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.

Drinking Alone with the Moon - Li Bai

From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone. There was no one with me –
Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.
Alas, the moon was unable to drink
And my shadow tagged me vacantly;
But still for a while I had these friends
To cheer me through the end of spring....
I sang. The moon encouraged me.
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.
As long as I knew, we were boon companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.
...Shall goodwill ever be secure?
I watch the long road of the River of Stars.

Nary a true verb be spake ...

J.D. Salinger Dies at 91: The Hermit Crab of American Letters

J.D. Salinger Dies at 91: The Hermit Crab of American Letters

Click on the hyperlink to see the story.

Great images of Australia! Koalas doing what comes naturally ...

Photos by Udo Zott and Deb Matthews-Zott - thanks for permission.

'The War Season' by William Stafford

The birds that winter blew past our yard
feathered along so young
that only the trees could follow their wings
or understand their tongue.

The north wind blew. Limbs bent down.
Leaves fell over the lawn.
The birds one day were young in the sky;
the next day they were gone.

This poem was written in 1945 when William Stafford was a conscientious objector in USA. He was a Quaker and a gentleman, a farmer and a family man. He is one of my favourite poets - a man who wrote a poem a day while his family slumbered before or around dawn. He used simple diction with lively imagery to celebrate the greatest passion of his life: the world about him. He had wit, humour, style and purpose. Thank you to The Friends of William Stafford who promote his work to this day throughout USA.

The photo and poem have been half-hitched from http://mikechasar.blogspot.com/2010/01/william-staffords-birthday.html

Call for Erotic Tales set in South East Asia

Here's an interesting call for submissions from Singapore!

Call For Submissions


“The Best of Southeast Asian Erotica” volume is the follow-up volume to the highly successful “The Best of Singapore Erotica” published by Monsoon Books (Singapore) in 2006.


For the new anthology, we are looking for stories of 2,000 to 5,000 words that address the themes of sex or sensuality. Unlike the first book, this second volume will be looking for stories based in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines as well as Singapore.


The editor and publisher stress the fact that this is erotica, not pornography. The stories must be well-written, original pieces that look at sex and sensuality. (The first volume even had a few stories in which there was no actual sex presented, but only longing and fantasy.)


And to answer a question that we heard while compiling the first erotica volume: Yes, the characters involved can actually be married to each other. Sounds a little perverse, of course, but we believe that even married couples can engage in engaging erotica.


Payment will be set according to royalties, divided between all the writers in the anthology.


All submissions and inquiries should be sent to eroscope2@gmail.com.

Deadline for submissions is April 10, 2010.

Roo Tales

Photo by Alan Donald Wilson, Australian activist and photographer.

Read Ned Kelly's famous Jerilderie Letter - original and transcription

Read the Jerilderie letter, dictated to Joe Byrne by Ned Kelly in 1879, and now one of the historic documents of Australian history. Around 8,000 words, the letter is an amazing epistle from a self-taught man, a young man who had only known the wilds and bush ways of Australia's rough-and-tumble early years. The original disappeared until donated to the Victorian State Library in November 2000. They have now generously put it on display for the world to read via the Internet. (Ned should have been a Twitterer!)

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/collections/treasures/jerilderieletter/jerilderie00.html

2010 photos of Kelly's house by Deb Matthews-Zott. Thank you, Deb. The house was built by Ned's father, John, and housed the Kelly family in the early years of Ned's life. It is now in a serious state of disrepair.

St Helena: remotest cricketing nation in the world ...

This information is from CricInfo at http://blogs.cricinfo.com/btw/. Since my son has worked for the ICC I have been amazed at the amount of nations near and far who play cricket and field a national team. They are all layered in special rankings and play with the passion and commitment of Test cricket nations. Here's a small insight into one of the smallest cricketing nations in the world -

It is possibly the remotest cricket outpost in the world, and its national team is set to travel by ship to take the field for the first time.

St. Helena, with a population of 4000, is located about midway between Africa and South America. It boasts of a ten-team league, but no airport, and plans to send a squad to a Twenty20 tournament in Montserrat later this year.

When St. Helena’s officials attended the ICC Centenary Ball in London last year, they got there by the most direct route, a two-week South Atlantic voyage aboard the RMS St. Helena which stops in Tenerife.

The British Government recently delayed plans, yet again, to build an airport on the island, which is situated around 1700 km west of Luanda, Angola.

