Merry Christmas!
December 22, 2014
Just like the title says, to all readers.
If you press this link, you will find a radical poem by Emily Brontë about her relationship with God, along with some rather bashful commentary at the Tuesday Poem hub. (I wrote the commentary, and Emily Brontë overawes me a little. I felt as if I was putting one of those idiotic jokes that you find in Christmas crackers below something ineluctably profound.)
Now, like the entire population of Australia (give or take a few hundred thousand more sensible souls) I am off to drink and eat far too much. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, and neither do I post lists of what I achieved this year, in the manner of the fearsomely scary and boastful letters that some Americans send each other. (‘Clara is graduating from NASA as an astronaut with a sub-major in Klingon, and Peter just bought Harvard to match last year’s Yale.’)
There really is no ‘end of the year’. Time is not a commodity that we control, or which gives any attention to our calendars. But that is no reason not to have fun, and to reflect a little.
I intend to do some reflection in rock pools, and to splash in the surf.
God bless us, every one!
In Transit
December 8, 2014
When December comes, a not-so-young woman’s mind turns to a heady mix of wine, politics, religion and poetry…
At least three of these were present at the Transit Bar on Sunday, where Kaveh the Unlikely Poet, Anthony Anaxagorou and a number of other poets performed their work.
I was the judge of a women’s poetry slam, and six women performed their poetry, some of which were composed, or reworked, at an earlier workshop run by Anthony. How he was still standing, or even lounging, is beyond me, as he had finished another gig in Sydney at 3am the previous morning, driven to Canberra, and then done the seminar.
Like an idiot, I was so busy concentrating on judging the poems that I didn’t take a photograph of the participants of that part of the night. I caused unintended difficulties for the organisers by awarding first prize to two women for their poems: Sarah Rice and Jacqui Malins. Both poems were about where the poets live in a sense: Sarah’s a direct and nuanced description of he physical home, and Jacqui’s about the need for a genuine acknowledgement of the first inhabitants of Australia. Both were excellent.
Anthony and Kaveh are both poets who refuse to draw an easy line between political awareness and the poetic. These two realms are inseparable; truly borderless. Neither has much in his too-hard basket, either!
Many thanks to Kira and Jessica, the organisers, for allowing me to participate in the evening through judging.
The photo I took of Kaveh was too appalling for me to post, but a somewhat more competent person took that one of Anthony and myself at the top of the post.
Tuesday Poem: Global Farms
December 2, 2014
Global farms
Stock cubes
are sent to sea, flavoursome squares
of mutton flesh and bone, seasoning,
woolly sardines.
Between pasture and knife
the blue stretches, and the yellow,
as rivers soak downwards,
contained in time.
No truck of guilt to turn from,
met on sudden road. Squalor
bleats over dollar’s equator,
safely unseen.
P.S. Cottier
That poem (published once before on this blog, in 2011, and written in 2008) about the horrors of the live export trade is a way of working through the feeling of surprise I had recently in re-reading something that I wrote twenty or so years ago.
I stumbled across an article by me that is seemingly in favour of fur coats. I am now tending more towards the vegan with every passing year. (Not there yet, because….cheese.) I wrote the article back in the early 90s to provoke the sort of person who decries self-expression through clothes. To quell any left over Old-Style Communist or inflexibly Green tendencies that renounced fancy endeavours such as hair dye and high heels. I recount some experiences with some fairly ugly types. (The article was published in the Australian Left Review, probably the last organ of the Communist Party of Australia. I used to have a column in it, mostly about food.)
Re-reading the article, I am struck by how far the central tenet seems to far be from what I think now, and, indeed, thought at all earlier times in my life. I first became vegetarian when I was eleven or twelve, although I have lapsed, sometimes just for days, sometimes for much longer. I can remember one of the first stickers I ever displayed was in favour of a ban on ivory.
Here’s the link to where you can go to read the article. The writing is quite good, in a few parts at least. The article seems to have been a little unusual at the time in linking feminism and questions of personal appearance in this way. That has become far more familiar, now that it is fuelled by social media. (In the days I am talking about, we had the occasional etching and miniatures in lockets, which gave a little more time to think. I think.)
But the fur thing? The article reeks of me being sarcastic, and I have never thought that fur was a desirable or ethical choice. Perhaps I should have included a sarcasm alert? Or a reminder, that would have unfolded twenty years in the future? (‘Penelope, you always liked tickling a little too much.’)
On a trip to New Zealand last year, a Maori woman who was a guide at Te Papa (the museum in Wellington) explained that the use of the introduced possum to produce fur products was a positive development, in her opinion. The possum, introduced from Australia, causes damage in New Zealand, just as the fox, rabbit and cane toad do in Australia. She obviously knew more about the environmental issues that I did. (It is also relevant to mention that Indigenous people have been utilising the meat and fur of Australian animals for tens of thousands of years did so in a way that caused no damage to the land.)
