Dada doesn't catch flies

Reading...

2012-02-22T18:05:00.000+10:00

Monday I purchased The Sons of Clovis: Ern Malley, Andore Floupette and a Secret History of Australian Poetry (2011) by David Brooks, published by UQP. Also, just arrived in the mail today courtesy of John Tranter, All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (2003) by Daniel Kane, Uni of California Press. And my PhD supervisor David Carter just gave me two copies of Makar from 1975 and 1976 that were being thrown out by someone having a clean-up at uni. Thank you John and David, I have my weekend reading planned out now, how about you?

Makar Vol 12 No 2 June 1976 and Vol 11 No 2 1975

I have a study and...

2012-02-21T11:09:00.000+10:00

I have passed my first milestone for the PhD and progressed to being confirmed as a PhD candidate (you are initially enrolled as a provisional candidate). Hurray! The next milestone is in twelve months time and is a mid-candidature review, so lots of writing to do now.

I have also finished unpacking my study. As you can see it is a small but light filled room which faces the street (sorry about the dark photograph, my camera wasn't coping with all the morning light). My books and DVDs have been arranged alphabetically for the first time ever and there is another bookcase in the entry (which has yet to have the alphabetical treatment).

My IKEA desk holds an assortment of poetry books and my signed copy of Ginsberg's Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems and Songs 1949- 1993 that I purchased at the Beat Museum in San Francisco. The two little cubes forming a tiny bookcase were purchased with the help of my lovely sister from Bunnings. I needed something small enough to fit in that space to the left of the desk to hold all the files and folders of photocopies, notes etc. for the PhD (a filing cabinet would be ideal, but financially and spatially the cubes stacked on top of each other were a better option for the moment). I have a room of my own, I have organised by books and my papers and now I have no excuse not to work!

Home to a new house...

2012-02-13T09:19:00.001+10:00

Bedroom with one box to unpack

Bathroom and my drawing of Egon Schiele

The study - just boxes at the moment!

Oscar in the lounge room

Galley style kitchen

Back in Brisbane and one room left to unpack. The new house is a sweet little Queenslander (weather board timber house on stumps, early 1900s). Time to set up the study and get to work on all the material I found in Canberra!

Last day at the library...

2012-02-10T08:25:00.000+10:00

Michelle De Stefani, Alexandra Dellios, Jon Piccini, Fiona Scotney and Robert O’Shea

Photograph by: Craig Mackenzie

Flying home tomorrow. It has been a fantastic research trip. I have found so much material for the thesis and enjoyed exploring Canberra and meeting new people. It has been a busy six weeks. I have to give a presentation on my research today to library staff and then it is drinks and a goodbye dinner with the other scholars. Have a great weekend!

From MS83 Box 2 Folder: "Poems from plastic folder"...

2012-02-07T19:51:00.001+10:00

                                                             Nigel Roberts Cento

       in the Post office & General Store
                                                   we were pissed / flagon drunk
                                                  & affirming our bond, say
                                            this place / is the only place where
                                               she has aquired some

   Genius / & Taste etc.

A cento I composed today while going through Nigel Roberts' manuscripts at the ADFA library, Canberra. Lines taken from "Today, in the Post office", "Of the wall, Buckmaster, myself & Bukowski", "Letter to Jamie Grant", "The Los Angeles Affirmation", "Joanna" and "Beauty/ Truth/ Genius? & Taste etc."

What is a poetry generation? Some ideas...

2012-02-05T14:40:00.000+10:00

There exists multiple ways to conceptualise generations. The multiplicity of view points and approaches to study and definition of generations vary widely, consequently in order to deploy the term effectively, to have it read with an intended meaning, one needs to demarcate how the term is being utilised. In the case of the “generation of 68” the term acts as a label for a group of poets rather than as a specific generation locator. It is not utilised critically to demarcate a generation of poets born after 1945 in Australia, but used to define a group of poets within the post-war generation. The “generation of 68” is does not function as an all encompassing term like “generation X” or “baby boomers”. It functions more like the label of “Beat generation” which was applied (in their case self consciously) to a group of poets.

The label "generation of 68" is synecdochic, it functions as a figure of speech where the part is used to express a greater whole, it is short hand for the generational location and the contributions young poets were making to Australian poetry, but it does not represent all poets of their generation (i.e. Les Murray is their contemporary, but not a "generation of 68" poet). While the term does carry obvious political connotations, and many have read it as a reference to international youth movements, 1968 was also the year that many underground magazines appeared in Australia (Mok, Crosscurrents, Our Glass and Transit) and readings began in meaningful ways at Monash University and La Mama. The significance of the year 1968 is reinforced in the preface to Applestealers (1974), where Colin Talbot explains that the collection offers a sample of works from the “renaissance in Australian poetry, which took place from about 1968, and continues to occur” (12). The year 1968 is a reference point, a metaphor, used to denote a period of time, a beginning date for a decade of change.

The "generation of 68" remains in many ways a contentious label or definition, this is largely due to the ambiguous nature of literary generations. The earliest allusion to a “generation of 68” is arguably Thomas Shapcott’s 1970 Australian Book Review article “Poets Today”. Shapcott writes that the advent of a number of new little poetry magazines beginning in 1968 “indicates that there is – at last – an active body of young people prepared to make the break with established journals and go it on their own” and whose faults of “brashness, arrogance, imitation [and] haste” are outweighed by their “openness of attitude”, and who will “have to face exactly the same problems of integrity, allegiance and adaptability as every generation before them” (277). While he does not explicitly use the term “generation of 68”, Shapcott’s article links for the first time in print the idea of a new generation of young poets with the year 1968, demonstrating his tacit awareness a new generation.

Tranter’s “Four Notes in the Practice of Revolution” (1977) is the first article to explicitly use the phrase “generation of 68”. Tranter ruminates over the preceding decade, and writes of the generation of 68’s rebellion and revolution. He describes the conservative poetry scene that the New Poets were rebelling against in the late 1960s, and the importance of small magazines around that time for the “cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques”, as well as focusing “the anti-establishment aims of the groups” (129). The groups go unexplored, but the generation of 68 comprised poets associated with Monash University, La Mama and Carlton in Melbourne and the New Poetry magazine and Balmain poetry scene in Sydney.

In the introduction to The New Australian Poetry (1979) anthology Tranter begins by stating without reservation, “This anthology contains the works of twenty-four poets, mainly young writers who first came to prominence in the closing years of the 1960s – the ‘Generation of ‘68’” (xv). He goes on to examine some of the causes that made this “loose group of writers” so “unique”, citing: demography (youth population/ baby boomers), music, technology, drugs, shifting attitudes to authority, American poetry, the Vietnam War and a “commitment to the overhauling of the poetic method and function” (xxvi). He also identifies the importance of poetry centres, poetry readings, and “underground” magazines. At this moment, by assembling a group of poets around the label, Tranter gives concrete form to what was previously an abstract idea by naming poets associated with the generation. The anthology contains the work of twenty-four Australian poets including Robert Adamson, Michael Dransfield, Laurie Duggan, John Forbes, Kris Hemensley and Alan Wearne. Tranter’s edited collection is in many ways a showcase and a retrospective for his own generation of poets, who he perceives as being united by “a generally expressed antagonism to the established mainstream of poetry at that time, which they saw as too conservative” (The New xv).

Ginsberg audio online...

2012-02-03T13:58:00.002+10:00

Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky 1956 (via)

The last day of week five at the National Library and feeling pretty low about my PhD (my confirmation may be pushed back even further), so I decided to cheer myself up with some online audio of Allen Ginsberg reading in 1956 over on the Penn Sound website. If you haven't visited the site before there are readings from 1956 to 1995.

"You're cheering me up and I'm thanking you".

PS. Happy Birthday Sam!

Week Five...

2012-02-01T13:23:00.000+10:00

Complete Destruction

by William Carlos Williams (via)

It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it

in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.

February Reading list...

2012-01-30T14:25:00.002+10:00

Image credit

Pam Brown's "Fifty-one contemporary poets from Australia" introduction is available on Jacket 2 here. Part one can be found here and part two here.

The latest Cordite Poetry Review, No. 37, "No Theme", edited by Alan Wearne.

Martin Duwell's review of the Plunkett anthology at Australian Poetry Review.

John Tranter's online Journal.

Happy Chinese New Year...

2012-01-28T12:03:00.001+10:00

"China Dolls" at the National Museum, Canberra

Another Saturday at the Library to make up for the public holiday - but what a wonderful Australia Day. We went to Chinese New Year celebrations at the National Museum, followed by an afternoon beverage at the Botanical Gardens and in the evening a string quartet performance in the foyer of the National Library. Afterwards we watched the fireworks over the lake from the verandah of the library.

Week Four...

2012-01-25T13:50:00.001+10:00

Week four run down:

Sunday... Renaissance exhibition with Dylan's grandfather and the other NLA scholars was lovely.

Monday... working on poetry magazine lists at NLA followed by dinner with friends.

Tuesday... morning tea at the War Memorial with the Summer scholars from the Museum of Democracy and the War Memorial and dinner with a friend who has just gotten back in the country.

Wednesday... met for coffee with the lovely Sue from Whispering Gums and Dylan's cousin for lunch. This week has been incredibly social yet productive.

Thursday... Australia Day - Chinese New Year celebrations and fire works on the lake.

Friday and Saturday... back to work at the library.

I have to thank John Tranter for sending me through some great leads, reviews, contacts and articles and also Nicholas Pounder for all of his helpful suggestions and titles to track down.

Happy Australia Day and Happy Triple J's Hottest 100!

Image credit

At this moment...

2012-01-21T12:11:00.000+10:00

Giovan Battista Moroni 'Girl from the Redetti family'

1566–70 oil on canvas 43 x 33 cm

Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

Image Credit

I am back into the National Library despite it being Saturday, trying to make up for the day we will miss for Australia Day this week and also feeling the pressure now that we have reached the mid point of the scholarship - only three weeks to go.

My list of Australian poetry magazines from 1968 to 1979 has doubled in the last week from twenty to forty, and the list does not including the big ones (New Poetry, Poetry Australia etc.). So lots of work to do - but I am going to the Renaissance exhibition tomorrow at the National Gallery.

Have a great weekend!

Shead's 1960s films...

2012-01-20T10:53:00.001+10:00

Image credit

The Experimental films of Garry Shead have been released on DVD and are avaliable at artfilms. Shead is better known for his visual art rather than film making, he is an Archibald prize winning painter and also won a Dobell prize for drawing, but he has been making short films since the early 1960s and has now released three discs of experimental art films. You can see some clips on the 7:30 ABC news report avaliable here, which includes interviews with Shead, Wendy Whiteley and Martin Sharp.