Should plans for St.Helena to make its ICC debut in 2011 at the Africa Third Division tournament come off, the team will most likely jump aboard the ship on its southbound journey via Ascension Island to Cape Town - eight days in all.

Barbara George, the secretary of the St. Helena Cricket Association, says that while there have been matches played against visiting Royal Navy ships, there has never previously been a need to pick an elite squad to represent the island.

"My guess is the team or squad will be chosen from a pool of the best players on the island and at present would be dominated by players from the three top teams – Levelwood C, Jamestown B and St Matthews A, with the remaining made up from the other teams."

Nowhere on the Nullarbor

Doing our Dean Moriarty bit as Aussie youths back in the sixties we stopped at Nowhere on the Nullarbor and sat to eat. The waitress gave us a decade or more start: bright red lipstick and too much foundation failing to cover the skin blemishes brought on by days and nights of greasy fat in the kitchen. ‘What are youse having?’ ‘You for starters,’ Jock said and they were off on a litany of flirtation until I sulked outside at closing time and waited in the cold desert air, my stomach battling the batter and the fatty bacon no limp lettuce could make good

Jock came back looking satisfied with himself, satisfied with her shooting his mouth off until I said peevishly, ‘Zip it, will ya, mate’.

Notebook Excerpt

41 Moves in Contemporary Poetics

A couple of poets - Elisa Gabbert and Mike Young - without enough to do otherwise in their lives, have carefully identified 41 'moves' used by contemporary poets - some grammatical, some simply style, some little more than passing fads or fashion.

Here's an example:

6) Verbing a noun or other nonverb
Examples:

From “[when you touch down upon this earth.little reindeers"] by D.A. Powell: “little reindeers / hoofing murderously”
From Scape by Joshua Harmon: “perceiving only how vertigo / secretaries me into the office”

END QUOTE

Read all 41 at http://htmlgiant.com/craft-notes/moves-in-contemporary-poetry/

City Lights 'Best Seller' lists

What were patrons of City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, Calif., buying for the holiday season?

Hardcover

1. Naked Lunch 50th Anniversary Edition by William S. Burroughs
2. The Wild Things by Dave Eggers
3. You're A Genius All the Time by Jack Kerouac
4. The Humbling by Philip Roth
5. The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov
6. Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
7. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
8. Unpacking My Library by Jo Steffens
9. Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand
10. Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

Paperback

1. Prison/Culture, edited by Sharon Bliss, Kevin Chen and Steve Dickison
2. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
3. Beauty Salon by Mario Bellatin
4. Indignation by Philip Roth
5. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
6. Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha by Jack Kerouac
7. To Die for the People by Huey Newton
8. Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
9. Impossible Princess by Kevin Killian
10. Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

"Poems have their own itineraries, issued only on the fly." Rachel Loden

The above is a quote from an article by Rachel Loden in The Washington Post. It is the tintroduction to a witty poem about Miss October and Hugh Hefner. Read it all at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/shortstack/2010/01/poets_choice_rachel_lodens_mis.html

The article is part of a series called Poet's Choice, worth researching I'd say.

There is also an interesting short interview at http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://home.earthlink.net/~lerphillips/images/loden.JPG&imgrefurl=http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/2005/10/rachel-loden-is-author-of-hotel.html&h=287&w=180&sz=40&tbnid=uwSJhqCTud0qzM:&tbnh=115&tbnw=72&prev=/images%3Fq%3DRachel%2BLoden%2Bphoto&usg=__2OH5F6-mmK9-ufLZv5FEhTnzpI4=&ei=PA1US_qSHM2LkAWZ-YiNAw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=image&ved=0CAcQ9QEwAA

Australia picks up full Test Cricket points

3rd Test: Australia v Pakistan at Hobart - Jan 14-18
Australia won by 231 runs

Photos from New York's New Year Poetry Marathon

... @ The Poetry Project - some you'll have heard of, some not, but good to meander through a gallery of living breathing poets composing and reciting on the planet at the same time we do! Go to http://poetryproject.org/project-blog/photographs-from-the-36th-annual-new-years-day-marathon-reading-the-greg-fuchs-gallery.html

How to use an apostrophe

It's fun. Go to http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe

Short Fiction Contest 2010

Submissions will be accepted February 1st-February 28th, with the winner announced in late spring. Submissions must be 1200 words or less. There is no entry fee. Louise Erdrich, winner of the 2009 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, will be the final judge. The Kenyon Review will publish the winning short story in the Winter 2011 issue, and the author will be awarded a scholarship to attend the 2010 Writers Workshop, June 19th-26th, in Gambier, Ohio.

