number?what conductor?) the glass late like

when language/flarf poetry is not enough

2009-01-06T09:33:00.004+10:00

Ron Silliman's blogpost links list of Monday 5th Jan 2009http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ contains a link to Charles Bernstein's 'Eulogy for Emma' (Emma Bee Bernstein). I cannot imagine how horrible the loss of a child could be, and for her family, Charles, Susan and Felix, my deepest sympathy at such a loss. Emma was a young woman, so brilliant and so beautiful, with prospects for a wonderful future.

I read the eulogy Charles wrote and was deeply moved by his honesty and his clarity in expressing the feelings that would be, under such circumstances, almost impossible to express - yet he did find a way to make his grief meaningful and to celebrate his love for Emma - celebrate her life. Her brother Felix, also wrote an amazing eulogy filled with that same beauty that only truth allows.

What I did notice when reading the eulogy Charles wrote was the use of quoted poetry throughout; the poets Wallace Stevens, Tennyson, Swinburne, Dickinson - all members of the western canon and possibly considered quietest, by today's post avant, flarf, and language school poets. I wondered why Charles Bernstein did not select some work from his own contemporary affiliations. His work is considered to be exceptional within the language school, and his leanings are decidedly post avant or post canon at least.

I am not writing to criticise his eulogy, or to criticise the language/flarf poetry community which I support and read, but I did think about what decides 'choice' during a time of great turmoil and in a state of deep grief, choice for him was to search out poetry which held meaning, which could be understood, which conveyed something akin to emotional connection with a/his particular state of being. That he included those quotes meant that he understood them and that they represented something to him in his time of great grief. The quoted works signified something meaningful.

I do wonder what will be available in fifty years or more of much of the language and flarf constructs of poets writing today. What will mean something to people in their times of joy or grief. What poetry will say for them when they need some expression in language to stand beside them.

Will flarf have anything to leave behind for people? Does it matter that language poetry may hold no meaning? Can poetry matter if it's only made for now and if it does not hold any understanding for anyone? What should poetry say, beyond its author construction? Does it need to say anything? And if meaning does not matter, and if it is only pattern or play, why write it and hope to have it published? Doesn't publishing poetry require readers?

What do people (poets and non poets) want when they reach for poetry - maybe not greatness, maybe not sentiment, maybe not old fashioned self indulgence - but surely they do want something which reaches them, something which they can recognise.

I do not think that poetry needs to be easily understood. I do think that many constructs within contemporary poetry hold up and will remain available to people well into the future generations. But, here's the thing, does the majority of poetry being written, blogged, published and performed today really matter to anyone? (Or matter to anyone outside of the poet's circle or school, and if it doesn't why bother with it).

I know that it is very difficult to select poetry which matters, or has qualities which matter , but it is possible to make a subjective choice for yourself or myself about the work which matters to you or to me. It is possible to care for poetry and care about the poetry you (or me) write or read.

Charles Bernstein made a choice about the work he wanted to include within his eulogy for his beautiful child, and he did not select poetry which held no meaning or was written for pattern or play, he grabbed onto work which was good contemporary poetry when it was written, and which is still good poetry today. Poetry which held meaning because the poets understood their craft. The forms are out dated now, but the poetry is as shinning and as fresh as it was then. It is good poetry, strange but open, mysterious but resonant.

It seems to me that Charles Bernstein selected work to include in his 'Eulogy for Emma' which was meaningful to him, because meaning was important. And meaning is important after all, language is important, making something far richer than play and leaving something for all to find if they want.

Essay on time

2008-12-22T08:38:00.005+10:00

In the decade first, in that time marked by the two thousand and's,
by way of, as introduction needs an approximation of time,
a situating of sorts for terms of historical renderings, for the flavour
of particulars and always the timeline moving fast, moving slow.
An introduction, at least knows which and what time is. Resists
any infinite encompassing. Allows that time is, in relation to one,
time is the beginning, time is the middle and time is the end.

As others do, and again, time is framed differently.
Some history only snagged bits,caught in ways similar
to flood drift's entourage of shifted things, caught by a bank,
stuck in the tree fallen near a creek, and time in each.
History always passing or snagged on something.

And time is this thing now aspecting. Time is my breathing and my
right hand, as flotsam drifted from my brain, caught up in.
A small page using lines and time counting is a present right now.
Mostly moving along in the flood drift's momentum.

Time is water, it arrives at some point in an ocean.
The ocean then, where all that history is. Or somewhere,
the bits that history, or an ocean can't claim, still snagged
or loosened and decayed, scattered by the dry banks.

Present, where my hand is this, is one of the many things in time.
A tangible trace here on the page. Later on, so much else,
the other snags, and so many, it's impossible to contain such
multitudes. One solo life, as the multitudes exist, complex as the
books, as the names and the whole is so many things lived.

Stories of you, stories of i, stories of them. In the yard by the fence,
some tree planted before i ever lived - pulling at weeds strayed there,
small mother of millions, growing in the mulch at the tree's base.
This tree decades making its shade, now shades me.

Or swimming in tides - when the low tide starts moving in, reclaiming
with its progress. At the apex between two different flows, on the point
of sand banked where the two tides cross, gently at first - but closer
to the tides high mark, the intersecting tides crash against themselves.
The tides splash up as if they were crashed on rock.

History sand then, and sand banked underneath. And this point
is a place less dangerous when the tide is low. Once in time,
the sand banked here, banked higher. The sand changed, but
here is still a place in time. Swimming in this drag and push,
swimming in this confluence of two tides coming in.

What time is, it is on and on. Is everything as it exists all around
before and ahead. The future is, always almost tomorrow
and before tomorrow comes, time is. And time is now, is already
so much and so much come and gone. And i'm here now in this
flotsam, snagged here in a history larger than one. Here on the
page, i know what time is. Later on, one being and this, for
them who read, where and when, and what time is.

sum/sille/seesun/wereds

2008-12-18T20:26:00.005+10:00

you toe pee are

ner varn are

car mar

pee ss

Dorothy Porter 1954 - 2008

2008-12-11T23:59:00.002+10:00

I was very sad to hear the news that Dorothy Porter passed away this week.
I didn't know her, only knew her work. I met her in Brisbane in 2002 at the Queensland poetry festival when she was a headline act on the programme and I was performing there for the first time. In large and generous writing she signed a copy of her book 'other worlds poems 1997-2001' for me.

From the first sequence in that collection, my favourite, an excerpt of three of the ten poems -

Comets

III

What voice of dirty ice
is talking in my head?

I can't watch the sky
without ringing Heaven.

My heart ticking as slowly
as poison
over its hissing dial tone.

Pick up, Heaven.
Please pick up.

It's me.

VI

A comet processed
as a negative
is black.

Space is white
with melanoma spots
for stars.

Let me end in fire
on a night of low smog
bright on the horizon.

Will my lips stream
a black tail?

X

Stop trying to remember
the swarming pong
off extinct broth.

Stop scuttling obessively
through antique shellgrit.

Stand
in the comet's
blue tickling tail.

Snag its fever.

as a decorating principle

2008-12-03T20:55:00.002+10:00

to find its potential you try to learn
what in its impact opens a room
stuffed with the weighted? if you
could start again go the curtain-
less go the clean lines on the wall
why a chair a chest and a pen just
there? in a notebook where it falls
in the dark house you press these
lessons you open it up and you
start again you press light on

all grown up now 2

2008-11-22T21:26:00.003+10:00

My youngest, Hannah turned 18 today - happy b'day hanzie! She's out clubbing with mates at the moment. They're having a scavenger hunt, wearing costumes and probably getting a little wasted (but in a good way I hope) - they're all booked into motel rooms and have some safeguards in place for themselves. Hannah has a fear of heights, so she wanted to jump out of a plane for her birthday and she did earlier this morning.

This shot features Hannah and the mud cake, yum...Rebecca and her youngest Ella in the background at the family part of the celebrations.

