An international poem

This very moving poem came through on my email this morning and I wanted to post it up. I think the poet is from Belgium, but his thoughts are universal and cross all geographical boundaries. Here it is courtesy of poetryinternational.org

Pushed out with worn-out furniture
her sprung insides show
the joys and woes of an old mattress.
The kapok suddenly releases secrets
and in its lumpy burls
refrains and duets stick:

Come my love, don’t withdraw
yet. Feel me over to see
if I’m a stranger once again
asking you the way to today –
I want to disappear inside
a raw body flap
as in a cave beneath the sea.

So bird-swift, with quick jerks,
this duet sounded like a duel
when in the middle of a kissed-away silence
a voice, almost choked, sprang up:
“If you die first, then I will surely follow . . .”

Come my love, pull me in
like a snail does its feelers:
I do not want to see the light
that whistles in my ribs –
Quickly set my coil-locked
body on fire: just one more sigh
and the bloom is gone.




© 2001, Lucienne Stassaert
© Translation: 2008, John Irons

Eureka Street poems

Hi folks. I am pleased to say there are poems of mine now on Eureka Street. The first one has lost its breaks between verses, but the others seem to be in place and format. Please take a look at http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=9920

I am presently in Broome as Writer in Residence at the Broome Library and Notre Dame University, organised by writingWA, our State lit office. Expect hot and humid Broome poems any day now!

Anyone reading this in The Kimberley can hear me on ABC radio tomorrow morning with Miranda Tetlow around 11.45am.

~sharing(secret)water~ ev13 has emerged

Raising our glasses in celebration!

Opening fluid connections, ~sharing(secret)water~

Emerging Visions visionary art ezine issue #13 has emerged.

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com

Drink deeply.

share and enjoy!

Emerging Visions #13 "Sharing(secret)Water" calls

Spirits of deep water are stirring. Emerging Visions visionary art ezine #13 ~ "Sharing (secret) Water"* ~ intends to emerge in early November. Look deep into your hidden treasuretrove to send your sharing by October 23.

Enjoying memories of being "Jung @ Heart" along the way, find the Submission Guidelines hidden below

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com


make it happen

My Poetry & Poetics Blog

Blogs appear to be essential these days. I do have a website @ www.geocities.com/helen_hagemann, however, my blog Evangelyne will host my poetry, my poetics, Australian & US poets' blogs, etc. Two poets that I met in Katoomba/Sydney are Deb Westbury & David Musgrave. Three fellow poets that I met through the 2008 Longlines Poetry Workshop are Ali Cobby Eckermann, Kimberly Mann & Andrew Slattery. From time to time I will post updates of our forthcoming collections to be published by the Australian Poetry Centre & our 2009 Australia-wide tour.


My Blogs

Evangelyne
anovelist


Heather, you must have re-set my email log-in, so thanks very much!
Cheers, Helen

A bit quiet around here, so I thought I'd but(t) in and tell you I am hosting a few local poems at my blog, http://hispirits.blogspot.com this week. Please take a gander one day soon ... Andrew

This Is Not Art: 2-6 October 08

It's the five days of the year where you get to share your ideas, passions and saliva with like-minded crew from all over Australia. This year This Is Not Art is composed of four very special festivals, and a series of events combining talents from the across the board.

From its first moments as an Electrofringe and National Young Writers' Festival, the convergence has grown to provide an annual extravaganza with a variety of workshops, panels, performances, speakers and exhibitions challenging ideas about making art, making culture and making noise. We’ve have remained true to our core aims - innovating, developing and showcase emerging art and media forms.

And this year is no exception. Throw in some experimental indy theatre performances, artist networking and industry exposés, and some ripe social & political cheekiness, and you have a rough idea of what This Is Not Art Festival has become - the largest and most diverse annual media and arts festival in Australia.

Will you understand?

(I loved this poem of Tatjana's so much I wanted to post it for everyone to read)

squeezed into my patter
as an embryo in the womb's
water
i curl muscles and pucker up lips:
my name is
beg your pardon
thank you

it is easier to read the winds around me
than pronounce these chits

i can flee all the rages of the seas
but the cloud of my mother tongue
that follows my boat, a greedy sea-gull
will it ever leave me alone?

the only one i have, a bad penny
the alphabet stiff as a birthmark
once shiny, dainty and rich
now a weary rug stuck to my skin
just a puff, groan, a shivering heave
i can't strip off my flesh

it does not make any sense a moan
i gasp to the wind, who will ever grasp
what is behind my silence once i reach this land?
oh mein gott! mio dio!
boze moj! my god!
will you hear me better
when i touch the furthest shore

and understand me
with no translator
when i sigh
my lord?

