Thinking about 2019 (from a deliberately narrow perspective)
December 23, 2019
As I sit and constantly look up the spread of the bushfires, particularly on the South Coast of NSW where we’d usually be around now, I thought I’d reflect back on all my publications and readings this year to take my mind (and lungs) off the smoke. Here we go:
Participant, Living Studio, Belconnen Arts Centre, late 2018 (November) onwards. Reading at Centre, 12 March (star poems) ‘Living the Studio’.
Poem ‘On the couch’ published The Canberra Times, 2-3-19
Poem ’Two stroke or more’ published Not Very Quiet 4, March 2019. Read it at launch.
‘The Ashes, 3150 A.D.’ published Eye To The Telescope 32, US, April 2019, ‘Sports and Games’ edited Lisa Timpf.
Poems ‘Mining time’ and Excalibur’s Lament’ published in The Rhysling Anthology (US), 2019, edited David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Poem ’Transformation’ published The Mozzie, April 2019
Poem ‘The creature runs through the ice, pursued by Doctor Frankenstein’ published Cordite 91, Monster issue, edited Nathan Curnow, May 2019.
Poem ‘Freckles’ published Sponge, Issue 5, New Zealand, May 2019
Senryu ’turpsichore’ (deliberately spelt like that!) published The Mozzie, Volume 27, May 2019
Reading poem ‘Fry up’ for special event, Poetry. Science. Women: Celebrating the Amazing, Smiths, 17 June, 2019. To be published in Axon.
Poem ‘Mawson Expedition medicine chest, 1911’, written on commission for National Museum of Australia about that object in the Objects Gallery. To be read at Museum event in June (2019) and published on website.
Shortlisted ACU Poetry Prize, July 2019, theme ’Solace’. Published in chapbook.
Reading Manning Clark House, July 2019
Poem ‘The Ashes 3152 AD’ republished The New Zealand Cricket Bulletin July/August 2019 No. 597
Review Jack Charles: Born-again Blakfella by Jack Charles with Namila Benson published The Canberra Times, 31-8-19
Haiku ‘Aliens declutter’ published Scifaikuest, US, August 2019, Edited Teri Santitoro.
Reading at The House (ANU) August 2019
Poem ‘Mountain Pygmy-possum’, renamed ’Snow and heat’, in Mountain Secrets anthology, ed. Joan Fenney, Ginninderra Press, 2019. Read it at launch in Blackheath, Blue Mountains, November 2019.
Poem ‘The dusky grass wren’ published Not Very Quiet Issue 5, September 2019, edited Tricia Dearborn
Haiku ‘Angels picnic’ published in The Mozzie, September/October 2019 (received November)
Panellist, Conflux (Poetry) and also interviewed by Kaaron Warren for another panel, October 2019
Review of A Sharp Left Turn: Notes on a life in music, from Split Enz to Play It Strange by Mike Chunn published The Canberra Times, 26-10-19
‘The Most Loyal Servant and the Peas’ (story) published Antipodean SF, No 254, November 2019, and on radio show (my reading).
Review of Never Say Die: The Hundred-Year Overnight Success of Australian Women’s Football by Fiona Crawford and Lee McGowan published The Canberra Times 9-11-19
Review of Absolutely Bleeding Green: The Raiders Story by David Headon published The Canberra Times 23-11-19
Review of The Institute by Stephen King published The Canberra Times 24-11-19
‘Fry up’ published Axon: Creative Explorations, Vol 9, No 2, December 2019
Review of Maybe The Horse Will Talk by Elliot Perlman published The Canberra Times, 7-12-19
I’m happy that I’m doing quite a few reviews again, as it keeps you on your intellectual toes (now I’m picturing a brain in a tu-tu) and encourages you to think about how each book promises something, and whether it lives up to those implied promises. I really enjoyed reviewing the history of the Raiders and the history of women’s football in Australia; all I need now is a cricket book, and AFL.
I’ll definitely try and keep the reviewing up next year.
Next year I’ll be having two books published, both poetry.
Have a great Christmas, and let’s hope that there is still an inhabitable east coast of Australia after the next few months. (And SA, and WA, too.)
(Early) Tuesday poem: Interrobang
December 10, 2017
This one is via link to the Thunderbolt Prize, where it was highly commended. It’s about a bike being hit by a car, so prepare for seasonal cheerfulness! The other poems are well worth a look, too. The winning poem is by Jenny Blackford.
I also just had a poem published in Australian Poetry Journal, with a poem about work, and was a finalist in the New Millennium Monthly muse competition, on the subject of fear, but I’m going to hoard that poem for a while and get it published elsewhere. Those competitions are also well worth a look.
Australia is moving into Christmas shutdown mode as we speak. And by Australia I largely mean me…which is fairly arrogant, but there you go. I am not writing as much as usual, and drinking (even) more. Cheers.
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.
***
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.
Beyond the realm of the merely freaky
January 12, 2015
That’s where you’ll find me, from time to time. One exciting development in the horrible world that lies on the wrong side of THE THIN BEIGE LINE OF COMPARATIVE NORMALITY ©* is Midnight Echo, the official magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association. Kaaron Warren is editing the next issue, and I have a poem in it, along with a column about poetry.
Press this link for the fully horrible Table of Contents. I can’t wait to be sickened, in a good way, by the issue.
who left the drawbridge down?
I also have a poem coming up in the 200th issue of Antipodean SF, which explicitly addresses the merits, or otherwise, of flash fiction. And I believe a story of mine from THE VAULTS, otherwise known as 2008, may also be appearing.
There are other publications looming too, like the mutant pterodactyls of Moscow in a novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky, but these are enough for today.
*no, not copyright at all. If you like dreadful writing, please help yourself to the phrase.
PS Cottier 