In this shot, Hannah and her tandem instructor are ready to go, and I couldn't believe the size of the plane. I did wonder if it could really climb to 11 thousand feet. She has a dvd of the freefall and the whole experience (including the loud screaming and the excitement, a bit of swearing).

Hannah said it was very peaceful up there once she got into it and freefalling was fantastic.

This shot we got on zoom as they were turning to land. I'm so happy for her, glad that she challenged herself and found more fun than she ever expected.

all grown up now

2008-11-22T20:55:00.003+10:00

Because I haven't posted for a while I'm taking this opportunity to post some pictures of my kids. The something else in my life which adds so much pleasure, reminds me that grant projects, book publications, writing and reading new poetry and all the other stuff I do is only part of who I am, only part of what matters about me living my life.

My son Jasper has finished his recruit training at HMAS Cerberus in Westernport and we went to see him graduate a few weeks ago. He's now Seaman Sailor Waller and is training in Avionics at the RAAF Base at Wagga. That makes him a 'birdie' in navy speak.

Jasper is in the middle in this shot of graduation day and it rained for the last ten minutes of the official stuff, but nobody seemed to mind too much.

Jasper is second on left in this shot and yes, they are real guns and he has been trained in the use and firing of his. I hope he will never have to use it.

This shot is one with my first born, his sister Rebecca, which was taken in winter, just before he left for his recruit training.

Mulloway: A Tribute to Robert Adamson 28.1 Cordite

2008-10-09T13:59:00.002+10:00

Cordite http://www.cordite.org.au/ has a great tribute to Robert Adamson as Issue 28.1.
I wasn't asked to provide a poem, but will post my own here, my own fringe tribute which is the first poem out from my ongoing collaborations with erica/erika, the now famous author of Issue #1 in the for godot project. And David, if you want to post this one, (as it's already on my blog and anything is up for free sampling these days) you don't even have to ask.

Hey Bird

Nights are emissaries, intruders to build over water

Talk is living out the darkness
and impulses eat truth and stones to silence

Keeping clings, a triumph dismantled, a glimmer
in a stand of interiors
throwing a sort of gold stain

A talentless gift is sadder
than this seeing

>>>

In abandoned storms, vexations concern
this drapping of water and satisfaction is a tin pail
by a low shore

In a fold of dawn, a narrative
to the outside sky

(Immenisity/a heart happening/in
still rise/a shine)

>>>

This installment/a caper
chanting immediate and sweet
wearing the unfaded grass as fine as wind that has arrived
puzzled

Shifting wider, soundless

>>>

A blue day, a daisy
a sun in play

Learn through the singing of bees
this bringing a mind into giddiness

And you shine as if you were strange

>>>

Teasing praxis, you are bold, mortal

In dipping forests wish breaks the bough

In a blue castle your travelling nature
is a babble, a song

ron silliman's poem from forgodot issue#1

2008-10-09T11:20:00.002+10:00

Anyone following the Issue#1 project will be aware that Ron Silliman posted an almost threatening and very negative post about it and in comments he made on his own post's comment stream about this issue, he called what was done a 'crime'.

I wonder if he feels the only crime is the poem attribution erica/erika made (and it's subsequent jumble in the mass) that landed on page 1849 with his name attached.

I have found much of what Ron does with his own blog very interesting and much of the time he is fair and inventive, but on some things, like his constant put-downs of alternative poetics to his own, he is way too rigid. I hope this is not a sign of age, because many intelligent people are reinventing their process and their art making with robust and exciting challenges enhanced by their accumulation of years. I think that this situation shows Ron has taken such a public position on the hierarchy of poetry, that he has cornered himself somewhat into narrow flexibilities. A sense of play is what matters sometimes, not humour or seriousness, just a bit of a play, a shake up, a strum and tune of strings.

I do think it interesting that Ron bit so hard, and many others as well, though none with the clout Ron has in blog terms. But blogs are territories to do with hit numbers and boasts and long blogrolls, not a lot to do with poetry or poetics really, just short of conversations, more bulletin boards, boring as hell.

I'm posting Ron's Issue#1 poem here because his poem strikes me as one that might have had an editorial or interventionist hand, in addition to erica / erika's first attempt - but maybe the computer got it right first off and it is a poem, not the best poem, not a ron poem, but a poem.

(i thought to post one of his own poem creations up here with it, so we could all vote on which one we like, or which one we can understand best, or which one fits the nomenclature of choice - but i can't count on not being important enough for him to threaten to become a 'lead plaintiff' in a lawsuit against me, so i'll pass on it for now).
i hope it keeps its formatting

Food

Lost as a food and won as a coast
Inefficient as a corner and efficient as a recess
Lost as balance, won as a time
Lost as a coast and found as a recess

It has been like becoming an
idea, jewels, memories,
devils, the fearing highnesses

Haze has gone in your impotent trading-house
You have been inefficient

Little and much
Low and high
Rotten and fresh

Ron Silliman

forgodot Issue # 1

2008-10-07T15:17:00.002+10:00

there's a whole lot of discussion going on in blogland over this http://www.forgodot.com/. some people getting pretty pissed and others feeling confused or amused. some people being excited and taking it on as part of the particular moment poetry is in right now. others who were not included finding out and wishing they were in (it is a hoax of sorts, so go figure that one) and yes, i'm in for(godot )and glad i'm in. although some local bloggers must have skipped my name in the trawl through nearly 4000. it's ok, no problem. we all found our own names first didn't we or our mates names or people who matter in the big game, we found their names?

i think that's the point. on one of my comments either on the forgodot blog or the silliman one, i mentioned the fact that we are all our own/our only best readers. i've read heaps of the poems and some suck big time, others are so close to contemporary compositional mode, that they are good - but good only if you wrote them - or good enough to want to write like that or something. it is writing and some or most would be better than the stuff that comps receive.

i don't think the point of this project is to seriously tackle the incestuous world of contemporary poetics, but it does now doesn't it? and i like the way it provokes re the comments and the tough talk about law suits. i think the point is that we will either join in or we won't, we will accept that it is possible to compose by computer generated methods and that we can't or don't own words.

i have completed more than eight pages of computer generated poetry now using erika, trying first the source 'emily dickinson collected' and then the source 'heart of darkness' using hinge, lyric and fragment. it offers a selection of language strings to poach. i'm into poaching bits i like and putting those together, linking with my own words or not linking. i don't see a problem with this form of composition. it fast tracks production. is it good work? do i own it? who cares?

i think the timing of Issue # 1 is essential and the impact is long over due. too much weight is placed on cluster group and individual reputations. on names and product marketing. putting us all together with the dead and famous poets is saying something about egos and they got me excited about poetry again. i think that for me, it is a matter of why write and finding an answer. write via inspiration only, (and pretend that this is pure and it will be my reward) or mix it up, computer generate and inspiration, become a lyric poet again, go full on post avant, write to a journal or publishers agenda, write for the blog, write for myself - why write?

and one of the things that Issue #1 has made really clear is the fact that only poets care about poetry, and only then their poetry and the public have been lost to us for too long. we have imploded by the sheer weight of our earnest outpourings, our savvy positionings, our careerist agendas. the full impact of Issue #1 is an authorless, computer generated anthology, which has used in no particular order all the names connected with online publishing, or blogging and the editors have used us (or who we are in our names only) without fear or favour, without judgement or concern for quality or style - and no one gets the gong, and we all get the gong.