But can I see myself wearing a cane toad cape, to return to the feral? No, not really. Although I haven’t totally weaned myself from cow leather, so my position is totally hypocritical. And, if I had to choose a garment made from an invasive species, it seems hard to place a toad on the same level as a fox; the latter being only a leap from a pet dog. Farming animals for fur, is of course, a revolting practice.
So strange not to recognise oneself fully in a piece of one’s own writing. There are a couple of other things in the article that my position differs from now, but I remember the changes in my thinking for those.
Cutting wit has its limitations…I hope I remember that I was being sarcastic about one or two little stanzas that I wrote this year if I last another twenty years! At least one attentive reader will know what I am talking about there.
Just as that person, and indeed other readers, will recognise that poetry knows no borders. Here is a link to the poetic output of other Tuesday Poets.
Seabirds and Labradors
November 25, 2014
Sometimes you lose sight of why you are doing something. Sometimes you get so caught up in the minute details of doing, that the beauty of doing evades you. You focus on a poem that was rejected, or a deadline that was missed, rather than remembering something that seemed to work well on the page, or an image, or a person you met through writing.
And then, suddenly, almost miraculously, you shake off that sludge. Or someone removes it from you, you miserable little seabird of gloom.
Three good things happened recently.
Firstly, I have been tutoring an on-line course in speculative poetry, that is drawing to an end. I have found the process of focusing on others’ work almost like trying something new at the gym; the muscles (or brain) scream, but new connections are made. Thank you to all the participants in the course, who have been my personal trainers.
Secondly, I undertook a one day course in writing and producing picture books, run by the expert and enthusiastic Tania McCartney, who is the author of many illustrated children’s books. Again, the brain felt its underdeveloped triceps straining, as someone who approaches writing for different people, and in a different way, took me through a (pleasurable) boot camp. Here is a photo of Tania, who is, as she said, obsessed with picture books:
Roaming around the Gorman Arts Centre at lunch time, I met a bevy of poets and other writers and performers, which reminded me how many people do interesting and creative and challenging things in Canberra. Undoubtedly many of these people has had a time when they felt seabird-in-oil sick, and each of them has found his or her way through.
A woman at the course (I won’t mention her name, as I don’t know how she’d feel about that) asked me if I would be interested in judging a poetry slam, and passed on my details to the organisers.
And that brings up Good Thing Number Three, where I’ll be judging a poetry slam for women, which is a special part of A Night of Art and Inspiration with Anthony Anaxagorou. I have seen some of this wonderful poet’s performances on YouTube. Search them out. You really should, you know. Kaveh the Unlikely Poet will also be featured at the event, which begins at 7pm, Sunday 7th December at the Transit Bar in Canberra. (Get there earlier for cheap pizza, if your stomach so desires. It’s in Akuna Street, near, but infinitely better than, the casino.)
So this is how unexpected connections can work, at times, at least for those who live in as lucky a place as Canberra. At least for those of us who also have access to literacy and educational opportunities. At least for those who are not to be denied citizenship because they are mentally ill, as if being locked up for being a refugee wouldn’t quite often make you mentally ill. Perhaps that’s the idea.
Sometimes you are buoyed up by luck and unexpected connections. I am fortunate to be able to find ways to shake off my depression like a Labrador shakes off water after a swim.
That’s my fat black dog out there, always chasing ugly ducks. He’ll come back to shore shortly.
***
Forgive this tl/dr rave; there will be poems again soon. Hopefully with metaphors a little less mixed than a fluffy duck.
Tuesday poem: Music notes
November 18, 2014
music notes
piano accordian
the lung that smiles
haversack guts fart
sousaphone
less said the better
triangle
P.S. Cottier
A tiny poem, or notes towards a poem. I am very busy coordinating (I do hate the word facilitating) a course on speculative poetry this month, so my own poems are getting shorter. Fifteen words is hardly a poem, really. If I keep this up the whole thing will be like John Cage’s 4’33”, only fifty years late. I shall call that poem erasure…Or unseen ellipses, which would win the pretentiousness stakes.
I hazard a guess that some of the poems posted by other Tuesday Poets have more than fifteen words. Just for the moment, the usual feather that takes you to New Zealand is sick, so press this link instead. It still works, though it is not as pleasing to look at.
***
A story of mine, a really short thing of 500 words, was recently published at AntipodeanSF (the October issue). Amazingly, this on-line magazine has been around since 1998! A real achievement for the editor, Ion Newcombe. The 200th issue will be appearing quite soon, which is a Proust worth of of flash fiction.
If you would like to hear me read the flash fiction ‘Slippery Worlds’, press this link and go to the AntipodeanSF radio show for November 15th, which is named Mirfak, after a star.
My fiction and my poetry seem to be converging in the universe of Small. I am the Incredible Shrinking Poet.
PS Cottier 