Proceed with Caution

‘Don’t lift your head! Don’t move your arms.’ A junior covered the robotic Head with a plastic cap. ‘Now I’m going to pin your arms beside your sides.’ She smiled insincerely. A Japanese face at the door: ‘Will I scrub now?’ ‘Yes,’ shouted Dominatrix. I expected a mop and bucket in one hand, a tough-teethed scrubbing brush in the other. Not so: she returned with a colourful surgeon’s cap on, a wrap-around apron. ‘Don’t lift your head!’ ‘Sorry.’ More white ceiling meditation, Om. A small hand lifted the curtain on my sexagenarian flanks and swabbed thighs and groin with antibacterial fluid, splashing drunkenly like Pollack in a mood. Colourful cap said, ‘A little prick.’ Who she referred to I don’t know – I was distracted from my meditation by a small needle pain in my right groin. ‘A sting,’ and it stung. She began steering the Head like an inquisitive praying mantis, testing angles on my chest area. I expected any moment to hear, ‘Warning! Warning! Aliens approaching!’ and smiled to myself and the white ceiling. The Head flew in close and nudged my shoulder as it took a close up of the cave within. Stalactites and stalagmites competed for room, having grown neighbourly for 65 years. Ceiling flouros flicked off, a whirring sound, then blazed again. The Head drew away at speed and swiveled in the purified air, sniffing out some morsel, and bent its neck to peer up-close at my left ribs. They shrunk back in fright. ‘Keep still!’ a disembodied voice whispered in a stage whisper from amateur variety. ‘Last photo,’ the colourful cap kindly added. She leant down to the ear of her captive audience: ‘You have blockages and …’ She spoke on. I lifted my head …

It was so high tech, and such a team of specialists in the control room, theatre and recovery ward, that the final token of the morning’s procedure was a surprise. ‘Nurse, it may need a band-aid.’ A band-aid!

Next morning, I stood in the shower, wondering at the minimalist punctuation on my groin: a band-aid, from a cupboard in Recovery.

Winners of the TOM COLLINS POETRY PRIZE

Congratulations to them all. And to the Furphy family for continuing to support the annual prize, awarded by the Fellowship of Australian Writers, WA branch.

Winning Poems - Judge: Les Wicks

First prize: "The Thaumaturge" by Christopher Konrad (WA)

Second prize: "Halfway Across the Desert" by Karen Dixon (WA)

Highly Commended:

"Worship" by Mags Webster (WA)

"The Crescent and the Cross" by Paula Jones (WA)

"China Landscapes" by Glen Phillips (WA)

"The Balinese Sonnets" by Roland Leach (WA)

Commended:

"Dispersion of Seed" by John C. Ryan (WA)

"From Lighthouse Hill" by Dick Alderson (WA)

"My Grandmothers" by Julie Watts (WA)

"Change" by Kathryn Lomer (TAS)

Ten rules for writing fiction ... by lots of today's authors

There's Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood ... and ... and ... one of my favourites, Roddy Doyle ... aall with good advice for you at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one

Roddy Doyle

1 Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

2 Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph ­–

3 Until you get to Page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it's the job.

4 Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.

5 Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don't go near the online bookies – unless it's research.

6 Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg "horse", "ran", "said".

7 Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It's research.

8 Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.

9 Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven't written yet.

10 Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – "He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego." But then get back to work.

Voicebox @ La Tropicana THURSDAY MARCH 4TH @ 7.30 pm

POETS IN PERFORMANCE

INTERNATIONAL

WOMEN’S DAY

Women poets of and about Afghanistan

SAWA-Australia, the Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan, is dedicated to raising funds for human rights, education, nutrition, health, safety, and improving the self-esteem of Afghanistan's women and children, including those who live as refugees in Pakistan.

In honour of International Women’s Day and to promote the work of SAWA, poems by famous and unknown Afghan women will be read by Chilla Bulbeck and Sarah Leighton of SAWA.

* Nadia Anjuman, who had been gaining a name for herself as a poet in Afghan literary circles, before she died, aged 25, in 2005 in Herat after being beaten by her husband. A literature undergraduate at Herat University, she published her first volume of poems shortly prior to her death, titled Gule Dudi (Dark Flower).