It's like the selection pool for the many 'best of' - which one will you select, (aside from your own) and will the fact that a big name is attached make it a better poem...just for the record, i really think john tranter is a great guy, but in this anthology, my poem is so much less awful than his one is (sorry john, but if anyone gets it i'm sure that you do).

here's my Issue #1 poem from page 3527

Bearing turned into immensity

A voice of parts
Of presence
Voicing
Sake
A voice

Stand
The immortality of glee

A flower of laureates

Louise Waller

because it has been very dull of late

2008-10-03T09:28:00.005+10:00

taking a drawing class once, the group had various seed pods and small vegetable matter, substances that were earth colours or leaf matter in the whole spectrum of shades, including living and dead vegetation, sticks, twigs and the like. our task was to select one first from the collected stash and attempt to render it with pencils of choice, or graphite and charcoal ...you know, just pick something and start.

the tutor moved around the group looking at the works in progress, but saying very little. we had a time constraint, more to do with the length of class i think then any creative component.

the tutor moved in and around my process a couple of times but looked and said nothing, which for me at the time, (being young and wanting to please or be praised or be noticed or be instructed or guided in some way) had an unsettling and creepy outcome, in that, even though i had thought my work finished half way through the time allocated, i continued on with shading and line marking, ending up with something which was boldly, loudly, awfully awful.

the fact that i knew this somewhere in my own instinctive creative awareness did not stop me from blundering on, perhaps, waiting for someone to shout, stop.finis.end. but the tutor was way too clever and way too practised to interfere before the fact. after the session time ended, we did get our feedback and she mentioned to me about my piece, that she noticed the work was finished very early and was good, perfectly executed and then when she came back i had ruined it. i had over rendered, over worked it. yes, i had killed it and i knew it but couldn't stop wrecking it at the time, because i couldn't trust myself without approval or instruction.

i never forgot that class that night, that experience. i discovered in a not too different way the same thing about creating poems. although, i'm still discovering things about creating poems, but one of the things that i do now is stop and walk away or cut out great chunks and get rid of or start again with one good line or two good words or you know whatever and i poach good lines and sometimes i write about them. i put a lot of shit work up on my blog because i like the immediacy of doing it and later some (most of it) gets reworked or i kill it off. or bin it. rarely something feels right and i keep it (mostly it doesn't happen that way) - but sometimes it does.
the book holding job's hand was written in my notebook without too much messing, i had managed to find a rhythm early on and was interested in minimalism, so i actually thought edited as i was writing - but work that evolves in that way is rare for me and most likely was a result of reading and thinking about divergent subjects prior to inspiration, which came about or was facilitated by a line of text discovered in a google search.

if people were to read me as a poet by my work on my blog, they would be reading the girl in the drawing class, unsure and untrained and awful sometimes. i don't mind this, as for me, the blog is a tool and an adventure. so many blogs out there are setting themselves up as the alpha and the omega. there are clusters of self congratulating, clusters of serious shit, clusters of hips, clusters of wanks, clusters of everything wonderful and awful in personality and talent.

i do love blog land, but it has been very dull of late and way too precious and seems to be lacking a little generosity and humility. the great ones announcing the great things and the little folk responding in comments, the leaders and the followers. it is a sham really, isn't it? a big game or a hoax of sorts. sometimes it's a conversation and everyone can join in.

Kanomi Island walk

2008-09-18T12:47:00.009+10:00

This photo is of the Kanomi headland facing open ocean to the north and the east.
I took some time out on Saturday after lunch to tackle the round Island walk with another tutor and two keen participants. The walk is very heavy going, taking about three and a half to four hours to complete if the pace is steady. Much of the first two hours is up hill and then the headland makes a great place to stop and revive before descending and walking out through the mangrove tidal creek which leads to one of the beaches. From there it's a swim and another twenty minute hike up the track and back to the cabin. It was worth every pain filled thigh tingling moment.

This photo was taken rather nervously by me, standing way too close to the edge of the headland just to get a shot of an Osprey's nest. We had seen one of the birds circling during our rest period on the headland, so had to have a quick peek but couldn't seen any fledgling in the nest.

North Keppel Island (Kanomi) Writers Workshop

2008-09-18T12:47:00.006+10:00

Sunset on the first night of the workshops, out front of the cabin looking towards Yeppoon.
The yacht in the picture had some grey nomads who were on their way south, having spent some time in the Whitsunday area. They rowed ashore on Saturday morning and I had a good chin wag with them. They had seen numerous whales on their journey and were interested in the recent win environmentalists had over the proposed Shoalwater rail line and coal port being stopped. The night after I took this photo two of the resident dolphins were playing in and around the yacht mooring enjoying the company.

Saturday morning from the Kanomi observation deck, looking out towards Great Keppel Island.

My favourite track from cabin to the beach for an early morning swim. The tide was in and the water was cool but not cold.

In the foreground of this photo is the longhouse the island's outdoor workshop area and wet gear area. In the background is the island kitchen and recreation, dining room, where we presented music and poetry readings, including open mic on both Friday and Saturday evening.

This photo shows the cabin assigned to the workshop tutors with the longhouse in the background. I took this photo from the sand out front.

light poem one

2008-09-18T12:47:00.003+10:00

sunrise is apple clear bites
these hours i swallow
and you ask how much light sticks
what amount can i consume
and how does the light know light
as it leaks from my skin

when my daughter and my son
travel in the snow filled towns
i sit with a globe turning apples
in all the rooms watching light
making marks on marks until
my daughter and my son return

i wonder what a snow filled world is
in a kitchen each hour as i swallow
does light mark this and how much
light can i hold turning the globe
in this light filled room where
the day is sunrise is apple

holding Job's hand - book launch

2008-09-17T14:14:00.005+10:00

A good crowd in the venue which was a super place for an exhibition and book launch.

All smiles now with exhibition and launch well under way.

In the back row left to right - Kerry & Angela publishers light-trap press (and Angela also artist exhibitor), Peter Christoff exhibition opener/launcher and all round great guy, Gwenn artist exhibitor & Clyde book cover artist. In front row left to right - Lisa artist contributor and me book poet.

A happy patron with her number one of the fifty limited edition signed and numbered copies.

That's me during my reading at the launch.

hey toto

2008-08-20T20:30:00.002+10:00

i'll be away from my computer until Saturday evening, yes...i'm pumping the air. i like to go cold turkey every now and then, just so i don't get a bad habit or something like an attachment to it.
my right hand has a carpal problem, ouch...bad timing for me.

i'll fly from yeppoon to melbourne tmw morning and really looking forward to friday's launch of 'job'. i feel a bit like dorothy waiting for the wind to pick me up.

packing light (or trying to) two jumpers and a coat, jeans, black dress plus a few other things i'll need...taking the black boots instead of the red shoes.

exhibition and book launch

2008-08-06T17:30:00.004+10:00

I hope you will be able to attend this event if you are in Melbourne on 22nd August

'Nightladder' exhibition featuring the work of Angela Gardner, Lisa Pullen, Gwenn Tasker
and book launch 'holding Job's hand' - poetry by Louise Waller and images by Clyde McGill.

The event will be held at Firestation Print Studio, 2 Willis Street, Armadale and will be opened by Dr Peter Christoff 6.00 pm - 8.00 pm.Friday 22nd August.

Publisher light-trap presshttp://www.light-trap.net/ Angela Gardner and Kerry Kilner aim to publish limited edition, fine quality books combining original prints and poetry in an equal partnership between art forms.

Edition one holding Job's hand is a sequence of poems by me exploring identity, loss and hope with an original photopolymer etching cover by performance artist and printmaker Clyde McGill.

This work also includes a double-sided digital image created from additional original photopolymer etchings made for this edition by Clyde.

underneath this weather

trees offer their limbs

...

all day the light sounds

of talking

stanage poem

2008-07-30T13:03:00.003+10:00

Is it naïve to think things will stay as they are?

