Friendly Street Poets Inc. Japanese Poetry Competition 2010

HAIKU & HAIBUN
Closing Date: Friday 30th July 2010

Category A HAIKU
Prize Money: A page of 3 Haiku = 1 entry $100 $50

Category B HAIBUN
Prize Money: $150 $75
A haiku journey = 1 entry
maximum length 600 words
Entry Fee: AUS $5.00 per entry
or AUS$12.00 for three Haiku entries
Cheque or money order payable to: Friendly Street Poets Inc.

Please send entries to Friendly Street Poets Inc PO Box 3697 Norwood, SA 5067


CONDITIONS OF ENTRY


1.Entries must be typed, one page per entry.
1.Two copies of your poetry must accompany the entry form and fee. Please use paper clips rather than staples.
1.Your name must not appear on the poetry page, only on the entry form. You need to use the entry form to submit entries.
1.Entries must be the original work of the entrant, unpublished, not have won any other monetary prize or be under consideration anywhere else.
1.There is no limit to the number of entries submitted.
1.Please retain a copy of your work. All entries are destroyed after judging.
1.Authors retain copyright of their work, but we claim the right (if we choose) to publish the winner’s work on our website or in our publications.
1.Prizes are awarded on literary merit and judged ‘blind’. The Judge’s rulings are final and no correspondence can ensue.
1.Prizes and fees are in Australian Dollars.
1.Notification of winners and commendations (if awarded) will be announced at a Friendly Street Poets Meeting; and after that, on our website: friendlystreetpoets.org.au. If you include a SSAE with postage (DL Envelope) in your entry, the results will be posted you.
1.We will invite all winners to attend the announcement.

This theatre is going black for a short while.

I shall be away from my computer for a number of days, so the content of this blog will not change during that time. I guess it will be about a week from Tuesday 29 June. Meanwhile, there's a lot to read here and in the archives

General submission guidelines for 2010 – Poetry

Submission Guidelines for the 2010 National Jazz Writing Competition (poetry)

* Submit up to three poems
* Maximum 50 lines and 500 words per poem
* The poem must be about or inspired by an aspect of jazz or improvised music in Australia.
* Entry is free. Thanks to the assistance of the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL)’s Cultural Fund we do not need to charge an administration fee in 2010.
* Entries must not be published anywhere until after the prize has been announced.
* The competition is open to: Australian Residents who are not judges of the competition in the year of entry.
* Submit your entry by 30 June 2010. If posting, the envelope must be postmarked on or before 30 June. If emailing, the email must be sent no later than midnight on 30 June 2010, Eastern Australian time.
* Poems should be typed in 12 point font and double spaced.
* The competition is judged ‘blind’ so do not include your name on your poem(s). Submit a separate sheet with your details.
* First prize is $750. Other prizes will also be awarded for second and third places.
* Entries will not be returned. Please keep a copy for your own records.
* The decision of the judges is final. No discussion.
* Any entry that does not meet the criteria set out in the submission guidelines will not be considered

Your details on a separate sheet

Submit a separate sheet with your essay that includes the following information:

* Your name and address
* The title(s) of your poem(s)
* A contact telephone number
* Your email address
* Once again: Do not include your name on the poem(s)

Where to send entries

Email: with attachments in Microsoft Word ™ or PDF format to njwc@extempore.com.au
or
Post: Send hard copies printed single-sided on white A4 paper to:
National Jazz Writing Competition
PO Box 3079, Cotham LPO
Kew Vic 3101

From http://njwc.extempore.com.au/?page_id=37

Birthday Antics

"Look! Grandpa's taking a photo of you! Say hello to Grandpa!"

Weekend Beatnik - a light poem by Andrew Burke

‘Is that a real poncho
or is that a Sears poncho?’
Frank Zappa

I started out on bongos
but soon hit the harder stuff*

never did smoke banana peel
but dark green leaf from Pakistan

in a silver lined bowl
in a small pipe
in a vintage Rover
on the banks of the Swan

I lived in an accent learnt from The Subterraneans
paperback bought second hand
from a bookshop of many tongues

nearly lost my job writing
music specials and commercials
at a radio station
Where No Wrinklies Fly …

obvious to a right wing boss I was Communist
buying books from the Pioneer Bookshop
I hid Mayakovsky’s A Cloud In Trousers
among beer cans in my office drawer:
Open Only in Case of Emergency.

