Belated Tuesday haiku: [Off to the printers]
April 9, 2014
Off to the printers –
the most beautiful four words
proofing is ended
Well, they are the most beautiful four words to an editor, anyway.
We’re finalising launch details for The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, edited by Tim Jones and me. There will be a launch in Melbourne, and one in Canberra, both in June. Poets will read poems from their own copies of the book! One editor will probably drink too much! Details to follow. Of the time and venue, not of the drunk editor’s proclivities.
For more sensible entries, I suggest you tap the following feather. Feather-tapping is a thing now.
Canberra: Centre of Poetry Excellence (and nice meals)
January 22, 2014
The indefatigable Geoff Page (was there ever a better surname for a poet?) has just released his schedule for readings at The Gods this year. Here it is:
Poetry at The Gods 2014
Tues Feb 11 & possibly Wed Feb 12 Les Murray (Bunyah)
Tues Mar 11 Omar Musa (Cbr)
John Stokes (Cbr)
Lizz Murphy (Binalong)
Tues Apr 8 Tricia Dearborn (Syd)
Barbara Fisher (Syd)
Tues May 13 Catherine Bateson (Dandenong Ranges)
Dennis Haskell (Perth)
Tues Jun 10 Moya Pacey (Cbr)
Harry Laing (Braidwood)
Geoff Page (Cbr)
Tues Jul 8 Ron Pretty (Wollongong)
Lynn Hard (Syd)
Tues Jul 22 Dead Poets’ Dinner
Tues Aug 12 David McCooey (Geelong)
Maria Takolander (Geelong)
Tues Sep 9 Alan Gould (Cbr)
Michael Thorley (Queanbeyan)
Penelope Layland (Cbr)
Tues Oct 14 Samuel Wagan Watson (Bris)
Judy Johnson (Newcastle)
Tues Nov 11 Jennifer Harrison (Melbourne)
Jordie Albiston (Melbourne)
Tues Dec 9 Stephen Edgar (Syd)
Judith Beveridge (Syd)
You can see that there is a melange of local and interstate poets, starting with Les Murray. Les always attracts a huge crowd, and there will most likely be two readings.
The venue (a café and restaurant) gets its name from the fact that it is next to a small theatre on the Australian National University campus. My alma mater, at least for my PhD. I thought I’d put up a theatrical image because of that. And poetry reading is theatre; the darkened room, the sweat on the brow, the audience response. The critics!
In other poetry news, we are hard at work on The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry. The cover is being designed by David Reiter, and I should be able to post it here very soon. All being well, the book will be appearing around the end of April, although no date has been set yet. Very exciting. There is quite a cross-over between that list of poets at The Gods and the anthology, to segue like a mad thing.
Tuesday poems: At one remove
December 31, 2013
Zireaux has analysed several of my poems about Canberra in a very thoughtful entry at his blog.
Not everyone turns into a sun-worshipping lizard over Christmas and New Year, swinging in a hammock and watching England snatch defeat from the jaws of a possible draw, as happened at the MCG recently. Or Zireaux hasn’t, anyway.
May I suggest you pop over to his blog? He has certainly thought more about my poetry than I ever have!
Rodrigo will tango, not tap
That is actually a photograph of me at the moment, not another walrus by the name of Rodrigo. You should see the size of the hammock…
Click this feather to see which of the Tuesday poets are lizards or walruses, and which are active at this time of year:
Tuesday poem: Clumsy in love
December 2, 2013
Clumsy in love
Clumsy wears ug boots, where others don high heels,
or light reflective slippers of glass. They waltz,
all Straussy and fine in white, with froufrou and swish.
Clumsy stomps. Even his sheepskin words betray him.
He muffles passion in good intention, dags love
in a brown blanket of nag. Clumsy would be lacy,
suggestive, a slight touch between eyelash and wink.
But his eagerness clutches and grabs, rummages
for a lost gold key of ease. He speaks words
subtle as a losing barracker at three-quarter time,
pie’s warm filling dripping onto his mind’s feet.
Dreams subsist, nonetheless, in quiet fleecy nights.
P.S. Cottier
A brand new poem, this one. Unsullied by previous publication, or heavy editorial touch.
I notice that, as the temperature climbs in Canberra, my blog has had snow added by WordPress in North America. I’m leaving it here, as it amuses me to be sitting in 30 or even 40 degree heat (that’s celsius) and look at this cold confetti thrown over my words.
Particularly when the words are dealing with a person who is unlucky in love, for whom cold confetti seems appropriate.
The word ‘dags’ by the way, is usually a noun, here pressed into service as a verb by the pesky sheepdog of experiment. Look it up if you dare.
Click this black swan feather, and check out New Zealand’s peaks of poeticness. Poeticity. Rhymsteration? Just do it.
By the way, we have sent the manuscript of The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, to the publisher, David Reiter of Interactive Publications. There will still be a lot of checking and fiddling, but as I said in a comment to the last post here, it has moved out of our grasp. I have enjoyed aspects of this process, namely, reading the poems, placing them in what seems to be pleasing patterns, and writing the introduction. Other aspects are more tedious!
I don’t think I’ll rush into anthologising again for a while.
The most amazing thing is that Tim Jones didn’t murder me at some stage in the process. Although, to be fair, I think I have slightly more of a temper on me…He is almost annoyingly patient.
This lack of murder is one of the benefits of working with someone from another country.
Tuesday prose about poetry
September 3, 2013
I just had to write about last Friday, which saw a flurry of poetic activity at The Front, a café/bar/gallery/performance space in Lyneham. The regular poetry slam held there, organised by Josh (JC) Inman and Varisht Gosain also saw the launch of the fourth edition of Canberra journal Burley. Patrick Mullins and Cara Foster edit that journal, although I understand that the editorial team is being enlarged for the next issue. Lots of wonderful poets performed in the slam, which was expertly judged…(Why, yes, I helped with that. Chris was the winner.)
But most interestingly for this little rhymester, there were two guest poets: Jackson from Western Australia, who radiates energy and plays the guitar, and Jennifer Compton. Fellow Tuesday Poet JC. Here we are before the slam started, and you can see Burley-related activity going on in the gallery space behind us:
Berets aplenty!
(Thank you to the pretty young man who took the photo! If you have a name, I have forgotten it, unfortunately.) It is the first time I have met Jennifer, who has been performing right down the east coast; notably at the Queensland Poetry Festival. She was tired, but her poetry was far from tiring: she does a very nice job in wicked and quietly disturbing.
This was a night that showed all that is good about Canberra; even the weather is pulling itself up by its bootstraps. I am, however, referring to the energy of the poetry, in both written and spoken form. All happening within a very short walking distance of my house.
Wonderful stuff, with a real mix of types of poetry and ages of poets. Sometimes I really love Canberra. Not the politicians’ Canberra, but the place where people live.
Click this feather and go to New Zealand for good poets who published actual poetry today:
PS Cottier 