Busy-ness unbefitting a poet
December 1, 2012
What a lovely present for a launch speech! Yesterday it was about 36 degrees in Canberra and unusually steamy, and I gave my first launch speech for the pamphlet In Response to Magpies. This was organised by Hazel Hall, Australian Poetry’s café poet at Biginelli’s café.
Hazel Hall
It went quite well, and the readings by the poets included in the collection were enjoyable. Here I am looking up in the air, as if there is an invisible magpie swooping:
Fortunately I am wearing my special invisible helmet
I am hoping to write up the speech for publication. The wine remains intact, as it is gin weather.
Last night I went to a poetry slam, co-organised by fellow Triptych poet J.C. Inman at The Front, and it was so steamy and hot we were all like pieces of tofu floating in a laksa. Here is a piece of poetic tofu, also known as J.C. Inman:
J.C. Inman
(my phone was fainting from the heat)
I realised how exhausted I was when I read a poem before the slam and my hands were literally shaking. People must have thought I was a very sensitive flower, but that was not it at all. It was: half heat, half gin, half gym. So what? A mathematican I ain’t.
Canberra: freezing one day and Brisbane the next. If only I could afford a pankawallah. Or another gin.
Now I’m off to be languid. After the gym.
Tuesday poem: Silver-eyes and figs
November 26, 2012
Silver-eyes and figs
Each bird a single note, played
between the heavy figs, swollen
breves in this flighted music,
swing accents in an airy score.
The eye does not dissect
any swift segue of feather,
rather the bird breeze shakes
the hand-leaves, palms turned away.
It is the movement we see, not
a display case specimen mounted,
spread eagled for our slower eyes.
To watch this quick-silver is to
turn away from focus, to become
silver-eyed ourselves, as the ruffled
feathers of the fig
breathe scent of bird.
This uncharacteristic poem appears in my first book, The Glass Violin, copies of which are still available from Ginninderra Press. (Scroll down this linked page to Cottier.) Annoyingly, the last two lines above should appear as a broken line, with the word ‘breathe’ under the word ‘fig’, but this broken line keeps being removed before I can post this entry, creating a lovely chunky effect. Sigh.
I still remember how nervous I was before the launch of that first book. Geoff Page did the launch speech.
And now I am doing the launch of a book for the first time on Friday. The book is called In response to magpies, and is a small pamphlet of nine poems dealing with this charismatic Australian bird. The idea is that it would make a wonderful alternative to a mere Christmas card. The authors are Denise Burton, Amelia Fielden, Hazel Hall, Norma Hayman, Kathy Kituai, Sandra McGahy, Fiona McIlroy, Sandra Renew and Jill Sutton.
golden eye, not silver
Details: Biginelli Expresso, 5th floor, School of Music, Australian National University, 2pm. Please come along if you feel like poetry or coffee (or both) in the middle of the day.
I understand that magpies cause some havoc in New Zealand, where they are an introduced species. So even though one might say Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle, I doubt somehow that this feather represents the magpie. Click it, and you will fly to New Zealand, where further poetry awaits you.
Tuesday poem: Sausage haiku
November 19, 2012
This poem was written on the spot at a recent event at my daughter’s school, where the students presented their explorations on themes of social inequality and discrimination to the assembled masses. As at most things I go to these days, there was a sausage sizzle. As a vegetarian, I feel somewhat redundant at these things, even where vego items are provided. All weak and salady and wilting. But give me something to write on, and I’ll write.
I recently saw a wonderful poet who composed a much more impressive and less sausagey poem on the spot, based on words called out from the audience. Khairani Barokka, known as “Okka”, is an Indonesian writer, performer, artist, producer and researcher. She is definitely one of the most exciting performance poets I have ever seen, and her appearance at the ANU School of Music, organised by the group of poets who meet there and by Australian Poetry Limited, was something I will remember for a long time. Particularly her poem about being asked to rate pain on a scale of 1 to 10. She combines the highly personal and historical and political aspects in her work, without any of the seams showing.
Here she is at the recent Canberra performance. Not the best photo, but I’ll blame Okka for not standing still!
Local poets also read their work, and Indonesian Butet Manurung spoke about her experiences with marginalised jungle-dwelling people in Indonesia. She read from her non-fiction book The Jungle School. The book is already available, but will be launched in Australia and New Zealand next year.
All round, it was an exciting event. And not a sausage to be seen. Or smelt!
Click this feather for further poems. Go on. Click like a clicky thing.
Tuesday poem: All the blond Jesuses
November 12, 2012
So, I’m improvising here. You’ll have to click this sentence and be taken to the journal Verity La, where my poem was just published. It came about after I noticed how very blond Jesus is in many stained glass windows. He’s like David Gower…If a little chubby in this version:
From an early age, his abilities in slip were manifest…Batting came later
If you like this poem, there are lots more in Triptych Poets Issue Three…
Or, click this feather, dropped by an angel, and head to New Zealand, where the mud bubbles and the poems are more than luke warm. (Little biblical pun there…Sorry.)
Tuesday poem: My lover Jim
November 5, 2012
My lover Jim
is ramrod straight, and flexible as steel.
Once he’s on top, it’s hard to make him shift.
He makes me sigh, and grunt and feel
pain, though sometimes I can just lift
him before he renders me 2D.
I have swooned and swallowed blood.
Nausea breaks like a fainting sea,
and I have to stop before it floods.
My legs at such weird wide angles
kicking the heavy sky; or squats:
my hair sweated into ratty tangles,
and arms tied in barbarous knots.
Knees squeak like fearful rodents
in the famous verse by Burns, Robbie
as I scythe myself into components.
He’s more an addiction than just a hobby.
Jim’s real charms show up in rear view
when I’m alone with a looking glass —
four times a week between one, and two,
makes miracles of muscle unsurpassed.
P.S. Cottier
My legions of loyal readers will have noticed that I just took slightly more than a week off. There were many reasons for this; a little disappointment here; a mini-existential crisis there. But my attending the gym four times a week had something to do with it too.
Now that poem above is something of an exaggeration. I have never fainted at the gym, although I have come close. There is nothing miraculous about the changes I am seeing. Some are so slow that they are only noticeable over months rather than weeks.
My legs and back are much stronger than my arms and chest. I may never be able to bench-press very much. But I am already doing much better than when I started, about four months ago. And it is a long time since I felt this fit, and that is a good thing.
With my bike and Jim, I will be a powerful beast by Christmas. I am so hoping that the beast will be a koala.
(And incidentally, a man who acted like the anthropomorphised Jim in the poem would be given short shrift by one little convert to exercise. Shrift shorter than a short string. Look! My very own tongue twister!)
Now, my dear weaklings, click this feather, if you can manage that, and head over to New Zealand for more poetry:
And, if you’re interested, fellow Tuesday Poet Tim Jones posted a review of the recently published Triptych Poets, of which I make up one-third. You could also head to his blog to read that.
PS Cottier 