I started out on Time magazine
but soon hit Evergreen Review

played Monk’s Dream as I wrote
the Two Dog Night Special
for Saturday Night

living in the left bank
of my mind
shades on to avoid indignation

but rooted in the right bank
of suburban Perth
a weekend beatnik
complete with beads
a beret from army surplus
and DT Suzuki’s Zen scriptures


* apologies to Bob Dylan

KSP Writers Centre invites you to hear LES MURRAY

WA Poetry Walls for Festival

As part of the 2010 Poetry Festival WA Poets Inc, are organising poetry walls at a number of locations, and we want your contribution. Each poet may submit poetry with or without artwork. The work must be suitable for simple black and white photocopying and consist of a single sheet of A4 with a 2cm margin at the bottom for the WAPI and Festival logos.

The deadline is July 16th. Please send all contributions to WAPI, PO Box 684,Inglewood, WA, 6932.

Any poets who are interested in working on a Poetry in Schools project, please email Veronica Lake . You must be willing to obtain a Working with Children certificate, which costs $50.


--
WA Poets Inc
wapoets@gmail.com
http://www.wapoets.net.au

Scenes from India (apropos of nothing)

'Humoreske' - by Halvard Johnson

Are we inside the frog or outside? To say the least,
it makes for diverse and enjoyable living.
Just off the road to

wherever it was we were going,
very few poets, reading over
your shoulder. Transformed pre-trance

formations, the first I’d ever
heard of. Natural dis-
inclinations.

Marginally pond-bound
exceptional infur-
iations.

* * *

Halvard Johnson has been on this blog before. His wit and way with words appeal to me and when I once asked him for a 'poetic', he replied:
'Mostly I can't really explain how poetry works/gets written. It just does.'

Search this blog for more, then google him - He has an entire book online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/27039868/Halvard-Johnson-THE-PERFECTION-OF-MOZART-S-THIRD-EYE-Other-Sonnets which is entertaining reading - he takes the sonnets out for a spirited walk!

Ticket special – 2 for 1 Gamma Rays

Phoenix Theatre is offering a special of 2 for 1 tickets for the opening night, Thursday 24th June 2010, of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds at Phoenix Theatre Memorial Hall cnr Carrington Street and Rockingham Road, Hamilton Hill.

That is 2 tickets for $20!

To take advantage of this deal – bookings by email only to phoenixbookings@hotmail.com and mention Gamma Rays!

Poets Prizes and Prize Winners

The circuitous route of curiosity lead me to this site, which I didn't know existed before: http://poetsprize.com/index.html

The Griffen Prize, the T.S.Eliot Prize, Judith Wright Prize, Kenneth Slessor Prize - plus lots of current information and 'blurbs' on festivals and books. If you are resting between writing poems, it is a pleasant detour.

Pieces of Me: Frieda Hughes

This painting of her husband, Laszlo Lukacs, by Frieda Hughes is just one of 15 'pieces of me' displayed by the poet and artist at http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/gallery/2008/may/30/poetry.art?picture=334465624

What an interesting concept. What 15 pieces of ephemera would you present to display yourself? Frieda shows us a couple of her paintings, Wellington boots mixed with high heels, a favourite jacket from childhood, and - a cement mixer! I think mine would feature CDs and books. I don't have the Hopalong Cassidy outfit I wore as a child, or the set of glitter bongos I first played as a teenage drummer. Maybe a few old LPs remain in a cardboard box in the top of a cupboard: Allen Ginsberg reading 'Howl', Van Morrison with The Chieftans. The tooth fairy has my first teeth. Much of my old life has gone to the tip, thin pickings for seagulls who once clustered there. Now it's a tip no more but a Waste Disposal Centre - scant fun in that for a barefoot boy on weekends. Even my faithful old 1913 Smith Corona portable has gone to the tip, it's razor-edged 'O' startling no-one anymore.

Geoffrey Hill wins Oxford Professor of Poetry election by landslide

‘Greatest living poet in the English language’, who celebrates his 78th birthday today, voted in ahead of nine other candidates

His academic credentials and plethora of literary prizes have meant that Geoffrey Hill has been the frontrunner for the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from the race’s start – and, this afternoon, the British poet was elected by a landslide.