Worse to believe. Some kind of innocence and time goes.
Unnoticed. Experience uses youth. The outcome sameness.
In retrospect. Being alive and life itself uses. I junky self on.
Can’t get enough. Each morning more experience. Breakfast/
lunch/not enough exercise. I clutter self on. In adjectives this
landscape. The me/ocean/islands/everything that I see/hear/
touch. And here feels. Is the long. And what did it change?
Seems not quantifiable. It creeps. Unexpected. It fogs
and fog covers aspects that otherwise manifest. In the sun.
On a clear day. And even when clear days mount. A sense
of the fog’s presence. Where it waits timing an entrance.
Change is that or is something. It finds. In a seaside pub in
a seaside town. Always a couple of drunks. The tart women.
The singles. The tourists. Now that the town is cashed. The
big pockets. Greed is the new belief. Better roads. The Judas
to the Christ. Talking locals who don’t want. It was a good
living once. How many times? Fishing local. I hear that
or I say it. Do. In another small place the greedy bell
rings. And how fast the pace a place disappears? Vegetation/
turtles/dugong. A bitumen road. Bringing in progress?
A deep sea port. Coal dust. A pristine pollution. A death
knell. A token. A sleight of…I don’t believe. Experience
echoes progress. In the way and the how. When it comes
cruising in on the resources. There's no backtrack out.

stanage poem

2008-07-29T11:16:00.006+10:00

The sound that forgot to end itself

Sound is a shim. As if it is an only thing. As noise
could be that. Making on silence what a lilium
opening offers scent. Finding the sense amongst
the senses that best appreciates. And believing
that this sound comes now as it's needed. Or not
so. It could be an illusion to make sound a
particular irritant. On a worthy day it could be
that the eyes won't take such enormity on
without distractions. In the inner ear this shim.
Almost rushing where silence could be.
If silence exists. Perhaps only in space
is a mind filled. The awe and spectacle.
One's smallness in that. Perhaps only then
that silence wipes away doubts about looking.
About opening the whole grab bag of sensory craft.
As deployment is. Space must be other than anything else
and not like. So much is here all the time. Looking different
because of a sunray's momentary grace or its purpose.
The light crossing green things the natural warmth.
Filling senses. This shim catches it's place. Fills enough.

stanage photos

2008-07-28T15:20:00.002+10:00

stanage photos

2008-07-28T15:09:00.001+10:00

more stanage photos

2008-07-28T15:06:00.002+10:00

stanage poem

2008-07-28T14:06:00.002+10:00

Why I'm not a twitcher *

Unlike Molly Crawford - writer, conservationist,
twitcher - I'm a poet. I like birds, but poetry
better. I've got a grant now, a writing project.
So, I'm a poet, on the road to Stanage
and birds are singing all around.

Birds don't notice poets. Their songs
go on. At intervals I write notes
for poems. Ray eats soft cheese
with those toasted baby bagels
he likes. I wish the sun was out.

Crows caw caw, ever present and
I miss the close up as a raptor lifts,
drop the last piece of camembert
onto my notes. Some of it sticks
when I scoop it off with my fingers.

Ray smokes and I smoke and birds
sing through each click. Ray says,
"Anything to drink?" I take the top off
the water, and get the camera out.
Thinking about Molly as we drive.

We get to a marshy stretch, two
brolgas and a crane are visible, so
Ray slows the car for a photo op.
I say, "They look like wood-cuts", but
he thinks they look better than that.

I can hear birds singing all around.
We've done 50 k's dodging pot holes
on the dirt, crossing sandy creek beds
that cut the road in the wet. Ray smokes
and I smoke. I put the window down.

The camera jiggles in my lap, along with
maps and my glasses. We drive through
another patch of fog. My notebook is
filling with poems; whimbrel, limosa
limosa, and red-necked stint as titles.

Still another 40 k's of dirt to drive along
before we get where we're going. On the
road to Stanage, a whole lot of birds are
endlessly singing. I'm calling my poems
'camembert notes' when they're finished.

* a person who travels long distances
to look at birds

more on the water - photos

2008-07-23T01:39:00.002+10:00

on the water - photos

2008-07-23T01:36:00.002+10:00

on the land - photos

2008-07-23T01:29:00.002+10:00

on the road - photos

2008-07-23T01:23:00.001+10:00

Stanage (northern Shoalwater area) photos

2008-07-23T00:52:00.004+10:00

I recently spent a few days at Stanage, (the northern part of Shoalwater Bay area) with Ray, researching and writing for my current project, fishing and taking some photos along the way. I'm going to post some soon and hope anyone reading my blog might enjoy them.
I'll post updates on the writing project from time to time, if and when I have anything worth posting about.

juggling judging 3

2008-07-22T23:14:00.002+10:00

Well, I have completed the task and will hand over the poetry tomorrow. The judging is blind and I don't know who has won the open and regional awards, or who the poets are who will receive the highly commended and commended citations but I do know their poems, having spent some time reading the work. I really like the majority of the ones that got lucky this time and have a good deal of healthy respect for all of the poems (and their soon to be announced poet creators).

Judging is so subjective. I was being objective about the task, but at the end of the day what I did was select the work which I found most worthy. Another judge/s may well have selected in a different order and possibly included some that I did not and I'm guessing that even with another judge/s some of the poems would be as I selected.

One of the things I notice when I judge poetry (no expert, but I have participated as a judge on this award for a few years now and last year I read and edited the many contributions for foam:e issue #5) is the way fresh work jumps right out, even from a pile of two hundred or more poems. A fresh poem is a treasure. It's such a reward when it's first read. It becomes impossible to forget and as a result, becomes one for the short list almost immediately.

I don't know about other judges or other more salubrious comps (what they find or what they do), but in this one (so far as I can comment from my own experience of reading the entries) not enough poems come in that are competent in form, voice, experiment, content, ideas, artistry (or any number of other aspects of the best literature) as well as being challenging and aware of the moment 'now' we are in. I image that those poems are only written (here I'm taking an educated guess) by a poet who reads widely, navigates their art risking something, striving for something more than a well-crafted or merely competent style.

I call this rare poetry 'fresh' because it shouldn't be so hard to find in the entries sent to a competition, but it always is. And that's why when it's read, it's such a big surprise, it's always going to impress a reader. I scratch my head and wonder why so many poets insist on doing the safe tired 'same ole'. I'm not suggesting everyone goes and gets all post-avant or langpo or hyperlyric or non-creative or flarf-like or anything whatever else (not that I would mind if they did for the most part) - but I wish that some of the people writing poetry would stop writing it. I wish that they would just give it up and consider a long course in reading it instead.

is wilderness?

2008-07-18T00:30:00.003+10:00

(if it's found it disappears)

the carbon footprint speeds
from earth to moon to mars
and space becomes a view / a picture
astronauts navigating
(weightless)

in my backyard the stars are smudgeless
yet stars reduce / this optic fastness / what light prints
best moving blind and legless through

juggling judging 2

2008-07-14T09:51:00.003+10:00

I have one medium pile of 'open' poetry entries now and one very small pile of 'regional' poetry entries...so I'm getting close to being able to sift the winners out - but as I sometimes like to do, I'll read through the discarded piles again, just to make sure that nothing got ditched (sometimes this happens) that should still be in the possible pile.

When I read through the entries, I make lots of little piles and bind them, so that I can track the process of discarding. A lot of work can resonate differently depending on my own mood and my own receptiveness at the time of reading. I'll probably continue to sit on these piles (mostly reading the possible pile over more throughly) until I feel that I've come to a decision.

One year, I remember ditching one poem from the pile a few times, and then a couple of days later, putting it back in. This went on for a while (it was the 'open' award pile) and then I started dreaming about the poem, and it just wouldn't leave me alone. Eventually, although it didn't win, it was left in and received a highly commended.

This year's 'open' pile has got me dreaming about poetry again, more specifically, dreaming about a couple of the poems, some of the striking lines and words in those poems and I'm waking up with those words in my head. I love it when this happens. It often happens with my own work and when it happens with the work of some other poet, it delights me no end. Poetry does not make a rational argument for itself, it can more often creep or sift in around the edges of the rational mind. Poetry is a great lurker and for this ability alone, it (the poetry?) insinuates itself into a wider field of existence and I love it for this.

