Rain comes at last over the quarry sides on a day grey as sandstone. I reach across the skin of the house but can’t find myself within. The gate still sticks although the maple tree has healed itself. Drugs pass across the road hand to hand. Somehow we all began to sound like the shadow. Rage pelts trees all along the valley. The sky isn’t finished with us, not till the curfew. We realise there are words inside words.
Windows blink, murmuring diamonds, and cast-off sounds twist dreams.
You say: ‘There are languages I regret not knowing’. Everyone is working to the measure. How large it’s become. We knew it was all over after the cops had gone. Each second has a guard. Unseen presences kick leaves and lever windows. We painted our bars dark green where letters were torn. It isn’t the time to hate. We accept night and its measure where corners bend and rooms rise up holy and self-contained. We don’t always understand the noise, but take comfort in storm light. Air is transparent beyond the hill, towards the bay. We are washed in salt and amusements, immersed then drawn more slowly as our selves. Drops of mosquito poetry climb my arms but my blood is elsewhere, serum with the droning and diving world. All I want is a breeze at an open window, to watch a raven lift, black, shadowed, astonished.
[Originally published by the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre:
http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/fugacity/jones.asp.]
Jill Jones says: The origins of the poem lie in a poem I wrote quite some years ago, around 2001, which was essentially a disjunctive succession of lines, observations, overheard phrases and happenings in my street, in my house, ending up with ‘the poet’ working. They were all pretty factual in their own odd ways. Some of the lines included, ‘Drugs pass across the road from hand to hand’ and, ‘no-one on the radio, the door of the nation closed/ and poets make words of little boats’. This was a reference to refugees being excluded from this country, the shameful Pacific solution.
The poem's original title is lost to me but one working title was ‘But Who Is My Enemy?’. It began around a time I was re-reading Shelley, the political Shelley, and there's a reference to a portion of ‘Ode To the West Wind’ in it, ‘from whose unseen presence the leaves dead/ Are driven’.
I played around with the poem for some time, maybe a couple of years, on and off. I may have even submitted it somewhere, not sure. It was never right: a bit too much detail not doing a lot, and it looked lumpy on the page. But there were things in it I liked. A couple of years later I wrote a series of lines in a large notebook. It was around the time of 2004 Australian Federal election. There are lines such as ‘Somehow we're all starting to sound like the shadow’, which is the first line in the notebook, and ‘It's elbows and interest rates and the beautiful soft furnishing of night programs’, or ‘Windows blink, murmuring diamonds, cast-off sounds twist into my dreams’. Looking at this now, I think I may have been watching TV as I wrote some of them. I see from the notes at the bottom of the page that I planned to write something titled many things but including ‘101 footnotes to a lost text on war’. Somehow, in a move I don’t quite recall, I decided these lines and the other poem, and a few other orphan bits and pieces, might work into something. I wrote ‘101 lines on a spring campaign’, I think I called it, mixing up the lines, getting together 101 of them. I was trying to get the poem to move between the very particulars of a place to the over-arching political state of a country. But it was always a bit uncooked, over-reaching or under-reaching, I don’t know.
I did send it off somewhere but it got the inevitable arse. It became ‘62 Footnotes For a Lost Text on the Spring Campaign’ for a short time. I left it for a bit. Then, one day, playing with it on screen, I ran it all together as a paragraph. It seemed to work with much, much pruning. The currawong in the last line became a raven (an Australian raven) because I suspect that's what it had been all along, a big black raven. I sent it off to nzepc for an online anthology and it came out in three paragraphs. I don't know if that was something to do with a coding error or whether someone there re-edited it like that. But I kind of liked it, and accepted it. The discarded lines have mostly found their ways into other works, or await their turn (maybe).
Thanks, Jill. Someone asked me today, When do you know when a poem is finished? And I replied with the 'abandonment' quote. But this poem's journey is a real living example of the twists and turns in the birth canal.
More to read at http://www.jilljones.com.au
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Zimmy wearing her 'lamp shade'
It is now day six, and Zimmy must wear this annoying contraption for ten days until she has her stitches out. It is hard for her to understand and she beats it against chair legs and door frames as she tries to run around.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
A reply to a poetry doubter ...
Poetry is alive and well. It is written, relished and read in a thousand tongues around the globe, in a myriad of shapes and sizes. The influence of yesterday's poetry is, thankfully, wilting on the vine, but that is not the end of poetry. It thrives in deserts and beneath the oceans, it bellows in outback stations and leaps in exotic whorehouses, it soars in cathedrals and whispers in alleyways by neonlight, it is read by torchlight under covers, it is written in refuge centres with a pencil and in pindan with a stick ... It is celebrated, it is ignored, it is here now and hardy, regenerating cell by cell (parthenogenesis) on all continents of the world.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
William J Higginson - RIP
Haiku poets around the world are probably aware that William J Higginson (Bill to his many friends and acquaintances) has been battling cancer.
News of his death has been broken to the haiku world by Bill's wife, Penny Harter, and you can read a letter from Penny on Curtis Dunlap's web-site Three Questions.
It would be difficult to envisage that any poet writing haiku in English would not be aware of Bill's major contribution to widespread understanding and adoption of this genre. Most people, serious about haiku, would own one at least, if not several, of his books.
On behalf of the haiku community of Australia I will extend our condolences to Penny Harter and to their daughters, Beth and Nancy, and to all other members of their family. Bill Higginson was a very special person who made a tangible, positive contribution to the world and he will be missed.
Beverley George
President
Australian Haiku Society
A letter from Penny Harter can be read at http://tobaccoroadpoet.blogspot.com/
News of his death has been broken to the haiku world by Bill's wife, Penny Harter, and you can read a letter from Penny on Curtis Dunlap's web-site Three Questions.
It would be difficult to envisage that any poet writing haiku in English would not be aware of Bill's major contribution to widespread understanding and adoption of this genre. Most people, serious about haiku, would own one at least, if not several, of his books.
On behalf of the haiku community of Australia I will extend our condolences to Penny Harter and to their daughters, Beth and Nancy, and to all other members of their family. Bill Higginson was a very special person who made a tangible, positive contribution to the world and he will be missed.