Hill, who celebrates his 78th birthday today, was voted in ahead of nine other candidates with 1,156 votes, beating contenders including the Beat poet Michael Horovitz, the biographer Roger Lewis, Oxford-based performance poet Steve Larkin and South African poet Chris Mann.

Read all about it at http://worldbbnews.com/2010/06/geoffrey-hill-wins-oxford-professor-of-poetry-election-by-landslide/

Issa Haiku

the katydid
wagging his beard
is singing


-Issa, 1814

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

The Second Coming - Yeats (1920)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

This poem is just one of a list of 'poems everyone should know' by the about.com:poetry crew at http://poetry.about.com/od/poems/l/blyeatssecondcoming.htm At the site you will find notes about content and context, and information about Yeats himself. The other poems on the list are almost predictable - I would have missed the Emily Dickenson one and probably would have featured an older English poem before Whitman - a Milton or Donne sonnet for example. But it is all to do with personal choice, isn't it, with perhaps just a hint of cultural bias. It's all worth looking at, imho.

Writing Advice

Some advice I have heard writers give emerging writers:

John Marsden: Take risks.

Elizabeth Jolley: Put your bum in the chair and your words on the page.

Frank Moorehouse: Stay clean shaven and change your undies every day.

John Marsden: Be stingy.

Submission Link for 'Walking' issue of Landscapes magazine

Dear Andrew,

Thanks for writing. The link to the call for submissions is buried in the last issue. Here it is:

http://landscapeandlanguagecentre.au.com/hydrobotanica/Hydrobotanica_callforsubmissions_walking.pdf

That's great that you can link to your blog. We'd like to get a hearty round of submissions on the theme of walking.

All the best,

John Ryan

JACKADDER’S MUSIC CLUB This Sunday 3pm

Hope that you can make it along to JACKADDER’S MUSIC CLUB this Sunday June 20 at 3pm to enjoy the music and humour of award winning singer,songwriter DEB BECKETT.

She has picked up a swag of awards in recent years including: Western Australian Country Music Senior Songwriter Award 4 times as well as the Best Female Vocal award in 2007 & 2009. She recorded her album “Life, Love and Laughter Lines” in 2009. There are many and varied reasons for artists producing albums – but in the case of DEB BECKETT, the inspiration was both simple and compelling.

In October last year, the much awarded songwriter and twice winner of the W.A. Female vocal award in 2007 and 2009 was diagnosed with cancer. “It really was a shock," says Deb. "I'd never been sick in my life before and suddenly I was facing something that could take my life. I decided early on I was going to fight it with everything. I would keep really positive and not let the circumstances stop me from pursuing a dream which suddenly became not just rekindled but blazing.

“One of the things that suddenly seemed so important was to make sure that if I didn’t win the battle, I’d leave behind something that said what I was about apart from being a Mum, daughter and sister.” In 2005 I had entered one of my songs in the W.A. Country Music Awards. I’d never entered anything before and won with a song called ‘Off to the Diggings”. So off I went to Boyup Brook and dipped my toe back into country music – and it felt good so I decided to dive back in.”
I’d never felt comfortable being out front on the stage, even though that’s where I wanted to be, and I never thought in a million years I could do it. “But at Boyup Brook in 2005 I had to sing my winning song. I found the confidence I’d always lacked. The stage fright was gone – it was like finding a dream you’d tucked away and forgotten about.

“I came home with a rekindled dream to be a singer/songwriter, and I’ve pursued that since 2005 working around Western Australia.”

But inspiration is a selective thing, and whilst the reasons behind her renewed confidence and making of her album are clear, Deb’s amazing upbeat attitude should be an inspiration to plenty of others out there.

“I guess that having this Cancer, though a horrible thing, has brought about some positive things as well, like not taking things for granted and making the most of every day and not putting things off until tomorrow,” say Deb.

Support acts are Danny Gunzburg and Debra Ratcliffe.