© 2007 Tatjana Lukic

Vale Tatjana Lukic

Tatjana Lukic, who was a member of the poneme list for quite a while, has died. she passed away in the early hours of yesterday morning, after a courageous battle with cancer over the last two years. she was almost 49. too young to die.
[Joanne Burns, on the poetry list 'poneme': August 11th 2008]

About Tatjana:

Tatjana Lukic was born in the former Yugoslavia (Croatia) where she spent her first 33 years. She received degrees in philosophy and sociology from Sarajevo University, and lived in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and the Czech Republic before leaving the region during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. In 1992 she arrived, with her young family, as a refugee in Australia. She did not speak English, but learned the language, studied and worked.

Prior to her exile in Australia, Lukic had published poetry throughout former Yugoslavia, and won national poetry awards. In recent years she started to write again, now in English. Her English poems have appeared in international journals.

(information from the ICORN international cities of refuge network http://www.icorn.org/articles.php?var=66 )

A tribute to Tatjana is on Ralph's blog - http://www.walleahpress.com.au/b25/?p=708

Links to some of Tatjana's published poems can be found on this blog as well as an exert from an interview with Tatjana for the Australian Poets at Work series in Thylazine no 12 (June 2007)

Her death is a sad loss to Australian poetry.

Does anyone know what's happening with National Poetry Week

Hi
I've been trying to contact Jayne Fenton Keane to find out what's happening with National Poetry Week this year, as the website hasn't been updated for a long time, but I can't seem to find her. Does anyone know if events are happening around Australia for National Poetry Week and how I might contact Jayne. We have a lot organised here in Perth. See the following web address for details of what's happening in Perth: http://www.maureensexton.com.au/Pages/waspringpoetryfestival2008.html
I would appreciate any information.
Cheers
Maureen Sexton

2008 Australian Poetry Festival

State of Play - Australian Poetry Now!

6th Australian Poetry Festival
5, 6, 7 September 2008

Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney

Opening Night Party and Performance
Poets from around Australia and overseas
Panels on the State of Play in Contemporary Oz Poetry
Performance Night
The Judith Wright Lecture (to be delivered by Bruce Dawe)
The $3000 Poets Union Poetry Prize
The Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Verse
Launch of the Poets Union Anthology
Pre-Festival Events (Monster Open Reading; Reading Seminar)

All to be recorded in a special double edition of Five Bells which will be a significant contribution to thinking about the craft of contemporary Australian poetry.
http://www.poetsunion.com/apf/2008

I'd like to say hello to any poets attending this festival. I'll be reading at the Friend in Hand Hotel, Cowper St Glebe, as part of the Varuna LongLines Regional Poets Program

writing project - field trip photos

I recently spent some time at Stanage, northern reach of Shoalwater Bay in Queensland. I've been writing, taking photos and fishing. I received a grant to develop a writing project as a 'poetry cycle' based on my interpretation of the issues and environment surrounding Shoalwater Bay which has been a military training area for combined ADF and US military forces since the Vietnam conflict. I thought that you might like to catch some of the first lot of photos I've posted on my blog herehttp://lou-waves.blogspot.com/

In the mid nineties the ADF assisted in keeping sand mining out of Shoalwater, now they may have to assist to stop a major coal loading port being situated there. During joint military training exercises every second year, the ADF and US use live firing in the area, (the beast you know hey). Many migratory bird breeding areas, turtle and dugong habitats, humpback whales and other flora and fauna life could be in a very precarious state, (if not already) should any further major industrial inroads be made.

I'm not a nature poet, but I do live in and around it, and appreciate that the environment is all around me (the landscape within and without) and I recognise it's important to respect what is there, before it becomes degraded and beyond self repair. There are so few pristine areas left in the world.

A Crab Wanders as a Lonely Cloud

Crab Convoy

Softer than light
soldier crabs navigate an early world.
From their drilled trenches they hover;
transparent bodies, miniature helicopters
airing a blue line across mud flats,
portable radio antennas
attuned to the sea’s bandwidth.
A lone soldier divides from the troops,
gathers in her sand rosette,
latches down.
Missiles of bird-song blast overhead;
sounds of the enemy,
digging.


