Sunday, December 11, 2022
Sunday, December 04, 2022
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Saturday, November 26, 2022
Book launch for LUCY DOUGAN
Friday, November 25, 2022
from DICTIONARY.COM THE oLDEST wORDS IN ENGLISH
Thursday, November 24, 2022
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Galway Kinnell says ...
Monday, November 14, 2022
Friday, November 11, 2022
Monday, November 07, 2022
Sunday, November 06, 2022
Saturday, November 05, 2022
Gertrude Stein says ...
Monday, October 31, 2022
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Herbie Mann - Memphis Underground - 8/19/1989 - Newport Jazz Festival (O...
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Thursday, October 06, 2022
Tuesday, October 04, 2022
The Buster Keaton Cure
Charles Simic
The Buster Keaton Cure
“Every few years I take a look at Buster Keaton’s films, and recently, being thoroughly depressed by our wars and our politics, I watched a dozen of his shorts to cheer myself up.”
Friday, September 30, 2022
A Poetry Reading by Jerome Rothenberg
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Sunday, September 25, 2022
HART CRANE
My current thinking is prompted by Hart Crane who said:
"The writing of a poem is not - as the writing of a chemical equation is - intended to describe anything; instead, the poem is the chemical reaction itself."
Thursday, September 22, 2022
Chu Berry - Blowin' Up A Breeze
Thursday, September 15, 2022
Natalie Goldberg's definition of Poetry
Over many decades, when I’ve been teaching writing, I have used a great list of famous poets who have described poetry, never quite nailing its essence. Today, while throwing out books to the op shop, I came across Natalie Goldberg’s WILD MIND. Page 203 held a great surprise – another definition:
Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.
Wow, this reader’s mind is in a turmoil of images which collide and clutter in the neural junkshop. It doesn’t tell me ; it delights me.
Sunday, September 11, 2022
ART IMPULSE by Andrew Burke
One of my favourite artists
was born before language
and I understand what s/he
was communicating:
five clay streaks on
a cave wall. Now the Tv
would feast on the arts channel
exploring which school of art
s/he creates in, what
string of influences s/he had,
the materials s/he chose
and the palette of the diaspora.
I ask, ‘Why did you stop at five?’
S/he puts up her hand in answer.
Published in The Australian 2022,
Lisa Gorton wrote in her poem Grafitti:
An arm’s length of
wall permits any depth
of meditative calm or
your money back.
I read it on the Internet,
I saw the streaks on my screen.
*
Why I wrote this poem
is the same impulse s/he had.
Friday, September 09, 2022
Saturday, September 03, 2022
Sunday, August 28, 2022
LAKE MOON by Murray Jennings
(from the novel ‘All Our Christmases’)
I have no idea what bird that is which scuds,
a silhouette along the silver-pink surface.
You need to hear a call, but it’s nearly night
and they don’t.
It’s not quite a lake, although there’s been more rain.
The frogs sound resigned to the season change,
the grasses, reeds and marshes
are fed again by the winter creek
from the foothills
where cashed-up people spend the weekends
scraping barnacles from boats
and vacuuming driveways.
Across the water, distant shadows are absorbed
and suburban lights flick on for the News.
I have no boat, no house, no complaints.
For me, nothing taints this swamp
this winter silence
an old bed
a shed roof almost leakproof
a lake moon
rates to pay soon.
PS: The novel is for sale at Crow Books and New Edition
Friday, August 26, 2022
OUT THERE by Colin Young
Out there ground imprisoned by drought
longs to escape in rain. Tussocks of
spinifex
inject the sky through needles.
The law of agony has sentenced
the thorny devil to wander its
scorching hell.
Look over the nearest rocks and
watch the sun
gloat over ants’ nests trying to
reach the clouds.
Why bother to expel breath here?
Better to conserve
every drop of sweat for the long
haul,
for the trudge over dune-oceans, and
twisted logs
sunk to the bottom of a lost
water-hole.
And that dingo hobbles, hesitant,
toward nowhere, fur ruffled by hints
of wind, teeth drooling for food,
without finding a companion
anywhere.
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
PEACH by Jan Napier
Peach
Peach pits are poisonous This is not a mistake.
Brenna Twohy.
we eat of life as if a ripened peach.
I wipe my chin, protest that I have had little
of this though on the cracked blue and white
plate only a single slice remains.
look, you nod. can mirrors have intruders?
hair is hoarfrost, face a windfall, hands aftershocks.
the sun is low. there are clouds. shivering begins.
on kitchen china, discarded skin, that last piece.
it is late, you say, for sweetness. crush the kernel.
tell the secret of the seed as you leave me.
head in hands. the pause between seconds.
I open my throat.
plate only a single slice remains.
Monday, August 22, 2022
THIS COULD BE ENOUGH - Gail Willems
I’m a catabolic woman
Stimulating
Dangerous
I want a slow hand
across my sagging breasts
spiralling nipples
tummy rolls thighs love handles
a wet tongue that adores
the many craters of my hot skin
me vivid with desire
shouting
nonsense as lust unravels
This landscape
sticky with you
won’t be enough
Years later
maybe sooner
Reality sneaks in
This could be enough
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
ABALONE FISHING
ABOLONE FISHING
John walked out
on ankle-high surf
babbling on the reef
finding its way
through the sharp rocky surface
I followed behind
nervous in my old tennis shoes
walking gingerly
tyre lever in hand
hunting for abalone.
John knows how. He’d been
around the world
working on merchant ships
telling tales of the high seas
and the low dives in port cities.
I’d been in boarding school
for much of his travels,
anchored to declining verbs
and translating Caesar.
He told us about the tough whores
of Marseilles while I was
taking a Burmese girl from
a Catholic boarding school
for a hamburger and coffee.
“Here you go, here’s some,”
as he bent to the reef
hacking at stones as
the sun glittered off
the Indian Ocean.
- 17/08/2022
Saturday, August 13, 2022
Saturday, August 06, 2022
Friday, July 29, 2022
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
There's poetry in everything. It's in how you read it. Take, for example, the text below:
20 is a pronic number. 20 is a tetrahedral number as 1, 4, 10, 20. 20 is the basis for vigesimal number systems. 20 is the third composite number to be the product of a squared prime and a prime, and also the second member of the (2 )q family in this form.20 is the smallest primitive
Monday, July 25, 2022
Friday, July 15, 2022
OLD NOTES DRAFT 2
I
am drained of much
and
live in echoes,
bones
brittle
and
heart
flawed.
Yet
I can laugh
and play
with dialog
with the
shopkeeper
and the old
woman
who sits
outside
on the
padded seat
of her
walking frame.
Tradesmen
bounce
out of
their
utilities
and trucks
to buy a
choc milk
and meaty
pies.
She sips her
coffee
silently in
a
meditation
on
their
exhaust.
Andrew BURKE
15/07/2022
Monday, July 11, 2022
Cootie Williams in Duke Ellington Sacred Concert 2 1969
Monday, May 30, 2022
Eileen Myles Interview: A Poem Says 'I Want'
Sunday, May 08, 2022
Saturday, May 07, 2022
Delfeayo Marsalis -Future Focus "Blue Monk"
Thursday, April 28, 2022
NEW & SELECTED Review in WESTERLY
A book review about my NEW & SELECTED POEMS out from Walleah Press.
The review is live: https://westerlymag.com.au/andrew-burke-new-and-selected/
Thank you Editors of Westerly and Jackson who is a fine poet herself.