Beverley George
President
Australian Haiku Society
A letter from Penny Harter can be read at http://tobaccoroadpoet.blogspot.com/
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Patti Smith at Readings, Melbourne
from 'autobiography' by Patti Smith [from CREEM, September 1971]
I was born in Illinois...mainline of America...
beat to shit...Chicago tenement
big red eyed rats in the night...dead rats to tease at night
Morning...I waited for the organ grinder
with my nickel for the monkeys tin cup
gingerbread man...cotton candy man
bad girl setting fire to the oil cans
run like hell escape on the icemans truck
I was a limping ugly duck
but I had good luck
The 'godmother of punk' was a guest at this year's Melbourne Festival, where she attracted 220 people to the Readings bookshop. That's a packed house! Alison Croggon did an on-the-spot interview, so Patti Smith then sang a song and dedicated it to her.
More available at Alison's Theatre blog http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/2008/10/patti-smith-at-readings.html
Robert Creeley's Library
Granary Books is pleased to offer for sale a selection of more than1,300 books, pamphlets, manuscripts, correspondence, and related materials from the library of preeminent American poet Robert Creeley(1926-2005). This selection is offered as a group, rather than as individual items, because of the preponderance of archival material accumulated within the books. Robert Creeley made a practice of inserting relevant letters, manuscripts, clippings, photographs, and ephemera into his books, many of which also bear significant inscriptions, thus making his library an important documentary archive occupying a rich site for research parallel to the primary repository of his papers at Stanford University.
Highlights among the author collections particularly rich with inscriptions and often including important correspondence and other association and archival material are: Ted Berrigan, Paul Blackburn (14 items), Joe Brainard (12 items), Stan Brakhage, Richard Brautigan (13 items), Basil Bunting (14 items), Tom Clark, Fielding Dawson (33 items), Diane Di Prima, Edward Dorn (31 items), Robert Duncan and Jess (over 50 items including "Caesar¹s Gate," Divers Press, 1955, Creeley¹s copy [1 of 3 letter ³C²] with an original Jess collage and holograph poem by Duncan), Larry Eigner, Allen Ginsberg (35 items many with excellent inscriptions), John Hawkes, Anselm Hollo, Ronald Johnson, Joanne Kyger, Irving Layton (12 items), Denise Levertov (28 items), Alison Lurie, Michael McClure (42 items), Charles Olson (59 items including several inscribed), Joel Oppenheimer (including "The Dancer" (1951) with Robert Rauschenberg, Jargon 2), Ann Quin, Tom Raworth, Aram Saroyan (11 items), Gary Snyder (including an inscribed copy of "Riprap," Origin Press,
1959), Philip Whalen, John Wieners, Jonathan Williams (26 items authored by JW including "Garbage Litters the Iron Face of the Sun¹s Child" (1951), Jargon 1, along with more than 35 other titles published by the Jargon Society), and Louis Zukofsky (29 items including "80 Flowers").
The library includes Creeley¹s personal copies of most of his regular separate publications (217 items) and contained within many are inscriptions, annotations, corrections, cards, letters, photographs, clippings, notes, etc. from Marisol, Edward Dahlberg, Stan Brakhage, Louis Zukofsky, Sherman Paul, Octavio Paz, Jim Dine, Georg Baselitz, Walter Hamady, Fielding Dawson, Denise Levertov, among others. Several of Creeley¹s collaborations with artists are present including "A Day Book" with R.B. Kitaj (Graphis, 1972), "Signs" with Georg Baselitz(Graphicstudio, 2000), and "7 & 6" with Robert Therrien and Michel Butor(Hoshour Gallery, 1988).
Price and detailed catalog (via pdf) are available on request to interested institutional clients.
Steve Clay
Granary Books
168 Mercer St. #2
New York, NY 10012
212 337-9979
212 337-9774 (fax)
http://www.granarybooks.com
Some more of interest at http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Creeley.html
Thursday, October 09, 2008
A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns (1794)
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my Luve’s like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ ’twere ten thousand mile!
I print this here because Bob Dylan has very recently stated this poem was one of the driving forces behind his first songwriting - and you can hear the influence in his folk material. It's always worth going back to a poem so near to song, just to refresh our ears for the contemporary scene which plays with the border between poetry & prose a lot.
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my Luve’s like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ ’twere ten thousand mile!
I print this here because Bob Dylan has very recently stated this poem was one of the driving forces behind his first songwriting - and you can hear the influence in his folk material. It's always worth going back to a poem so near to song, just to refresh our ears for the contemporary scene which plays with the border between poetry & prose a lot.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
The Projectionist by Max Richards
The primary school shares the same sky
as the railway workshops;
has concrete air raid shelters,
useless now, since we beat Japan;
a green football field, clay
where boys play marbles, in season,
girls skip; six bare classrooms,
lavatories;nasty – better to hold on;
kids who are roughs or waifs,
all of us in cheap clothing,
some with runny noses and bare feet,
and my father as head-teacher.
It’s 1946, this is
Randwick near Wellington; out
of bounds, beyond the stop-bank,
the river’s forcing its way past fast.
Here nothing happens, slowly, till
Father does some fundraising –
a projector comes, rare and fragile.
He learns how to make it work.
No one else is allowed near.
None of us young ones have ever
seen anything on any screen;
we’re agog for Charlie Chaplin.
Children and parents come one night
to father’s classroom. From home
Mum’s lent him a white sheet; he fixes
it up straight, I switch off the light,
whirring begins, the sheet brightens.
Flickering black and white humans
stalk the sheet. Something is happening.
A man climbs on a diving board,
trots out, dives, splashes, vanishes.
Father flicks a switch, time freezes; flicks
again, feet first the diver rises,
curves back up onto the board.
All of us squeal with pleasure.
The evening’s films, all short,
are never better than when Father,
powerful and popular,
flicks that switch, the image freezes,
time halts, reverses, pauses,
moves forward again, taking us
all with it along, along.
Going home in Dad’s Austin Seven,
dreaming new powers, camera
projector and screen, a rapt crowd,
the river pulsing under the night sky.
A log like a floating man sweeps past fast,
vanishes. My camera eye strains and fails.
8 October 2008
Max Richards
Doncaster, Victoria
as the railway workshops;
has concrete air raid shelters,
useless now, since we beat Japan;
a green football field, clay
where boys play marbles, in season,
girls skip; six bare classrooms,
lavatories;nasty – better to hold on;
kids who are roughs or waifs,
all of us in cheap clothing,
some with runny noses and bare feet,
and my father as head-teacher.