The venue is Woodlands Reserve Hall, Teakwood Ave, Woodlands

For more details call Carmel on 94461558

Cost $8 Adults. Children free. Afternoon tea included

When I was a teenager, my brother Michael turned me on to Gene Krupa. It was a lasting passion - not so much for Krupa but for various forms of jazz drumming. However, it had another effect: the cover of Clef records back then had design and art work by David Stone Martin, a master of line and wash illustrations, as shown here with the Billie Holiday and James P.Johnson covers. His album covers are now up on the Internet at http://www.birkajazz.com/archive/stoneMartin.htm

Apart from David Stone Martin, I have always been drawn to the artwork of Ben Shahn and Jonathon Shahn ... Draw these styles together and you have the early cover work of Andy Warhol before he became THE Andy Warhol. The Griffen and Burrell ciovers are his.

CDs do have cover art, but today's artform for music is more the video. Progress I hate to call it, but time stands still for nobody - and technology dictates more changes today than a Zappa concerto!

So, I hope you enjoy these postcards from my past musical passions.

Hear Charles Bernstein read on ABC's Poetica on air or online

Poetica this week on ABC National Radio features one of my favourites, USA poet Charles Bernstein. It is repeated again on Thursday afternoon, but is available online for two weeks or so at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/poetica/default.htm

Here are the ABC's notes:

Thank you for saying thank you

A meeting with New York poet Charles Bernstein.

Charles Bernstein was born in New York City in 1950 and has published more than 20 books of poetry. He has been closely involved with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry movement, and in the 1970s co-founded the journal of the same name.

In this production Charles Bernstein speaks to Anna Messariti in New York about his life and work, and reads a selection of his sharp, funny and political poems.

Sound engineer: David Le May
Producer: Christine Kinsella

Charles Bernstein's Selected Poems is published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Poems in the program

There's Beauty in the Sound
Thank you for saying thank you
The Ballad of the Girly Man
In Particular
Wherever Angels Go
It's 8.23 in New York
All from Girly Man published by University of Chicago Press

And
Doggy Bag
From With Strings published by University of Chicago Press.

"In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes."

Matsuo Basho
trans. by Lucien Stryk

Replay: A Snap Poem from 2006

I am open to
suggestion, free
in a life of
comfort and choices,

my children so
secure and active,
villains locked away
in the jug, silenced

forever. I am
a strong breeze, filling
sails of laughter
and life --

a rainbow around
the sun, a white gum
by the river
as it shimmers

in response. I delight
in taking pleasure.
I hear the city
whispering and see
the ocean lapping.

Poetry Reading circa 1998 ...

Thanks to Frances Macaulay Forde for this piece of ephemera.

Landscapes 2010 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language at Edith Cowan University

Volume 4 Issue 1
Peripatetica

The upcoming issue of Landscapes 'Peripatetica' is soliciting responses to the theme of walking and bipedal movement in wild, suburban or urban areas.

American Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau in his essay ‘Walking’ says ‘I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING’. Rebecca Solnit more recently in Wanderlust echoes Thoreau when she describes ‘walking is a subversive detour, the scenic route through a half-abandoned landscape of ideas and experiences’.

Landscapes is currently accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, photography, visual and sound art for this unique 2010 issue. We welcome all submissions that attempt to explore the theme of walking in literal or metaphoric ways, regionally in Southwest Australia or internationally.

Academic articles of 8000 words or less will be submitted to a peer-review process before publication.

Please see http://www.landscapeandlanguagecentre.au.com for submission guidelines and for previous issues

Closing Date 30 June 2010
General Editors Glen Phillips and Andrew Taylor ISSN 1448-0778

Addendum:

I went enquiring at their Landscapes site and with some difficulty found the following which may be useful to you.

Guide for Contributors to the ICLL journal Submissions

Landscapes welcomes submissions of scholarly articles, reviews and creative works on all aspects of the interrelationship between landscape and language, with a particular interest in ecocritical approaches. Reviews of books, notices of book launches, exhibitions and other events such as conferences and symposia are invited. Creative works accepted include short stories, poems, images and sound files. Scholarly articles will normally be 3000 - 7000 words; book reviews should usually comprise 600 - 800 words. The journal is published twice yearly. Submissions for Landscapes are accepted at any time throughout the year.

All submissions to Landscapes including creative works are refereed. The refereeing process may take up to 3 months. According to the interdisciplinary nature of the journal, our referees come from different disciplines. To view a list of previous and current referees of the journal please click here (coming soon).

