Hello and welcome to the first post of the new decade, I hope you had a lovely end-of-year festival and that you Melbournian readers didn’t suffer too horribly in the recent heat.

Thanks to Peter Bakowski and the marvellous poetry course her ran last year, my new year resolution last year to write at least one poem a month ended up somewhere close to 20! Thanks Peter!

So here is the first for this year, a Martian poem.

This species unique for
their Bowie coloured eyes
one for dark, one for light.
Shiny black carapace,
fragility increasing
as they mature and grow.
 
The human holds her charge
with reverence, stroking
and grooming its arcane
circular plumages.
 
It’s back pressed to her face
They observe, in ritual,
some distant mock-prey.
It clicks in excitement
with an explosion from
it’s bright eye, it’s dark eye
fluttering in response.
 
Satisfied, the human
shows the marsupial
nature of this creature;
returning it to a
black spongy pouch
around her neck before
they continue to stalk
more eye-catching quarry.

Reading: “The collected poetry of Czeslaw Milosz”
Listening: “Legions (War)” – Zoë Keating

Currently enjoying the first leg of the journey that is Takin’ It To The Streets, the annual poetry pub crawl. Dante’s now, Southpaw and Blue Velvet later. For specifics, check out the Overload Poetry website page for this gig.

The launch was amazing, The Heart Chamber were fantastic.

I’m pleased to announce that Concise Delight have selected three of my poems for publication in their inaugural issue!

Specifically two haiku and a recent rework of one of the first poems I wrote.

Check out the Concise Delight website. Looking forward to ordering a copy or three!

I’m in the same journal as Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz. Happy? Pleased? Thrilled? Am I what?

Finally it is done!

The not really all that secret project I’ve been working on has been released. The 2009 Overload Poetry Festival website is online!

Programme and venue details, as well as performer biographies are all available. Also featured are notes on our Partnered Projects (see what we are doing with the magnificent Bristol Poetry Festival and the incomparable Going Down Swinging) and details on registering for poetry workshops and the Overload Poetry Slam.

First off, apologies, dear reader, for being so slack on the updates. I’m focussing my time on the web on another project that will soon be launched. More news as I feel happy talking about it!

The Year of Poetry course is going swimmingly, one of my chief goals was to get myself into a position where I’m writing more than a poem a month on average. Today I had the second of six workshops with Peter Bakowski and really enjoyed it, the group discussions were good and the exercises gave me a pair of decent poems and another pair that need more work but make decent starts.

Don’t forget, I’ll be performing at Speaker’s Corner this coming noon-4pm on Sunday, 24th May as part of the Emerging Writers Festival. It takes place at the Federation Square Atrium. There will be me, Maxine Clark, Cha-Ya Clancy, Santo Cazzatti, Michelle Dabrowski, Dragonfly, Meg Dunn, Crazy Elf, Julez, Anthony O’Sullivan, Marc Testart, it will be made entirely of awesome!

I will be appearing in Speaker’s Corner, an event that is part of the Emerging Writer’s Festival.
It will be held in the Atrium of Federation Square on 24th of May, from 11am to 4pm.

The EWF’s Speakers Corner will be the major free public event for the 2009 Emerging Writers’ festival providing an opportunity for visitors to, and residents of, the City of Melbourne a chance to hear a variety of performance writers, experience and emerging present their works in a free forum. Inspired by the political soap boxing made famous in Hyde Park – London, Speakers Corner will combine spoken word, poetry, monologues, story telling, readings and opinion pieces in an innovative presentation of this work, breaking down the normal performer/ audience divide to a more dynamic blend of street theater and audience browsing.

Five soapboxes (podiums) will be set up within the atrium at Federation Square on the first Sunday of the Emerging Writers’ festival between 11 and 4 within which time the finest of Melbourne’s wordsmiths will take turns presenting their work to the passing public, trying to capture their attention and their imagination with their presentation of ideas, creativity and thoughts through their words. The public will drift between soap boxes either being captured by the performances or moving on to check out the next of the wordsmiths plying their trade.