Thanks Jon for sending me the link to this - I have purchased the DVD.

ADFA and Duntroon...

2012-01-18T14:08:00.000+10:00

Outside the Academy Library

ADFA Academy Library manuscript boxes

Duntroon House, Duntroon

Today I caught the bus to the Australian Defense Force Academy (ADFA) with Michelle (another National Library scholarship holder). She went to Duntroon House and the Bridges Memorial Library to look at archives and I went to the AFDA Academy Library to look at the papers of Robert Adamson, Rudi Krausmann, John Forbes, John A Scott and John Tranter.

The Academy Library is operated by the University of New South Wales and sometime in the not too distant past had funding to buy Australian manuscript collections and hence why they hold papers from generation of 68 poets that I am studying. They also have some poetry magazines there that are not available at the National Library (Aarvark and Mindscape). It was strange walking out of the library and seeing Army officers and Federal Police everywhere, but I loved the non saluting area sign (above).

After I had finished going through the collection boxes I met up with Michelle at Duntroon house and we were allowed to do a little self-guided tour. It is the oldest homestead in Canberra, and despite the decades of renovations and extensions it still holds artifacts from the original owners. It was an eventful research day.

Handwritten...

2012-01-17T16:03:00.002+10:00

I went and saw the Handwritten exhibition at the National Library today. It is free, but you have to book a time as it has been so popular. The exhibition contains one hundred works from the Berlin State Library spanning one thousand years, from illuminated texts to letters by Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Michelangelo, Napoleon and many more.

There are manuscripts from the sciences, philosophy, literature, politics, exploration and even music scores. The display is laid out chronologically and there are didactic panels explaining each exhibit and the writer's significance. I went at lunch time and it was very busy, so I will visit it again one morning during the next month to see the things I missed and to have a good look at some of the things I shuffled by too quickly. But even my brief visit has already got me thinking about my appalling handwriting in my journal and the significance and amazing longevity of these well preserved texts.

The exhibition is on until the 18th of March 2012 and there are evening events to coincide with the exhibition.

Discovering new poets...

2012-01-17T08:27:00.002+10:00

Overs

It seems almost unimportant
when you put it like that.
Just so many sheets laid end to end,
so many cups of coffee.

- Andrew Darlington

Premonition of civil war

A tree branch caught
in a street lamps light.
A hanging capitalist.

- Andrew Darlington

in Your Friendly Fascist no. 8 c. 1972

Yesterday I was reading Andrew Darlington's poems in old editions of Your Friendly Fascist, a Sydney based poetry magazine edited by Rae Desmond Jones and John Edwards throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s. Edwards moved to the UK and so the magazine includes a number of international writers, including Andrew Darlington. I googled Darlington and found what I thought was his blog, he kindly emailed me back and confirmed that he is the one and same Andrew Darlington who was publishing in Your Friendly Fascist in the 1970s. Darlington blogs about music, books and poetry here.

Week Three...

2012-01-16T09:54:00.005+10:00

Night Rider

He travelled on
the night bus

with a suitcase full
of revolution

to blow
the edge of darkness

George Cairncross (UK)

in Your Friendly Fascist no. 6 c. 1972 ed. Rae Desmond Jones and John Edwards.

_________________________________________

Image credit

"John Forbes once said that the Australian poetry scene was like a knife fight in a telephone booth."
- Laurie Duggan in dialogue with David McCooey

"Poetry throughout the 1970s ran the danger of being the cloest thing we had to a bloodsport."
- Don Anderson, "American Graffiti, or 'I'm living in the Seventies'" 1982 Meanjin 41.1

And yet there is a colletivist approach to the underground poetry magazines. Despite the passions and disagreements (and the odd beer can thrown at a poetry reading) the magazines do give a sense of a supportive network. An almost self-sufficient network where young poets could bypass the established networks by virtue of their relationships with other young/ youngish poets who acted as audiences, editors and publishers. Maybe that was part of the problem though, you had to be part of the network...

National Gallery Sculpture garden...

2012-01-14T19:52:00.000+10:00

Mirror sculpture, mist machine and mist over pond with bronze heads.

End of week 2...

2012-01-13T13:49:00.001+10:00

The best of all possible poems

Like a dreaming shark
or a very quiet limb
waiting for the lecture
to make it a star the
best of all possible
poems relaxes asleep
in the tropical surf
beginning near the
right hand corner of
the room. meanwhile
just outside my window
inter-island trade
begins. their supply
of coconuts is endless

John Forbes

Published in Issue 1 of Surfers Paradise magazine 1974

I am enjoying looking though the poetry magazines, compiling contributors lists, looking at the cross-advertising that was occurring for other poetry magazines, the bookstores listed that stocked the magazines, recommended books, up coming protests/ poetry readings/ workshops etc. and reading lots of great poems - like the one above.

Why does the Nation Library have so many obscure poetry journals?

2012-01-12T07:27:00.019+10:00

Ploughman's Lunch first issue

Text reads: This is the first issue of a pamphlet of poems entitled ploughmans lunch is presented to the National Library of Australia in accordance with Section 201 of the Copyright Act 1968. Contributions of poems, graphics drawings and money are eagerly sought by the humble editor. Also Librarians heads on silver plates. (Signed) Gary Oliver 1. January 1974.

Opp. text reads: Special erratum sheet prepared for copy number 155 forwarded to National Library & posterity.

________________________________

As you can see, the answer is actually very simple; it is because (lucky for me) the poets knew section 201 of the copyright act 1968 which required them to send copies of their magazines to the National Library, Canberra. Hence why the National Library has almost every poetry journal from 1968 onwards that I want to study.

_________________________________________

COPYRIGHT ACT 1968 - SECT 201

Delivery of library material to the National Library

(1) The publisher of any library material that is published in Australia and in which copyright subsists under this Act shall, within one month after the publication, cause a copy of the material to be delivered at his or her own expense to the National Library.

Penalty: $100.

(2) The copy of any library material delivered to the National Library in accordance with this section shall be a copy of the whole material (including any illustrations), be finished and coloured, and bound, sewed, stitched or otherwise fastened together, in the same manner as the best copies of that material are published and be on the best paper on which that material is printed.

(3) When any library material is delivered to the National Library in accordance with this section, the National Librarian shall cause a written receipt for the material to be given to the publisher of the material.

(4) This section is not intended to exclude or limit the operation of any law of a State or Territory (whether made before or after the commencement of this Act) that makes provision for or in relation to the delivery to a specified public or other library in or of the State or Territory of copies of library material published in the State or Territory.

(5) In this section:

"illustrations" includes drawings, engravings and photographs.

"library material" means a book, periodical, newspaper, pamphlet, sheet of letter-press, sheet of music, map, plan, chart or table, being a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or an edition of such a work, but does not include a second or later edition of any material unless that edition contains additions or alterations in the letter-press or in the illustrations.

Afternoon tea amusements...

2012-01-11T14:19:00.001+10:00

and [Like A Version: Eskimo Joe - Somebody That I Used To Know]

Underground Australian poetry magazines of the late 1960s and early 1970s...

2012-01-11T11:12:00.009+10:00

A list (thus far)...

Mok started: March 1968. editor: Robert Tillett, Richard Tipping. location: Adelaide. issues: No. 1 (Mar. 1968)-no. 5 (Spring 1969)
Crosscurrents started: May 1968. editor: Michael Dugan. location: Melbourne. issues: Vol 1.1 no.1 – 1.1 no. 4, vol. 2.1 – 2.2 October 1969
Our Glass started: May 1968. editor: Kris Hemensley. location: Melbourne. issues: seven issues
Transit started: September 1968. editor: John Tranter. location: Sydney. issues: two issues
Cat started: July 1969. editor: Andrew Jach. Location: Beaconsfield Vic. Issues: one issue
Mindscape started August 1969. editor: Norman Thompson. location: South Oakleigh Vic. issues: one issue
Flagstones started: August 1969. editor: Ian Robertson. location: Heidelberg Vic. issues: five issues
The Great Auk started: September 1969. editor: Charles Buckmaster. location: Parkville/ Gruyere. issues: twelve issues. Holocaust 2 is also The Great Auk 7.
Free Poetry started: October 1969. editor: Nigel Roberts, Terry Gillmore, John Goodall. location: Sydney. issues: eight issues
Free Grass started: October 1969. editor: anonymous (John Tranter) location: Sydney. issues: one issue
Poem started: 1969 editor: Ross Thompson, John Tozer, location: Hawthorn, Boronia. issues: two, issue one no date. issue two November 1969.
Aardvark started: 1970. editor: John Jenkins. location: Box Hill South Vic. issues: one issue
Manic magazine started: March 1970. editor: R.J Deeble. location: Richmond Vic. issues: one issue
Earthship started: October 1970. editor: Kris Hemensley location: Southampton, Hamshire. issues: No. 1 (Oct. 1970)-no. 13 (Oct. 1972) Second series, called The Ear in a wheatfield, began in 1973
Contempa started: 1972. editors: Phillip Edmonds, Robert Kenny. location: Armadale Vic. issues: 1-10, Series 2, no.1-6
Leatherjacket started: February 1972. editor: (issues 3) Cheryl Adamson and tom thompson. location: Sydney. issues: four issues
The Ear in the Wheatfield started: May 1973. editor: Kris Hemensley. location: Hawthorn Vic. issues: 1(May 1973)-19 (Dec. 1976) No. 20 published in "Rigmarole of the hours" series issue entitled "3 blind mice".

Also Your Freindly Fascist, Timestream, Mere Anarchy, Ploughman's Lunch (just Ploughman after second issue), Fitzrot, Fields, Dark Areas, Makar, Dharma, Etymspheres... I am still researching them.

The "mini-mags" or underground poetry magazines of the late 1960s and early 1970s offered a space for poetry which was outside established poetry magazines and journals. These early magazines were often gestetnered off by hand and sold cheaply (30 to 45 cents). Many survived for only one issue, but new ones seem to have been surfacing regularly, and others like Contempa ran for six years before financial strain caused it to cease. New printing technology gave this generation of poets the opportunity to bypass the "gatekeepers" of poetry in Australia by making their own publications. Even though many of these poets were being published in newspapers and mainstream magazines, the mini-mags offered a creative freedom that doesn't seem to available elsewhere at that time.