· Contributors to the Afghan Women's Writing Project (AWWP) http://awwproject.wordpress.com/ (). The project was set up by US novelist Masha Hamilton as a way for Afghan women to share their experiences with the rest of the world. 36 women from across Afghanistan publish their work anonymously, their own families often not aware of what they are doing. If found, these women could face serious reprisals. One writer says she has ‘received a death threat from Taliban’.

· Granaz Moussavi’s work, including ‘Afghan Woman’ will also be in the program. Granaz Moussavi has been invited to read her poetry in France, the USA, London and Goteborg. Her collections include پا برهنه تا صبح (Barefoot Till Morning) and وازهای زن بی‌اجازه (Songs Of Forbidden Woman). She recently directed the movie "My Tehran for Sale" (which SAWA hopes to bring to Perth for a showing mid-year).

· Ros and Steve Barnes write and perform songs about people and places in our everyday lives. Steve is an award-winning songwriter and Ros interprets his songs with clarity and strength. It's not complicated or tricksy- just one voice, one fine guitar, good words and the whole thing comes together Ros and Steve Barnes write and perform songs about people and places in our everyday lives. Steve is an award-winning songwriter and Ros interprets his songs with clarity and strength. It's not complicated or tricksy- just one voice, one fine guitar, good words and the whole thing comes together.

@ LA TROPICANA 177 High Street Fremantle
Fair Trade coffee and tasty snacks

OPEN MIC – POETS & SINGERS

* FRIENDLY FREO VIBE * DOOR PRIZES*

voicebox@live.com.au: 9336 2836 : voicebox-fremantle.blogspot.com

VOICEBOX Fremantle:

FIRST THURSDAY EVERY MONTH

Donation: $5/$3 conc.

16 Words for Water - by Billy Marshall Stoneking

Start Time: Friday, 26 March 2010 at 20:00
End Time: Saturday, 10 April 2010 at 23:00
Location: Garrick Theatre
Street: 16 Meadow Street
Town/City: Guildford, Australia

From the playwright's website at http://stonekingpages.webs.com/sixteenwordsforwater.htm:

In 1943, the American poet, Ezra Pound, was indicted by the United States government on the charge of treason. It was alleged that Pound, an American citizen, had made anti-American broadcasts over Italian radio during wartime, and that these same broadcasts had given "aid and comfort" to the enemy. By war's end Pound found himself in the custody of U.S. marshals.

Mindful of the political hysteria of the times, and fearing for Pound's life, his wife, friends and colleagues, urged him to enter a plea of insanity as a means of escaping trial and the possibility of a death penalty. This he did, and the court subsequently upheld the plea. However, instead of releasing him into the care of his wife as had been expected, the government chose to confine him at St Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., an institution that housed hundreds of the criminally insane. Pound - "one of the great literary figures of our time" - would remain incarcerated at St Elizabeth’s for nearly thirteen years.

Sixteen Words for Water takes up Pound's life in the final days of his "imprisonment", when the balance between life and death had reached its most critical point. The Ezra Pound of the present play must choose between sanity and the possibility of the electric chair, or insanity and the surety of safety at the expense of freedom. In the midst of this, he finds himself invaded by strange thoughts - memories of the ancient Aboriginal myth of the Wandjina... the creative spirits of the Dreamtime who fashioned the world out of words and who, in the act of naming, threatened the world with chaos.

MORE POETS NEEDED FOR THE FIRST HEAT!!

Perth - Get Ready to Slam!

Kicking off Wednesday 24th February at the Blue Room Theatre in
Northbridge, the Perth Poetry Slam provides an opportunity for Perth
poets to perform their original work to an audience - and Perth
audiences the chance to be entertained by short bursts of contemporary
poetry.

In the spirit of the Australian Poetry Slam, contestants are given a
microphone, a live audience and just two minutes to impress the randomly
selected audience judges, with their original spoken word, poetry,
hip-hop, monologues - or whatever.

Perth Poetry Slam heats run each Wednesday night until the final on 17th
March.

Three finalists from each slam heat will compete in the final. The
overall winner will take home prizes - and the coveted Perth Poetry Slam
Cup!

The Perth Poetry Slam series is part of The Blue Room's 21 Summer Nights
program.

Contestants can register at the www.perthpoetryslam.com website.