Submission Guidelines

* Writers must 30 years of age or younger at the time of submission.
* Stories must be no more 1200 words in length.
* One submission per entrant.
* Please do not simultaneously submit your contest entry to another magazine or contest.
* The submissions link will be active February 1st to February 28th. All work must be submitted through our electronic system [http://kenyonreview.org/krsubmit/submissions/ ]. We cannot accept paper submissions.
* Winners will be announced in the late spring. You will receive an e-mail notifying you of any decisions regarding your work.
* For submissions, we accept the following file formats only:
o .PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
o .DOC (Microsoft Word)
o .RTF (Rich Text Format)
o .TXT (Microsoft Wordpad and Notepad, Apple TextEdit

Submissions will be accepted February 1-28, 2010

Hallmark Launches World's First Twitter-only Romantic Verse Competition

RealWire
2010-1-12

• Search for the UK's best Twittermantic• Winner receives a luxury romantic break away
• Entry details at http://www.Hallmark.co.uk

Hallmark Cards is giving the UK's wannabe romantic poets, writers and song-smiths the chance to show off their talents through a new national creative writing contest, launching today. But there's a unique twist - it needs to be done in just 140 characters on the popular social network site, Twitter!

The competition - a world-first - is being launched by Hallmark's online personalised card service (http://cards.hallmark.co.uk/Cards/Seasonal/Valentines-Day/) as part of its build up to Valentine's Day, with a luxury weekend break away* on offer for the winning 'Twittermantic'…that's a romantic Tweeter to you and me!

The best entries collected before the end of this month (January 31st) - whether they are funny, soppy or plain old romantic - will be judged by an online public vote and by a panel of experts, including poet and published author, Christine Miller.

Jon Taylor, from Hallmark Cards online (http://cards.hallmark.co.uk/), commented: "It's really simple to enter; all people need to do is follow 'Hallmark Cards' on Twitter and then compose a verse in 140 characters or less, making sure they include Hallmark in their tweet entry. Full entry details can be found at Hallmark.co.uk.

"We want to see just how creative the great British public can be. We don't mind if people want to use text speak or clever abbreviations to keep it within the word limit, what's important is that it's original. We'll also be publishing regular hints and tips on our Twitter page as well as attempts from the pros. Remember anything goes, so get writing!"

The judging panel consists of seasoned limerick writer and author William Clark, professional poet and published author Christine Miller, as well as Hallmark's own editorial team.

The overall winning verse will be featured on a 2011 Hallmark Valentine's Day (http://cards.hallmark.co.uk/Cards/Seasonal/Valentines-Day/) card which will be available for the public to purchase through Hallmark.co.uk. The lucky winner will also scoop a luxury romantic cottage break for two courtesy of Cottages4You [cottages4You.co.uk].

Christine Miller, author of The Secret Garden of the Soul, who forms part of the expert judging panel, said: "Poetry is a way of re-interpreting the world through fresh senses, making unusual and unique connections, and can be a hugely liberating experience which really feels more like play!

"More and more people are being inspired to write poems themselves, and it can be a powerful exercise in how to express the most meaning in the fewest words. This fits well with Twitter, where each individual message or 'Tweet' at just 140 characters imposes a similar discipline of brevity."

The Twitter Verse Competition aims to bring creative writing to the masses with the contest open to everyone in the UK - from complete novices to quality amateur writers. The only criteria is that the verse must be the individual's own work.

William Clark, the panel judge and author of "700 Limericks and How to Write Them", commented: "This competition puts a clever modern twist on the traditional custom of writing romantic verses on Valentine's Day.

"The original St. Valentine, whose feast day on 14th February was thought to be when birds paired off, became associated with romantic love during the Middle Ages when a young knight would show his love for a lady through romantic verse. In the 12th century French poets and singers spread the idea of courtly love with song and verse across Europe, and it was this that led to Valentine cards containing a love-inspired verse. Who'd have guessed it would evolve into this!"