For me one of the most startling early handmade poetry magazines is The Great Auk by Charles Buckmaster. When he printed volume one in September 1968 he was seventeen years old and publishing La Mama poets like Michael Dugan, Bill Beard and Kris Hemensley. By the third issue in 1968 the cover carries Buckmaster's urging "TO ALL SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS.. GET OFF YR ARSE & DO SOMETHING!!!... start YR OWN undergrounds.." and included work by Ken Taylor and John Jenkins, as well as Hemensley, Dugan, Ian Robertson and Andrew Jach. The Great Auk becomes a who's who of the underground poetry publishing scene until mid 1970.

For more information on Australian poetry magazines from this time there is a great early article on poetry magazines by Dennis Douglas in Overland no.41 Winter 1969 (p 46-7) titled "Mini-Mags and the Poetry Explosion" and what amounts to a follow up article (in many ways) by Phillip Edmonds in Contempa Series 2/1 1975 (n.p) called "'Little Magazines' (1971- 75)".

Week Two Day Two...

2012-01-10T19:47:00.000+10:00

Some days I feel like I accomplish a lot and other days I can only see the piles of books, poetry magazines, CDs and photocopies on my desk that are still waiting for me. When I was offered the scholarship I was worried about what I would do for six long weeks at the National Library, now that the days are flying by and their is so much to do I think I could stay for another six! Suffice to say I am enjoying doing the research immensely, but the next step is of course to start writing. I have 18mths in which to write the thesis (and a six month extension is available if I need it) and I really only have one chapter at the moment completed (and it will need to be revised once I have written everything else)... so I still have a long journey to go, but really I am loving it.

Week Two...

2012-01-09T10:05:00.000+10:00

National Library, Canberra

My excitng news today is that Cordite Poetry Review has published my review of Michelle Dicinoski's Electricity for Beginners. Michelle has also been featured on Graham Nunn's blog another lost shark.

National War Memorial...

2012-01-08T21:22:00.002+10:00

National War Memorial, Canberra

Inside the dome above the unknown soldier

George

Simpson and his donkey sculpture

I went to the War Memorial today with some of the scholars and some Canberra based friends, it was an interesting and somber experience. The last time I was there was when my family came down for the opening of the Vietnam Veteran's memorial and I was about twelve years old. Today I was amazed to discover that the War Memorial gift shop contained a book on Vietnam that contained photographs of and by my Father. It was strange to see him in uniform, clean shaven, and twenty years old.

Day Four...

2012-01-06T10:52:00.003+10:00

Advertising for other underground poetry magazines in the back of Cat poetry magazine, 1969.

One of the other scholars yesterday pointed out that the poetry magazines I was looking at listed bookstores that the magazines were available in. It is something worth pursuing - how these underground magazines were distributed and how they cross-promoted. I have provided some examples of advertising in Cat, The Great Auk, and Free Poetry that also allow you to see what gestetnered pages look like. Click on the images to see them larger.

The Great Auk issue 8

Free Poetry issue 4

Day Three...

2012-01-05T21:17:00.001+10:00

My office.

Behind the scenes.

I've spent today listening to interviews and poetry readings and taking notes. Inbetween CDs I have been requesting more materials and I went and had a look at the Michael Dransfield papers, I wish I could show you the photographs I took! This afternoon a cache of underground poetry magazines turned up for me and I have been pouring over their gestetnered pages; titles include "Free Poetry" by Nigel Roberts, "The Great Auk" by Charles Buckmaster and "Flagstones" by Ian Robertson. On there way are more small undergound poetry magazines like "Transit" by John Tranter, "Cat" by Andew Jach and "Our Glass" by Kris Hemensley. Fantastic reading.

At lunch I went for a walk to Old Parliment House, saw the rose gardens and ducked into the Portrait Gallery (again - I went there yesteday). Finished the night with Thai and a drink with my fellow scholars.

Day Two...

2012-01-04T10:16:00.001+10:00

Patrick White's glasses in National Treasures exhibition. Image via.

Currently at the National Libray, sitting in my little office and slowly swamping myself with books, typscripts, audio of interviews and manuscript guides. PhD research heaven. To get books and audio I just put requests through on the computer and then a little while later go and collect them from just around the corner. And for the manuscripts I pop in a form at the manuscripts desk two levels up and then go back later to sit and read through the materials and take notes or photographs of the pertinent things. I have been poping in all manner of requests to keep me busy for the rest of the week (and probably next week too).

Day One...

2012-01-03T22:06:00.000+10:00

Above. The National Library. Fish in the pond where we are staying at ANU. A shot within the accommodation complex.

This morning we were picked up and whisked off to the National Library and spent the day doing incredible behind the scenes tours, exploring the book stacks, the archive and manuscript compactors and the cold storage space for recordings in the oral history collection. We got assigned our office, internet log-ins, email addresses, security clearances etc. and met with a number of specialist librarians and collection officers. We discussed our projects and the libraries holdings and found out how to fill in retrieval forms, where to get the best coffees and that there are 15km of shelves devoted to the manuscript collection at the National Library. Tonight I went into Civic for dinner with my fellow scholarship holders, who are all lovely and very interesting and studying very diverse topics, i.e. the Governor's Generals role, women's reading in the 19th century and migrant camps in Australia. I am happy and exhausted. Tomorrow I get to start requesting manuscripts, but today was just an amazing day of internal library sight seeing and meeting with clever talented people.

The Adventure Begins...

2012-01-02T19:52:00.001+10:00

I arrived in Canberra tonight. My sister and her little boy visited this morning to say goodbye and Dylan waved me off when the taxi came to collect me this afternoon. The scholarship is exciting, but a little nerve racking, and it was sad to say goodbye to Dylan and Christina for six weeks. I am staying on campus at the Australian National University and tomorrow morning someone from the National Library is going to come and pick up the scholarship holders and take us for our first day at the library. And so the adventure begins...

This past me by...

2012-01-01T22:16:00.001+10:00

in 2011 - an article from October by John Tranter on the Thirty Australian Poets anthology called In Praise of Poets with PhDs. Found via Graham Nunn's another lost shark. Thanks for the link Graham and Zenobia. It is an interesting article by Tranter. I've been wanting this book and after reading Tranter's and Zenobia's thoughts I really want to get hold of it.

PS. I have since purchased the anthology and have been enjoying reading it.

It's New Years Day...

2012-01-01T07:12:00.006+10:00

and my New Year's resolution is to write, write, write this year.

Original plan of Canberra found here.

Tomorrow I fly to Canberra for the six week Summer Scholarship at the National Library in Canberra. It is very exciting. I've been packing my suitcase and the house. Our lease runs up this month and the owners want to renovate so Dylan has to move house while I am away - poor thing. We have secured another little cottage not far from the city.

I plan to blog about my experiences at the library and when I get home I plan to just write, write, write! I have carried out and complied many interviews with the poets I am researching, I have files and folders of reviews, poems, letters, essays and articles etc. I am looking forward to being able to add to this during my time in Canberra and then concentrating on writing chapters for the next twelve months.

Do you have any New Year's resolutions, literary or otherwise?

Christmas and the mystery of the free book...

2011-12-31T12:03:00.001+10:00

Seasons Greetings.

It's New Year's Eve and life has been travelling at a quickened pace for sometime, though I have found time to do lots of reading due to a few days where I was sidelined getting tests at the hospital (I have a cyst on my ovary, nothing too serious). We spent Christmas with family and got some lovely and thoughtful gifts including a Moleskine address book, a beautiful fountain pen (above) and a Hemingway book, True at First Light. We also went and saw Australian singer/ songwriter Darren Hanlon at the Powerhouse on the 23rd for his last Christmas gig. Hanlon was fantastic and we were introduced to American folk songwriter David Dondero, his support act ,who writes wonderful witty but charming songs (we bought three of his CDs).

On the reading front, I have just finished reading Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, it is no Brideshead, but I enjoyed it immensely. I read True at First Light, a fictionalised memoir of Hemingway's time in Africa published posthumously and edited by Hem's son Patrick. It is what it is, an unfinished novel, but very interesting but I feel that this one is for Hemingway fans only. Certainly not in the same league as his other fictionalised travel memoirs like Festiva: The Sun also Rises or A Movable Feast. And last night I finished Persuasion by Jane Austen. It was compelling reading and I always love the many ways she has to describe a characters worth and social standing, i.e. manners, breeding, education, eloquence, attractiveness etc. It is very charming. I avoided English romantic fiction and Victorian literature like the plague when I was an undergraduate. I had a sneaking suspicion that only sickly-looking virginal girls who lived with their over-controlling parents read Austen and the Brontes. But over the last few years my position has not only softened, but changed substantially as I have read more widely and realised my preconceptions/ prejudices were based (unfairly) on interactions with several girls in first year lit tutorials.

And now to the mystery of the free book. Amanda Curtin's The Sinkings appeared in the mail this week. There was no return address on the padded envelope and inside the front cover was a slip of paper printed with the University of Western Australia's letter head and the words "with compliments" and no further explanation. I am all for free books turning up in the mail, but I don't for the life of me know how I would be on the University of Western Australia's mailing list for anything, let alone complimentary books. And the envelope was addressed to my new married name (which I have only had since the end of September), so clearly they have gotten my address recently. But how? Curious and curiouser.

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Have a great New Years and if you have time check out Graham Nunn's blog, another lost shark, as he goes through a list of Poetry Picks for 2011 chosen by various poets and reviewers. Some great books so far on the list, including Michelle Dicinoski's Electricity for Beginners, a book that I really enjoyed and have just written a review for (will let you know if it gets published).

And finally I thought I would share this great little clip of What are you Doing New Years Eve? by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (fond via FourThousand).

Enjoying...

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- reading my copy of Going Down Swinging #32 and looking forward to listening to the CD.
- having just finished Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Hemingway's Festiva: The Sun also Rises and Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue.
- learning new words: vaguebooking and schadenfraude.
- Haiku traffic signs in New York.
- catching up with friends and family for Christmas.
- the overcast weather.
- reading bad reviews of good books, especially this line about Kafka, "He's got nothing to say, but an overwhelming urge to say it."

Keates commended...

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Carmen Leigh Keates: Image courtesy of the artist

Well done to Carmen Leigh Keates for her commendation in the ACT Poetry Prize for her unpublished verse novella Second-Hand Attack Dog. Read a poem from Second-Hand here and my interview with Carmen for the Queensland Poetry Festival here.

PS. As Graham Nunn notes in the comments, Carmen will feature in Brisbane New Voices III to be released in April 2012!

Poetry inspired Christmas gifts...

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Book Christmas Tree Image Credit

It seems like every website I look at and email I receive of late has suggestions for Christmas presents. I thought I might put together just a few poetry inspired Christmas present suggestions:

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- An issue or two of poetry Zine-in-a-match-box by Pascale Burton at the Lavender Room.