Slam Dates:
HEAT 1. Wednesday 24 FEBRUARY 8pm
HEAT 2. Wednesday 3 MARCH 8pm
HEAT 3. Wednesday 10 MARCH 8pm
Slam Final: 17 MARCH 8pm

For more details please phone Allan Boyd on 0402 573 580

Audience tickets are $5. The venue has limited capacity.

To book, please phone the Blue Room on: 9227 7005

The Blue Room is located at 53 James Street, Northbridge, in the Perth
Cultural Centre.

See: http://www.perthpoetryslam.com for all the details, and to register.

New appearance online @ Frank's Home

I'm proud to say five poems of mine are now on display at http://frankshome.org Please take a look, then check out the other poets there. A living anthology which accepts many different styles. It's my great privilege to be included.

'On Passion' by Dorothy Porter

From the Melbourne University Press website:

A wonderful, ultimately joyous, insight into the creative life of one of our best loved poets.

In On Passion celebrated Australian poet Dorothy Porter delves headfirst into the passions, both literary and earthly. We discover the young Dorothy Porter's 'drug of choice' was none other than romantic love and that 'some of the most deeply passionate experiences of [her] life happened between the covers of a book'.

Written just before she passed away in 2008, On Passion is a wonderful, ultimately joyous, insight into the creative life of one of our best loved poets.

Publication date: March 2010
Price: $19.99
Status: Forthcoming
Format: 112 pp, HB, 150 x 110 mm,

Subject: Non Fiction
ISBN-13 : 978-0-522-85601-9
Imprint: MUP

There is a generous extract in The Age newspaper online at http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/books/a-ravenous-heart/2010/02/19/1266082347892.html

Issa haiku

one push
is all red leaves...
river of melting snow


-Issa, 1823

http://cat.xula.edu/issa/

Once upon a time, the mad women of the Swan River Settlement looked at this venue to give them shelter, too!

The Reading Life: A Chinese Writer’s Poetics, and Politics - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com

The Reading Life: A Chinese Writer’s Poetics, and Politics - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com

Singer Ruby Hunter dies - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Singer Ruby Hunter dies - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Sad news.

Why Live Without Writing by Durs Grünbein : Poetry Magazine [article/magazine]

Why Live Without Writing by Durs Grünbein : Poetry Magazine [article/magazine]

Longish but so well-written.

'Poetry is aversion of conformity' - Charles Bernstein

Poetry is aversion of conformity in pursuit of new forms, or can be. By form I mean ways of putting things together, or stripping them apart, I mean ways of accounting for what weighs upon any one of us, or that poetry tosses up into an imaginary air like so many swans flying out of a magician’s depthless black hat so that suddenly, like when the sky all at once turns white or purple or day-glo blue, we breathe more deeply. By form I mean how any one of us interprets what’s swirling so often incomprehensibly about us, or the stutter with which he stutter, the warbling tone in which she sing off and on key. If form averts conformity, then it swings wide of this culture’s insatiable desire for, yet hatred of, assimilation — a manic-depressive cycle of go along, go away that is a crucial catalyst in the stiflingly effective process of cultural self-regulation and self-censorship.
...

It is particularly amusing that those who protest loudest about the fraudulence or aridness or sameness of contemporary poetry that insists on being contemporary, dissident, different, and who profess, in contrast, the primacy of the individual voice, fanned by a gentile inspiration, produce work largely indistinguishable from dozens of their peers and, moreover, tend to recognize the value only of poetry that fits into the narrow horizon of their particular style and subject matter. As if poetry were a craft that there is a right way or wrong way to do: in which case, I prefer the wrong way — anything better than the well-wrought epiphany of predictable measure — for at least the cracks and flaws show signs of life.