Some poets who got lucky during my years of judging the 'open' include winning, highly commended and commended entrants (in no particular order) - Angela Gardner, Jena Woodhouse, Andrew Slattery, Nathan Curnow, Catherine Stewart, T.M. Collins, Jan Sullivan, Shane McCauley, Rosana Licari, Mark Miller, Lyn Oliver, Vivienne Glance, Maris Morton, John Egan, Daphne Hargraves, Raymond Southall.

Anyone who is reading this, (my few visitors god bless you) and who is an Australian, may recognise some of the names above. Regional competitions don't always attract large numbers, but the field is always well contested in the 'open' award. Prize money is smaller than the larger comps, but is often a little easier to get because of this (especially if the poetry rocks), and I guess any prize with money attached is always welcome.

So I'll be reading again later today, and I'll be sleeping on it again, and who knows what will happen. All I know at this point, is that poetry is alive and lurking...

juggling judging

2008-07-10T15:10:00.002+10:00

Last year I declared my intention not to judge a particular regional poetry award, which in previous years, it had been a great privilege to judge. I had decided that it was probably time for others to step up...alas...none did, or none were asked to take it on, and I find myself (as of yesterday) with around two hundred open entries, considerably fewer regional entries and less than two weeks to complete the selections for awards.

I'm not adverse to doing it, mostly I welcome it, but I had so hoped someone else would have been keen to take it on this year. So, I've done my first round of selections, spent most of yesterday with them, feel that I have only just got rid of the rubbish, and found that I have two very large piles of possibles for the open and two smaller piles of possibles for the regional.

I thought I'd blog about the process as I was inside it this year. After having successfully edited edition #5 foam:e throughout last year, and getting it to publishing stage for March launch online, I feel that I've got a lot more of a take on what poetry catches, what poetry makes itself heard, what poetry insinuates itself into my reader brain.

But first, a little about the rubbish.

Some poets are not reading poetry, some might only have read the odd one or two from 19th century or the work on greeting cards, but most of the really bad rubbish, is just the emotional mind talking to itself, some need to talk on paper, perhaps it is comforting, but it is not poetry worth sending into an open award.

Also, some still send in hand written narratives, which could be letters to friends, or shopping lists, (if you could read them) - still others are fond of tricked up fonts and title headings the size of hot air balloons and in colours that are so bright you need sunglasses to read them.

Yes, yes, they are entitled to send entries, yes they pay the fee - but do they really (i mean it do they) think they can win?

Here's a little bit of spleen for the kind of person, who so devalues poetry, who so scorns it, that they think they can send any silly rubbish to an award, without ever reading anything current, or without ever finding a passion for poetry which could instruct them better than any workshop ever could, so here is my big bit of wisdom spleen for the kind of poet that will always end up in the rubbish pile when I'm judging...why bother why bother why bother why bother why bother why bother why bother...

PS I'm not even sure if I want to tackle the mind numbing humming of the endless caress of the kind that in mind needs everything to rhyme (I wouldn't object to work of originality and flair, but the rain, pain, love, dove, head, dead stuff, no, never, not ever).

post splat splatter

2008-07-02T10:26:00.002+10:00

this is not a prose poem nor a po poem nor a con po poem
maybe this is a lang po poem or a un poem or a couple of
lines on a page that don't have ............................................

did you hear the one about the poem that was meaning
to........................................yeah, like, i didn't get it at all
at first and then i thought what if..................................

what else floats up

2008-06-19T09:43:00.004+10:00

yet here i am in the image in the background the early dew

that persists as one drop drops at intervals through the hole in the tin
guttering as multiple drops settle in leaf mulch and it sounds like singing

on the inside of the wall a group voice an anthem quite melodious

a choir in the morning under birdsong and a cat lurking silent in the garden
where high drama might ensue and the neighbour gets a courier surprise

not top heavy hope wanting a birthday or a settlement a catalogue

purchase (so maybe that) or ebay in this sort of light morning an episode
with the dog not wanting to move (a finger's recovery) the skin unbroken

but wary the future moving dogs too early into the outside cold

(caught off guard and snarly) know that theory know that feeling try to
bite things myself under the influence of the ever expanding moving too

far ahead and discourse fast and building what is too large to com

prehend with a bit of paper a pen scratching and too large when even tech
nology can't catch a feather blowing in a willie willie counting on scotty on

air currents to beam me up beam me up for a five second pass

mid splat splatter

2008-06-15T22:39:00.002+10:00

once it is heard
rising and falling

the unmistakable spills
blurs the edges
of continents

good news - regional arts development - funding approved

2008-05-30T10:36:00.003+10:00

I heard earlier this week that my grant was approved and will be sent to council for ratification next week. A modest sum of $2,500 to assist me to complete my research and writing project on the Shoalwater area.

I plan a poetry cycle based on the environmental, political issues surrounding this area north of Yeppoon in Queensland. The Australian defence force utilise the area in conjunction with the American and the Singapore defence forces. Many locals use the beach as a roadway to the area, some use boats (only the defence force can use the roads in). Many birds and marine life visit the area for breeding or migration stop overs.

The military conduct live firing in the area. Many of the men who went to fight in the Vietnam conflict were trained in the area. Many men who have gone to serve in the current conflict have trained in the area. It is a beautiful place with a diverse and important environmental significance.

I am hoping to develop the poetry cycle informed by some specific issues that I'll explore and that the completed sequence will be included in my 2009 ms for Small Change Press .
As part of this project, I'll also be working on some poetry based on prints of the Shoalwater Series of paintings completed by Dieter Irving during his residency in the area.

I'm delighted that I'll get some financial assistance to develop this project. The Regional Arts Development Fund is the 'outside the city base' funding programme of Arts Queensland. Prior to the Queensland amalgamations the local partnership in our area was through Livingstone Shire. This is the first funding round since amalgamation. Great to get a little 'love' for a poetry project.

pre splat splatter

2008-05-30T10:17:00.004+10:00

banging sounds begin in my kitchen (new wiring or something equally

important) these bangings are disrupting my writing and my thinking

are banging and banging (are irritant) are raining too much sound

it's cold and it's wet outside (and in here) it's louder than my tinnitus

i already miss so much

2008-05-18T10:11:00.002+10:00

if i knew miracles it would be sand not water that i'd part
just to see what's under (how it looks) and what i seek
is so much and so varied it needs a microscope, or a
fact sheet, a true and certain thing

^^^

in the nursery (how the nursery used to look once)
viewing through the window glass tiny cribs in rows
in each one a child new to its breath ( a few hours old
or a day) for the first time breathing the same air as

^^^

in a corridor, in a heart, a prayer is wailing and
wailing is prayer going on in someone, in
someone else's voice, someone else's shock
hits what the breath marks when it stops

^^^

(i don't see, but) i think about a time we all take
the same inward breath (all at the same time) in and then
the breath rushing out would spin us off balance
in a chaos, in an endless turn, in a heartbeat

^^^

waves pound and roll on a beach
little feet get wet chasing at the edge
of so much movement

sand is a bucket house when sand gets tipped
but only sand that's not too dry or too wet

digging holes in the sand, all the water the bucket
holds fills and the water in the hole leaks
back, over and over, into sand

^^^

deep in the
deep going down
water over and
no air i
learn how to
float tiny bubbles
in my blood
so i can
drift back so
i can gasp
so i can
suck air in
and god is
my breath then
is the sun
is the air

^^^

sand blows loose in the wind
settles somewhere else when the
wind stops and i don't try
to tag a grain's progress

in that thought, as each grain scatters
each grain is displaced on the shore, and
if i knew how, i'd part the sand, try to
find all the exhaled breath underneath

two poetry prize comps with oddish conditions

2008-04-29T09:19:00.006+10:00

Newcastle Poetry Prize entry form - closing date 4th July 2008 - stipulates in Conditions of entry #3. "The manuscript must be an original work, written in English, and must not have been previously published or accepted for publication, or be under offer to any publisher. Presentation on the internet via blog or website constitutes publication for the purposes of the prize."