It’s 1946, this is
Randwick near Wellington; out
of bounds, beyond the stop-bank,
the river’s forcing its way past fast.
Here nothing happens, slowly, till
Father does some fundraising –
a projector comes, rare and fragile.
He learns how to make it work.
No one else is allowed near.
None of us young ones have ever
seen anything on any screen;
we’re agog for Charlie Chaplin.
Children and parents come one night
to father’s classroom. From home
Mum’s lent him a white sheet; he fixes
it up straight, I switch off the light,
whirring begins, the sheet brightens.
Flickering black and white humans
stalk the sheet. Something is happening.
A man climbs on a diving board,
trots out, dives, splashes, vanishes.
Father flicks a switch, time freezes; flicks
again, feet first the diver rises,
curves back up onto the board.
All of us squeal with pleasure.
The evening’s films, all short,
are never better than when Father,
powerful and popular,
flicks that switch, the image freezes,
time halts, reverses, pauses,
moves forward again, taking us
all with it along, along.
Going home in Dad’s Austin Seven,
dreaming new powers, camera
projector and screen, a rapt crowd,
the river pulsing under the night sky.
A log like a floating man sweeps past fast,
vanishes. My camera eye strains and fails.
8 October 2008
Max Richards
Doncaster, Victoria
Maybe impractical from here, but worth knowing about, don't you think?
The Atlanta Poets Group is seeking proposals for work for the third issue of its magazine Spaltung. This issue will be packaged in the form of a box. We are looking for poem-objects. Pieces that address/ embody the concept or experience of multiplicity/heterogeneity are encouraged. *Please do not send work at this time.* Instead please send a *proposal* for the piece you propose to include to spaltung@comcast.net.
Some parameters you should consider in preparing your proposal:
-- 100 units of the magazine issue will be produced-- We have not yet decided upon the size of the box. in cubic inches it will likely be larger than a breadbox and significantly smaller than a moving crate.-- If your piece(s) reqire anything beyond mindless, cheap reproduction/assembly, we will likely look to you to provide us with 100 units, fully-assembled.-- We are mostly looking for work that is beyond what can be accomplished on 8.5x11 paper and beyond what can be included on a CDROM.-- Proposals should include exact dimensions of the object(s) to be submittedYou can familiarize yourself with past issues of Spaltung via the blog at www.spaltungmag.blogspot.com.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Cutwater journal - Open for submissions ...
from http://cutwaterjournal.blogspot.com/
The floodgates are now open. You can now send in your submissions to Cutwater.
THEME: Ratbags
DEADLINE: November 30 2008
WORD LIMIT: 5000 words.
SEND YOUR SUBMISSIONS TO:
Sam Twyford-Moore
Editor, Cutwater Literary Journal
PO BOX 52
Toukley NSW
2263
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Please print your submissions with page numbers. Work should be formatted 12pt Times New Roman and should be 1.5 spaced.
If you want your work returned please include a self addressed stamped envelope. Editors will not have time to comment on every piece of writing, but those who are highly commended may receive some form of feedback.
Please include a cover page with your name, date of birth, address, contact details, including phone and email, and a very short biography (keep it under 50 words). Please define which genre your work fits into (eg. poetry, fiction, literary journalism etc.)
Do not include your name on your submission, only on the cover page. Please ensure that the title of your work is included in the header of each page of your submission.
Please send us your zines. Cutwater is very interested in publishing a wide selection of zines. We feel that zines are underrepresented in literary journals in Australia and worldwide and we want to help this. Please only send your best and most recent zines. You can send up to three zines.
We will accept up to three pieces from each writer.
We will not be accepting writing that has been published elsewhere. Your writing must not be under consideration for publication anywhere else. Self-publishing, in the form of zines, e-zines or blogs, is acceptable.
If you are sending comics or zines please address them to:
Comics Editor, Cutwater Literary Jounral
PO BOX 52
Toukley NSW
2263
Or
Zines Editor, Cutwater Literary Jounral
PO BOX 52
Toukley NSW
2263
Let out the inner ratbag! Good luck.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Same As It Ever Was by Andrew Burke
The shopping centre’s footpath is
thin and interrupted by
parking signs. I tell you this because
along comes an up-market gopher
with tall zipped-up plastic walls
like an oblong of shower curtains
driven through the drizzle of
a spring day. It parks outside the chemist
and an old hand unzips a side panel
carefully. Tall and stooped, rickety on
frail legs, Merv leans on his walking stick
and steps out, then just as carefully
zips the panel up. He travels slowly
on worn slippers, his stick as third leg.
Down the path come two lads,
twenty or so, cocky, sure of
their balance and future.
Mrs Jones, grandson's hand
in hers, moves closer to the wall.
The boys don't notice. On legs
swift and sure, a teenage schoolgirl
walks past, hips alive, and as she passes
she bends and waves at the boy.
The big boys wave back,
mockingly. They know her sister,
the one with a rose tattoo. This one’s
younger, solitary, waiting
at the lights, balancing first on
one leg, then the other. Just now
a gleeful burst of young children
runs down the street, gold and green
streamers flying. Merv pauses
in the doorway to let them pass.
No respect, he thinks, no respect anymore.
His gopher has left a thin stream
on the footpath and one whooping boy
takes a tumble, no worse than
a fall at footy but today
it's a fright and he rubs
his coccyx. The chemist's girl
comes to help. Merv waves
his stick to Shoo! them away,
then slowly zips up a panel,
walking stick on his arm
Hoagy Carmichael style. I
watch from the prompter's pit
how they play their roles so truly. I'm
at The Globe when my wife returns,
shopping bags in each arm. I start
the car. She says, 'This lot'd cost
a pretty penny without a pension card.'
I steer out and over a speed hump,
windows up tight against the wind.
I say: This poem began a couple of weeks ago. It began as a thought. I was sitting in the car outside our neighbourhood chemist where my wife had gone to pick-up a prescription and other nameless objects. I had Talking Heads on the CD system and cranked it up a bit to fill my head. As I watched the passing parade - only scattered pedestrians as it was a weekday and before school closing time - I noticed the extremely different ways people walk. Some loaf along, barely raising their feet. Others walk with a determination and purpose, driven by busy brains. An old man appeared in a flash looking gopher, and the trademark caught my attention: Shoprider. Ha! Just like a surfrider or a waverider but for an oldie. I had to smile at that - I had to write that down. The passing parade had fat people, young thin people, school kids in a bunch, and two young sporting looking men who conversed in a lively manner as they almost danced down the street. They were in their own world as I was in mine.