Submissions should be sent in electronic form via attachments of MS word or Rich Text format documents to g.phillips@ecu.edu.au. Paper submissions will neither be considered nor returned. Images should be sent in jpg-format, sound files in wav-format. Scholarly articles must include an abstract of 150-200 words. All submissions must be accompanied by a brief biographical note. Contributions submitted to Landscapes should only require minor corrections and need to conform to the journal's style guide.

Style Guide

* Please use UK English.
* Please use single spacing for both main text and footnotes.
* The text should be unjustified with a font size of 12 points.
* Please use endnotes and in-text citations instead of footnotes.
* Indicate new paragraphs by indenting their first line with the tab key. Please do not indent the first paragraph under a heading.
* For all other matters please comply with the current edition of the MLA style. For more information on this style see http://www.mla.org/style.

Rockpile Tour Interviews and Feature at The Argotist Online.

This feature relates to ROCKPILE a collaboration between poets David Meltzer, Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion, who travelled through eight cities in the U.S. to perform poetry and prose, composed while on the road, with local musicians and artists in each city. ROCKPILE’s main aim was to educate and preserve, as well as to create a history of collaboration. It is hoped that it has helped to reinforce the tradition of the troubadour, a tradition that is central to the cultural upheaval and the identity politics that reawakened poets, artists, musicians and songwriters from the mid-1960s through to the 1970s.

Included in this feature is an interview with David Meltzer and Michael Rothenberg, an interview with David Meltzer, perspectives from two of the musicians involved (Bob Malone and Daniel McNaughton), some reactions from people who were either involved or who saw the tour on the road and an overview of the tour by Michael Rothenberg.

http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Rockpile%20Interviews%20and%20Feature.htm

The other day I put up a link for the far-reaching site History of 20th C. Photography. On that same site was a link to Western Literature, of which Modernism was my first interest. Have a look - the evolution of cultural and artistic attitudes and stances is always interesting, especially when we are living in the aftermath, so-called Post Modernism - much of which is simply strands of Modernisn extended and separated from its roots.

Illustrations by Yuri Annenkov


http://www.all-art.org/history666_literature.html

Spoken Word in the Four5Nine: Sunday 20 June 2010

Poet, performer and Perth Poetry Club MC Janet Jackson presents an awesome lineup of local and interstate spoken word on Sunday 20 June in the old Cottonmouth venue: the Four5Nine Bar, Rosemount Hotel, 459 Fitzgerald Street, North Perth. Tickets at the door. $15 unwaged, $10 unwaged. Doors open 6:30pm. Dick Alderson. Tomás Ford. Kate Wilson. Amanda Joy. Kevin Gillam. Randall $tephens & Steve Smart (Melbourne). Plus open mike.

Janet says: 'I'm thrilled to be presenting such a smorgasbord of the best in Perth poetry and spoken word -- and Randall and Steve capture the absolute quintessence of Melbourne performance poetry. If you've got a mind, you'll enjoy this.'

What a lineup! Slam-winning headline Steve Smart has a presentation style that's almost violent in its nakedness, and a completely original voice, informed by everything from Bill Hicks to Laverne & Shirley to love and death to Tasmanian forest blockades. Randall $tephens has an angry vibe, spitting straight-talking lines of urban existence. Kevin Gillam, one of Perth's best-loved poets, performs his experimental, stylish poetry both with and without cello. Amanda Joy lives up to her name: poignant, lyrical poems of love, life and loss, presented with flair and feeling. Kate Wilson, from Bunbury, is one of WA’s favourite performance poets: get ready to hear rhymes that will tingle your spine. Tomás Ford, well-known here and interstate for his electro-disco multimedia shows, was the MC of Cottonmouth; his spoken word is confrontational and uncomfortably funny. Dick Alderson is a favourite at Perth poetry events for his wryly intelligent short poems that splice science into art.

More info: 0406 624 578. http://www.proximitypoetry.com

This event was made possible by Brian and Heather Hunt of Entopia Wines.

Interview with Millicent Borges Accardi

Interviews with poets are often interesting, and here's one by a poetry-list friend of mine, Millicent Borges Accardi at http://womensvoicesforchange.org/millicent-borges-accardi-woman-on-a-shaky-bridge.htm

A quote to tantalise you:

INTERVIEWER: That’s a provocative position! We’ll be interested to hear what WVFC readers think about that. Meanwhile, to close our conversation, here’s one final query: What question do you wish we’d asked you and how would you answer it?