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- A poetry stamped plate with your choice of poem or quote.

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- Poetry book ends.

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- An inscribed ring.

- A subscription to Australian Poetry Journal, or a copy of Rabbit non-fiction poetry journal, or maybe membership to Australian Poetry or the Queensland Writers Center (there are many journals and organisations that could be added to this list).

- A writing workshop or even a language course in French, German, Spanish, Latin etc. etc.

- And of course books of poetry from you local independent bookstore. Or contact Collected Works bookstore in Melbourne which specialises in Poetry books. I would buy 6am in the Universe, the Selected Poems of the late Benjamin Frater, Grand Parade Poets, $27.95. and Perrier Fever by Pete Spence, Grand Parade Poets $24.95. Both published by Alan Wearne - read an article by Wearne about publishing them here.

Feel free to leave further suggestions in the comments!

T-shirt from Supermarket

PS. One more idea. I just saw this on a Paris Blog. The t-shirt reads: “Moi, je veux te dire que je ne te quitterai jamais. Et puis, si tu es triste, je pourrais toujours te donner un peu d’alcool pour te rechauffer le couer. xo”

Which translates to something like: “I want you to know that I will never leave you. And, if you’re ever sad, I can always give you a little alcohol to make you feel better”.

So deserving...

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Picture: Liam Kidston Source: The Courier-Mail

Graham Nunn is not only a super nice person, the kind of person everyone smiles and nods approvingly about whenever his name is mentioned, but he is also an Australian poetry champion (i.e. he writes and supports poetry). His efforts have been recognised with the 2011 Johnno Award for outstanding contributions to writing in Queensland. Well done Graham! Click to read the Courier Mail's article on Graham and click over to his blog another lost shark to read some of his poems and find out more about Graham and all things Brisbane poetry.

Oh Matisse...

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Henri Matisse | Patitcha souriante (Patitcha smiling) 1947 | Purchased 1993 with funds from the International Exhibitions Program |

Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | © Henri Matisse 1947/Succession H Matisse/Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2011

Yesterday I went to the Matisse: Drawing Life exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art. It was beautiful. There were more than 300 drawings, prints and even some paintings. Matisse is well regarded as a painter, but it was just wonderful to see so many of his drawings in one place.

Frank O'Hara wrote in Personism: A Manifesto that when writing poetry "You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'" It is a fabulous and often quoted line but it reminds me of how Matisse draws. He just does it. There are beautifully detailed rendered drawings, tonally accurate and technically brilliant, but for me his best works are the ones with the expressive lines, the quick sketches, the portraits with only a few lines. Matisse has a sureness in his lines that you find in great artists like Picasso and Brett Whiteley, the ability to put it on paper with ink and not make a false line. You can see it in Matisse's prints too, there was a number of dry point etchings (where you work directly onto the metal plate with a pointed instrument) and lithographs (where you draw directly into the stone with a wax crayon) and you could see his directness, you could see that they were experimental and that he was "going on his nerve" creating lines that cannot be erased. These drawings and prints have an unmistakable immediacy to them, they are gestural, expressionistic and beautifully brief.

The exhibition runs until the 4th of March 2012 and is certainly worth the $16-$20 entry fee. There is also a studio set up where you can draw, art materials supplied, so give yourself plenty of time.

On why I feel like a literary detective...

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When I interviewed Alan Wearne earlier in the year he mentioned a researcher named Erica Travers who did her PhD in the late 1980s/ early 1990s on Australian poets and interviewed a number of generation of 68 poets, Alan Wearne included. I went in search of her PhD and found it at the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland. It turns out that she had interviewed some 16 poets and produced hundreds of pages of transcripts, but the Fryer library didn’t have any copies. I searched in vain for where the interviews may have been donated.

I was thinking that the interviews would be a great resource for a number of reasons. Most obviously because I am interviewing many of the same poets, but mainly because the only other collection of interviews with these poets is Martin Duwell’s A Possible Contemporary Poetry (1982) which contains interviews from the 1970s with thirteen of the poets included in John Tranter’s The New Australian Poetry (1989) anthology. There are great interviews by Hazel deBerg also done in the 1970s with some of the poets (i.e. Tranter, Forbes, Duggan and Adamson) that are held at the National Library (that don’t seem to have ever been published) and a number of interviews conducted over the years with the poets spread between various journals and websites. But to find a pile of unpublished interviews from the late 1980s/early 1990s was a really exciting prospect. Only thing was, I couldn’t find them.

Then while I was leafing through Alan Wearne’s papers in the Fryer library I came across a note from John Tranter to Wearne about the “Bell Collection” at the Sydney University. The Erica Bell collection. Hmmm... Five minutes on the internet and I had tracked down the illusive Erica Travers interviews that have been collected under her maiden name, Bell. I sent an email immediately. It has been a week and I hadn’t heard back and so today I did the everyday ordinary thing and rang them. The poor librarian I emailed has been away sick, but the lovely lady on the phone told me I could request copies of the interview transcripts through the University of Queensland library’s inter-library loan service. So I have. After all the hunting, it seems a little too easy, but I am not complaining. I am sure there must have been one hundred ways to find where the collection of interviews were, I just hadn’t found one of them! But it did make me feel like a literary detective, just for a little while, and I wonder what happen to Mrs Erica Travers (nee Bell), PhD.

Have you ever?

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Have you ever created a Wikipedia entry before? We got an email from uni not so long ago suggesting that folks in the Australian literature realm take up the gauntlet and write some wiki entries on over-looked Australian writers. What a great idea I thought. Anyone can write wiki entries so why not lecturers and PhD students who have done extensive research on these writers? Sounds good in theory. So today I set about writing a Wikipedia entry on Martin Duwell.

Martin Duwell has worn many hats, but they include being the editor of Makar Press, publishing 37 poetry chapbooks in the Gargoyle Poets Series and being the poetry editor at the University of Queensland Press for a number of years. He was also a Senior lecturer at UQ in Australian Studies and Poetics. Duwell was a poetry reviewer for the Australian newspaper from 1989 to 1998, general editor of the Best Australian Poetry series from 2003 to 2009 and has edited further collections of poetry. He has also published a book of interviews called A Possible Contemporary Poetry (1982), he commissioned John Tranter's The New Australian Poetry (1979) anthology and published over 200 reviews and essays. Duwell is still writing and continues to be published in a number of journals, including Australian Book Review, Stylus Poetry Journal and Jacket. He runs the Australian Poetry Review website where he publishes a review per month and extended essays.

Jacket magazine has called him "Australia’s leading poetry critic" and the AustLit database acknowledges his "significant contribution to the recognition and development of new poetry in Australia during the 1970s". Impressive hey?

I have been researching Martin for an interview for my PhD and I have also been lucky enough to meet with him a number of times regarding my thesis. So today I set about putting my research into the form of a Wikipedia page and it was a nightmare. I wrote it up and posted it and while I was making changes and adjustments (un-be-known to me) it was being edited by someone else and when I went to post the changes the whole article had gone. Once I had figured that out and replaced the text, it happened again! Then I found where it had been moved to and two thirds of the text had been cut. Then there was a note to say that I had committed editorial "vandalism" by reinstating deleted text. Sigh. So now there is a much cut down and edited version of the article that doesn't really show how amazing Martin Duwell is and what he has contributed to Australian literature. But I guess the beauty of Wikipedia is that other people can now edit it and hopefully fix up the entry somewhat. At least there is a Martin Duwell entry now, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Duwell

PS. I didn't learn my lesson though, I had a go at making a non-biographical article on the Gargoyle Poets Series. That one is still waiting to be approved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Gargoyle_Poets_Series

30

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Happy 30th Birthday to me and my twin sister!

Exciting news...

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National Library, Canberra. Image credit

I found out yesterday that I have been awarded a National Library Summer Scholarship! It includes return airfares to Canberra, six weeks accommodation at the Australian National University, access to the National library's materials, facilities and staff, as well as a $300 a week living allowance. It is a great opportunity for me to research for my PhD thesis and is so exciting!

de Beauvoir

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Yesterday I went to a lecture by Constance Borde and Shelia Malovany-Chevallier, the translators of the new unabridged English language version of Simon de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. It was amazing to hear how this long awaited and desired new translation came about, the logistics of how one translates an 800 page text and the critical reception of the work.

I own a 1988 copy of The Second Sex, as translated by H.M Parshley (a zoology professor), and I was unaware that he had taken out much of de Beauvoir's philosophical language, cut whole sentences and paragraphs and mistranslated key words and sections of the text. This new translation has been long overdue, but will enable the English language reading public (and scholars) to revisit and reconsider de Beauvoir's work in the light of the restored and reinstated text. Her work still seems as current and important now as it did when it was first published in 1949, and this new translation is certainly worth seeking out.

PS. If you can't get to a bookstore, the book is available in Australia from Borders online. It is $12.11 with free postage: http://www.borders.com.au/book/the-second-sex/2202657/

Henri

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Henri Cartier-Bresson | France. Paris. Place de l'Europe.

Gare Saint Lazare 1932 | Collection: Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation,

Magnum Photos. © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos

If you are in Brisbane over the next few weeks I suggest you take some time out to go and see the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition that is currently on at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG). It is a stunning exhibition of black and white photographs beautifully displayed with white matt boards and black frames on cool grey walls. The exhibition includes some 260 photographs, as well displays of vintage magazines featuring Cartier-Bresson's work and a documentary made the year before his death. Cartier-Bresson is considered the father of photo-journalism, and while his works are candid "everyday" shots, he never lost his Surrealist appetite for the unusual. The exhibition in a wonderful journey through continents and decades and it made me want to pack a bag, grab a camera and a journal and some plane tickets out of the country.

Actually, I thought it was so good that I went twice, once with Dylan and once with my twin Christina, she had blogged about it here. I am now looking forward to the Matisse drawing exhibition that open next month at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) next to QAG.

Laurie Duggan...

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I am working very hard on my confirmation chapter at the moment, thus why I have been out of touch with blog land. But I did just order Laurie Duggan's latest book of poetry, Allotments. Fewer and Further Press have set up a blog page for the book here, but if you are having troubles buying it like I did, email Jess Mynes ( jmynes@gmail.com) for other ways to pay. Looking forward to getting Duggan's new book in the mail!

Call for artists...

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From Chantell Schott:

"CALL FOR ARTISTS for the Mixed Messages: A Mail Art Project (and exhibition)

The exhibition is open to Australian Artists of all ages

The Project is about presenting diverse artistic expressions in the structure of mail – theme open!