This is a poem from my soon to be published collection "Country Girl" - but may not make it in.

Retrieved poem: Hot Days

in this town
summer days are songless
brute sun in a silent sky

banksias stand like stringless cellos
warbler whistles his choked phrase
from a melaleuca’s dry neck

in the cracked silence
a string player buries his fingers
in the soil

feeling for song



This is a poem from over a year ago, but I only found it again when I went trawling through my blog for another poem my wife wanted me to find.

foam:e submissions now open

For anyone interested in sending work - issue #6 foam:e http://www.foame.org/ to be edited by Angela Gardner is now open for submissions. You can read the current issue and previous ones and also link via the submissions link on the main page or through the link on the current issue's editorial page.

Poet in Residence

Hi gang,
I have posted this WA notice to advise you of the following position. I used to work there in the beginning & it's a lovely house, very quiet, library close by & kangaroos. Why not give it a try! Cheers, Helen

Poet in Residence @ PCWC - Call for EOIs

The Joondalup-based Peter Cowan Writers Centre is on the lookout for a new writer in residence.


The centre (which occupies Cowan House in the beautiful grounds of ECU Joondalup) has a vacancy for a writer in residence under it’s charter to bring writing resources and opportunities to the people of the northern suburbs of Perth.


Potential writers (who will spend three weeks at the centre involving themselves in variety of writing workshops and other community activities run by the centre) are invited to apply for the position.


Applicants need to be established, published authors to be considered.


This year, the centre is especially interested in poetry and so poets will be looked upon favourably for this residency. The centre traditionally have two Writers in Residence each year.


The three-week residency can be any time between now and the end of August, 2008. The cut-off date for applications is June 30, 2008.


For more information, contact Coby Pearson at the centre on 9301 2282 or email cowan05@bigpond.com for more details of the Writers In Residence program.

hero

hero

Pearls from the Sun
Diamonds from the Moon
Gold-dusted silks from
exotic worlds
Valued in danger, adventure
from there to here.
Fine old wood
mellowed with wisdom
tasting of Earth essence
silently regales with tales
old and pure.

Young Percival took knighthood seriously. To protect and to serve King and country.
The old King sickening, perhaps dying, soul sickness they said.
Crops failed. Floods and droughts, inopportune times. The peasants too sickened,
died, lived in dreadful poverty and despair.
In a dream, the young knight was shown the Grail -- shiny jewels upon a golden cup
self-generating elixir of immortality.
On awakening, he took off in the direction of adventure. He left the dying kingdom
to its own devices, in search of a promised land of magical curative power. He was
not thinking of King or country, but of a delicious ecstatic pounding he knew to be
his own heart.

Where do you ride, fair Percival?
Off to find the dreamer's Grail?
Learn your song and tell your tale.
Become a son of Sky and Earth
and rain
to return with all you gain
some wondrous day.
Break the spell.
Release the kingdom's pain.

He learned the ways of seers, demons, subtle sorceries and charms. Growing ever
stronger with healthy exercise and happy purpose, he made his way. Trial by
treacherous trial, he ever more closely approaches his prize.
These trials are the key. They test mettle while bestowing grace, confidence,
skill acquisition, glimmerings of wisdom. The prize glitters, shines, glows
brilliantly in the distance to maintain focus, a clear point, fixed star to contemplate
through twisting, turning, misty mythic pathways.
Sometimes the brick is yellow. Some paths are more intuitive, steps in the dark,
brambly forest.
Percival knows what a hero does. A hero perseveres. A hero scales the tower to free
the enchanted maiden, goes where others dare not because fear is a solid companion.
Daring, fighting, sometimes dazed, momentarily forgetting his cause, he perseveres.
He need but think to look to see his Grail shining, calling him forward.
Of course, he reaches the Grail, discovers the codes, incantations, disarms dragons,
ensorcels giants, generally blazes through to capture his dream.
Returning triumphant, he fixes the kingdom, drop-kicks the curse, cures the old King
of his soul malady, takes the throne to wisely guide into times of prosperity.
So the story goes.