Charles Bernstein,‘State of the Art’, A Poetics, Harvard University Press, 1992

Catastrophe Theory II By Mary Jo Bang

Article and poem on display at http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100216/FEATURES06/2160315/1010/FEATURES/Acclaimed+poet+Mary+Jo+Bang+knows+the+value+of+narrative


The foot goes forward, yes.
Yet there are roots. And a giant orb
which focuses its cyclopic eye
on a moiré morning.
When the microcosm is dry — it's earth;
wet — it's water.
Water, reeds, electric eel: one possibility.
Sun, reeds, dust mote and mite: another.
Whatever the elements
(it's urban/ it's pastoral,
it's empty/ it's open), the theory says
it could always be worse.
Until it is. Then theory fails,
leaving a tracer mark.
From blood you come to blood
you go. Sudden things happen
inside a frame. A flame is
lit. Look
at those pathetic wiggly squiggles.
Inferno or garden?
An immeasurable distance
sizzles between them.
Watching it all. But taking so little in.
Just what will fit on the flat
of a glass lens. The ticker is hopeful.
Pathetic fallacy.
Look at the numbers move.
The mystery of ticks.
One per second, sixty per Mickey.
Four becomes ten, one in six
bombs falls in a bushel, a basket,
a two o'clock casket. Do you wish to stay
connected? The seen blurs
into the just heard. A bird outside the wide
open window. The warm day
of March. It changes. It has
all changed. The world
as a distracting disaster.
MY, what little SENSE you make, said the wolf
to Mary Jo. The theory rests
on a tipping point.
The clock steps in a direction.

John Tranter interviewed by Brian Henry

John Tranter interviewed by Brian Henry

At the same Argotist online site, there are a few Tranter sonnets.

Hit and Run Magazine

Hit and Run Magazine

A different way to promote your work.

Ewa Lipska: [Poetry] arises from solitude.

A Poetry Daily Prose Feature:

Lipska’s rejection of nationalism is consistent with her vision of the artist's role in society. She would argue that the poet does not craft a work out of sheer will or calculation; rather, art depends on an innocence rooted in a fidelity to personal experience, an authentic response to one's life that is lost in politics, or any other highly organized, artificial social system. The solidarity of poets, unlike that of political regimes, or of activists organized against them, is not a matter of design. Poetry is not collective life. It arises from solitude; it cannot be planned. Lipska thinks of art not only as a rejection of political intention but also as a deliberate engagement with the irrational and with uselessness."

—Robin Davidson, Introduction to The New Century

Read it all at http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_davidson.php

For example:

Elsewhere

I'd like to live Elsewhere.
In hand-embroidered towns.

To meet those
who are not born into the world.

At last we would be happily alone.
No stop would wait for us.

No arrival. No departure.
Evanescence in a museum.

No wars would fight for us.
No humanity. No army. No weapon.

Tipsy death. It would be fun.
In the library, multivolume time.

Love. A mad chapter.
It would turn the pages of our hearts in a whisper.


Splinter

I like you a twenty-year-old poet writes to me.
A beginning carpenter of words.

His letter smells of lumber.
His muse still sleeps in rosewood.

Ambitious noise in a literary sawmill.
Apprentices veneering a gullible tongue.

They cut to size the shy plywood of sentences.
A haiku whittled with a plane.

Problems begin
with a splinter lodged in memory.

It is hard to remove
much harder to describe.

Wood shavings fly. The apple cores of angels.
Dust up to the heavens.

Ewa Lipska
translated from the Polish by Robin Davidson and Ewa Elżbieta Nowakowska

Every Saturday at Perth Poetry Club - readings at The Moon. Guest poet for 20 Feb. is MAGS WEBSTER

Issa Haiku

floating duckweed--
appropriate
in this floating world


-Issa, 1820

http://cat.xula.edu/issa/

'Said Hanrahan' by John O'Brien

In response to the wild weather on the East Coast, I offer this:

SAID HANRAHAN

"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.


The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,

And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.


"It's looking crook," said Daniel Croke;
"Bedad, it's cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke

Has seasons been so bad."


"It's dry, all right," said young O'Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.


And so around the chorus ran

"It's keepin' dry, no doubt."
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."


"The crops are done; ye'll have your work
To save one bag of grain;

From here way out to Back-o'-Bourke
They're singin' out for rain.


"They're singin' out for rain," he said,
"And all the tanks are dry."
The congregation scratched its head,

And gazed around the sky.


"There won't be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
There's not a blade on Casey's place
As I came down to Mass."


"If rain don't come this month," said Dan,

And cleared his throat to speak -
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"If rain don't come this week."


A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
And each man squatted on his heel,

And chewed a piece of bark.


"We want an inch of rain, we do,"
O'Neil observed at last;
But Croke "maintained" we wanted two
To put the danger past.