Exhibition 1-25 February 2012, official opening Sunday 12 February at 2pm, The Repertory Theatre (Toowoomba)

Artists are welcome to use a variety of media and styles to create their works onto postcards, envelopes, boxes, postal cylinders, bubble wrap or cardboard of all sizes!

Please head to the website www.emergeart.net.au to download an entry form – see the dropdown menu under the Artists page.

Entries $10

REMEMBER – ENTRIES ARE DUE BY 1 NOVEMBER, BUT THE ARTWORK ISN’T NEEDED UNTIL 2 JANUARY 2012, GIVING YOU PLENTY OF TIME TO PLAN YOUR WORK!"

PS. Entry due date extended until the end of November

New Zealand honeymoon

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We spent 11 days exploring and relaxing in New Zealand on the north island. From Wellington to Napier, then Taupo, Rotorua and onto Matamata and Coromadel. We loved the scenery, the art deco buildings, Hobbiton, the museums, galleries, and the snow fields and just having some time out to sleep in, eat out and have adventures!

Professional wedding photographs

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Our wonderful photographer Liz has posted up some photographs from the wedding on her Lizzy C Photography blog. She has done such an amazing job at capturing the day. I can't wait to see the rest of the photographs later this month. But for a sneak peek of what is to come, click on the link!

Oh, perhaps I should mention who is in the pictures over on Liz's blog? The beautiful bridesmaids are my twin sister Christina, Dylan's gorgeous sister Lauren and my dear friend (and the photographer's husband) Dave. The groomsmen are our close friends Russell, Grant and Nathan, and the page boy is my sister's little (almost three year old) boy Cohen. There is a shot of my Father walking me down the aisle, and my Mum fussing over my dress and various friends as well.

The details:
Locations: The wedding took place at Preston Village Chapel and Manor in Toowoomba and we girls got ready at Vacy Hall Historic Guest House.
The wedding dress: 1960s Vintage find from Bohemian Bisoux on Etsy
Wedding dress sash: from Project U on Etsy
Bridesmaid dresses: Raw silk hamdmade by my Mother.
Bride and bridesmaid clutches: handmade by me.
Grooms and groomsmen's suit: assorted.
Pew decorations: ribbon flowers handmade with the help of friends and family.
Cake: Made by my Mother, iced and decorated by my Mother and I, cake topper from Melabo on Etsy.
Flowers: by family friend Brad Mayger
Hair and makeup: by Nicole Murphy and Katrina's Hairdressing in Toowoomba
Table decorations: Flower crochet napkin rings by my twin Christina.
Center pieces - Op shop dollies, depression era glass vases and assorted candle holders.
Wedding rings: Mine was my Great Grandmother's wedding ring. Dylan's was made by my sister Christina.
Car hire: 1936 Dodge Limo from Kenz Classics.
Invitations: Go Go Snap on Etsy
Bridal Waltz: "Video Games" by Lana Del Ray
Honeymoon: New Zealand

Oh the times... wedding photo booth pics...

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Me (before the wedding)

My beloved Dylan

Grant and Russell

Dave, Christina, Me, Dylan and Nathan

Dave and Nathan

Christina and Me

Lauren and Jakeson

Megan, Me and Robert

Lauren and Dylan

Dave and Liz

Dave, Cohen and Christina

Michael and Nicole

Dave and Liz

Nicole and Michael

My Dad and Bruce

Christina and Cohen

Ella, Nathan and Leisa

Nathan, Dave, Liz, Lauren, Me, Dylan, Christina, Dave, Grant, Dulci, George, Emma and Ian

An assortment of pics from the photo booth at the wedding.

A camera, a tripod and some props - hours of fun!

Such a perfect day...

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Christina and I

Me and Christina (at the reception)

Nathan, Russell (best man), Dylan (Groom) and Grant

My Father walking me down the aisle

Cohen (page boy), Christina, Me and Lauren

Dave (bridesmaid)

Dylan's sister Lauren (bridesmaid) and Me

It was perfect! The weather, the location, our wonderful friends and family - it was everything I imagined and more. It was the best day; I laughed and cried and didn't want it to end. These are a few shots that friends took, I will share the professional photographs when I get them. We also had a photo booth, so I will upload some of those soon too! Christina has also shared some photographs of the day over here, and also look here. Off on our honeymoon tomorrow!

One day...

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Collage by Christina

Preston Village Chapel and Manor images

One sleep until the wedding and everything is done (I hope)! Chapter emailed to supervisor (not quite finished), animals at the kennels and bags packed for the weekend in Toowoomba and the honeymoon. Off to the rehearsal this afternoon, followed by the rehearsal dinner tonight with all the bridal party and family. Weddings are such a great excuse to see everyone you love. I am so excited!

We fly out a day after the wedding, but I will post wedding pictures as soon as possible. In the mean time, check my twin sister's blog for some sneak peeks over the next few days.

One week...

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A bunch of daggy photographs of Dylan and I over the last few years.
We get married on Sunday!

I have been doing all the last minute wedding things - making sure everyone knows when the rehearsal is, organising the music for the reception, double checking all bookings (vintage car, chair covers, hotels etc etc.), wearing in the wedding shoes, digging out the passports, beginning to pack for the honeymoon, getting the animals their shots before they go into the kennels, and countless other details and ends that need to be tidied up and sorted out before the wedding and prior to our leaving the country. It is exciting and hectic. I am loving lists, I am loving family members who help with last minute requests (like I need some pretty coat hangers for the dresses) and loving Dylan's patience with everything!

Meanwhile, I am working on my chapter for the PhD (which my supervisor thoughtfully said I can hand in the day before the wedding!) and reading. I finished Bohemians of the Latin Quarter by Henry Murger, and I loved it, but it made me glad for hot running water and desirous of red wine. I've also been reading a monograph on Ezra Pound by G.S Fraser (written while Pound was still alive) and Warming the Core of Things, a book of poetry by Nora Krouk. I just finished The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (awesome/ heavy) and started The Damned by J.K Huysmans (some nice light reading to take on the honeymoon).

Will post wedding photos as soon as possible and then hopefully this will get back to being more of a book/ poetry/ PhD blog again!

12 days...

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The Journalist, the Film PhD, Me and the Poet/PhD

Me and my twin sister

Twelve days until my wedding! Which might explain why I have been off air for a while. I just want to thank my gorgeous friends for glamming up for my Hen's night on the weekend. I had such a great night!

Poet stamps...

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Image credit

Thanks to City Lights for posting about these forthcoming Twentieth-century poet stamps in America. They look great and have been thinking about who I would put on a stamp - given a chance to.

Loving...

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Nancy Sinatra meets Cat Power... Lana Del Rey - Video Games

Another look...

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Max Ryan

Andy White

Michelle Dicinoski

Matt Hetherington

Julie Beveridge

What a great weekend of poetry. Such a great venue and so well organised. Congratulations to all involved!

I saw a long list of performers on the first day including: Jacob Polley, the 2011 Arts Queensland Poet-in-Residence, Ashley Capes reading with Sheish Money on guitar and Graham Nunn on drums, the changing his life poet John Koenig, the stunning Carmen Keates who read from her verse novella Secondhand Attack Dog (unpublished) as well as new poems. Ron Pretty, who was awarded Member for the Order of Australia (AM) in 2002, and who has apparently written more poetry in the last three years since he retired from teaching and publishing, than he did during the last twenty years. Jaya Savige, current poetry editor for The Australian, was back in Australia from Cambridge and about to launch a new book, Surface to Air, through UQP. Sandra Thibodeaux, Australian Poetry's Poet-in-Residence for 2011, read poems about sex and death and was followed by Pascalle Burton, Nathan Shepherdson and David Stavanger performing The Outlandish Watch. An extended work featuring audios and visuals based on time.

Sunday I caught the wrong bus to the Valley, but still managed to see the lovely Max Ryan (I love his poems "Keef" and "Reading Leonard Cohen in the Austral Cafe, Murwillumbah"). Andy White sang and read (I liked his Beckett song), and Michelle Dicinoski was wonderful with her beautifully polished poems and clear reading style. Matt Hetherington engaged with the audience, including a baby, who punctuated his lines of poetry with squeals and chortles of delight (while Matt entertained us with his marriage break down). Julie Beveridge read some fantastic new travel/ pregnancy poems and some haibun from Home is Where the Heartache is. Betsy Turcot and Eleanor Jackson did not disappoint, with their incredible poetic narrative about desire, love and relationships; taking us on a journey from first glance to last promise. They were followed by Ghostboy, who misbehaved delightfully with the audience. Part Tom Waits, part Leonard Cohen and part Tim Burton, Ghostboy blends poetry, theatrics and music for a thoroughly provocative performance.

There was so much on offer (two venues running simultaneously), that I didn't get to see everyone read/ perform that I wanted to, but it was great seeing the sessions and catching up with friends. There was also a great little poetry bookstore going throughout the festival. I got one of Pascalle's badges and a copy of Max Ryan's Before the Sky.

If you want to hear more about the festival, check out the QPF facebook page, or Graham Nunn's Anotherlostshark blog. Hope you had a great weekend!

First Look...

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Sandra Thibodeaux

Jacob Polley

Ashley Capes

John Koenig

Carmen Keates

David Stavanger, Pascalle Burton and Nathan Shepherdson

I had a wonderful time at the Queensland Poetry Festival last night and today. I thought I'd share a few photographs of some of the poets I have caught so far. The festival continues tonight and tomorrow!

Tonight, tonight...

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Queensland Poetry Festival opens tonight! So look out for updates over the weekend - if I am anywhere near a computer - if not, there will be some reflections after the weekend.

I want to take my camera so I can provide visuals for those who are too far away to attend, but after hearing an installment of Pam Brown's "Complaints Department" in Melbourne recently, I am scared I might be tied to a staked if I take photographs of poets with microphones in front of their faces, holding pages of poems with their eyes looking down and their mouths awkwardly half-open... but I will do my best.

Chris Lynch Interview...

2011-08-26T12:13:00.002+10:00

I managed to catch up with the incredibly busy Chris Lynch for a quick interview. Aside from being a writer and editor, Chris is also a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland. He is reading at the Queensland Poetry Festival this Sunday at 2:00 in the Shopfront space in the Zen Method of Bingo session.

When did you start writing poetry?

I wrote quite a bit of poetry as a teenager, but it was only recently, in my early thirties, that I began writing poetry again seriously.