Over the next two days I carried this thought of a poem around in my head, and by now it had become a thesis on the various skeletal frames of these pedestrians and how age and misfortune affect our walking styles. But when I sat down to write the first draft, it came out differently. Here's the start of the first draft:
Working beats the poems out of you.
At the start of two weeks mid-semester break
I drive my wife to the chemist
And wait outside, listening to
Talking Heads live on some concert CD
My daughter burnt for me. The footpath
Is a thin one, with signposts interrupting
Its width every now and then. I tell you this
Because along comes a Shoprider –
A gopher with tall zipped-up curtains
All around like an oblong shower recess on wheels
Only this one has driven through the drizzle
Of a spring day to park outside the chemist.
An old man – tall and stooped, rickety on
His frail legs – unzips a panel carefully,
Balances on his walking stick and just as
Carefully zips it back up. You can’t be
Too careful, I can almost hear him say.
He travels slowly on those flatfeet,
His stick supporting him as a third leg.
The draft went 548 words, and had a lot of extraneous detail in it. I worked on it on and off for days until the Poetry and Pasta night last Thursday. There I showed it to my fellow poets - and I must thank Sarah French and Dennis Haskell for cutting through the conversations and social ambiance of the evening to suggest cuts and corrections. I started again, and have now done twelve drafts all up, a lot more than my usual amount (although, not unheard of). I chopped the lyrics of the Talking Heads song out early when I chopped the intro out; I named characters just two drafts ago. I cut and I cut and I listened to my mates on a poetry list, PoetryEtc, and to my wife Jeanette. So, it hasn't turned into a camel but it has been written with the input of a lot of minds. Hopefully it is clear and evocative now; hopefully this is the last draft. But it may not be ... Time will tell.
If you are too young to remember Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981), he was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust" (1927), "Georgia on My Mind" (1930?) and "Heart and Soul", three of the most-recorded American songs of all time. He also read contemporary poetry very well, and - from memory - appeared on a poetry & jazz album called Jazz Canto. He is not a man to be forgotten.
As some wise person once said, Poems are never finished; they are merely abandoned. I abandon this poem.
thin and interrupted by
parking signs. I tell you this because
along comes an up-market gopher
with tall zipped-up plastic walls
like an oblong of shower curtains
driven through the drizzle of
a spring day. It parks outside the chemist
and an old hand unzips a side panel
carefully. Tall and stooped, rickety on
frail legs, Merv leans on his walking stick
and steps out, then just as carefully
zips the panel up. He travels slowly
on worn slippers, his stick as third leg.
Down the path come two lads,
twenty or so, cocky, sure of
their balance and future.
Mrs Jones, grandson's hand
in hers, moves closer to the wall.
The boys don't notice. On legs
swift and sure, a teenage schoolgirl
walks past, hips alive, and as she passes
she bends and waves at the boy.
The big boys wave back,
mockingly. They know her sister,
the one with a rose tattoo. This one’s
younger, solitary, waiting
at the lights, balancing first on
one leg, then the other. Just now
a gleeful burst of young children
runs down the street, gold and green
streamers flying. Merv pauses
in the doorway to let them pass.
No respect, he thinks, no respect anymore.
His gopher has left a thin stream
on the footpath and one whooping boy
takes a tumble, no worse than
a fall at footy but today
it's a fright and he rubs
his coccyx. The chemist's girl
comes to help. Merv waves
his stick to Shoo! them away,
then slowly zips up a panel,
walking stick on his arm
Hoagy Carmichael style. I
watch from the prompter's pit
how they play their roles so truly. I'm
at The Globe when my wife returns,
shopping bags in each arm. I start
the car. She says, 'This lot'd cost
a pretty penny without a pension card.'
I steer out and over a speed hump,
windows up tight against the wind.
I say: This poem began a couple of weeks ago. It began as a thought. I was sitting in the car outside our neighbourhood chemist where my wife had gone to pick-up a prescription and other nameless objects. I had Talking Heads on the CD system and cranked it up a bit to fill my head. As I watched the passing parade - only scattered pedestrians as it was a weekday and before school closing time - I noticed the extremely different ways people walk. Some loaf along, barely raising their feet. Others walk with a determination and purpose, driven by busy brains. An old man appeared in a flash looking gopher, and the trademark caught my attention: Shoprider. Ha! Just like a surfrider or a waverider but for an oldie. I had to smile at that - I had to write that down. The passing parade had fat people, young thin people, school kids in a bunch, and two young sporting looking men who conversed in a lively manner as they almost danced down the street. They were in their own world as I was in mine.
Over the next two days I carried this thought of a poem around in my head, and by now it had become a thesis on the various skeletal frames of these pedestrians and how age and misfortune affect our walking styles. But when I sat down to write the first draft, it came out differently. Here's the start of the first draft:
Working beats the poems out of you.
At the start of two weeks mid-semester break
I drive my wife to the chemist
And wait outside, listening to
Talking Heads live on some concert CD
My daughter burnt for me. The footpath
Is a thin one, with signposts interrupting
Its width every now and then. I tell you this
Because along comes a Shoprider –
A gopher with tall zipped-up curtains
All around like an oblong shower recess on wheels
Only this one has driven through the drizzle
Of a spring day to park outside the chemist.
An old man – tall and stooped, rickety on
His frail legs – unzips a panel carefully,
Balances on his walking stick and just as
Carefully zips it back up. You can’t be
Too careful, I can almost hear him say.
He travels slowly on those flatfeet,
His stick supporting him as a third leg.
The draft went 548 words, and had a lot of extraneous detail in it. I worked on it on and off for days until the Poetry and Pasta night last Thursday. There I showed it to my fellow poets - and I must thank Sarah French and Dennis Haskell for cutting through the conversations and social ambiance of the evening to suggest cuts and corrections. I started again, and have now done twelve drafts all up, a lot more than my usual amount (although, not unheard of). I chopped the lyrics of the Talking Heads song out early when I chopped the intro out; I named characters just two drafts ago. I cut and I cut and I listened to my mates on a poetry list, PoetryEtc, and to my wife Jeanette. So, it hasn't turned into a camel but it has been written with the input of a lot of minds. Hopefully it is clear and evocative now; hopefully this is the last draft. But it may not be ... Time will tell.