"If we don't get three inches, man,

Or four to break this drought,
We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."


In God's good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane

It drummed a homely tune.


And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.


It pelted, pelted all day long,

A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o'-Bourke.


And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,

"If this rain doesn't stop."


And stop it did, in God's good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o'er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.


And days went by on dancing feet,

With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o'er the fence.


And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey's place

Went riding down to Mass.


While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.


"There'll be bush-fires for sure, me man,

There will, without a doubt;
We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."

Around the Boree Log and Other Verses, 1921

the dreamlife of letters, Brian Kim Stefans

the dreamlife of letters, Brian Kim Stefans

A great active visual poem. Take a look!

A White Ceiling Meditation

You might call it a white ceiling meditation.
‘Don’t lift your head! Don’t move your arms.’
The Indonesian nurse put a plastic cover,
like a shower cap, over
the enquiring head of their obedient robot:
‘Now I’m going to pin your arms
beside your sides.’ And she did with
a school matronly grimace.
‘Will I scrub now?’ a Japanese face at the door.
‘Yes,’ shouted the dominatrix.
I expected a mop and pedal bucket in one hand,
and a tough-teethed scrubbing brush in
the other. Not so: she returned with a colourful
surgeon’s cap on, a wrap-around apron.
‘Don’t lift your head!’ ‘Sorry.’
More white ceiling meditation, Om.
A small lady of unknown origin
and broken English, lifted the curtain
on my sexagenarian flanks and swabbed
thighs and groin with antibacterial fluid,
splashing drunkenly like Pollack in a mood.
With viewing screens adjusted,
the colourful cap said, ‘A little prick.’
Who she referred to I don’t know –
I was distracted from my meditation
by a small needle pain in my right groin.
‘A sting,’ and it stung. She began
steering the robot like an inquisitive
praying mantis, its bulky head
testing angles on my chest area.
I expected any moment to hear the cry,
‘Warning! Warning! Aliens approaching!’
and smiled to the white ceiling. The Head
flew in close and nudged my shoulder as
it took a close up of the cave within.
Stalactites and stalagmites competed for
room, having grown there for 65 years.
The ceiling flouros flicked off, a whirring
sound, then blazed again. The Head
drew away at speed and swiveled in
the purified air, sniffing out some morsel,
and bent its neck to peer up-close at my left ribs.
They shrunk back in fright. ‘Keep still!’
the disembodied voice whispered
in a stage whisper from amateur variety.
‘Last photo,’ the colourful cap kindly
added. She leant down to the ear of
her captive audience: ‘You have three
blockages and … ‘ She spoke on.
I lifted my head …

It was such a high tech scene, and
such a team of specialists
in the control room, theatre
and recovery ward, that the final token
of the morning’s procedure was
a surprise. ‘Nurse, it may need
a band-aid.’ A band-aid! I stood
in the shower this morning, wondering
at the minimalist punctuation on my groin.
A band-aid, from a cupboard in Recovery.

*

I am over ruling rules these days.
Left the hospital on my own two feet.
Snuck off, they said, without a wheel chair
and a nurse. I used to take nurses home
when I was younger, I said, but I'm not up to
sport at present. They rang me on my mobile
halfway home to tell me that. What a rebel.
Perhaps I'll put tassels on my Zimmer frame,
zoom off down to the Autumn Centre
and park in the manager's bay.
That'll show 'em.

From a series, 'Bored at Work?'

Some wit made great folk art/cartoons out of dead flies. I present one here. If I think of it,I'll present more tomorrow. Stand by.

Extracts from real letters written to local councils in the UK:

1. It's the dog’s mess that I find hard to swallow.

2. I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off.

3. I wish to complain that my father twisted his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage.

4. Their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.

5. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other day that blew them off.

6. My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand?

7. I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is coming away from the wall.

8. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.

9. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.

10. 50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster, and 50% are just plain filthy.

11. I am still having problems with smoke in my new drawers.

12. The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared.

13. Will you please send a man to look at my water, it is a funny colour and not fit to drink.

14. Our lavatory seat is broken in half and now is in three pieces.

15. I want to complain about the farmer across the road. Every morning at 6am his cock wakes me up and it's now getting too much for me.

