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

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