Hallmark Cards offers more than 1,000 card designs covering all occasions, including new and exclusive OK! Magazine Cards where you and your friends or family can follow in the footsteps of Posh and Becks and be cover stars, as well as Lego and Disney designs. Popular Hallmark brands, including Forever Friends and Purple Ronnie, are also available on the site.

ENDS

To request an interview with Christine Miller or William Clark, or for creative writing tips and hints on how to write your perfect romantic verse, please contact: Chris Norton or Will Ockenden at Moolah; T: 0113 243 1117; E: hallmark@lucre.co.uk

And here's some verses to get you started in 140 characters or less (remember, you can use abbreviations to meet the word limit!)

By William Clark • My love is a lady of fame, & herein is hidden her name. Relentless pursuit, is how I would put, every step of the game! • There's something I really must tweet: My true love is awfully sweet! She's sugar n spice/And ever so nice/To kiss her's a wonderful treat!• A rose is the symbol of love/And so is the purest white dove/My love it is true/And only for you/And falls like a dew from above. • When falling in love it is fun/To know what a true love you've won; But many a slip/ Betwixt cup and lip/Can leave you alone and undone!

By Christine Miller• Love arrives/Warmly wrapped./A scarf/Of/Softest silk/Sensuously slips/Around/Our beating hearts,/Glowing embers/Set aflame/By your/Beauty:/Bliss//

Editor's notes:

HallmarkEstablished in the UK in 1958, Hallmark Cards is the UK's leading greeting card publisher. As well as greeting cards, Hallmark also produce related products such as wrapping paper, gift bags, social stationery, and gift products, • Hallmark Cards Facebook group can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/HallmarkUK/211973881681• Hallmark Cards Twitter profile can be found here: http://twitter.com/hallmarkcards • For more information on Christine Miller, visit http://twitter.com/christinemiller• For more information on William Clark, visit http://www.clarkscript.com/how-to-twitter-limericks.html

*Twitter Verse Competition -Terms and Conditions - available at http://www.hallmark.co.uk

Gertrude Stein

For those of you who don't read http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ I pass on this wonderful photo of a sculpture of Gertrude Stein. Solid. Centred. Immovable in all weathers.

Issa Haiku

wild geese clamoring
and one pretentious
crow


-Issa, 1825

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

Australian Jazz in New York

Many expat Australians are highly active on the jazz scene in New York and throughout the USA and Europe. There are also many gifted Australian graduate students at Juilliard, The New School and Miami School of Music. As well as the USA based musicians; there are a number of great players making the trip across the Atlantic from London for this very special event. This performance will bring together an amazing array of Australian New Yorkers, Australian Londoners, and Aussies in New York for January for a concert not to be missed.

The featured artists include Graham Wood – piano (Perth), Jamie Oehlers – saxophone (Perth/Melbourne), Barney McCall – piano (NYC/Sydney), Alison Wedding – vocals (NYC/Melbourne), Troy Roberts - saxophone (Miami/Perth), Danny Fisher – drums (NYC/Melbourne), Carl Mackey – saxophone (Perth), Sam Anning – bass (Perth/Melbourne), Linda Oh - bass (NYC/Perth), Matthew Jodrell – trumpet (NYC/Perth), Des White – bass (NYC/Melbourne/Perth), Daniel Susnjar – drums (Miami/Perth), Matt Clohesy – bass (NYC/Melbourne) and Grant Windsor – piano (London/Perth).

Australian Jazz and Australian Jazz musicians are really making a big impression on the international music scene. This will be a very special performance because for the first time a wide range of the best players who have been performing at the highest level in the international music industry will come together for one night to celebrate the music, art and culture of Australia and Australians.

Le Poisson Rouge is one of New York’s finest live music performance venues located at the same site as the former Village Gate Jazz Club on Bleeker St in Greenwich Village. It features a 650-capacity flexible performance space (300 seated) and state of the art audio, lighting and visual systems. It will be the perfect space for this once off performance that will hopefully be an annual event for years to come.

Damn - Forgot the Camera!

