Frequent flyers: Poetry, music, birds
May 23, 2016
Frequent Flyers: The Lives of Coastal Birds is a group exhibition currently showing at Durras Progress Hall, cnr Corilla & Banyanda Streets, South Durras, NSW, running until Sunday 29th May. On that Sunday, at 3pm, there will be a poetry and music performance at the venue, and I’ll be reading some bird poems, as will Sarah Rice, Johanna Rendle-Short, and Kerrie Nelson. Helen Maxwell, who has organised the event, will be reading a poem by Francesca Rendle-Short and another one by Sue Fielding. It sounds like a fun afternoon! There will be flutes and ukuleles, although probably not at the same time.
Sunday 29 May, 3pm – Bird concert and poetry recital – followed by exhibition closing drinks $10 – BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL. For bookings contact Helen Maxwell helen {AT} helenmaxwell.com, or ring 0439 876 645.
South Durras is a beautiful part of the world, about two hours drive from Canberra. The photo below shows the main surf beach, from the dunes.
A special afternoon
April 19, 2015
David Stavanger works on a line between music and poetry…No.
David Stavanger erases the line between music and poetry….That’s better. Though overly simplistic.
Here he is setting up before his gig in Canberra at Hotel Hotel in New Acton.
Richard Grantham played actual music, including electronic delay with a viola, and keyboards. David played his throat, and the audience, in a devilish performance.
Ellie Malbon also performed her poetry, and at one stage she was joined with Aaron Kirby in a piece with eucalyptus forests, and drowning, which made me think of Birnam Wood coming towards Macbeth in his castle (in the soon to be released play of the same name). Also there were surfing images, and a challenging of the division between elements, and a questioning of myths of improvement. There was a bath, too, in another poem. Here are Ellie’s feet, displayed on the interesting floor which could hardly be described as minimalist:
CJ Bowerbird emceed and performed, and I regret not having captured either his suit or his performance. Andrew Galan read works from his forthcoming second collection, which had a decidedly canine feel to it. This is the sort of maniac that he had in the audience:
Thanks to Annie Te Whiu for the photo.
All in all, this was a wonderful afternoon of poetry and music at Hotel Hotel, in which a lot of poems about water were transformed into magic. The wine was good too…
David’s collection, The Special, is one I should have read by now, but it’s always great to buy it from the poet direct.
Publications and sloth
April 18, 2015
No, I am afraid you won’t get a picture of a sloth engaging in upside down cuteness on these austere pages. But here is one of some dogs. One of them is even upside down, and some say she is a cross between a dog and a sloth.
I have been at the beach for a week or so, and relatively slothful, aided by very dodgy internet access. Although I did enter the best poetry competition, whereby a list of ten words is provided and the entrant/masochist must write a poem containing each of the words. In 48 hours. There are, it seems, very few sloths in Canada. That festival of energetic composition is organised by Contemporary Verse 2. For some poets, this contest would seem overly prescriptive, but I quite like the challenge of using the ten words without them screaming ‘We were given, not found’. It keeps you on your poetic toes.
If you would like to read a poem I wrote which did not derive from a competition, please press this link. The poem deals with space and jazz, and is called ‘Miles and Beyond’. It was just published at Eye to the Telescope, which is the online journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, based in the United States, a nation to the south of Canada, also bereft of sloths. Diane Severson edited this issue, which is made up of speculative poetry about music.
Now, to drag sloths into a blog is terribly out of date; a bit like a parent trying to speak to a teenage child and speaking of ‘Instantgram’ and ‘Readit’. (Tragedy often wears a cardigan.)
In fact, including sloths here might be described as slothful.
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The issue of Midnight Echo I mentioned in my previous post is now available for purchase. It is currently only in PDF, but will soon be available in different formats. I wrote a column about poetry and an actual poem for that issue, edited by Kaaron Warren.
UPDATE 21-4
Midnight Echo is now also in epub and mobi.
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.
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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.
Tuesday poem: Palm cockatoos
July 16, 2012
Palm cockatoos
Heads like a child’s drawing of bird heads,
huge beaks and feather manes, flopping,
last extant beat-poets, croaking of things
hep and cool. Man, you hit bedrock
on that arching drum, selecting the sticks
that give the deepest echo, sound playing
through tall wooden amplifier,
from dark roots to hazy blow of sky.
You contemplate the waving tops
of tropical trees, plumed angel-head,
stylish in your black daytime rhythm.
Inimitable pulsing punctuation,
beaky accent perched above
the forest’s bright green flow.
(The palm cockatoo is the only wild animal known to select, and possibly to store, sticks for use as musical instruments.)
P.S. Cottier
I am fascinated by palm cockatoos, although I have never even seen one. They live in the far tropical north of Queensland. The tattoo comes from much closer Queanbeyan, just over the border in New South Wales.
So why would you get a tattoo of a bird you have never seen? A little reminder that there are more things in heaven and earth…an encouragement to discover new worlds and boldly go…a cheap and less seedy way of being a pirate?
I don’t know, but I think the tattoo artist did a good job. (Thank you Carbine.) I have posted a black and white photo as the colour one I have makes my skin look a rather alarming yellow: just below nuclear buttercup. I will try and obtain a better photo, as the detail is blurred in this one. But this is my cockatattoo forever looking for sticks. My skin is the drum. Watch your finger!
For poetry, much of which is written in a country where tattoos are not unknown, please press this feather:
PS Cottier 