Over the day up to 40 different writers will get a chance to present their work over five separate soap boxes providing a rare opportunity for these writers to present to new audiences as well as largely increase numbers of audience members they have performed to both outcomes which are core to the mission of the EWF.

So come along and see me and Maxine Clark, Cha-Ya Clancy, Santo Cazzatti, Michelle Dabrowski, Dragonfly, Meg Dunn, Crazy Elf, Julez, Anthony O’Sullivan, Marc Testart perform in public!

Reading: “All Of Us: The Collected Poems of Raymond Carver“
Listening: “Lua” – Amanda Palmer (Bright Eyes cover)
Eating: Pumpkin Lasagne

What: The Spinning Room! Hosted by Jon Garrett and Anthony O’Sullivan.
Who: Me!
Where: ET’s Hotel, 211 High St., Prahran
When: 8pm, Tuesday, 14th April
How: (…much?) Entry is free, but we do encourage the purchase of raffle tickets as the proceeds, as ever, go to the feature. Besides, the raffle prizes are good! There will be books and wine!
Why: Because I have new stuff! Because I have old stuff! Because the open stage is really good! Because the Spinning Room is a fantastic gig!

Reading: “The Yale Anthology of Twentieth Century French Poetry” – edited by Mary Ann Caws
Listening: “The Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes” – Elvis Costello

Sorry it’s taken me so long to post, dear reader. Many things are on the proverbial boil here and I hope to be a touch more active online. In short, here’s things that have happened in the absence of posting.

1. Work continues apace in organising the Overload Poetry Festival, the line up is looking rather exciting with a sprinkling of interstate and international guests coming to perform. I’m currently hard at work updating the website and hope to have it up and running soon.
2. I clocked in a new record for submitting poetry to a journal. Discovery of submission deadline to angst, selection, more angst, worrying about what to send, final angst and tidying of submission to clicking send in under an hour.
3. On Sunday I attended the first of six workshops in The Year of Poetry, run by Peter Bakowski. As a result, I will be attempting to write one poem per week! Hopefully I’ll have them up here..for better or worse.

Reading: “A Handful of Dust” – Evelyn Waugh
Listening: “Weapon” – Matthew Good Band

I had the good fortune to attend the kick off for 2009 of Wordplay, the monthly gig hosted by Geoff Lemon which has now moved to the more spacious surrounds of the Dan O’Connell in Carlton. Given recent sad events it was also turned into a fundraiser for a poet who had suffered and lost in the recent bushfires.

We were entertained by the spiritual and thoughtful Simon Cox, Joelistics (musician and rap artist with TZU) got us moving, we were blown away by the picturesque story telling of Eleanor Jackson and beguiled at the end by the work of Kevin Brophy.

Go check out their website, listen to the mp3s of previous gigs, download a copy of the Wordplay mag that they’ve just launched. It’s all worth your time.

Well, that was a lot of fun. Thank you to everyone who came along to the gig.

Ozlem, as expected, was amazing, particularly poised for someone who was performing at her debut headline gig.

I was happy with how my new work came out. I had decided to do one of the new ones in response to something I had heard in the open stage, and it felt a lot better than I thought. Needs a bit of work, perhaps, but certainly held it’s own.

This is mostly for my own recording, but my set list was:

1st Set
Thirteen Hours Into Summer; Sad Bleak Sky; That’s Chiroptera To You Mr. Lawrence; Supermarket Queue; In Memory Of Boris Pasternak (by Denise Levertov); Observing Denise Levertov Remember Boris Pasternak; Inauguration; In The Absence
2nd Set
Dr. Frankenstein; Dust Revisited; Ballard Days; Eulogy For The Polaroid; Extracts From The Kama Sutra Of Sleep; Go; 21 – The World

Reading: “District & Circle” – Seamus Heaney
Listening: “Save What You Can” – The Triffids