The Perth Poetry Club reading this afternoon at The Moon Cafe went well. It was poetry all sorts with improv poet Belowsky vying with the attractive young lady Caitlin; Mike T and Steve in the traditional bag with Ron Okely; there was Frances reading her well turned verses and a young lady who read in public for the very first time, reading her Bi-Centenary poem and signing up for more information; there was the convener and first half compere, Janet Jackson, happy to be back at PPC for 2010, followed by Neil Pattinson, compere of the second half and final poet on the afternoon, with rhythmic rants that work well as performance pieces. And in among it all I read two ten minute sets, mainly from my current title, Beyond City Limits (ICLL @ ECU, 2009). My long time friend Maggie Van Putten also read, one of her two poems from the corner of Jack Kerouac Lane - great to see friends from times gone by, isn't it. And that includes Shane Macauley, eminent poet and co-editor of Indigo magazine.

Nobody but nobody had a camera. Awk! How frustrating. My camera sat at home, forgotten. So no recording of this afternoon's show but great memories for us who were there. And there were at least thirty people there, in the hot back room at The Moon.

Today @ 2pm - I am reading at The Moon

Grab a couple of friends, or make a couple of new ones, and come to the Perth Poetry Club's first reading for 2010 at The Moon Cafe on William Street, Northbridge. The enthusiastic Janet Jackson will be compering and reading, and I will be doing a couple of spots. There will be Open Mike and probably some music - with drinks, food and conviviality available.

Entry fee? Zilch, nil, nought, nothing. You can't beat that ...

Sound ideas by John Cage

Listen to John Cage on Silence at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y

Andrew Burke reading at Perth Poetry Club this Saturday 2pm

Perth Poetry Club resumes on Saturday 9 January 2010 and our featured reader will be well-known, entertaining Perth poet ANDREW BURKE. Andrew has just published his latest slim volume 'Beyond City Limits'. He'll be happy to sell you one on the day for $15.

Plus open mike, with professional sound. 2-4pm at The Moon, 323 William Street, Northbridge. Come and listen!

Coming up:
16 Jan: JAN NAPIER + MIKE T
23 Jan: DENNIS GREENE + JOHN MCBAIN
30 Jan: DEANNE LEBER + RON OKELY

More info: http://www.perthpoetryclub.com; mail to:perthpoetryclub@gmail.com;

joke

A guy goes into a bar and orders ten shots of vodka. The bartender sets up ten shots on the bar, and the guy takes the first and the last in the row and throws them on the floor. The bartender asks him why he did that, and the guy says, "Well, the first one always tastes terrible, and the last one makes me sick."


Thanks, Halvard Johnson.

'Wheelhouse' Magazine Submission Guidelines

from http://www.wheelhousemagazine.com/submissions.html

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Send all manuscripts, poetry, prose, essays, art, hybrid or multi-media work, Derridean monstrosities, word scarps, and other ephemera to wheelhouse@wheelhousemagazine.com. At this moment we cannot, unlike Congress, pay our online contributors in dollars. But we can pay you in fake dollars, which we will do, whether we use your work or not.

Specifically:

1) We welcome both new and established writers' submissions. However, we do favor the new writer. We especially welcome non-mainstream work, work that has of yet no agreed upon name or categorical framework. We are pluralists regarding text arts, but we are not eclectic. When we open submissions we take great pleasure in disruptive, performative, and philosophically violent poetic expectoration.

Send all work to wheelhouse@wheelhousemagazine.com, and, with the exception of poetry (which you may put in the body of your email), send your work as a DOC or RTF attachment.

Note on Wheelhouse Chapbooks: we are not currently accepting submissions for our chapbooks series.

2) Prose should be short, not long, say, no longer than 3,000 words--as a general rule. Please refrain from sending realist fiction, confessional fiction, genre fiction. In fact, if you tend to call your work "fiction," take this as a potential (though, due to its dogmatism, somewhat unreliable) sign that we will not be interested in publishing what you send. If, on the other hand, you have prose that challenges you (and us), that takes pleasure it its own alterity, or you sense that it does, we'd love to read it. Include in the subject line of your email: prose submission/last name.

3) Poems: if Billy Collins has been "an inspiration" to you, do not send us your poetry. Not that there is something necessarily wrong with your poetry, but there is, semi-factually, something wrong with Billy Collins. Poems that experiment with language as material, interrogate normative grammatical structures, exlore ideas as cultural artifacts and not merely givens, and that may be accused of falling prey to the difficult poetry epidemic of 1912 are especially welcome. As are: translations, ekphrastic work, sound and visual work, and collaborative ventures. We really love good collaborative pieces. Please send 3-10 poems. We like to get a deeper sense of your writing than, say, the lone poem, could give us. Include in the subject line of your email: poetry submission/last name.

