Lots of prose about poetry
March 26, 2013
I’ve had two articles published in other places this week, talking about the wonders of poetry, in prose.
Here is a link to a launch speech I gave last year for the pamphlet In Response to Magpies. It deals with that most Australian of birds, its colonial conquests, and some very well known poets. That’s in the Australian Poetry members magazine, called Sotto.
This second link is to the ACT Writers Centre blog, where I mentally swear at a stupid person, and talk about Byron, as per usual. It is a defence of poetry. It contains jokes.
So busy have I been writing prose about poetry that I have no Tuesday poem for you today! But fear not. Click this feather, and other poets will satisfy your cravings:
Next week, the third anniversary of the Tuesday Poem group, we will be writing a joint poem, starting on Tuesday, to be posted gradually at that link as each poet writes a section. It should be a lot of fun!
Have a wonderful, reflective and chocolate flavoured Easter.
Why would you do that?
February 22, 2013
Sometimes you forget why you started writing in the first place. You get so caught up in minutiae: rewriting an article for the fifth time, or compiling endless lists of addresses to which you need to send something, or writing careful emails to other poets so you don’t inadvertently hurt their feelings…which is about as possible as teaching a walrus to tap-dance.
Rodrigo will tango, not tap
And then you come across a poem that reminds you why it is all worthwhile. These things often happen through serendipity. I was lucky enough to be short-listed in a Canadian literary competition a while back, and have been receiving the journal CV2 (Contemporary Verse 2) from Canada for a year. It is most excellent, and the Summer 2012 issue (which translates in Winter 2012, for Southern Hemisphere dwellers!) contains some truly beautiful work by John Steffler. I can’t reprint the poems here, as I don’t have the rights. But there are poems about rock art and trees and people living in snow and, yes, moose, that stole my muscles for a moment or two.
Mr Steffler is on the cover of the journal, wearing a black beanie. (I get the impression that everyone in Canada wears a beanie all the time…) He is, to put it euphemistically, no spring chicken, even an autumnal chicken, and the backs of his hands are deeply mottled, as if they have poems bubbling away, just waiting to filter into the fingertips and onto paper.
A lot of poetry comes about from the sort of chance meeting that led me to this journal. (And please note I am talking about my own poems and methods here, not those of the far more experienced John Steffler.) You see an orange-tinted cloud that reminds you of the flavour of ice-cream. You don’t know why exactly, and then you remember an orange dress that you were wearing where you smelt the first drops of rain while eating an icecream and how they drew you outside into the sudden cold. You notice the particular curve of certain words; yes, obviously, the word curvy (not in this angular font, though) but also cove. Does the word cove change its meaning when written in the longhand of say, James Cook, to when it is dashed off on the spur of the moment blog entry on a computer? These thought can lead to a poem. It’s the quirk of things; the infinite jest of language itself; grinning from its deep grammar into the everyday exchange of inanities.
And that’s why you say yes to poetry, even when you have a cold. Even when you just wish you were a tad more ‘normal’ and didn’t get excited about words in a way most people don’t, and wish you didn’t see a misplaced apostrophe as a knife stuck into a sentence’s bowels.
You feel even better when you can indulge in a little schadenfreude: Clarise Foster’s editorial to CV2 for Summer 2012 mentions that there are only a few months of the year in Canada where you can get out ‘without ubiquitous winter gear’.
Makes the first signs of Autumn seem bearable. (Autumn translates to Spring, Canadians! And our Autumn, even here in Canberra, is probably a lot warmer than Canada’s Spring, I suspect.) Sometimes we even go out without beanies!
I promise not to mention the Black Caps…*
January 14, 2013
Scorecard
Genius comes in many forms: scientist
to poet, astrophysicist or scribe,
and from its milky way we imbibe
a celestial drink. We’re often pissed
on the fluffy ducks of cleverness,
garnished cocktails of the everafter.
But if you would engender laughter
and gales of glee quite effortless,
suggest that genius might reside
in knitting, crotchet or a recipe
for jam, or scones, or fricasee.
They’ll call you mad, in accents snide.
Quite different from the game of cricket
where it takes a Shane to take a wicket.
P.S. Cottier
Not another one?
Yes, it’s summer, and a young (or autumnal) woman’s fancy turns to cricket. And in keeping my poetry on its toes, at least as alert as a New Zealand batsman. (*I lied….)
In that spirit of relaxed experimentation, please find above a wee sonnet on a gender and cricket theme.
In search of poetry
January 10, 2013
Having just returned to Canberra from the beach, I can say that it is much harder to locate poetry on the south coast of New South Wales than it is in Canberra. Not at all in terms of inspiration drawn from scenic beauty, if your own poetry tends to focus on that sort of thing:
… and mine doesn’t, usually, but just in terms of finding actual poetry in printed books.
The local bookstores might have a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets, but little else. The local library had a better selection, but I did most of my reading of poetry (and only poetry, with a little poetic essay thrown in) on-line. Resources such as the Australian Poetry Library and its American equivalent allow for large chunks of poesie to be swallowed, like a gull with the key to a fish and chip shop, when one is in the village that poetry forgot. Or that forgot poetry.
We really are spoilt in Canberra with a number of independent bookstores that carry poetry. How long will they remain though?
I realise that my sticking to a diet of poetry and only poetry has had the bizarre effect of making me not post any poetry on my blog for a while…I promise a poem next time.
A year of poetry. And only poetry.
January 1, 2013
I suppose the idea for having a year of reading no prose came to me after listening to someone say ‘nobody reads poetry anymore.’ Apart from being a tad tactless, when the person addressed is a poet, this comment made me think about the comparative weight that the novel gets in society, as opposed to the art form that places language itself at its centre.
Why not see how it would be not to read fiction or non-fiction for a year? Will too much poetry drive me mad? Will that madness be sadly obsessive, or downright Byronic? Or just moronic?
My Year of Living Poetically (thank you Mr Featherstone, novellaist extraordinaire) begins today. Let me clarify; I don’t intend to give up on news or blogs or government forms. I will read articles about poetry.
The Japanese have a form of writing called the haibun, where prose is illuminated by a haiku. I intend to have a year of poetry, illuminated by the occasional book review. Or funding application.
But no novels, no history, no theology for a year. This is my New Year’s Resolution for 2013, amongst more mundane things about haunting the gym and being more tolerant. I’ll be blogging about my efforts and experiences here. In prose, mostly.
We’ll see how this experiment in poetry goes.
Happy New Year!
PS Cottier 