Tuesday poem: A timely monster
March 9, 2015
A timely monster
And if I could drink youth in
through my eyes — a vampire
of glance, lapping it from
perfect blush of skin —
would it be possible not to
drink and rise, leaving years
like a phone lost in cushions?
And yet, and yet…
before my eyes suck, remember
the self-consciousness,
the rash redness of life
before it wrapped itself in time?
To take, and lose a burden,
is to lift another,
cutting into hands or mind,
like an overloaded bag.
So let them pass, and let me yearn
and learn to stop, just here.
I’ll sit, and plait kind memory
through this smoked nostalgia of hair.
P.S. Cottier
Very traditional matter there, about the passing of time, given a sprinkle of Polidori. I like ‘my eyes suck’. Certainly not over-poetic! Monday was a public holiday in Canberra, so I did a little revision of this poem, and decided to post it.
More and more I find myself unable to wait the months that some journals take to say yes or no to a piece. I pity the editors, but I value my own work more! This blog now has many readers (hello to you all, from France to India to the Americas to Binalong) so why not self-publish?
Of course, I am foregoing the huge piles of pelf that poetry usually attracts, and there are some journals and anthologies that I really want to be part of, but I do like the immediacy of this medium. Particularly when I can find such cool pictures for free at Old Book Illustrations!
Other poets enjoy that too, whether they are posting their own poems, or those of others. Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets. They are definitely worth the clicks.
Paths Into Inner Canberra: my next publication
March 6, 2015
I am having an essay published. Yes, in prose, with two bonus poems. This is happening in a wee pocketbook to be called Paths Into Inner Canberra. The publisher is Ginninderra Press, based in South Australia. It is part of a new series they are publishing, called Pocket Places.
In the book, I describe riding a bike through Canberra along the bikepaths, and the wildlife that one can see, such as cockatoos and turtles. It is part memoir, part philosophical reflection (that’s a very little part) and part evocation of aspects of this city that I love.
The lovely photos have been taken by the very clever and cool Geoffrey Dunn. Here is one that the publisher chose not to use, which I quite like.
How do I obtain this wonderful book, I hear you cry? And is it true that it costs only $4?
In answer to your first question, I will post a link when it is available. Or if you see me in Canberra, enquire direct, buy me a coffee (or a beer or wine, if your accountancy skills are delightfully bad) and one will be your own to keep. To quote Willy Loman ‘That is a one million dollar idea.’
In answer to the second: Yes. Plus postage.
I am very happy that this essay is being published, although I should probably call it creative non-fiction, or extended haibun, or something clever. Does anyone write essays anymore?
Tuesday poem: A persistence of jellyfish
March 3, 2015
a persistence of jellyfish
flesh liaisons bloom
sea-flowers have no soul
P.S. Cottier
‘sea-flowers…’is from Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
This bluebottle is the sort of lovely Australian creature that delights visitors. The image (PD Wiki Commons) is very fine, but doesn’t show the long tail of the creature, which is the bit that stings.
I have a vivid memory of swimming out of my depth, when one of these wrapped around my arm like a mad doctor’s blood pressure tester. I had to swim to shore, against a slight overtow, with a band of pain tightening around one of my arms. I developed a delightful weal on my arm, resembling a string of rubies given by a particularly sadistic Prince from a fairy tale by Angela Carter.*
At the time, I didn’t know how bad the sting of these creatures was, in terms of how poisonous. Fortunately, they are not too bad for most people, unlike the small invisible jellyfish found further north, which are deadly. (Some people have bad reactions to them though, as with bee-stings. See this article.)
Interestingly, the bluebottle is actually a co-operative of creatures that band together, rather than a single life-form. I believe that these are the sorts of things that we will find on other planets. ‘Other planets’ here means the south coast of NSW.
I believe that Australian wildlife may be touched on in the central Tuesday Poem this week. Press this link and find out.
*UPDATE: I have been flicking through other posts by Tuesday Poets, and just noticed that Helen Lowe is featuring a poem by Tim Jones about Angela Carter. There is an absence of jellyfish in the fine poem, but the coincidence tickled me. Like a bluebottle, but a lot less painful.
Tuesday poem: Falling through
February 23, 2015
Falling through
Suddenly enough, all the computers yawned, quick gape of electric jaws, and we fell inside their crocodile bytes. Gusting through googles of guts, airy programmatic colons, we were curtly expelled onto other users’ chairs. I am now John le Carré, and he has swapped Cornwall for my Canberra. He pecks up the slim crumbs of poetry, that elegant confetti of wordy Gretels, tracing back the route to nowhere known at all. He likes the sun-dipped cockatoos, the nestling hills, and the pungent gums; their leaves such shy apostrophes, punctuation in all four seasons’ sentences.
You’d think I’d favour it, being famous. Heaving shelves of unborn books with my name on them groan out to a midwife agent, so patient and alert. But anonymity has its charms of liberation, and cover stories (as John would know) can thin and fade, and sometimes even fray. For England, Cornwall almost has a Summer, or at least a Summer’s spritely maiden Aunt, out for a jaunt, recalling dead youth spent in War. I have felt something approaching happiness, writing of Berlin or terror on the cliff edge of this little island, staring out to frown of dark, deep grey sea.
I want to go home now, to space and lancet light, but this white dumb screen stays obdurate; locked square surface, on which so many best-sellers have been keyed. Teases of postcards beckon in front of portal mouth; I tempt it with treats to open up, chew, and spit me back. It likes this latest tray of toffees so tightly wrapped in silver. Now it quivers; a glassy jellyfish on firm dry sand of desk. Now
P.S. Cottier
Prose poem? Flash fiction? Unclassifiable weirdness? You be the judge.
I read somewhere that John le Carré does not write on a computer, but we’ll call that detail poetic licence, hm?
I hear that there has been a dead drop of poems here. Press this link and find out.
Happy birthday Banjo!
February 18, 2015
For yesterday, that is.
I just drove back from Orange, about three and a half hours from Canberra. Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson was born here, and the 17th February is his birthday. I went courtesy of a competition offered through Australian Poetry Ltd and attended a poetry competition, a birthday breakfast, a dinner, and undertook my own Banjo-related activities.
Soon I’ll write something about the Banjo Paterson Australian Poetry Festival for Australian Poetry’s website. (There are too many similar words in that sentence, but that can’t be helped!) I’ll talk about how much I enjoyed this experience in Orange, but for now I must rest, having eaten about as much as I eat in a week over three days. Here is a photo of a bust of the poet, erected just near his birthplace. It can be found in a park dedicated to him:
And what other Australian poet gets jokes made about his or her birthday by coffee shops? (Yes, that is rhetorical…)
PS Cottier 