MILLICENT: Oh gosh. I guess I want to answer a question about the book cover for Woman on a Shaky Bridge. My husband is an artist and the painting (of me) is a large-scale oil that he painted. It was one of those moments—I was sitting on the couch and Charles had finished a series of nude self portraits, then, another series of fallen soldiers, and was about to launch onto a new pathway when he looked at me and said, There! I had just returned from yoga and had no makeup on and I was not all that engaged. But when it came time to choose a cover, I thought that painting was perfect.

Iron W by Rich Curtis in Poetry

Iron W by Rich Curtis in Poetry

Very interesting project - with successful poems. Most games like Rich Curtis plays produce unreadable poems at best. I enjoyed these and will go back to them often. Hope you do too. And the download is FREE - best price.

Here is a very minimal example (not all so thin):

19.
into the
moving

be-grieving
bright

streets of
sunshine

rising for
work

opening
into a

day of
substance

and
optimism

Rich Curtis

Great Photography - Great Art

A great site for photography and art. Don't go there until you have time to spare!

http://www.all-art.org/history658_photography9.html

A poem is muddy

The children sing
tirelessly

It’s a hard act to follow

A little clip from Jill Jones piece in http://ungovernablepress.weebly.com/uploads/2/1/2/2/2122174/passages_annotations.pdf

Reasons for Poetry - by William Meredith

A long and thoughtful article on The Reasons for Poetry by William Meredith is available at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16176

I quote a section here:

If every poem is new, it is also associated in its own mind, and ideally in the reader's, with other poems of its species. Poems hold one another in place in our minds, Robert Frost said, the way the stars hold one another in place in the firmament.

The three roles I envision are these:

1. The poet as dissident. Underlying poems conceived by the poet as dissident is a social criticism, whether of a tyranny, like George III's or Stalin's, of an abuse, like nuclear pollution, or of a system, like capitalism. As an activist poet, the dissident is likely to be formally radical, since the large metaphor of his work is revolution, but not necessarily.

2. The poet as apologist. Underlying poems conceived by the poet as apologist is acceptance or approval of the human and social predicament of his tribe. However much the poem may focus on errors or imperfections in its subject, there is implied an order or decorum in the model. Often the poem's mode is praise, overt or implicit, of the specific subject or of the human condition. Every work of art, the Christian apologist W. H. Auden said, is by its formal nature a gesture of astonishment at that greatest of miracles, the principle of order in the universe. The poet as apologist is apt to have a pronounced sense of form, but not necessarily.

3. The third and commonest stance of the poet is the poet as solitary. While the poem by the poet as solitary will sometimes take the stance of talking to itself, more often it speaks from the poet as individual, to the reader as another individual, and intends to establish a limited, intense agreement of feeling. There is no implicit agreement about social needs or predicaments. Such solitary experiences, and they make up most of lyric poetry, carry on their backs the world they are concerned with, like itinerant puppet-shows They create a momentary event where the poet and the reader dwell together in some mutual astonishment of words. The best teacher I ever had told us a lyric poem can only say one of three things. It can say, "Oh, the beauty of it" or "Oh, the pity of it," or it can say, "Oh."

This is a crude trinity, and if useful at all, useful at the elementary level of detecting and dispelling false expectation. I will rehearse the three roles with some examples. [He continues ...]

William Meredith

Communication breakdown

smoke rises daily
from the hospital

but the staff have
their heads down

at the canteen
and coffee lounge

and can't read
the signals ...

Poetry lives, OK? | The Australian

Jaya Savige has his say on contemporary Australian Poetry.

Poetry lives, OK? | The Australian

Be quick! Hear Mick Jagger play the music that influenced him

http://www.facebook.com/l/4a741;www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sknv5

Louise Bourgeois 1911-2010. RIP

Louise Bourgeois' Maman, located outside the National Gallery of Canada. Personal photo by:Radagast.

More poetry jots by Andrew Barke

Holden fans wave their flags
in Ford fans’ faces

The automobile is a wheelchair.

Balinese drape gods
in checkered cloth

*

we are numerous,
Oppen said

singleminded & focused

poems change up
minor to major

*

all poetry is derivative

no tradition without
revolution throwing over
the balustrades

ant’s a centaur in his dragon world

*

automobile quote, Nicanor Parra; ant quote, Ezra Pound