If you are too young to remember Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981), he was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust" (1927), "Georgia on My Mind" (1930?) and "Heart and Soul", three of the most-recorded American songs of all time. He also read contemporary poetry very well, and - from memory - appeared on a poetry & jazz album called Jazz Canto. He is not a man to be forgotten.
As some wise person once said, Poems are never finished; they are merely abandoned. I abandon this poem.
Hear ye! Hear ye!
ABC Radio National
Books and Drama newsletter
2-10 October 2008
POETICA
4/10/2008 15:00
9/10/2008 15:45
Robert Lowell
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/poetica/stories/2008/2358003.htm
Robert Lowell was one of America’s most famous poets of the 20th century. This program features a range of poems taken from his collection, Selected Poems, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
LINGUA FRANCA
4/10/2008 15:45
9/10/2008 15:45
The naming of roses
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/linguafranca/stories/2008/2379477.htm
The rose is an ancient bloom of which there are now thousands of varieties, with hundreds more new types introduced each year. Gardening writer, Roger Mann, tells of the history of their naming.
SHORT STORY
5/10/2008 08:30
The Bathe - A Grotesque by Henry Handel Richardson, read by Sarah Aubrey.
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/shortstory/stories/2008/2374416.htm
When two women decide to ignore convention at a lonely beach, a small girl has her first sight of naked adults and is not impressed.
Books and Drama newsletter
2-10 October 2008
POETICA
4/10/2008 15:00
9/10/2008 15:45
Robert Lowell
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/poetica/stories/2008/2358003.htm
Robert Lowell was one of America’s most famous poets of the 20th century. This program features a range of poems taken from his collection, Selected Poems, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
LINGUA FRANCA
4/10/2008 15:45
9/10/2008 15:45
The naming of roses
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/linguafranca/stories/2008/2379477.htm
The rose is an ancient bloom of which there are now thousands of varieties, with hundreds more new types introduced each year. Gardening writer, Roger Mann, tells of the history of their naming.
SHORT STORY
5/10/2008 08:30
The Bathe - A Grotesque by Henry Handel Richardson, read by Sarah Aubrey.
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/shortstory/stories/2008/2374416.htm
When two women decide to ignore convention at a lonely beach, a small girl has her first sight of naked adults and is not impressed.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sonnet: Sometimes a penis . . . by Halvard Johnson
Penises have numerous identities. For example, a corona
is a straight penis measuring some 5 1/2" with a rounded end
that goes in the mouth. Coronas then descend in order of size
as follows: petit corona, tres petit corona and half a corona,
coming in at about 3 1/2" in length. Similar in shape to the corona
but slightly longer is the Lonsdale. The Ideales is a thin, torpedo
penis measuring some 6 1/2". Bouquet and Londres penises are
similarly thin but shorter. One of the most popular and accessible
of the penis family is the panatella, which is slim, about 5" long
and is sometimes distinguished by being pinched at the mouth
end. Once it had a finished top that had to be severed before
pissing or fucking but this is not the case nowadays. A cheroot
is usually beefier than a panatella, and shorter. In Britain
a small penis open at both ends is called a whiff.
==
Hal writes:
It was Freud who once said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a statement that for many years confused me. Bill Clinton, however, taught me that cigars can be more than cigars, and led me to forever confuse them with other implements, as you can see.
Mostly I can't really explain how poetry works/gets written. It just does.
Halvard Johnson
is a straight penis measuring some 5 1/2" with a rounded end
that goes in the mouth. Coronas then descend in order of size
as follows: petit corona, tres petit corona and half a corona,
coming in at about 3 1/2" in length. Similar in shape to the corona
but slightly longer is the Lonsdale. The Ideales is a thin, torpedo
penis measuring some 6 1/2". Bouquet and Londres penises are
similarly thin but shorter. One of the most popular and accessible
of the penis family is the panatella, which is slim, about 5" long
and is sometimes distinguished by being pinched at the mouth
end. Once it had a finished top that had to be severed before
pissing or fucking but this is not the case nowadays. A cheroot
is usually beefier than a panatella, and shorter. In Britain
a small penis open at both ends is called a whiff.
==
Hal writes:
It was Freud who once said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a statement that for many years confused me. Bill Clinton, however, taught me that cigars can be more than cigars, and led me to forever confuse them with other implements, as you can see.
Mostly I can't really explain how poetry works/gets written. It just does.
Halvard Johnson
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Out now: Masthead 11: Poetryetc: Poems and Poets
An anthology edited by Andrew Burke and Candice Ward
http://www.masthead.net.au/
"What made the Poetryetc listserv distinct from the beginning was John Kinsella¹s internationalism, and his vision of its being a space for collaborative projects as well as dialogue and exchange...From 1997, Poetryetc projects collectively represent hundreds of poems by dozens of poets, by any measure an extraordinary explosion of collective creativity....
"This anthology is the most recent of the Poetryetc projects. Edited by Candice Ward and Andrew Burke, with an e-book designed by Peter Ciccariello, it represents a selection of poems written by list members over the past few years. It includes many distinguished poets side by side with new or little known voices, and demonstrates the diversity and stylistic openness that was always a major strength of Poetryetc."
From Poetryetc: A Brief History by Alison Croggon
With poems from:
Rachel Loden | Martin Dolan | Kenneth Wolman | Renée Ashley | Patrick McManus | S.J. Litherland |Nathan Hondros | Sheila E. Murphy | Tina Bass | Trevor Joyce | Kasper Salonen | Larissa Shmailo | Halvard Johnson | Sally Evans | Glen Phillips | Mark Weiss | S.K. Kelen | Stephen Vincent | Tad Richards | Barry Alpert | Martin J. Walker | Jim Bennett |Gerald Schwartz | Peter Riley | Robin Hamilton | David Bircumshaw | Candice Ward | Peter Howard | Joanna Boulter | Jill Jones | John Kinsella | Randolph Healy | Bob Marcacci | Liz Kirby | Max Richards | Andrew Burke | Peter Larkin | Cindy Lee | Caleb Cluff | Douglas Barbour | Árni Ibsen | Janet Jackson | Lawrence Upton | Heather Taylor | Roger Collett | Peter Ciccariello |Harriet Zinnes | John Tranter | Sharon Brogan | Frederick Pollack | Pierre Joris | Alison Croggon
http://www.masthead.net.au/
http://www.masthead.net.au/
"What made the Poetryetc listserv distinct from the beginning was John Kinsella¹s internationalism, and his vision of its being a space for collaborative projects as well as dialogue and exchange...From 1997, Poetryetc projects collectively represent hundreds of poems by dozens of poets, by any measure an extraordinary explosion of collective creativity....