Max Harris Poetry Award entry form - closing 15th July 2008 - stipulates in Conditions of entry #12. "Poems must not contain offensive material that breaches the university's ethics regulations."

With regard to the former, yeah, I can understand that website and blogs would be considered as publishing, but do wonder how that could be checked by a judge or judges during their judging process (which is blind judging) and it would be difficult to check after the fact also, unless the contest judge/s (or admin folk) googles every poet's name and finds their sites and blogs and reads through all the entries to ensure that the poem (or part of the sequence/poem) has not appeared there (bit of a 'too hard an ask' for anyone gracious enough to judge expecting that of them) I would imagine, though, that as it is a condition of the prize, then someone will have to do it or else, it might come back to bite a few bums. The Newcastle Poetry Prize provides a substantial funding pot and is highly regarded by those that enter and those that win, so my point on this clause is that, if the clause is in place as a condition of entry, then there needs to be some way to ensure that that condition is supervised (policed yuk too harsh but...) overseen?? (rather than overlooked).

With regard to the Max Harris, well I'm not too sure what that #12 condition could mean. Does it mean swearing? does it mean libel and slander? does it mean overly political? does it mean ...? And as a condition, shouldn't it be spelled out more clearly, so that contestants know what condition they are breaching or complying with when they enter. I wonder what are the 'university's ethics regulations' and where would one get a look at them (and please, forget it if the regulations are longer than a page, too hard to read through an entire opus to establish whether one is in breach with an entry or not) - so how can these conditions be established and overseen?? (rather than overlooked) because if they mean don't use the words xyx or don't mention personal names of people or don't poke fun at this university or any other such thing, then they should spell it out, or at least give one a sense of what it is they mean.

I am not trying to 'knock' these comps, because they are both so beneficial to poets. I just think that conditions are shifting things, sometimes and that not a lot of checking does really go on, can't, it's the nature of the beast with blind judging and trust, that is, trusting the poet to send work that is in line with the conditions.

I remember judging an open poetry comp run by a regional university and awarding a winner (prize being money and publication later in the university journal) and a selection of highly commended and commended (prize being no money, but also publication in the university journal) and prior to the publication of the journal, saw that one of the entries had also won (money and a publication) in another comp which had a closing date of (almost) the same time for entries as the one I judged, and included the rules about 'not being on offer or submitted to any other comp' --- and this entry was one of the highly commended entries I had given, so this poet (pretty well-known) flew in the face of the conditions, got the poem entered in at least two comps, and won money in one, and got publication in both. I didn't say anything and I'm certain that the poet did not 'dob themselves' and the other comp people may or may not have known.
Perhaps, the challenge is, risk at one's own peril and mostly get away with it. Makes rules (or conditions) seem fit to be broken now doesn't it?

no safe way to judge or select

2008-04-25T01:31:00.004+10:00

This is just a small bitch like an itch that needs scratching patching saying...

People get really pissed off if you don't pick their work and they think that you should have.
If names were not attached to submissions, they would perhaps not feel so despondent.
I know that when I selected work for foam:e issue # 5 I was very careful to focus on the poetry not the names of the poets who sent work in. I knew that I rejected the work of some very fine poets, but I didn't reject the poets. There is a difference and anyone in a position of judging or selecting knows this difference.

I've felt the odd cold shoulder from here...yes you can feel seething over the webwaves -but poetry is an open field full of fresh and foul air. I don't get personal about rejection, had too many rejects of my own work to worry about it. I just get busy and write better (more or less).

Virtual anthology on Brisbane's City Cats

2008-04-25T01:09:00.002+10:00

I've had a poem selected for the Poem of the Week 2008 project - called it back from here, hear the hush - one of a small set I'm developing about the Brisbane that I grew up in, merged with the new Brisbane that I visit from time to time. These poems will be slow to develop and I'm stretching them back in time and forward in time, so they could be years in the making, sorta like memory is and the future is, at least that's what I'm aiming for.

Submissions were invited from Queensland Poets which expressed something fresh about the City of Brisbane and/or its river. Each accepted poem will be developed by 4UTV into a 30 second program to run for one week on the digital screen inside each of the ten Brisbane City Cat Ferries to a potential audience of 120,000 City Cat passengers. The project will run for a period of 6 months, starting in late March/ early April 2008.

The poem of the week project is a partnership between Queensland Poetry Festival Inc. and Brisbane City Council and 4UTV. Really happy to be part of this project, hope I get to visit and catch my poem during its week-long run.

finding time to find funding

2008-04-25T00:58:00.002+10:00

I've been working on a very small grant application for a regional arts development fund (qld) application round. It is frustrating and time consuming and making me wonder if I really do need the money, maybe I should just research and write what I want and forget to ask for money. Why am I asking for money? Sometimes it helps...and now that I have no business income (which was hardly an income anyway) I guess that a small amount of grant money will assist me to get the project started, with an outcome that might be relevant or not. So, if I get the grant, will the work be better? thinking that maybe it will.

at this instant in the audience

2008-04-10T13:59:00.002+10:00

a full house, night parts as a curtain drawn, as an elbow bends.

a moon on the floor, a slanted thing on the object, the focus.

an opening floats in a thousand eyes, a thousand thousand.

everything surrounds everything else in the darkness.

an auditorium, a stage, the unknown (as yet) pinpoints in space.

symbols distinguishing, graphs, who speaks, who moves.

what longitude, latitude, what degree on the set.

positions, pathways, eyes signalling, light, objects.

light-trap press - edition one

2008-03-10T00:31:00.002+10:00

light-trap press have announced Edition One of their new publishing venture, holding Job's hand.

I am really excited about this publication - you can check out some of the details here
http://www.light-trap.net/

It feels pretty special to have my work included in this process, a new venture with a press interested in achieving quality creative production .

I am looking forward to the launch of this project in August. Maybe I'll post a picture or two.

foam:e issue 5 goes live

2008-03-10T00:17:00.002+10:00

Finally, yes, it was worth the wait - foam:e issue 5 is live - http://www.foame.org/index.html

Plenty of primo poetry from local oz and international poets, reviews, interview and some links and news about all things poetry - hope you can knock yourselves out with the weight of the words and celebrate the launch of 2008's foam:e - issue 5.

This was a first time as editor for me, and it was a full-on experience. The pleasure is going to stay with me for a long time, and the pain was just enough to keep it real.

big changes for me on the work front

2008-03-08T07:10:00.002+10:00

I've been a little distracted of late with work. After five years, I am closing my business and moving on...and moving away from working six days, sometimes seven days a week.
It is liberating (and a little bit sad) and exciting. The 'greed' factor which has invaded our sleepy little beach town saw my rental for premises double,( just the boomboom times we're in) - and I have decided not to play that game.

I've done ok in my business, have kept many treasures that I couldn't bring myself to sell, including two beautiful leather bound books from the mid 1700's with artwork and hand written notations - 'how to clean and store feathers'; a beautiful oriental urn with incredible detail dated from the early 1900's; some early Australian cedar furniture; and lots of other small and unique treasures.

I've also discovered heaps of interesting things about the people in my town, found pain and pleasure and stories to last me well into my dotage.

Around the time when I first thought about getting out of my business, my creative side was powering into overdrive, and I was taking work to work to work on...one of the best things that came out of the later end of last year for me, was the development of my long poem 'holding Job's hand'. I was so involved in making this work, that it went everywhere with me, in a notebook. One of the local poets, who also shopped in my store, kept coming in for updates as the poem was being developed. The pleasure for me in that response and the joy, will be with me always. When the visual artist Clyde McGill, who is collaborating on the project by producing 50 only individual printed covers (and a digitally reproduced double centrefold for each of the 50 copies) first received the poem for perusal, he said that he carried the poems around with him for weeks, reading and responding to the ideas...he has made some truly outstanding art out of his take on our collaboration. Angela Gardner - Light Trap Press (more news and links soon) is looking at a launch in Melbourne in August for this work. I'm so happy to have the 'job' project interwoven in the end days of my business, almost as swansong.

