Cricket Poetry Award: Line and length
June 15, 2012
Perhaps that should be lines. The Cricket Poetry Award closes on 31st August, so if you have an idea for a poem about playing or watching cricket, it’s time to pad up.
The prize is $2000 AUD, entry is $20, which can be done by Paypal, and the announcement of the winner is made at the SCG members pavilion. The top twenty poems from each year have previously been published in a booklet.
Entry forms and full conditions can be found here. There is a tight word limit of 150, so there is no defensive play allowed. No Boycott. Only Gower. And that has to be a good thing.
Bloody batting metaphors. Grumble grumble.
Tuesday poems: seven dwarfs
May 21, 2012
1.
Aladdin’s café
health foods, humous, saffron
Open Sesame
2.
haiku yakuza
execute punctuation!
killer formalists
3.
If poetry
is the mouth
critics pulling
are needle-mad dentists
4.
Grey ghosts of planes
winding down to Gitmo
cigar smoke blows
5.
Bonsai triffids
cut down to flowerpots
balcony stings
6.
Sun fishing
gravity snags planets
hook bites deep
7.
Manga and cartoon
smooth cheese and wasabi
spreading mayhem
P.S. Cottier
They breed like mice (dwarf, gnome, same difference…)
Now, that’s value for you!
Why not click this feather and see if any other Tuesday poet has been playing Snow White?
Poets in the corner
February 2, 2012
not everyone is such a publicist...
No, this is not a post about naughty poets (I told you to stop playing with Augusta, George*!) but about three sculptures that were just unveiled in Canberra’s Garema Place, in an area now known as Poets’ Corner. Judith Wright, David Campbell and A.D. Hope make up the triptych.
I attended the launch, and forgot to take photographs, but anyone interested can follow this link to a Canberra site called The RiotACT see what the sculptures look like. (Not everyone is as forgetful as I am.)
There were excellent poems read at the launch, and an appearance was made by Jon Stanhope, a former Chief Minister of the ACT (sort of a cross between Mayor and School Principal and Premier) who was also Arts Minister. He was supportive of this project.
While many poets pushed for something like this, I left feeling somewhat underwhelmed. Do poets need any memorial outside their words? I don’t think so. And the sculptures (while competent) show the poets at once staring into the middle distance and totally wrapped up in an internal world, with little awareness of the actual world around them. I’m afraid that’s probably how most people see poets, anyway. The idea that the real poets of the world are the dead ones is somehow supported by this type of project, in my opinion.
Byron’s memorial plaque in Westminster Abbey (a somewhat more salubrious location than Garema Place, Canberra) was not installed until the 1969, due to his most naughty reputation. Yet did the reputation of his poetry suffer in the meantime? I don’t think so. The real memorial to these three fine poets can be found in their work. A.D. Hope and David Campbell are represented at the Australian Poetry Library. Judith Wright doesn’t seem to be (copyright?) but examples of her work can be found on the net.
*Byron’s Christian name, as you all undoubtedly knew. And Augusta was his half-sister.
All about, um, me
December 15, 2011
Tim Jones, New Zealand poet and author, who seemingly never sleeps, just interviewed me on his blog. In the interview we talk about chess boxing, The Cancellation of Clouds, our ignorance of Australian poetry (Tim), our ignorance of New Zealand poetry (Penelope), depression, life choices, poetry, prose, my name and lots of other good stuff.
But not cricket. Not after what New Zealand just did to Australia in Tasmania. Not cricket at all.
the muse is drowning...
‘Progress’ by P.S. Cottier
December 12, 2011
Progress
When I turned twenty
I thought the world could be changed
like a pair of jeans, a little dirty
at the knees, fraying at simple seams.
Emergent detergent left
the great unwashed.
Thirty, I decided to be a lawyer
who’d unmask justice,
let her see into dark corners
with right vision goggles.
I stand convicted
of blank stupidity.
At forty, I realised
I’d better decide what I’d be
when I grew up.
Too late for Wimbledon,
I made a poetic racket,
served and volleyed
just inside the lines.
I’m still following through.
P.S. Cottier
This poem appeared in my first collection of poetry called The Glass Violin, launched in February 2009. I will be posting a poem on this blog every Tuesday from now on, either my own or someone else’s, as part of a group of poets who try to do the same thing. Most of the poets are from New Zealand, with a sprinkling of Americans, a seasoning of Italians, and a shake of Australians. If you would like to check out the other poems, click on the quill above, or here. That will take you to the Tuesday Poet hub.
Update: I brilliantly managed to post this on Monday, not Tuesday, but hopefully, by next week I’ll get that right.
PS Cottier 