How do you go about writing? (Do you need five coffees, a new pencil and a quiet spot? Do you write in cafes or on a laptop? Do you carry around notebooks? Do you write in the morning or in the evening? etc.)

I carry a notebook; for ideas and first drafts, nothing beats paper and pen. Cafes are good for writing--cafes in foreign countries are better, and mountains in foreign countries at night.

Evenings, definitely. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure I've ever written poetry in a cafe on a mountain in a foreign country. Something to remedy!

I like the idea of inspiration, but basically it's bollocks. I'm working on consistency instead.

You write and edit poetry, fiction, reviews and plays. Do you find that one style of writing predominates, or informs other aspects of your writing practice?

Until recently I would've said no, but poetry has started to take over in the last few years. It seems to be the key to unlocking my voice in all forms.

What can we expect from you at the Queensland Poetry Festival?

I guess you could say it's an exploration of the nexus between nature and the city. A mix of Japanese forms (haiku and tanka) and some new free verse.

QPF opens tonight (tickets available here). All the weekend activities and performances are free! More information at queenslandpoetryfestival.com

Introducing Pascalle Burton...

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Pascalle Burton

Pascalle Burton is a Brisbane based poet/sonic artist and zine maker who also performs in The Stress of Leisure. Burton's Zine-in-a-Matchbox series has been shortlisted for the Golden Stapler awards this year. She also makes poetry inspired jewelry, coupling images of poets with words from their poems to create upcycled brooches and earrings, available at the Lavender Room stall in the bookshop during the QPF.

Zine-in-a-Matchbox

Word's Nest Brooches

All images courtesy of the artist

Pascalle Burton is performing in The Outlandish Watch session at the Queensland Poetry Festival this Saturday at 2.45 in the Shopfront with David Stavanger and Nathan Shepherdson.

The Outlandish Watch will be available on limited edition 7″ vinyl and features contributions from The Stress of Leisure. Here is a poem from the 7":

CHANGING MY PERFUME

I’m changing my perfume again

from roses to winter to sandalwood

I’m moving all the furniture

from southern to eastern and homeward bound

He asks for space

so she visits more

he should know how this works:

time and space in reverse

I try to return my library books

the library has disappeared

a dog lies dead in the water

you cannot exchange consequences

The grave of Edgar Allan Poe is empty

no roses or cognac

an Unknown Heart is feared dead

under the floor somewhere in Baltimore

I am scared every single minute of the day

what lurks behind this happiness?

It is exquisite and it leaves one unsatisfied

Sleep helps you avoid everything

from wastelands to bossmen to magic tricks

a darkness in the stillest deep

with Jesus and Buddha and royalty

And there’s nothing you can do

but dream of what comes next

Eleanor Jackson interview...

2011-08-24T07:29:00.028+10:00

Eleanor Jackson: Image credit

"We all know the formula for love, right?

Boy meets girl, they fall in love, conflict occurs, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again, true love triumphs and they all live happily ever after.

But what do you do if it’s girl meets girl? How will they know who’s meant to sweep whom off their feet? What if both parties are troubled by a dark secret? And can one be a lady sheikh?

Betsy Turcot and Eleanor Jackson blend popular romance, slam poetry and the occasional dirty limerick to create a poetic narrative about love in a modern age."
- from http://mbswoon.com/about/

I saw you read together at Riverbend books, you were both engaging and dynamic. The poems that you performed that night were ostensibly about modern relationships, but also love and loss, attraction and desire. The stranger sitting next to me was breathing heavily throughout your performance (sorry strange man I have never met before, but I could hear you). Are we in for similar up-beat and off-beat love poems (perhaps with the accompaniment of heavy breathing) at Queensland Poetry Festival (QPF)?

Hopefully not the heavy breathing!

But yes - more of the same, but this time, we're going all the way... The previous performances (we've done two short taster sets, one at Riverbend Books and another at Words or Whatever) were only excerpts from the show, which modified the pieces to try not to give too much away... This time around, it will be the full set of poems. Which both Betsy and I are really excited about having the chance to perform.
Definitely love poems, but not all lovely dovely, some are in fact much more dark, about the failures and heartbreaks of love.

You have great timing in your performances together, as you swap back and forwards and your voices interact. How do you go about writing for collaborative work? Can you describe the processes you have been using leading up to the QPF?

The process of writing together has been a fabulous experience for us both - we've generated pieces together, then adapted them in conversation. Sometimes we've edited each other pieces, or had to edit our own work in relation to a piece written by the other person. Which has been illuminating and exciting. We are different writers, with different voices but - like the character in the relationship in the show - we've had to learn to compromise, adjust and adapt to each other in order to create something that is bigger than the work we would have developed alone. I can't say it's been an exact science, but a bit like falling in love, it's been exciting to learn more about the other person, and then also about ourselves as writers and performers.

You are performing in the Smitten Cobras session with Ghostboy (and friends) who recently set the challenge on this blog for a nude poet run in the Valley - do you think anyone will take up the gauntlet (maybe during that session)?

If anyone would be able to create a nude poetry run - it would be Ghostboy. I can't guarantee that I'll be getting my kit off - god, the show feels "exposing" enough - so we'll just have to see if the audience is feeling it!

Catch Betsy Turcot & Eleanor Jackson at the Queensland Poetry Festival in Smitten Cobra's / Judith Wright Shopfront / Sunday 28 August / with Ghostboy / 3:15pm

Cindy Keong interview...

2011-08-23T07:30:00.002+10:00

Cindy Keong: Image courtesy of the artist

When did you start writing poetry?

Does winning a poetry prize about a shipwreck at the school fete in 1981 count?? The serious answer is I have always written, but most of it is not fit for anyone’s eyes. It has really only been in the last two years on becoming connected to a poetry community I have taken another look at writing poetry and learning about the craft. So much to learn and so little time!!

I love the invention of laptops, as I am an appalling hand-writer when committing my thoughts to paper. If I relied on pen and paper I would never be able to read back anything I wrote.

In terms of writing inspiration I would have to say I need to attach my ideas to some kind of theme to organise a sense of purpose in the poetry I am trying to write. Much of my inspiration comes from people watching one of my favourite pastimes and from my adventures experimenting with photography.

As well as being a poet, you are also a photographer. Do you see poetry, perhaps like photography, as a way to document your experiences and the world around you?

Poetry and photography is another way we can look at life, relationships, concepts and ideas with a fresh set of eyes. Photography for me is similar to carrying around a notebook to record your ideas for possible poems. Much of my poetry is triggered directly and vicariously by the photographs I have taken.

A few months ago I heard you read some poems based upon your experiences in Tanzania. Can you give us some background to your travels there and the impact on your poetry?

Last year was a year filled with opportunity, most significantly was the opportunity to work as a volunteer in Arusha; Tanzania for Food Water Shelter. This not for profit organisation is a project providing a hand up for vulnerable women and children in a rural area known as Sinon. My work there certainly provided many photographic opportunities and the inspiration for a small collection of poems I will be performing this year at QPF called “Same Sky”. Together, my photographs and poems create a narrative that explores the physical and cultural landscape through the eyes of a westerner (Mzungu), they connect us to universal hardships and celebrations that we all experience under the same sky.

Catch Cindy at the Queensland Poetry Festival in Image Back to the Word - Saturday 27 August / Theatre Space / 2:45

Review...

2011-08-22T18:20:00.001+10:00

Image credit

My latest review for M/C Reviews is online. Thursday night I was lucky enough to get comp tickets to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at QPAC - it was amazing! Read the review here.

Catching up...

2011-08-22T12:25:00.002+10:00

Fiona yesterday: tired, cold and happy.

Life seems busy for everyone I know at the moment, it is a busy time of year all round, myself included. Yesterday (Sunday) I fell out of bed at the unnatural time of 6am in order to do a three plus hour drive to Ballendean near Stanthorpe with my partner Dylan. We meet up with his beautiful family there for the opening of the Scotney Nature Refuge, named in honor of his Father who passed away in 2009. It is a wonderful part of the world the granite belt, and a thoughtful legacy for Tom.

In the meantime, my wedding is less than six weeks away, my PhD confirmation is a month overdue and I am putting the finishing touches on two interviews for publication and a review of a play I saw last week. Life is hectic to say the least, and yet what is it about being busy that means you actually get more done? There is nothing like looming deadlines amid lists of things to do to actually get things done. If I just had one thing to achieve today, I probably wouldn't get it done, but when I have a list so long I could never get it all done in one day, well that is when things really start to move!

The Queensland Poetry Festival is less than a week away and it has been great to be able to get in contact with so many talented writers in the lead up to the QPF. I would like to thank them all for sending me photographs, poems, bio-sketches and answering interview questions and putting up with my erratic and often less than prompt responses (sorry). But it has been a great delight to be a guest blogger for the festival this year. There are still a few more posts planned this week and then of course there will be posts about the Poetry Festival. Hope to see you there!

Introducing Michelle Dicinoski...

2011-08-22T07:19:00.000+10:00

Michelle Dicinoski: Image courtesy of the artist

Michelle Dicinoski’s first poetry collection, Electricity for Beginners, was published by Clouds of Magellan in June 2011. Michelle’s poems and creative non-fiction have appeared in journals, newspapers, and anthologies including The Best Australian Poems, The Australian Literary Review, and Meanjin. After completing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Queensland in 2010, Michelle was awarded an Australia Council grant to work on her next book, a work of creative non-fiction. Her essay “How to Grow a Lawn” is forthcoming in Speak Now: Australian Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage (Clouds of Magellan, 2011).

Milk teeth

Three-year-old Sophia leans into danger
like a sailor picks a fight. She swings
through mornings with a candy swagger and
stumbles home at night with her skin inked blue
from where she’s assaulted the world.
Something in this child makes you think
she might be spared fear her whole life.
This afternoon in Woolworths she’s
all liquored up on milk-tooth bravado
and rolls through the aisles on the trolley’s prow.
Sit down, you say, it isn’t safe,
but the kid just loosens her grip
and shouts:
I don’t want to be safe
I want to be la la la.

Catch Michelle at the Queensland Poetry Festival: Midday Arrives and Drinks /Sunday 28th August / Shopfront Space/ 12:15

Introducing Eleanor Jackson and Betsy Turcot...