During this period, I also was selecting work for foam:e #5 which I have edited and which should be going live very shortly, so stay tuned - ( a week's delay - due to delay type things). Issue 5 of foam:e has more than fifty contributors and I found the opportunity to participate very rewarding, even though it added so much more to my workload, that sometimes I wondered how I could ever get it done. But it does get done, and for me, if I am interested in any project, it will be followed through. It's impossible for me not to find time for things that are worthwhile.

In the five years that I worked so slavishly in my business, many friends and extended family saw less of me than I would have liked. My own personal space was reduced to the number of hours each day that I could shave off sleep and still survive. I can only think about each day at a time at the moment. I don't know what I will be doing next...it is a great feeling to be uncertain about my future. So many possibilities are open to me now.

note to all editors as i tips me hat to you

2007-12-07T19:27:00.000+10:00

I think you have to edit work to appreciate how wonderful journal editors are to even begin to be able to select and place work, enjoy it, celebrate and salute it, even to develop the ability to reject it and to know why that happens.

Something else is surely easier to do than this.

Editing foam:e this issue has been a wonderful and challenging experience.
I'll get better at it I hope. I've spent another day, all day, with submissions and feel intimate and seasoned with so many wonderful poems, still sorting much of the work, needing to contact poets, set up files to send off to the wonderful webmistress who will make webpages so all poets can check out their work prior to foam:e going live in March next year.

I really do hope to get better at this, but I have encountered so many more excellent poems than I can publish this time. I hope I get it right...the force be with me and all the other editors out there.

note to ralph

2007-12-07T19:19:00.000+10:00

sorrythereareno com
mentstobe moderated
no com m
entsto
day

...

bloggerbloggerbloggerstuff
edup

...

have nuther go???

a home for the 'job' poems

2007-11-25T08:37:00.000+10:00

For my performance at the Queensland Poetry Festival 2007, I was allocated a 15 min session in Saturday's line-up and another 10 min session in the closing Sunday line-up. Much thought went into my planning for the sessions and a little bit of risk, (maybe a lot of risk) - as I wanted to include the 30 poem sequence Holding Job's Hand in full and worried about the impact of allocating my entire 15 minute session to doing so. What if I blew my chances with an audience by tackling a long poem in my first session? What if people didn't get it and what if it wasn't any good? Should poets read new work at festivals? Should long poems be explored at festivals, when selecting a sampling of shorter poems would give an audience a better overview of my work?

Deciding what to do, in the end, was relatively easy. My roomies for the festival were Sue Stanford, Karen Knight, Jules Witek and our visiting roomie Lyn Reeves. Over a nice bottle of Janz and some fine conversation, we shared our work, timed it amongst ourselves and with each encourageing the positive aspects found in each others performances, the risks were less daunting and we had, at least, the opportunity to preview our performances in a less intimidating way. So, it was after the affirmation of my peers, (special thanks to Sue for her timing and advice) that I went forward with the reading of the 'job' poems in full for my first festival session.

Taking the risk, believing the poetry will mark itself in some way, trusting the work to speak for itself, this is what performing work is about. I'm so pleased to say, that my anxiety heightened as it was, did not detract me from trusting myself and the new work. I also appreciated the interest and kind words from Nathan Shepherdson and Angela Gardner re my reading of the 'job' work.

The poetry sequence, or as I prefer to call it, the long poem Holding Job's Hand is under offer and due for release in February 2008 with Angela Gardner's http://www.light-trap.net/paper.html newly fomed Light Trap Press

Angela received the Thomas Shapcott Award last year for her book Parts of Speech and she has recently received a Churchill fellowship. Angela is an award winning artist as well as a poet and is looking at launching limited edition artbook collaborations between artists and writers with the focus on high quality production values. Clyde McGill http://www.abc.net.au/tropic/stories/s1587062.htm is the artist selected to collaborate with my text. More news on this when I can, but as this is the first of a planned series and both Angela and Clyde are very talented, I am completely delighted that my work will be involved in this new enterprise.

In this instance, the risk I was discussing at the beginning of this post has indeed paid off, if an outcome which sees work getting out into the world in any form, can be considered a pay-off.
I'm deeply grateful for the confidence Angela and Clyde have shown in my work and I'm really proud of the work and myself for getting something done, which I did not think was going to be marketable or popular, but which I felt was worthwhile doing in any case.

I guess that work can often drive itself and with the process I undertook for developing the 'job' poem/s, the ideas and the creation of the work, almost did drive itself. I was much more involved than an onlooker, but at times, was an onlooker wondering how I did manage to finish the poem/s and was happy to know when they were finished, that they were what I didn't know I was going to end up with, but was surprised and delighted that I did end up with them all the same.

Risk is everything, to be aware and to respond and to trust the craft...

peeling an orange is not the same as eating it

2007-11-11T10:49:00.000+10:00

fish map the tank and on each pass
a day brings forgetfulness and surprise
something new is discovered again and again

an eager argument on blog comments as infinite as string theory
nomenclature boldly sits in a room flies are circling
confluence at 5 am and the eager argument depletes

within each discourse time is still
and in any event one true thing
time is still what has passed

the abstract is picking what fits
a post [anything] guardian a jigsaw a motive
an opaque a willingness as clear as imagining

many knocking and only the few let in 'dress codes'
when lights flicker 'time please ladies & gentlemen'
they conform and look dishevelled as they leave

flies back circling in a room no epiphany no lone strategy
facts peel the orange which is too bitter to taste
and nomenclature gets boldly flyblown

the line that started with 'it's'

2007-10-02T07:46:00.000+10:00

in the time it took to walk into another room
(and look for a pen) it vanished, the first thought and now
thinking really bad thoughts and steam
on the person/s who took all the pens, even the one
in the desk drawer with the pending, nobody messes with

(and the pen) it's the opposite of close to hand
the bad lingers moving about, opening doors and windows
the overcast day coming in, me staring it out and
it could rain before the line that started with 'it's' comes back
into thought and the pen is retrieved

from a tote bag that took time to locate, using touch and reach
into a bag full of everything with one want, mouth many fucks
shopping dockets stuck to the uncovered lipstick, tobacco and keep
finding the heavy clump of keys at the bottom with tissues
these everythings, this play and the touch at the fingertips

(the pen) it's in my hand and nowhere
in my head, the line that started

Ghost Poem a winner

2007-09-05T22:34:00.000+10:00

It was with great pleasure and a little sadness that I judged the Idiom 23 Bauhinia Literary Awards Open Poetry competition this year. Having judged the poetry comp for a few years, I felt it was time for a fresh eye and a new perspective and decided to step aside and let someone else step up.

But the surprise and the pleasure this year was the winning poem, one of Nathan Curnow's Ghost poems and the first one out of the box...bodes well for the rest of his collection which I look forward to reading when it is published. A very interesting poem, well worth the prize, good onya Nathan.

Four of the 'Job' sequence up and running

2007-09-05T22:00:00.000+10:00

Four of the thirty poems from my poetry sequence Holding Job's Hand will be published in Social Alternatives next edition. I'm pleased to see them start to move out and happy for them to appear in the School of Education, University of Queensland publication.

The following blurb appears on the inside cover of the journal;
What is Social Alternatives?
Social Alternatives is an independent, quarterly, multi-disiplinary, refereed journal. It analyses, critiques, and reviews contemporary social, cultural, economic, and ecological developments to determine their implications at local, national and global levels. Because we value artistic endeavour, we publish short stories and poetry.

Wow, cool.

Launching this week-end at QPF

2007-09-05T21:23:00.000+10:00

Angela Gardner's 2006 Thomas Shapcott award winning collection 'Parts of Speech' (UQP 2007) will be launched on Saturday at the Queensland Poetry Festival. Angela is the Editor of the online journal foam:e and a friend of mine. I've had the pleasure of reading her wonderful book and look forward to the official launch at the Judith Wright Centre's Performance Space during this week-end's poetry festival events. Angela is the Editor of foam:e and a well known visual artist as well as a poet. Her collection is outstanding and in particular, the sequence 'The Twelve Labours'.

