Ballard Days

This sprung out of reading an article about JG Ballard and watching people on Brunswick St.,

Ballard Days

We live in the Ballard days.
We bare our bullet torn flesh,
our steering wheel cracked ribs
but deny the pierced heart of
our internal bleeding.
 
We bare the radiation burns
as marks of piety
but think nothing of the cancer
and how it quietly spreads within us.
 
We inure ourselves to the constant
degradation of our bodies
and wake up every morning
a little further behind the 8-ball.
 
We wake every morning
change the bandages
and recycles the letters
from the doctor saying
“Your results are back. Call me.”
 

Reading:We Will Disappear” – David Prater
Listening:Money Changes Everything” – The Smiths

Tim @ Spinning Room!

Hello folks, happy easter/purim/oestre. It’s been a quiet month or so here on the poetry front. Much noise and commotion elsewhere though, so I can’t say I haven’t been busy. Far from it. I remember the days where the hilarity of sleep deprivation used to inspire me to write strange and mystical half-ranting poems. Now the hilarity of sleep deprivation brings overtime, bags under my eyes and a zombie like state for a day or two afterwards. So it goes.

I have news however!! I will be featuring at the Spinning Room on April 1st. Oh yeah, I’m well aware of the importance of the date. My set list will be tailored accordingly. Come see the funny.

What: The Spinning Room featuring Tim Hamilton
Where: ET’s Hotel. 211 High St., Prahran
When: 8pm, Tuesday, April 1st 2008.
Why: I’ll have new stuff, old stuff, and just about every silly poem I have in the set list.

Reading: David Prater – We Will Disappear
Listening: Ani Difranco – Wish I May

Another World

A friend of mine has started a really rather interesting blog that I think needs to be seen by many. Go visit Loki at The Centre Cannot Hold.

I mention this, not only because I’m more than happy to laud the work of my friends, but also because I made reference to one of my poems on his site and thought I should log it here for sake of reference.

Another World was written as a meditation on the point that person A can only really transmit a concept of what they are saying to person B. The simple act of saying “blue” generates two different shades of the same colour in the minds of the two people discussing the colour because at a basic level, our experiences are different.

Continue reading Another World

Questions Left Unvoiced

This year seems to have started well. Oh, and happy new thing to all of you!

I went to the Dan O’Connell gig on Saturday, my reading went OK (Culture & Politics, Dr. Frankenstein, Eulogy For The Cassette), Anne & Norman’s set was amazing as per usual and I seem to be having more luck writing than I had last year. One poem, two close to poems and another that I’ve been working on for nearly a year is getting closer to the finish line.

For the last few years I’ve been making a new year’s resolution to write at least one poem a month. Admittedly, not the most grandiose of resolutions, but I figure it’s something I can build upon. So this month I’ve already got two poems, and hopefully a third on the way!

Anyhow, my second work this year is something of a dramatic monologue, all the questions you want to ask in different circumstances but are never quite sure if you should or not. I found it interesting how, while separate thoughts, they tell a story as a whole. Have a look under the cut.
Continue reading Questions Left Unvoiced

The Courthouse Readings

Come join Alex Skovron and I at the Eltham Courthouse!

Hosted by Helen Lucas, Alex and I will be featuring in the magnificent stone acoustics of the Eltham Courthouse.

When: Thursday, 21st February, 7:30 for an 8pm start.
Where: Eltham Courthouse, 728 Main Rd, Eltham (near the corner of Brougham St., about center in the map)
What: $5 entry, open mic, free tea, wine, coffee, biscuits and door prize.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do the happy dance, then write frantically for approximately 5 weeks.


Listening: Matthew Good Band – Weapon

Reading: London Review of Books, January 3rd, 2008

Podcast plug for Indiefeed

It’s time for me to recommend a podcast.

I’m slowly working my way through the Indiefeed Performance Poetry podcast on my way to work in the mornings. What currently amounts to 300-and-a-bit poems recorded around the slam and open mic gigs of North America (including several recordings from great poets further back in history such as Auden, Ginsberg, Millay, etc.). There’s a wide selection of brilliant poetry of every stripe. This podcast is really worth checking out if you love the spoken word in all its many splendid forms.

The link to the site is http://performancepoetry.indiefeed.com/. Worth getting an iPod for.

It should also be noted that “Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam”, the new book by Cristin O’Keefe-Aptowicz is out and about, the prologue containing none other than the grand Melbournian poet Steve Smart. Sounds like a great book and I may be chasing a copy of it.

This message, may or may not have been brought to you by me entering a competition to win said book. Thus it is I fulfill my new year’s resolution of last year by enteing a poetry competition. Almost.

Listening: Taylor Mali – Labeling Keys
Reading: The Rattle Bag (ed. Ted Hughes & Seamus Heaney)