4) Essays: should be limited to 10,000 words. We're interested in work with a left political slant, work on particular writers or text art movements, work that plays with form as any text art would, and that does not read as journalism (one extreme) or memoir (other extreme). Include in the subject line of your email: essay submission/last name.

5) Visual artwork (like, pictures of your paintings or pictures of someone else's paintings, or paintings of your pictures of...) should be submitted in JPEG format. Include in the subject line of your email: visual artwork submission/last name.

6) Filmmakers, multi media artists, composers, etc., should contact Wheelhouse Magazine for further information regarding formatting. We're interested if you are!

7) We hope to get back to those whose work we are considering within 1-3 months. Feel free to query us regarding your submission if you have not heard back from us within 3 months.

8) All copyright reverts to author upon publication. Wheelhouse Magazine reserves one-time electronic copyright for works submitted. All work will be considered for print publication and Wheelhouse Magazine reserves the right to archive the work and publish it in future print editions.

9) We do accept simultaneous submissions; please let us know asap if your work is accepted elsewhere. We will also consider reprints, though require acknowledgment/permission from the previous publisher in order to do so. We do not accept multiple submissions.

10) We do not require a bio with your submission, but you may include one in the body of your email. Truthfully, we don't particularly care about publication credits. We are interested, however, in notes on the process of your writing, how the work you've sent was constructed, and so forth.

Thanks for your interest in Wheelhouse. We look forward to hearing from you.

In Solidarity,

The Editors, Wheelhouse Magazine
David Michael Wolach
Eden Schulz
Andrew Csank
Jenny Paris
Lionel Lintz
& past contributors

Guess the Writer - from David Levine Gallery

Check out the amazing caricatures at http://www.nybooks.com/gallery/gallery-browse?category_id=14

Family Feast

Tinfish submissions - by March 2010

from Susan M Schultz, editor, Tinfish magazine:

I am especially interested in works of innovative translation from Hawai`i and elsewhere in the Pacific, as well as poems about ageing. As Tinfish never has "theme issues," other materials are also welcome.

Remember, we publish experimental work from the Pacific region only. Please feel free to send word around, but encourage prospective authors to read some Tinfishes first.

Our website is at http://tinfishpress.com
The blog is at http://tinfisheditor.blogspot.com

aloha, Susan

Please send to 47-728 Hui Kelu Street #9, Kaneohe, HI 96744

Why Father Xmas is a male ...

Merry Christmas in a Zen kind of way ...

"Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes." — Alan Watts

The Birth of 'Kind of Blue'

One night in 1958, [George] Russell sat down with [Miles] Davis at a piano and laid out his theory's possibilities—how to link chords, scales, and melodies in almost unlimited combinations. Miles realized this was a way out of bebop's cul-de-sac. "Man," he told Russell, "if Bird was alive, this would kill him."

Read all about it at http://www.slate.com/id/2225336?obref=obinsite

'Human Beauty' by Albert Goldbarth + article link

If you write a poem about love ...
the love is a bird,

the poem is an origami bird.
If you write a poem about death ...

the death is a terrible fire,
the poem is an offering of paper cutout flames

you feed to the fire.

...

Albert Goldbarth
from "The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems 1972-2007," Graywolf Press, 2007.

No poem is tame if it's a good one, Albert Goldbarth would say.

Read the entire poem and an article about the poet at http://www.record-eagle.com/onpoetry/local_story_355064050.html

AVANT-POST - Now archived online

ISBN 80-7308-123-7 (paperback). 300pp.
Published: September 2006. Prague. Litteraria Pragensia Books.
Out of print.

http://issuu.com/litteraria/docs/avant_post

"The question at the heart of these sixteen essays--alternately theoretically demanding, impishly elusive, stylistically impacted, and wholly absorbing--is this: what, in the context of contemporary politico-aesthetic practices, is the avant-garde, and how, if at all, can some version of it continue to exist in an historical moment when ... everything is permitted, hence nothing is any longer possible?" --American Book Review

Avant-Post engages the question of whether or not avant-garde practice remains viable under the prevailing conditions of a whole series of "post-" ideologies, from Post-Modernism and Post-Structuralism, to Post-Historicism, Post-Humanism and Post-Ideology itself.