"This anthology is the most recent of the Poetryetc projects. Edited by Candice Ward and Andrew Burke, with an e-book designed by Peter Ciccariello, it represents a selection of poems written by list members over the past few years. It includes many distinguished poets side by side with new or little known voices, and demonstrates the diversity and stylistic openness that was always a major strength of Poetryetc."
From Poetryetc: A Brief History by Alison Croggon
With poems from:
Rachel Loden | Martin Dolan | Kenneth Wolman | Renée Ashley | Patrick McManus | S.J. Litherland |Nathan Hondros | Sheila E. Murphy | Tina Bass | Trevor Joyce | Kasper Salonen | Larissa Shmailo | Halvard Johnson | Sally Evans | Glen Phillips | Mark Weiss | S.K. Kelen | Stephen Vincent | Tad Richards | Barry Alpert | Martin J. Walker | Jim Bennett |Gerald Schwartz | Peter Riley | Robin Hamilton | David Bircumshaw | Candice Ward | Peter Howard | Joanna Boulter | Jill Jones | John Kinsella | Randolph Healy | Bob Marcacci | Liz Kirby | Max Richards | Andrew Burke | Peter Larkin | Cindy Lee | Caleb Cluff | Douglas Barbour | Árni Ibsen | Janet Jackson | Lawrence Upton | Heather Taylor | Roger Collett | Peter Ciccariello |Harriet Zinnes | John Tranter | Sharon Brogan | Frederick Pollack | Pierre Joris | Alison Croggon
http://www.masthead.net.au/
Friday, September 26, 2008
KITE FLYING, CAR DRIVING by Andrew Taylor
Only Franklin or the empty-headed
fly their kites while lightening
bothers distance yet here
the feather-headed ply their brains
along thin string and a twist
or two of hands. But nothing alights
like a falcon, the whimpering string
strains and relaxes, the kite
flutters its tethered emptiness and swoops
to catch only itself.
At 150 most cars take a life
on of their own
and decide the driver
is either ok or dead. At 160
the driver decides again. It’s a great
gap, 150 to 160,
like surf, you throw yourself
forward, ahead of yourself
and none of those little ties
to family or love exist.
Lightening crackles close, they fly
their pig-headed kites some more, then quit.
But at 160 you put your foot right down
eager for the rest of it
This poem is included in my forthcoming book, The Unhaunting, which Salt Publishing will bring out before the end of this year. It follows a poem about surfing, which I will explain later.
Ever since I was a teenager I’ve loved driving. Not driving madly, but watching the country in front whip past and new territory open up ahead. This poem grows out of that, even if at my age today I’ve become wary of driving for too long, since two of my friends were killed when the driver fell asleep on a long trip. Driving is dangerous, and that’s another reason why I find it enlivening.
Danger enters the poem in another way too, which is not explicit. In 1971 I was walking on the beach at Cape Hatteras where the Wright brothers made the world’s first flight in a powered aircraft. It’s long, and very flat, which I suppose is why they chose it. A thunderstorm blew up, and I watched lightening getting closer and closer. Soon I could see it striking the sand maybe half a mile (this was in the USA, of course) in front of me. I still kept walking towards it, half mesmerised but also consciously daring myself, as the lightening got closer. I was a lightening conductor, the only vertical thing on that deserted expanse of sand, and by now I was covered in water. Suddenly I turned and ran.
Benjamin Franklin discovered that lightening consisted of electricity by flying a kite in a lightening storm. He was crazy to do it, but was also one of his century’s great minds. Other people fly kites, float ideas or pretensions, but to no purpose. They’re empty-headed or feather brained (unlike the bird kites or falcons, who wear their feathers on the outside and are all muscle and determination inside).
I’m used to driving fast. In Germany, where I spend a fair slice of each year, it’s normal to do 140 to 150 on the Autobahn. But there’s a thrill pushing just that 10 k or more, and more, faster, as there is in surfing, and finding out how you can deal with and control the incredible force you’re riding. The poem’s about pushing yourself beyond what you thought your limits were, and finding more landscape opens up to you.
An anecdote. In the early 1970s I was driving one of the first Datsun 240Zs in Australia through the Adelaide Hills, before the freeway was completed. A huge red Ford challenged me and we upped the speed and upped it again and again, startled cars vanishing like mosquitoes in the rear vision mirror as we manoeuvred to pass or overtake, until I reckoned we – the car and I – had reached its limits. I pulled into a gas station, but the big red souped-up Ford pulled in beside me and a huge guy leaped out and rushed across. I scrambled to wind up the window but too late. He grabbed my hand and shook it and said ‘Jees, that was fucking great. I was pushing 180 and you was still pulling ahead of me!’ We could have been friends for life.
fly their kites while lightening
bothers distance yet here
the feather-headed ply their brains
along thin string and a twist
or two of hands. But nothing alights
like a falcon, the whimpering string
strains and relaxes, the kite
flutters its tethered emptiness and swoops
to catch only itself.
At 150 most cars take a life
on of their own
and decide the driver
is either ok or dead. At 160
the driver decides again. It’s a great
gap, 150 to 160,
like surf, you throw yourself
forward, ahead of yourself
and none of those little ties
to family or love exist.
Lightening crackles close, they fly
their pig-headed kites some more, then quit.
But at 160 you put your foot right down
eager for the rest of it
This poem is included in my forthcoming book, The Unhaunting, which Salt Publishing will bring out before the end of this year. It follows a poem about surfing, which I will explain later.
Ever since I was a teenager I’ve loved driving. Not driving madly, but watching the country in front whip past and new territory open up ahead. This poem grows out of that, even if at my age today I’ve become wary of driving for too long, since two of my friends were killed when the driver fell asleep on a long trip. Driving is dangerous, and that’s another reason why I find it enlivening.