16. The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is highly unsightly and dangerous.

17. Our kitchen floor is damp. We have two children and would like a third, so please send someone round to do something about it.

18. I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night.

19. Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife.

20. I have had the clerk of works down on the first floor six times but I still have no satisfaction.

21. This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broke and we can't get BBC2.

22. My bush is really overgrown round the front and my back passage has fungus growing in it.

23. He's got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can't take it any more

Haiku

the crickets raise
a ruckus...
another month ends


-Issa, 1813

http://cat.xula.edu/issa/

This Saturday 13 Feb at Perth Poetry Club: CORAL CARTER

The irrepressibly vivacious CORAL CARTER (third in the 2009 National Poetry Slam WA final) entertains us this week with her forceful, verseful social and personal commentary. Coral has (so far!) had an interesting life in various odd corners of Australia and the world. Coral blogs her poems at http://coralcarter.blogspot.com

Plus OPEN MIKE for poets and songwriters, professional sound, and the friendly ambience of The Moon cafe. 2-4pm, 323 William Street, Northbridge. Come and listen!

Coming up:

20 Feb: MAGS WEBSTER (Singing holds the colour of the air) + bonus interstate poet NICOLETTE STASKO (TBC)
27 Feb: MEG McKINLAY
6 Mar: TOMAS FORD (Yes, that Tomas Ford!)
13 Mar: KAITLYN WEST (aka Kaitlyn Plyley)

More info on artists and Perth Poetry Club: www.perthpoetryclub.com Email: perthpoetryclub@gmail.com Phone: Janet 0406 624 578

Updated link to Bush Slam poets from ABC

Here's the true complete link which I had wrong the other day. Go here to read the poems by all the Bush Slam poets. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bushslam/about.htm

No comment.

Read the 'Bush Slam' poems courtesy ABC

The ABC has put all the Bush Slam poems online so you can read them at your leisure.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bushslam/about.htm


The Bush Slam poets rollcall:

* Ballou, Emily, Author.
* Bix, Ezra, Author.
* Blundell, James, Author.
* Croggon, Alison, Author.
* Fagan, Kate, Author.
* Goodfellow, Geoff, Author.
* Kinsella, John, Author.
* Ma, Joel, Author.
* Schneider, Melinda, Author.
* Wagan-Watson, Sam, Author.
* Harding, Ester, Author.
* Thorburn, Chris, Author.



These poems were written under unusual pressures and distractions, so I wonder how the poets feel about them being on public display. It must have been part of their contract.

Here's the original blurb on the concept from ABC Publicity:

Bush Slam: three days, two poets, one town… Finding the heartbeat of the nation in verse.

Bush Slam puts poets and poetry in motion across Australia to discover the true spirit of the country.

Our host H.G. Nelson (Greig Pickhaver) is at the wheel of the Bush Slam bus, each week taking two very different poets to explore a rural community and meet its people. Each is given just three days to capture the heart of the town in verse – and then the tricky bit, to perform their work before the locals in a live head-to-head poetry slam for a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down!

Bush Slam features Australia’s leading poets and songwriters, including John Kinsella, Geoff Goodfellow, Sam Wagan Watson, Emily Ballou, Joel Ma, Melinda Schneider, Alison Croggon and James Blundell.

Together, their writing covers a vast spectrum of styles, from bush poetry, to country, to hip hop. (End quote)

"We're Bam Creative, an award winning website design and development company, based in Perth, Western Australia. "

We're Bam Creative, an award winning website design and development company, based in Perth, Western Australia. - Home - Bam Creative

Well, Number One son is 'building a better web'. This Old Spider's web is a bit tatty and dusty, with the occasional dead leaf and shredded fly. Might be time for a refit ...

Attempts at a Definition of Poetry by Famous Poets

"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

Poetry Quote by Robert Frost
American Poet (1874-1963)

"Poetry is what gets lost in translation."

Poetry Quote by Robert Frost
American Poet (1874-1963)

"A poem should not mean but be."

Poetry Quote by Archibald MacLeish
American Poet (1892-1982)

"The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both."

Poetry Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
American Poet (1803-1882)

"Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind,
because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science."

Poetry Quote by Sigmund Freud

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.

Poetry Quote by Sigmund Freud

"Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words."

Poetry Quote by Paul Engle
(1908-1991) University of Iowa

"To have great poets there must be great audiences too."