Edited by Louis Armand. Contributors include: Johanna Drucker, Michael S. Begnal, Lisa Jarnot, Ann Vickery, Christian Bök, Robert Archambeau, Mairead Byrne, R.M. Berry, Trey Strecker, Keston Sutherland, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Robert Sheppard, Bonita Rhoads, Vadim Erent, Laurent Milesi, Esther Milne ...

Merry Jolly - Happy Holly

Life summed up in Five Bottles

BRIGHT STAR - Opens on Boxing Day

Written and directed by Jane Campion with research from Andrew Motion's biography Keats
Rated PG, 119 minutes
Cinemas everywhere
Opens on Boxing Day

IN the early days of their relationship, the poet John Keats calls his sweetheart, Fanny Brawne, ''minxtress'' - a nickname stemming from the zest she displays in trading insults with Charles Brown, one of Keats's most chauvinistic friends.

And she's pretty forthright with Keats himself. Aware that she is being patronised over her obsession with fashion, she reminds him that her dressmaking skills earn money, which is more than he can say for his poems.

READ MORE AT http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/tv--radio/a-relationship-of-mist-and-mellow-fruitfulness/2009/12/16/1260639224494.html

Chicken Poetry Reading ... by Doug Savage

Ancient Music by Ezra Pound

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
So 'gainst the winter's balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing Goddamm, DAMM.

[Pound's] Note.- This is not folk music, but Dr. Ker writes that the tune is to be found under the Latin words of a very ancient canon.


Text as published in Selected Poems, Faber, mcmlix (paper covered edition), except indents which I can't do on blogger.

Sumer is icumen in

Sing cuccu nu! Sing cuccu!
Sing cuccu! Sing cuccu nu!
Sumer is icumen in;
Lhude sing cuccu;
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu!
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu;
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth;
Murie sing cuccu.
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu, cuccu,
Ne swik thu naver nu.

Celebrating Miles Davis's 'Kind of Blue' at Ellington's Jazz Club

Last night I went to the Ellington Jazz Club to hear a tribute night to the classic Miles Davis album, Kind of Blue - 50 years old this year.
Here's a word from their pre-concert advertising: Explosive saxophonist Carl Mackey assembled an all-star line-up to pay tribute to arguably the most definitive album in Jazz. It has been fifty tears since legendary trumpeter Miles Davis recorded Kind Of Blue in 1959 abandoning his earlier forays in hard-bop to explore pure modalism. It is cited by many music critics not only as Davis's best-selling album, but as the best-selling jazz record of all time, being certified quadruple platinum last year. Miles Davis – trumpet (Ricki Malet), Cannonball Adderley – alto saxophone (Carl Mackey), John Coltrane – tenor saxophone (Jamie Oehlers), Wynton Kelly/Bill Evans - piano (Graham Wood), Paul Chambers – bass (Nick Abbey), Jimmy Cobb/Philly Jones – drums (Ben Vanderwal).

(End quote)

They played through the entire tracks for the first set - a generous helping. But I don't want you to think they were mimicking the original solos: they played as them selves, just in the order of the album. For example, the percussion was much more upfront many times, as is the want these days compared to half a century ago. And, by the end of the night (in the second half, they played all the Milestones tracks, their individual originality shone through. The club was absolutely crowded, wall to wall, for the first half, but, mysteriously, a third of the audience left at half time. Well, they missed a cooking last set where the guys seem to leave the reverence behind and play to their own heart's content. I respected the first half, and loved to hear such mellow tracks live, but for me the excitement lay in the second half, the Milestones tracks, where each muso seemed to push themselves more.

It is incredibly good value at Ellington's as well: just $15 at a table, with full table service - and fine coffee. I'll leave the bar assessment to others, but we received all the efficient and smiling service we needed. A great night of live jazz, paying due homage to my alltime favourite jazzman.

Quote Ponting Unquote

'Going to Perth, we know it's a wicket that does offer some assistance to the quicks, but the breeze over there generally helps the finger spinners more than the legspinners.'

Ricky Ponting expects Nathan Hauritz to play in the third Test at the WACA against the Windies.