2011-08-21T07:31:00.003+10:00

Eleanor Jackson and Besty Turcot: Image courtesy of the artists

"Eleanor has recently relocated to Brisbane from Melbourne, where she was a regular feature at Melbourne’s numerous poetry venues. Two-time winner of the Midsumma Poetry Out Loud slam, Eleanor has featured at the Overload Poetry and Melbourne Writers Festivals and was the producer of the Melbourne Poetry Map, a series of six audio poetry walks supported by the City of Melbourne. Her audio poems have been published in Going Down Swinging and the Cordite Poetry Review, while recordings of her work have been featured on RRR’s “Aural Text”, 3CR’s “Spoken Word”, ABC Radio National’s “Night Air” and the online poetry channel, “IndieFeed: Performance Poetry”. Her poignant, conversational style of poetry is capable of creating powerful quiet.

Check out Eleanor’s Blog or perhaps her previous project the Melbourne Poetry Map: Audio Graffiti."

"Betsy hails originally from the United States and since relocating to Brisbane, she has contributed her words, her heart and her passion to the city’s vibrant spoken word scene. Host of the popular, bi-monthly “Words or Whatever”, Betsy featured at the 2010 Queensland Poetry Festival as a member of The Broken Records Collective show “Just Like Me”. With her fresh delivery style, Betsy was a finalist in the Nimbin Performance Poetry Cup. With a BA in English literature, she brings a considered measure to the slam performance genre and is committed to teaching diversity through performance poetry.

Check out Betsy’s Blog or explore her work with the Broken Records Collective."

Catch Betsy Turcot & Eleanor Jackson at the Queensland Poetry Festival in Smitten Cobra's / Judith Wright Shopfront / Sunday 28 August / with Ghostboy / 3:15pm

Introducing Chris Lynch...

2011-08-20T07:36:00.002+10:00

Chris Lynch: Image courtesy of artist

"Chris Lynch was born with twelve fingers in the jungles of PNG. He has also lived in Australia, the USA, China, and Japan. Prone to crazy ideas, he has run off and joined the army, walked the length of Japan, eloped, started Tangled Bank Press, and eaten goat testicles. Thankfully, not all at once. He blogs at www.chrislynch.com.au".

Homo pedestrius

Two legs are a series
of elegant falls:

all progress depends
on undoing what was done,

one foot falling
and then the other

smacking dirt,
phalanges spreading

and springing back. This is
the beauty of walking—

to walk is
to be human.

I stand, step out
doors into sun

or moonlight.
Feel the spread

and spring
of each step

and remember:
before anything

I am the primate
that walks.

Catch Chris at the Queensland Poetry Festival in The Zen Method of Bingo - Sunday 28 August / Shopfront Space / 2:00

Introducing Cindy Keong...

2011-08-19T07:32:00.002+10:00

Cindy Keony: Image courtesy of the artist

I am a Brisbane based photographer, poet and teacher. I have recently been exploring life in Tanzania assisting with a community based education program. I usually live in breathing distance to the Pacific Ocean which continues to inspire my work. 2010 was an exciting year with both my poetry and photos published in Page Seventeen as well as being shortlisted for Queensland Poetry Festival Filmakers awards and receiving a highly commended for film submissions at the Melbourne Overload Festival.

Daladala

We catch Jim Jim a dented silver

bus, Bob Marley’s face emblazoned

on doors, his voice pumps

through dusty speakers.

Twice as many bodies than

there are seats; stale sweat

and the waft of

ripening bananas.

Mamas pass babies and

parcels through open windows, stranger

or not window seats come with

added responsibility.

A women determined not to stand, concertinas

the back row with her quaking form,

a thick thigh overlaps mine, my left arm

resting on her breast.

A local boy playing chicken, grinds

the journey to a halt. Mine the only

eyes that blink, when the driver leaps to the gutter,

administers a beating.

And when the journey ends, eyes stinging,

a mouth lined like a dusty shelf

you pay 30c for the pleasure, an

amusement ride you’ll never forget.

Catch Cindy at the Queensland Poetry Festival in Image Back to the Word - Saturday 27 August / Theatre Space / 2:45

Introducing John Koenig...

2011-08-18T07:27:00.004+10:00

John Koenig: Image courtesy of the artist

i am fond of keeping secrets can you
recently published in Brisbane new voices 2
would say i am a man who keeps his own counsel
born in dalby town on the edge of the western downs
i am particularly interested in all things emotional
in relationships - people and how they think
the underlying motivation for why
people act and do the things
they are want to do
meaning means
everything
to me

Careful You Might Scare Me

Well it’s all or nothing

the way it’s always been

when I ride crazy, wild and free

like a bohemian cowboy should be

astride a white stallion above the neon night

way, way out there hiding amongst the stars

where the strings of a mandolin can tickle my heart.

Intriguing reflections can signal connection

and an intimate conversational craving

now the night’s festivities have finished

and the coffee dregs are drying

and the mile high ride is over.

Fear turns my head away from her lips

and I peck a soft cheek instead.

Seduce and reject, such exquisite regret.

Damn, we almost kissed!

Catch John at the Queensland Poetry Festival in Torching the Shadows - Saturday 27 August / Shopfront Space / 11:45

PS. More Queensland Poetry Festival related blog posts over at Graham Nunn's blog Another Lost Shark.

Another Ghostboy Poem...

2011-08-16T07:32:00.004+10:00

Image credit

I am all right (aren't you?)

are you crying?

no, I am not crying I am very happy.

but aren’t you crying over us ?

no, I am happy to be here with you in this place.

I’m sure they are tears?

no, you are in correct. there is no water on my face. I was born without tear ducts.

but they are tears for us?

perhaps I am not being clear. let’s just call them onion stains or false starts.

okay. so how are you about me moving out?

depressed. I can’t stop crying. I think it all started when I heard you say

“Í am picking up the cat”

Catch Ghostboy at the Queensland Poetry Festival in Smitten Cobra's / Judith Wright Shopfront / Sunday 28 August / with Betsy Turcot & Eleanor Jackson

Interview with Julie Beveridge...

2011-08-14T07:30:00.004+10:00

Image courtesy of the artist

When did you start writing poetry?

I guess I’ve always written poetry. The last few years have included a few strange instances of bumping into people from my past lives (including you!).. one of whom was someone I went through early high school with in Tasmania in the 90’s. She reminded me that I used to make poetry zines (that she has kept to embarrass me with) so I was definitely fully into poetry by the time I was 12 or 13 – but I couldn’t tell you how I got there. It just makes sense to me.

I am a super lazy writer – hence being an emerging one for so long I guess – and there’s a few reasons for that. Over the last 5 years I’ve worked heavily in the literature sector of the arts creating programs and building writing communities ... a bit like seeing how the sausage gets made before the sausage sizzle.. during this time I lost the urge to contribute creatively to the community I was developing. Since the end of last year, I’ve had much more space from all of that and am slowly rebuilding my writing practice.

Usually I am triggered by a theme that I write around until I’m bored with, or a project... I’m super outcome driven so will start a project with the end game – I want a suite of 52 poems on playing cards about transgender zombies – and I work backwards from there. I’ve never written 52 poems about transgender zombies with the view of making them into a deck of cards but now that I joke about it ... watch this space!

I spend a lot of time with poetry in my head, with images and lines – themes of home, being broken, things beginning and ending circling around – and I spend a lot of time in a poetry state of mind – but have a pretty relaxed pen to paper practice.

Do you write with an audience in mind?

I think more I recognise an appropriate audience after writing poems. Things that I have submitted to one magazine I would never send to another, reading at SpeedPoets I would read different things than an audience at the Byron Bay Writers Festival, or that fish and chip shop I read at in Nambour. I prefer to focus on the craft of investigating whatever it is that I am investigating and let the audience come later – often there is no audience for the work I write and that’s ok too.

Your first book was Rock 'n' roll tuxedo, can you describe the process of writing that collection?

The title came first.

Tuxedo is a perfect example of what not to do when you have written a bunch of poems and without being connected to a community or critique process decide to put a book out. So in my work with QWC it comes in handy as a show and tell of ‘what not to do’. The process for writing the book however was based around making albums, it’s really a few albums collected together – at the time I was listening to a lot of elvis, who heavily informs the work and was in love with deserts and suburban destitution, so I wrote about that. In hindsight, I should have released the greatest hits... my reading copy of the book has these poems ear marked.. it’s really a book of maybe 15 good pieces and 50 pages of outtakes and b-sides. One thing I remember about that collection is I wanted it to be heavy, thick to hold and look slick on a book table. It was important that the package and content to be complimentary like that. I have such a secret love affair with that silly book because it was the beginning of something and the end of something else – which I love!

Can you tell us about your latest book Home is where the heartache is?

Heartache was more process driven. Haibun is traditionally a form of travel journaling consisting of clipped turse prose, with little poetic trickery, interspersed with haiku. A lot of nature, seasonal, life cycle themes. Before I had read much Haibun I thought it was trite and simple, that it held little poetic value. My husband writes beautiful haibun and one day, just to mock him I said that I was going to write a small chapbook of haibun celebrating that human heartache lives at home with us along with human joy: domestic menace, kidnapping, rape, death, abuse, blood and fire etc. So I set about reading a few pieces and writing some pieces and something unlocked. Haibun is a complex and liberating form – it allows a poet to call things exactly what they are. Because poetic devices are so sparingly used, suddenly rape is just an action – it’s peared back to its most simple meaning.. which made the subject matter I was looking at more powerful I think. Some of the poems in the book are rough, but there is an honesty to all of them. I started with the title, then the cover – a tapestry design of the classic home is where the heart is style and worked my way back from there.

I’ve been writing some haibun recently – having a crack at tradition and writing about a recent trip to Vancouver and San Francisco ... and will be debuting these at QPF. It feels great to be back behind the keys.

Introducing Julie Beveridge...

2011-08-12T07:30:00.011+10:00

Julie Beveridge: Image courtesy of the artist

"Julie Beveridge is an emerging poet who lives in Brisbane (although she’s been saying that for years now – emerge already!). She is the Program and Services Manager for Queensland Writers Centre and was the Director of Queensland Poetry Festival: spoken in one strange word in 2009 and 2010. Her first collection of poetry Rock’n’Roll Tuxedo was released in 2005. Julie is an active member Brisbane’s poetry community and is passionate about the innovation in promotion and distribution of new poetry and is always looking for a new way to deliver poetry audiences.

Julie has featured at the Queensland Poetry Festival; Byron Bay Writers Festival; Tasmanian Poetry Festival and the Sydney Writers Festival as well as reading at various arts events throughout Queensland, Victoria and Canada. Her work has appeared in Stylus Poetry Journal; Retort Magazine; Bottle Rockets (USA); Kokako (NZ); Page Seventeen;Contemporary Haibun Online; Cordite; Famous Reporter; Ripples Magazine; Idiom23 and Small Packages.

Her last collection, Home is where the Heartache is was released through Small Change Press in 2008 and was her first collection of haibun.

