Submissions for The Stars Like Sand close on June 4th, so read the full submission guidelines:

http://pscottier.com/2013/02/25/poetry-wanted-for-new-anthology-guidelines/

And submit yourself to my tender mercies, and those of my co-editor, Tim Jones.

The poetry semi is about to leave…

We have already received a large number of submissions from Australia and from Australians living in other places. Add yourself to this roll of honour today! And next year you may be reading your work in an Interactive Publications tome.

P.S. Cottier

The best thing to happen during Canberra’s Centenary Celebrations (there are a lot of capitals around at the moment in the nations’s capital) took to the air outside the National Gallery on Saturday.

Skywhale, a balloon sculpture designed by Patricia Piccinini, is not exactly your typical whale. She has a bit of the turtle about her, and wings made of breasts. Is she an angel? I don’t know, but her presence is peaceful and wonderful; confusing those who like straight lines and easy classifications.

The money, some people are shouting! The outrageousness of producing a whale that isn’t even a proper whale for the centenary of an inland city! The threat to mental law and order! Read some of the comments here on RiotACT, where the haiku was posted by me as a comment. I didn’t want to argue the case, as Skywhale seemed so strangely perfect in her ambiguity. A poem seemed more appropriate.

There should be more of this sort of perplexing beauty, confounding those who think that art should be confined to easily recognisable portraits and lovely landscapes punctuated with useful sheep:

Moustaches and merinos
made Australia what she is today.
No fleecy clouds of maybe here!
No blubbering queens of perhaps,
with flowing boas of breast to tease
certainty into mere sniffle;
our capital’s castaway.

P.S. Cottier

Through all the controversy, Skywhale maintains her dignity, moving gently through the sky with her wings of breasts, a kindly and whimsical presence, powered by hot air but quite serene. Skywhale is certainly the Queen of the Centenary. She will soon be touring the country, looking down on her subjects with that benign and somewhat Mona Lisa smile.

Mona Lisa with barnacles

Long may she swish through the skies, delighting those who prefer their art to have a little whimsy, and to pose a few questions, at the same time that it delights and sets us free.

Click this feather for further poetry:

Angels dancing on pins are nothing to us.
Those celestials number thousands,
harpies with harps, slippery butterflies.
Bring the formeldehyde, I say,
and still their antic twists.
We live in millions, simple stars,
galaxies that give no light.
A bone slung hammock,
a fleshy divan,
your body transports us
as we rock, divide, and redivide.
Under the curved
frowns of your fingernails,
on the flaky deserts of your head,
we plant our sprawling flag.
Any crevice is our castle, your mouth
a plunge-pool for our disport.
Arise, Sir Realm, Lady Habitat.
King Bacillus is well pleased.

P.S. Cottier

Really, these little things rule the world; a successful form that’s been around a lot longer than we have, and which may outlast us.

Sucked in, hm?

Now, press this feather to read more, possibly less infectious, poetry:

Looking past the one long leg of tarmac spider, head in Sydney,
refusing to see her iPod plugged ears, hear tart mozzie hums,
or feel insinuating throb of pocket phone, nudging like a bull
against fabric seclusion, I spread blanket on bleached ground.
I closed eyes, and opened them, misting the scene in moisture.
I applied numbing cream to mounds of anted bites, reddening.
Wished away health filled salad, replaced carrot crunch with Corot,
cocky squawk with cagey flute. Then checking watch, I turned to go.

P.S. Cottier

A brand new poem as I enter a very busy week. Tomorrow night (Wednesday), at 7.30, I’m reading at Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmania Circle, Forrest, along with Charlotte Clutterbuck and Geoff Page. Do come along if you’re in Canberra. There’s an entry fee, which includes wine and snacks. It is $10, and $7 concession. Then there will be excellent books for sale, so don’t forget to buy one of them, if you are able.

A podcast of three of my poems is now available at the Blemish Books site. If you like what you hear, the book can be ordered from the very same site.

I have had a poem called ‘A question for Jane’ published at the Eureka Street blog: http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=36017 . The Jane in question had the surname of Austen, so have a look if you have time, and answer the question for yourself.

For other poems, please press this link. The Tuesday Poets are a group who are many and varied, and seemingly moulting:

I like a chat, but choke on gossip;
threads of conversation become barbed wire
glutted inside fairy floss.