Robert Herrick, Ben Jonson, et al, kvetching with style

The Yiddish verb for complaining, kvetch—literally to squeeze or to crush—has an onomatopoetic quality to my ear. All of those consonant sounds, squashed into a single syllable, surrounding the explosive grunt of the short E sound, to me, like the prolonged insistence of a grievance. And who has not occasionally been a kvetch, the noun—a relentless complainer?
Robert Pinsky writes about the complaining masters at http://www.slate.com/id/2237012/

Today's Issa haiku

down he sits
with a great thump...
frog


-Issa, 1825

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

Can poetry change the world? John Kinsella says 'Yes!'

"For me, poetry has no point in existing if it’s not to be a prompt or aid to political and ethical change. This is not to say that a poem should be political or ethical instruction, but rather that it might engender a dialogue between the poem itself and the reader / listener, between itself and other poems and texts, and between all of these and a broader public (whatever that might be). I see myself as a poet activist—every time I write a poem, it is an act of resistance to the state, the myriad hierarchies of control, and the human urge to conquer our natural surroundings."

This is just part of an article by Australian poet and eco-activist John Kinsella at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=238296

Advice to all writers ...

Thanks for this one, Frank Parker.

Bad sex award goes to Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones

Bad sex judges pay tribute to 'part-genius' of winning novel and hope winner 'takes it in good humour'

The American winner of the Prix Goncourt, Jonathan Littell, has added another feather to his cap. His novel, The Kindly Ones, was tonight announced as the winner of the Literary Review's 2009 bad sex in fiction award.

The Kindly Ones, which tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of one of the executioners, beat off stiff competition from a stellar shortlist that included entries from Philip Roth, John Banville, Paul Theroux and the literary rock star Nick Cave.

The judges paid tribute to the novel's breadth and ambition, calling it "in part, a work of genius".

"However," the citation continued, "a mythologically inspired passage and lines such as 'I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg' clinched the award for The Kindly Ones. We hope he takes it in good humour."

According to Jonathan Beckman at the Literary Review, The Kindly Ones is the first work in translation to win the award, set up by Auberon Waugh in 1993 to "draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it".

The Kindly Ones was originally written in French, where it was published as Les bienveillantes in 2006, and went on to sell more than 1m copies across the continent and win the Prix Goncourt, France's highest literary honour.

The Goncourt judges were clearly unconcerned by the section which caught the Bad Sex judges' eye, in which Littell draws a comparison between a woman's genitalia and "a Gorgon's head ... a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks".

"If only I could still get hard, I thought," the winning passage continues, "I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus who made me Nobody. But my cock remained inert, I seemed turned to stone."

According to Beckman, Littell has no plans to attend the award ceremony. Last year's winner was Rachel Johnson for her novel Shire Hell. Previous winners of the famous plaster foot include Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Sebastian Faulks.


* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

ROUGH TRADES by Charles Bernstein

I have a few fav poets at present, but for wit and sheer panache, I go to Charles Bernstein. I have his latest books, yes, but I still enjoy dipping into an old favourite, now available to you complete on the net for FREE. Best price - http://writing.upenn.edu/pepc/books/bernstein/rough-trades/index.html

Little Creatures (instant poem)

Last night a brown frog
under thin moonlight
in the circle of
a green hose wound up.

Today my wife's sandal
near takes the back half
of a brown gecko off

by the delicatessen
where the workmen buy
pies and flavoured milk.

Now same bee
as yesterday seemingly
walks up to my barefoot
on the hot driveway
saying, Not you again.

Little creatures so
honest in their lives,
so vulnerable in ours


PS: On another site, a friend has suggested knocking off the last verse. Whaddya think?

Call for Submissions

Landscapes, the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language at Edith Cowan University, is accepting submissions for its upcoming issue 'HYDROBOTANICS' on the twin subjects of water and plant life. We are seeking inter-disciplinary academic essays, poetry, and other creative writing, and visual and sound art based on the theme. Although special emphasis is given to issues and perspectives on Western Australian water and plant life, national and international content is encouraged. All academic articles will be peer-reviewed and published online.

The deadline for submission is 18 December 2009 at 4pm. Please email submissions to Glen Phillips, ICLL Director at gphillips@gengo.com.au

For submission guidelines, please visit the ICLL website: http://www.landscapeandlanguagecentre.au.com

Another Issue of Landscapes will be published later in 2010 and it is not too early to send material that may be suitable for the second issue which will be open to all aspects of landscape including photographic images, visual and sound art and creative writing. There will also be a tribute to the life work of the late Rica Erickson, Western Australian author and naturalist.