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

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?

Another year, another winter train with a box of black pencils.

Tired, hypnotised by perfect circles stirred into my morning coffee.

Beside a silent stereo the speakers stand,
humming to themselves.

Friday afternoon carhorn shouts “What a magnificent traffic jam!”

Mad at itself, brooding Winter walks about in circles, muttering.

In the shopping mall microclimate, noticing a lack of kigo.

Like everyone else on the Hell Municipal Council road paving crew, my good intentions to work on my current homework project has been subverted by a bunch of other stuff. The most useful of the bunch though was joining ReadWritePoem, an online gathering place for poets.

Amongst the many discussion groups, I rediscovered one whose topic is the American Sentence. The term was coined by Allen Ginsburg and it takes it’s queue from the haiku and the Buddhist Heart Sutra. If I’m not mistaken, the Melbourne poet Myron Lysenko coined the term Rooku with similar intent. (Myron, if you are reading, please correct me if I’m wrong!)

Either way, I’ve joined the American Sentences been inspired by the group founder who tries to write at least one a day (I’ll be attempting the same here and maybe on my Twitter account as well).

On Joining American Sentences group:

The Antipodean wonders if his presence here subverts the form.

Yes, I know. Still, it’s a start.

Reading: “The Last Night Of The Earth Poems” – Charles Bukowski
Listening: “Podgrams (Series 1)” – Stephen Fry

Dear readers, apologies for taking so long to update, I’ve been flat out between work (1 x 16-hour day < fun) and other engagements.

Speakers Corner, part of the Emerging Writer’s Festival was an amazing amount of fun. I described it to one person as “Big Day Out for poetry”. Five stages, screaming poetry over the noise of passing trams on one stage, doing the next set sounding like Tom Waits, getting to see a bunch of my favorite local poets perform one after the other, it was a big big pile of fun. Hats off to the curators (amongst whom, Sean M. Whelan and Zöe Barron’s names are listed) and thanks to them for inviting me and making it such an awesome gig.

I really wish I had made it to the other gigs but I seem to be surrounded and buried in busy right now. Partially work and family doing it’s thing, other projects and my own writing get squished in there wherever I can fit it too.

In the mean time, here’s something I’ve actually been working on. It’s a response to an Ian McBryde poem called “Reports From The Palace“. McBryde fans out there will be aware he has several poems by that name, this is in response to the one in his book “Equatorial“.

Reading: This fortnight’s London Review Of Books
Listening: Billy Bragg podcast ep. 14