Danger enters the poem in another way too, which is not explicit. In 1971 I was walking on the beach at Cape Hatteras where the Wright brothers made the world’s first flight in a powered aircraft. It’s long, and very flat, which I suppose is why they chose it. A thunderstorm blew up, and I watched lightening getting closer and closer. Soon I could see it striking the sand maybe half a mile (this was in the USA, of course) in front of me. I still kept walking towards it, half mesmerised but also consciously daring myself, as the lightening got closer. I was a lightening conductor, the only vertical thing on that deserted expanse of sand, and by now I was covered in water. Suddenly I turned and ran.
Benjamin Franklin discovered that lightening consisted of electricity by flying a kite in a lightening storm. He was crazy to do it, but was also one of his century’s great minds. Other people fly kites, float ideas or pretensions, but to no purpose. They’re empty-headed or feather brained (unlike the bird kites or falcons, who wear their feathers on the outside and are all muscle and determination inside).
I’m used to driving fast. In Germany, where I spend a fair slice of each year, it’s normal to do 140 to 150 on the Autobahn. But there’s a thrill pushing just that 10 k or more, and more, faster, as there is in surfing, and finding out how you can deal with and control the incredible force you’re riding. The poem’s about pushing yourself beyond what you thought your limits were, and finding more landscape opens up to you.
An anecdote. In the early 1970s I was driving one of the first Datsun 240Zs in Australia through the Adelaide Hills, before the freeway was completed. A huge red Ford challenged me and we upped the speed and upped it again and again, startled cars vanishing like mosquitoes in the rear vision mirror as we manoeuvred to pass or overtake, until I reckoned we – the car and I – had reached its limits. I pulled into a gas station, but the big red souped-up Ford pulled in beside me and a huge guy leaped out and rushed across. I scrambled to wind up the window but too late. He grabbed my hand and shook it and said ‘Jees, that was fucking great. I was pushing 180 and you was still pulling ahead of me!’ We could have been friends for life.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
SMALL FAMILY of SALTIMBANQUES by Lucy Dougan
The small family of saltimbanques
occupies one corner of the dance hall every Saturday.
The oldest girl moves with the same self-sufficiency
that all her family possesses. She walks an edge
of holding something back and then giving it fully.
The younger ones sit in a circle with their mother.
Her body made each one no more or less beautiful than the next,
as if she had chided patiently before their births:
now do not outshine the one before you.
It could be a family credo, this democracy of looks.
In their little circle they eat and play, practicing a patience
that certain beggars own. Nothing is too showy, everything eked out.
Their mother watches them with a poised neutrality.
She is with them the same way her oldest child dances.
At any moment she is tuned to another order, to almost
imperceptible openings. The colour of skin
beneath her eyes, a feather-blue in forest light.
LUCY says, 'This poem came from all the times that I've sat in and watched at my daughter's dance and acrobatic classes. On one occasion a friend said to me that you can tell a lot about a child from the way she/he dances. This statement came to rest in my mind with the image of a family that also attended these classes and the atmosphere that they created around themselves in one corner of the room. Of course, it's an imagining, a waking dream, of this family and it unites them loosely with Picasso's images of performers.
I love the unselfconscious intimacy that young dancers and acrobats have with each other. As they wait in line they lean on each other and do one another's hair. To me, there's something very honest and beautiful about the body learning these skills. When I watch my daughter execute a cartwheel I feel a pride in her strength and grace - the speed and sense of rhythm required and the risks are all compelling. I've come to think of poems that come as gifts (as this one did) as something like the feeling of a thumping good cartwheel.
Sideways to this poem sits an essay by John Berger simply called "Degas". Here's my favourite part of it:
"Do we not all dream of being known, known by our backs, legs, buttocks, shoulders, elbows, hair? Not psychologically recognised, not socially acclaimed, not praised, just nakedly known. Known as a child is by its mother." '
"Small Family of Saltimbanques" was first published in The Best Australian Poems 2004 (Black Inc., ed Les Murray) and then in Lucy's book White Clay. (Giramando Press, 2008)
occupies one corner of the dance hall every Saturday.
The oldest girl moves with the same self-sufficiency
that all her family possesses. She walks an edge
of holding something back and then giving it fully.
The younger ones sit in a circle with their mother.
Her body made each one no more or less beautiful than the next,
as if she had chided patiently before their births:
now do not outshine the one before you.
It could be a family credo, this democracy of looks.
In their little circle they eat and play, practicing a patience
that certain beggars own. Nothing is too showy, everything eked out.
Their mother watches them with a poised neutrality.
She is with them the same way her oldest child dances.
At any moment she is tuned to another order, to almost
imperceptible openings. The colour of skin
beneath her eyes, a feather-blue in forest light.
LUCY says, 'This poem came from all the times that I've sat in and watched at my daughter's dance and acrobatic classes. On one occasion a friend said to me that you can tell a lot about a child from the way she/he dances. This statement came to rest in my mind with the image of a family that also attended these classes and the atmosphere that they created around themselves in one corner of the room. Of course, it's an imagining, a waking dream, of this family and it unites them loosely with Picasso's images of performers.
I love the unselfconscious intimacy that young dancers and acrobats have with each other. As they wait in line they lean on each other and do one another's hair. To me, there's something very honest and beautiful about the body learning these skills. When I watch my daughter execute a cartwheel I feel a pride in her strength and grace - the speed and sense of rhythm required and the risks are all compelling. I've come to think of poems that come as gifts (as this one did) as something like the feeling of a thumping good cartwheel.
Sideways to this poem sits an essay by John Berger simply called "Degas". Here's my favourite part of it:
"Do we not all dream of being known, known by our backs, legs, buttocks, shoulders, elbows, hair? Not psychologically recognised, not socially acclaimed, not praised, just nakedly known. Known as a child is by its mother." '
"Small Family of Saltimbanques" was first published in The Best Australian Poems 2004 (Black Inc., ed Les Murray) and then in Lucy's book White Clay. (Giramando Press, 2008)
SAX POEM:1 by Mike Williams
it's a saxophone evening
& there's a blues singer
singing for whisky
& cigarettes
rain dances on cold tombs
& back in the woods
owls sit like judges
lovers in a doorway
hands frantic beneath coats
& the man playing sax
has a hat on the ground
with coins
he's feeling lucky
it's just another night in so many
This poem has spawned two published novels, Old jazz & The Music of Dunes (Fremantle Press) and has become one of the poems I have put under the pen of my protagonist, Frank Harmon. A very simple poem, really, but I have a strong attachment to it. I like to put it across at readings, along with some companion poems. I like the sound of it, the atmosphere, the rain, the owls, the jazz of it. I wrote it after walking home one night and seeing a busker in Northbridge. Three more poems followed and, after numerous drafts, the novel Old Jazz ...