Sometimes I despise my comparative lack of conviviality, despite my ability to make excellent small talk:

Small talk so fine 
that the Higgs Bosun
can’t find a trace

And yet, you can look on things and still feel engaged; exchange truly well-meant pleasantries. Sometimes reticence is no bad thing, but another way of saying that the other person matters.  I’m having a great time, but more in my own head than anywhere else.

So, just a quieter time than some. Here’s that picture of the hat again; I think the Victorian expression should be noted. All I need is my embroidery, or its modern equivalent, the smartphone.

Off with her head!

Off with her head!

Today I have attended two panels; one on publishing and one on horror and the body. Tonight I’m doing a poetry reading, so I’ve escaped for lunch and to get my thoughts together. Then back into the fray.

I really admire those who attend everything possible at conventions; I just lack the stamina.

So far it has been a terrific convention. And it gave me an excuse to wear that hat…

UPDATE: We were a small but enthusiastic group of poetry lovers at the reading, so I turned the chairs around and we had a more casual event. Enjoyed it immensely, and assembling all my speculative poetry made me realise that I have enough for a small collection of my poetry in hat field. Sorry. That field.

FURTHER UPDATE:

Heard Sean Williams talk about TM, which existed long before Scotty beamed up Kirk.

Heard Nalo Hopkinson talk about her early writing career.

Attended an interesting panel on appropriating the sacred.

Caught up with various people, including Gillian Polack.

I’m stuffed, to put it in a most non-poetic way. (Although I am not the sort of poet who tends toward the flowery. Unless that flower be a pavement daisy. Yes, you may sneer at that, in a sneery way.)

The eighteen poets are all members of the Tuesday Poem group, based in New Zealand, and the poem started and ended there and did a world tour in between, visiting such global hotspots as Canberra.

Click here, and read the poem written for the group’s third birthday, called ‘Scratch’.

http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/3rd-birthday-communal-jazz-poem.html

That word snappy is a very bad joke, which you will not understand unless you look at the poem. Here’s the link: http://kaaronwarren.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/refreshing-the-wells-20/

Kaaron’s novel Slights is really truly scary, and I recommend you chase it up. It is horror in a true sense.

The woman herself is the Special Guest at the Conflux SF convention next week in Canberra, and I hope to hear her read and perform on panels there. Here is the Conflux link: http://conflux.org.au/ This is the Australian national science fiction convention this year.

I hear there is a poet reading too, but that may just be a rumour…

Ten million green commas punctuate blue sky,
quick breaths of swooping wonder, multiplied.
Water-hole is your target; liquid rope pulls you
and the whole emerald sky is diving,
as miniature bodies scoop down to pool.
Your individual markings have taken you
further than native flight; outside the Louvre
I saw you, cold, trying to break in, as pointillist
as Pissarro, but so acrylic in your finish.
Proud but damp escapee from French balcony,
regretting the lost seed and the found liberty.
Plump and fresh, I have heard you were good eating,
a winging fast food charred to a turn;
as far from stringy battery chook as fingers in the fire.
Most know you singly: whistling in cages,
bowing and bobbing, rattling plastic mirrors.
Driven mad you ring and ring chink-chinky bells
or make love to that hard, hard-to-get reflection.

What joy to see you
just once, as you swoop,
one stitch amongst the tapestry,
a blade of grass in feathered turf carpet,
magically landing,
transforming dreary waterside
with that fallen sward of Eire.
Swift dragon of twenty million wings,
fluorescing with your simple, beak-filled joys.

P.S. Cottier

I wrote this poem quite a while back, but haven’t found the right place for it. Until now! Budgerigars live in huge numbers in inland Australia. Apparently they are our most successful animal export (excluding the woolly things). They are, I assume, no longer exported, but their proclivity for breeding makes them the world’s most popular cage bird. I’m sure they’d rather be back in the wild, if birds were capable of such choices.

For further poetry, click this feather, which is most definitely not that of a budgie:

So dog, what rhymes with ‘jazzy’?

Click this feather to see the poem develop…emerge…crystallise…meld…cook…,no no no; rise, Phoenix-like from the unashed and smokeless computer screen. Mmm, perhaps I need to try that sentence again?

For a person who usually works in isolation, this is quite a rare process. I’m going to go for it…whatever that may mean.

Visit the Tuesday Poem site a few times this week and see how things are going.