Julie is expecting her first child in November this year."

van diemens land

canyon precipice

jagged merciful

each sharp extension

endures grooves

for my fingers to rest in

or slip out of

whether I’m climbing or falling

nothing is patient as these cliffs

silent monuments

to tomfoolery & suicide

rocks call to me at night

knowing I’ve always wanted to

fling myself off something

into something else

Tasmania

heart shaped & irregular

hangs onto my memories

chained up dogs that don’t get fed

who long to slide

over the brink

Catch Julie at the Queensland Poetry Festival: Saturday/ Shopfront Space/ 10:30 am
Sunday/ Shopfront Space/ 2:30pm

Ghostboy interview...

2011-08-11T07:34:00.004+10:00

Ghostboy: Image courtesy of the artist

When did you start writing poetry?

Short answer: When does a fish first dance? When does a child first make a fist? When does the wind learn our names?

Short answer: When you were five.

As a performance poet, how would you describe your reading style?

Explosively quiet. Menacing but sensual, like going to bed with a raincoat on. The stage is my room, you are my parlour maid, the words are my payment. I am broke. performance poet? reading style? No, I am a performance, the poetry is plain to see if you open your hearts and read the lines, and I have as much style as is needed to get away with what I don't do. I give everything, and sometimes I get everything back.

How do you go about writing? (Do you need five coffees, a new pencil and a quiet spot? Do you write in cafes or on a laptop? Do you carry around notebooks? etc.)

I don't write. I hum to myself and try to name the tune. I seduce flowers and see how many ways there are for a rose to agree to open up. I do write. I usually require: a vase; touch; music; despair or sudden joy; a great idea that grabs my throat and says "SHUT THE FUCK UP GHOSTBOY, THIS IS WHERE I AM TAKING YOU, SIT DOWN AND TAKE THE MEMO, STAT". I write a lot of shit but hey, I have learnt to sift through to where the sideways gold is, the voices that I haven't heard before, let them sing their strange strangled song.

But I don't write.

You have been described as a "career poet", what does that mean?

Who said that, hey? Who is your source? What is the opposite of a "career poet", a "carrion poet". Yes yes, maybe. Rather be trying to thrive than barely alive in a dead end job with a dead end head then using poetry as a cathartic escape to be inflicted on deaf people at open mics. No, kidding. No, serious. Wow, someone called me a poet. That is like calling a chicken a bird. Career? I career into the abyss, I career into the page, I career into this. I write without you in mind. Or the carrion poets. I perform with my mind at the bottom of the cliff.

What can we expect from you at the Queensland Poetry Festival?

I more have expectations of the festival. What will the audience give me? When are the free drinks? Who is going to tell me what to do and when? Who will do a nude run into the Valley (Matt Hetherington?... those skinny Melbourne poets should smile less), just to show that stripped to the bone is not just another metaphor.

But you can come and see me, I will love you as much as everyone else does. Plus I have friends on stage, old friends and new work plus Sir Lady Grantham on keys/sex/ukulele and I will shake your hand (if you don't shake your heads) before I get a chance to lay the blueprint in your palm of how we can get through all this with no teeth a smile within....... reach.

Scroll down for Ghostboy's bio-sketch and a poem.

Catch Ghostboy at the Queensland Poetry Festival in Smitten Cobra's / Judith Wright Shopfront / Sunday 28 August / with Betsy Turcot & Eleanor Jackson

Introducing Nicola Scholes...

2011-08-10T07:30:00.002+10:00

Photo credit: Elleni Toumpas

Nicola Scholes is the author of Dear Rose (Small Change Press, 2009). Nicola performed at Queensland Poetry Festival in 2009 and 2008, and her poems have been published in the journals The Broadkill Review (USA), Cordite, Forge (USA/UK), Hecate, Page Seventeen, Social Alternatives, Stylus, Verity La, and the books Hibiscus and Ti-Tree: Women in Queensland, and Poems in Perspex: Max Harris Poetry Award 2007. Nicola regularly reads her poems at the Brisbane monthly poetry event SpeedPoets, and has been an actor in Brisbane community theatre for more than ten years. Nicola has a BA with first-class honours in English from the University of Queensland, a Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Studies from QUT, and an MA from Deakin University. She is currently studying a PhD on representations of the maternal in Allen Ginsberg’s poetry at the University of Queensland.

Stolen

Cocooned in thin polar fleece

taken from the airline,

legs outstretched on miracle couch

nectarine ankles going down

A starfish plane crosses the sky

it’s another world up there

hardly Paradise

a world where heads are bowed

for the execution of sleep

and dreams of running around

scream like chickens

where meals punctuate

eight-hour sentences

for a pack of salted peanuts

don’t question the authority

of those who feed us

A world unto itself

clouds held up with Viagra

toilets in cupboards, pissing down towards earth

relieved only by the sight of

brightly-coloured dorsal fins

sharks drifting toward terminals

Wiggling toes in soft thin socks

stretching sympathy one minute

recoiling the next

I emerge grateful

for carpet a couch

a two-bedroom unit in Brisbane

by Nicola Scholes

published in page seventeen #8 (2010)

Catch Nicola at the Queensland Poetry Festival in Among the last bright leaves - Sunday 28 August / Shopfront Space / 5.00pm

Help Collected Works...

2011-08-09T06:24:00.001+10:00

Image credit

Poetry friends, if you happen to be in Melbourne on Friday the 19th of August, stop into Collected Works bookstore for The Big Read Benefit Event to help raise money to keep Collected Works alive. It is a fantastic bookstore specialising in poetry books and run by the charming Kris Hemensley. If you can't make it, maybe give them a call next time you are looking for a specific book of poetry and help keep this wonderful store afloat.

The art of intelligent review...

2011-08-08T17:40:00.001+10:00

Image credit

"a man of large fortune must be in want of a wife! shut up austin nobody cares!!!!!!!!!!!"

Quote taken from one of my all time favorite blogs: Bad Reviews of Good Books. Yep, it is as the title describes and you are sure to find pearls of wisdom and delight, like this:

"Due to unfortunate job-related stuff, I'm currently teaching a Jane Austen novel. Doesn't matter which. I can't keep them straight".

The Removalists Review...

2011-08-08T13:25:00.001+10:00

Image credit

My review of the Queensland Theatre Company's production of The Removalists is now online at M/C Review.

a fresh new piece (of something)... by Ghostboy

2011-08-08T07:30:00.005+10:00

this is an Intro to a song....

this is an intro to a song

one yet to be sung

like a school bell

that has not rung

not for the children

but for the children that never were

this is for the crib

for every kid who runs away

from their nanny

this is for our final day

everything that comes sideways

like carjacks, cancer

mud crabs & choking on fries

this is for kebabs

and hummus

and all the strange dips

on this ride home

this song is for the boat people

and by boat people I don’t mean

refugees

but all of us afloat

this is for the goats

and the sheep who lost their clothes

this is for the cows

and their dairy dreams

this is for the cream

and the crops

and the wheat

and the wheat bix

and the bits of us

that don’t rise to the top kids

this is for the toast

to the men who boast

that their more than white bread

this is to the head

the one between

the cloud and the sea

and the toes

may one toe never big bigger than another

this is for our brothers

and out mothers sisters cousins

and their cats

this is for the rats

who didn’t jump ship

and the fleas

and all the circus tricks

we try and pull off every day

this is to the night

and the night before

and the night before that

and any woman named dawn

this is song that’s yet to be sung

like a man who is yet to be hung

and if Jesus returned right now

We would call him Jes

which would just leave us

and he would catch the bus

and he would smoke more

and he would swear less

this is to public transport

and the other bad jokes

and the things that don’t arrive on time

like periods

and parking fines

and losing track to find the map

this is to the ones and the twos

whose ticket was already punched

the ones not out too lunch

this is too brunch

half egg half bread roll

man, this is to the soul

and the shoes

and the socks

who hold us up

when the leg is longer

than the road

this is a song for the peeps

who creep in the dark

this is to the park

where the grass is never mowed

this is too the leaves

and everything that blows

like school and the crazy fools

who ski without their clothes

this is too yoghurt

and dessert

the shower that ran out

before we had a shirt

this is Just in

Bieber

small boys

with big egos

colder than a fever

this too the girl who knew to much

and the car that turned to rust

this is for the zen

those who kept the hens

but never ate the eggs

this is to the teachers

who taught us their teachings

that lessons can’t be learnt

that hearts (not fists) are meant for beating

and that words, words, words are best for speaking

this is to the silence

Catch Ghostboy at the Queensland Poetry Festival in Smitten Cobra's / Judith Wright Shopfront / Sunday 28 August / with Betsy Turcot & Eleanor Jackson

Introducing Ghostboy, by Ghostboy...

2011-08-06T07:30:00.009+10:00

Ghostboy: Image courtesy of the artist

"Ghostboy is the world’s only vaguely legal literary cannibal. He lives in a poet’s kidney. He likes both the page and the stage. He reads and can count backwards to six. He is a live hybrid of poetry, spoken weird theatre, & performance art. He has been a feature at many major festivals including the Brisbane Writers, Sydney Writers, Byron Bay Writers, Tasmanian Poetry, Broken Hill Poetry, Woodford Folk Festival, and QLD Poetry Festivals as well as featuring as part of Night Words at the Sydney Opera House. Most people liked him, some did not. He still gets booked, regardless. Ghostboy also heads Green Room Award Nominated art-rock-punk-cabaret band Ghostboy with Golden Virtues, who have featured at the Melbourne Fringe, Woodford Folk, Bohemian Ball & Brisbane Cabaret Festival. Some people listen and watch them, a few refuse. Tracks from their debut album Enter have also received Triple J & rage airplay.

Ghostboy loves you as much as everybody else does. At QPF, Ghostboy will perform a spoken word set of old and new poetrick treasures featuring some of his “f(r)iends”. Mz Richard Grantham (the Velvet Follies) will also accompany him on keys / sex / and viola. The two will be dressed to kill but no-one will die. This is all he can promise."

REVIEWS

...masterfully dealing out phrase upon phrase of lyrical goodness. He is a true showman with absolutely slamming poetry

- Time Off Magazine

Ghostboy immediately destroyed the pretensions of audience, casting verse across the floor

- FasterLouder

Any comparison is lame and doesn’t do Ghostboy himself justice, but think along the lines of a high-art Hedwig but with a lot more punk and a lot sexier –AUSSIETHEATRE.COM

Catch Ghostboy at QPF in Smitten Cobras - Sunday 28 August / 3.15pm / Shopfront Space