Foam:e's 2008 edition will see me guest editing and will include a review of 'Parts of Speech' by Jena Woodhouse. I am still looking at accepting poetry submissions up until end November, so if you haven't already sent something, knock yourself out, send and see what happens.

...

Also launching with Angela's book is 'The Best Australian Poetry 2007' (UQP 2007) - Series Editors Bronwyn Lea & Martin Duwell and Guest Editor John Tranter. I've had a sneak preview and think that many will be surprised and also delighted with Tranter's selections.

One paragraph in Martin's & Bronwyn's introduction which caught my attention, (and following discussion of Jacket's online success);

"A short list of other Australian-based, online poetry magazines that have steadily grown in profile might include Cordite, Divan, Retort, Stylus Poetry Journal, hutt and foam:e.
Since we monitor each year the ground rules for our anthology, we have updated our initial decision to avoid taking poems from electronic journals. In coming anthologies, we intend to add the best of these sites to our list of literary magazines from which we source the year's best poems."

A little celebration now surely.
All the poems published in those online journals are likely to get a look-in for next year's collection.
The online revolution, yeah...

sick puppies

2007-08-21T07:58:00.000+10:00

I've been away from my blog for too long, missed posting many thoughts about things I was reading on other blogs, or other poet's collections. The flu just flew into our household and settled down for a good while. I found it difficult to be both nurse and patient, but managed to do so - (it's a mother thing) learned on the run. The house needs cleaning as well, big time, so I'm looking forward to dusting all of a sudden, looking forward to raking leaves and tending to my lavender patch, longing to find the extended arm for the tree shears...thinking about getting some chooks again and re-planting the veggie patch.

Yellow Door Bookshop Readings - Yeppoon

2007-07-14T10:04:00.000+10:00

The readings went really well last night. A twenty plus crowd, not large but interested.

I took the opportunity to read a selection of poems from the (now almost completed) Holding Job's Hand sequence as well as some from the Rainshadows cd (IP Digital 2007) and Swelter (Interactive Press - emerging authors series 2003) & (IP Digital 2004).

Most of the audience had heard the older work at various events and readings locally over the last few years and it was good to read some that were familiar and fresh in a new way. It is surprising how often poets forget to reacquaint themselves from time to time with their own 'golden oldies'.

The Job sequence was also a surprise, as it created some excitement with a couple of people who hadn't heard my work before. Fellow author and reader, Michael O'Sullivan and a woman who had studied theology and in particular - the Job conundrum. Both were very enthusiastic about the journey my poems were taking and how I might resolve the Job question within the larger framework. Most of the poems are short, so I read 13 of the 30 (or 33 as ending is still unresolved).

It is easy to forget how enjoyable smaller readings can be. The drinks and conversations that often continue afterwards. The way people feel empowered to discuss with an author aspects of their work, things which caught their attention or their interest.

I guess for me, that sort of interaction and support can validate the toil.

I'm now really looking forward to the readings at Rockhampton Art Gallery this afternoon, although because of the nature of the space and the afternoon time slot, I'm guessing there will be a little less of the drinks and conversations after the readings.

Famous Reporter 35

2007-07-11T08:06:00.000+10:00

This issue is a must-have with some outstanding work included.
Ralph Wessman's Famous Reporter's 20th Anniversary edition includes poetry, prose, reviews, blog entries and all other literary things.
I was very impressed with one very long poem in this edition by John Kinsella.
An epic poem over many pages, well worth publishing and reading.
Three cheers to Ralph and FR!
With text and journal publishers being very shy on the ground, it takes determination and faith these days to publish literary work, and for a journal to publish one author's longer work, is always a risk.
This one pays off tenfold.
If you can get a copy do so, you won't be disappointed.
Also included are two of my reviews - Francesca Haig's 'Bodies of Water' and Dorothy Poter's edited 'Best Australian' 2006.

IP Autumn Season 2007 - northern tour

2007-07-11T07:49:00.000+10:00

Interactive Publications are touring the new Autumn season in my neck of the woods/words.

'Rainshadows' (IP Digital 2007) celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the press features authors from 1997 to the present, including myself and Kristin Hannaford - work from our combined collections 'Slipway' and 'Inhale' which were published in 'Swelter' (IP 2003) & (IP Digital 2004).
The tour features the children's book 'Real Guns' by David P. Reiter and 'Easter at Tobruk' by Michael O'Sullivan who also wrote 'Secret Writings'.

Kristin and myself will be performing with David and Michael at the Yellow Door Bookstore in Yeppoon on Friday night and the Rockhampton Art Gallery on Saturday.

Also participating in the Saturday readings will be local academic Stephen Mullins, demonstrating from his Community, Environment & History: Keppel Bay Case Studies (CQUP).

Hope to see some central Queenslanders there and any intra/interstate visitors who might like to come along.

queensland poetry festival

2007-07-06T06:41:00.000+10:00

The programme is uphttp://www.queenslandpoetryfestival.com/
Looks like another great line up of poets and performers.
Poets from Canada, Tasmania, New Zealand, Ireland, and Australia - wow - I'm getting excited already.

untitled

2007-06-14T08:45:00.000+10:00

consider the path from the mouth
to the arse

what to make of it
Leonardo's lined perspective

the muscle so
skillfully crafted
under bone

the bone a fall out shelter
when the muscle sparks
eyes respond and the mouth
opens to swallow or to say
something

what the muscle controls

a tangible
where thought really does travel

know what the spider knows
each limb a tactile limitless

the surface breathes when it's stretched
it covers

catching up with this
in the middle of a walk

wonder if presence is felt
if the feet ground
when the muscle tasks to the tree
if the bone sings with the wood

junesplatter 2

2007-06-05T08:32:00.000+10:00

the dirt's the thing i indolently stand on
the toes sink this stranger than ever
weather conjures its rain dropped
all over winter perhaps it's only
remarkable now because the drought
blasted and blazed a decade long
and there is so much dirt for toes
to surface (think noah) and it could
rain up a flood soon as the dirt becomes
a richness that fills itself fuller and this
dirty mud water floats toes walking
over the (climate change) junesplatter

she's an elves child eating rosemary

2007-06-03T17:55:00.000+10:00

(for ejb)

in a long pre-literate string
she utters

inflects using eyebrows
consonant-pause-vowel

fingers all around the air
she lifts her head

skips the smile the sky fast
as she journeys experience

that flash sound ordering
her pitch of keening notes

junesplatter

2007-06-01T23:05:00.000+10:00

yo derek

looking at maps with lines
no x to arrow
no flash dots or detailed guidelines
no here is the place with a creek
over there is a house
that one's a private track to the beach
trying the hybrid now
cause there's no way to work it out
from this disorderly bunch of lines
tweak the motivational in the right/left side
the place i want to find
is as far from here to there
as it is from there to further

photo essay series

2007-04-28T00:22:00.000+10:00

I recently had the pleasure of reviewing Francesca Haig's first chapbook 'Bodies of Water' (due for publication in Famous Reporter 35 )and was really struck by one of the poems 'Koonya, Tasman Peninsular'. It set me thinking about Tasmania again. I can almost hear the moans coming from those who have heard me going on about it off blog...During my trip to Tasmania with Ray during Christmas (2006) and into the first week of the new year this year, we spent a lot of time walking around and seeing some places we both wanted to visit again. Both of us were blown away by the Tasman Peninsular, just love it there.

I had not been to the Saltwater River Convict Mine ruins before - found it a really beautiful place - the ruins there (unlike the Port Arthur ruins) are unsupervised. People can move around freely and almost all the ruins are allowed to decay and crumble back into the earth. They are all the more striking and poignant as a result.