Mike Williams
Mike Williams books can be found at http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/
& there's a blues singer
singing for whisky
& cigarettes
rain dances on cold tombs
& back in the woods
owls sit like judges
lovers in a doorway
hands frantic beneath coats
& the man playing sax
has a hat on the ground
with coins
he's feeling lucky
it's just another night in so many
This poem has spawned two published novels, Old jazz & The Music of Dunes (Fremantle Press) and has become one of the poems I have put under the pen of my protagonist, Frank Harmon. A very simple poem, really, but I have a strong attachment to it. I like to put it across at readings, along with some companion poems. I like the sound of it, the atmosphere, the rain, the owls, the jazz of it. I wrote it after walking home one night and seeing a busker in Northbridge. Three more poems followed and, after numerous drafts, the novel Old Jazz ...
Mike Williams
Mike Williams books can be found at http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
BLOWHOLE by Meg McKinlay
On the ocean road, we are tourists
of calamity; our father parks us close
to crumbling edges
and alarm. The sea puckers slick
rock-cheeks of disapproval, exhales
one body, consumes
the rest.
Meg says, "This poem actually began as a kind of exercise in 'writing short'. My natural tendency has always been to write fairly long poems, giving myself license to range freely across an idea until I feel I've exhausted its associative or narrative possibilities. I was astonished when this rather glaring feature of my work was pointed out to me, somehow having failed to notice it myself. At the time, I was putting together my first collection, Cleanskin, so I decided to try a few poems in which I consciously wrote against that impulse, staying tightly focused on a single image or idea.
'Blowhole' has its origins in childhood travels with my family up and down the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. We always seemed to be stopping to stare at a place where something awful had happened - a shipwreck site or the place where some once-great monument had crashed into the ocean. And of course, there were all those signs warning us not to get too close to the edges, that the cliffs could disintegrate beneath us at any moment, and so on. I was remembering all this, and thinking too, about the blowholes we had seen on those trips. I was fascinated by them, finding the violent but predictable movement of the water really hypnotic and investing it, I think, with the danger and threat associated with those other sites. So those connections started forming and I began playing around with the images, thinking there might be something there I could work with. For me, there's usually a moment when things start to coalesce, when I start to feel I'm on my way to a poem, rather than just pottering about with words; for this poem, it was when the phrase 'tourists of calamity' came to me. The rest followed fairly quickly after that and I managed to retain a reasonably tight focus and rein in my impulse to go exploring up and down the coastline and all the way through my childhood. There are a couple of other poems in Cleanskin which mine this sort of territory and these are actually bits and pieces which splintered off this poem to become new poems in their own right. It was really interesting for me to negotiate that process, to push those ideas out of 'Blowhole' and let them develop elsewhere into something different.
So this is a simple little poem, which is what I was after, but there's a neatness about it, a self-containment combined with a kind of larger, suggestive undercurrent, that I find pleasing. And I guess that's a little like blowholes themselves, so I like the way that works, too."
From Meg's website:
Cleanskin was published by The Westerly Centre as part of ArtsWA's "A Few New Words" initiative for emerging West Australian poets. It has gone out to Westerly subscribers with that year's issue, and can be purchased separately from The Westerly Centre, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA. It consists of 24 pages of poems, mostly new work, and a CD of me [Meg] reading and discussing some of the poems, which was a lot of fun to do.
Meg McKinlay
Children's Writer & Poet
http://www.megmckinlay.com
of calamity; our father parks us close
to crumbling edges
and alarm. The sea puckers slick
rock-cheeks of disapproval, exhales
one body, consumes
the rest.
Meg says, "This poem actually began as a kind of exercise in 'writing short'. My natural tendency has always been to write fairly long poems, giving myself license to range freely across an idea until I feel I've exhausted its associative or narrative possibilities. I was astonished when this rather glaring feature of my work was pointed out to me, somehow having failed to notice it myself. At the time, I was putting together my first collection, Cleanskin, so I decided to try a few poems in which I consciously wrote against that impulse, staying tightly focused on a single image or idea.
'Blowhole' has its origins in childhood travels with my family up and down the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. We always seemed to be stopping to stare at a place where something awful had happened - a shipwreck site or the place where some once-great monument had crashed into the ocean. And of course, there were all those signs warning us not to get too close to the edges, that the cliffs could disintegrate beneath us at any moment, and so on. I was remembering all this, and thinking too, about the blowholes we had seen on those trips. I was fascinated by them, finding the violent but predictable movement of the water really hypnotic and investing it, I think, with the danger and threat associated with those other sites. So those connections started forming and I began playing around with the images, thinking there might be something there I could work with. For me, there's usually a moment when things start to coalesce, when I start to feel I'm on my way to a poem, rather than just pottering about with words; for this poem, it was when the phrase 'tourists of calamity' came to me. The rest followed fairly quickly after that and I managed to retain a reasonably tight focus and rein in my impulse to go exploring up and down the coastline and all the way through my childhood. There are a couple of other poems in Cleanskin which mine this sort of territory and these are actually bits and pieces which splintered off this poem to become new poems in their own right. It was really interesting for me to negotiate that process, to push those ideas out of 'Blowhole' and let them develop elsewhere into something different.
So this is a simple little poem, which is what I was after, but there's a neatness about it, a self-containment combined with a kind of larger, suggestive undercurrent, that I find pleasing. And I guess that's a little like blowholes themselves, so I like the way that works, too."
From Meg's website:
Cleanskin was published by The Westerly Centre as part of ArtsWA's "A Few New Words" initiative for emerging West Australian poets. It has gone out to Westerly subscribers with that year's issue, and can be purchased separately from The Westerly Centre, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA. It consists of 24 pages of poems, mostly new work, and a CD of me [Meg] reading and discussing some of the poems, which was a lot of fun to do.
Meg McKinlay
Children's Writer & Poet
http://www.megmckinlay.com
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