Poetry Quote by Walt Whitman
American Poet (1819-1892)

"Poetry is an orphan of silence.
The words never quite equal the experience behind them."

Poetry Quotes by Charles Simic
American Poet born in 1938

"One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves."

Poetry Quote by W. H. Auden
English and American Poet (1907-1973)

"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."

Poetry Quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley
English Poet (1792-1822)

"Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul,
and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject."

Poetry Quotes by John Keats
English Poet (1795-1821)

"Poetry ... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance."

Poetry Quote by John Keats
English Poet (1795-1821)

"No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language."

Poetry Quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
English Poet (1772-1834).

"There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either."

Poetry Quote by Robert Graves
English Poet (1895-1985)

"A poet who makes use of a worse word instead of a better, because the former fits the rhyme or the measure, though it weakens the sense, is like a jeweler, who cuts a diamond into a brilliant, and diminishes the weight to make it shine more."

Poetry Quote by Horace Walpole
English Poet (1717-1797)

"God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations."

Poetry Quote by Robert Browning
Famous English Poet (1812-1889)

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

Poetry Quote by Paul Valery
French Poet (1871-1945)

"He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet,
though he has never written a line in all his life."

Poetry Quote by George Sand
Female French writer who used the pseudonym George Sand (1804-1876)

"Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content."

Poetry Quote by Alfred de Musset
French Romantic Poet (1810-1857)

"Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand."

Poetry Quote by Plato

"Poetry is more philosophical and of higher value than history; for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular."

Poetry Quote by Aristotle

"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own."

Poetry Quote by Salvatore Quasimodo
Italian Poet (1901-1968)

“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

Dante Alighiere

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.”

William Blake

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen

“I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who’s living makes a name.”

Emily Dickinson

“A great man is always willing to be little.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”

Robert Frost

YouTube - The Sinkings (Amanda Curtin) book trailer

YouTube - The Sinkings (Amanda Curtin) book trailer

To go with the Amanda Curtin interview below.

Bookslut | An Interview with Amanda Curtin

Bookslut | An Interview with Amanda Curtin

As I said when I posted this link to facebook, it's too easy: just press a button and you know what I am interested in today or any day. I love interviews with friends because I always find out more about them than I ever knew. I may know how many sugars they have in their hot beverage but I often don't know what prompted them to write in the first place. Very interesting interview here, especially if you have read The Sinkings.

The Paris Review - Four Poems by Robert Hass

The Paris Review - Four Poems

When you have a few minutes, read this. It's worth it.

Friday Night 8pm @ The Ellington Club: Jamie Oehlers BLOWFISH

Musicians/Members

Jamie Oehlers - Tenor Saxophone
Damien Maughan - Trumpet
Jordan Murray - Trombone
Tim Wilson - Alto Saxophone
Sam Keevers - Piano
Rodrigo Aravena - Bass
Danny Fischer - Drums
Allira Wilson - Vocals

I advertise this in part as protest at the $99.90 price tag on concert tickets for the Branford Marsalis Quartet in March. What extortion! Friday night you will hear absolutely world-class contemporary jazz in a more intimate setting for a small percentage of that concert price! Support Live Jazz - particulalry SUPPORT LIVE AUSTRALIAN JAZZ.

Here's the blurb sent out by the Ellington Club:

FRIDAY
8.00pm Jamie Oehlers' Blowfish with special guest Allira Wilson. Blowfish is a group that Jamie Oehlers led in Melbourne for nearly 10 years, regularly playing at festivals around Australia and at Bennett’s Lane in Melbourne with guest vocalists and also performing tributes to Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. This is a dynamic and energetic eight piece group that packs a lot of punch!
11.30pm Late night groove series featuring Tara Del Borrello. Tara is a fast rising star on the Perth scene. She has just completed her degree in Music at WAAPA and is making a much anticipated return appearance after singing with The Roast, The Chemist and also her own Late night groove show on NYE. She was a finalist in the 2004 Australian Idol and continues to forge a reputation as a fine singer.

END QUOTE


The Ellington Jazz Club. 191 Beaufort Street, Perth. http://www.ellingtonjazz.com.au

An Old Man's Winter Night - Robert Frost

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.