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com

Haibun for Sheila Murphy

Reading your book and stirring the porridge is a plaiting: tactile, rhythmic. The dog barks to have such fun, or wants it. Rain primps on our tin roof, veranda dusted off, biddable as Berryman, narcissistic in its newly found pleasure. I eat the porridge, at the mere mention of which a child sings a song of praise. Nobody answers. Cynicism scoffs at such a half-pint hoofer. Limited by language building in rounds, ego is not a dirty word, fitting biorhythmic conflict within multi-veined bladders. And the verb ran away with the noun. Duncan spoke of the swarm of human speech, as, just now, galahs parlez loudly in the tall gums. Just now and still then. Wit and words and oats,

the spelling and grammar check is complete.

Launch of 'After 1984'

I finally found a good place to launch my book so I'm going ahead with it on Sunday 25th May @ 4.30pm.
Fordes Front Bench used to be the Station Hotel, Auckland. When I lived on Constitution Hill in the 70's & 80's it was my local live music pub. One band regularly played 'How is the air up there..' at 9pm every Saturday. My boys were babies and I didn't go to pubs in those days. (I didn't need to)
Thomas who runs Fordes is opening specially. Being a weekend, the parking shouldn't be too bad. Baz, my son is playing some music along with friends Fiona (McEwen) and Steve. I'll read a few poems. So come, eat, drink and be happy.

Red Room Pigeon Poetry

Red Room Pigeon Poetry: Call for Poets

Poems for Sale

Pimping to Main Street.
Boobs and balls for
me ma'ams and gents,
sweetly dipped in excrement
for your shocking awe;
packaged in plastic, curse
of dinosaur extinction.
Consumers of distinction
may choose leatherbound,
even snakeskin.
Aiming to please the crowds
who adore confusion
in profusion
as long as it makes them
look real fine.
I set myself a task
in childhood
to learn great secrets
unobscured by truth.
But what I learned was
shameful and so sad.
I understand why so few
would listen.
No clever, teasing entertainments
enrich my humble wares.
Pay a pretty penny dipped in heartache;
I will sing to you your native tongue.

(c) May 4, 2008 Laurie Corzett/libramoon

Earth Day Ritual performance piece

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html


It's really a simple story Beings find planet. Beings treat planet badly. Planet goes about her business. Beings start to realize that they need planet, and had best learn to make friends rather than futilely keeping up enmity.

Gaea: A Ritual Performance

layers of imagery, music, tribal drums, futuristic dreams

Gaea was there, in the beginning. Gaea was all. Gaea was wise.
How could we not have seen, in the blindness of pride, of avarice,
of service pledged to false gods?

The journey was long.
The journey was cold.
The journey was lonely.

Asleep in a box with wilderness dreams. Or awake on the watch, wondering what was to come.

Thus it was those false gods bespake us: Out of the cold vastness of space and time,
out of the fear that was all the companion we knew,
out of a need to make it all Someone else's responsibility,
out of a need to believe all would be well for our kind.

Our planet was dying.
We did what we could to survive.
Survival we find
an appopriate end
to any means.
Survival will give us
the time we need
to find a better way
to survive.

The strongest of us,
the proudest of us,
the meanest of us,
would not allow us to die.
We took off in our ship with the barest of plans

to find another land
where our kind could live ...
expand.

Now,
hybrid children evolved
from refugees
fleeing a hostile star.
Skygods and Earth Mother of ancient lore.

It's time we relinquish fear and hatred, accept Gaea as partner and home
that we may all live and thrive.

The land, when we found her was so warm and inviting.
We felt safe, supported, encouraged to grow.

We ate of her fruit and her herds.
We built with her trees, stone and clay.
We drank from her cool crystal streams which we soiled with our waste.
Gaea was saviour and womb.
We repaid her with rape.

We didn't understand,
thought her merely land,
thought ourselves masters from afar.

Gaea sent storms to bring us to our senses, wild winds and seas.

Gaea tried to shake us off: Earthquakes, Floods, Famine, Plagues
sending us scattering into hiding. Intermingling with her primates, Gaea's children.
Without question or shame, we murdered what we could not steal.
Without honor or remorse, we laid waste to our host, to our adopted home,
then cursed her for not giving more.

By accident or design, chimera adapting to Gaea's marketplace creating
new ways to define our origins from outer space
We lied to our halfling children, denigrated their Gaean kin,
twisted their virtues into a false concept that we called "sin."

What Gaea did to us? Cruel, evil, in need of the whip.
we seal over her bounty
into mad parody of Mother Ship.
Unforgiving of the mess of living, the miracles of life.
In our ignorant pride we gave ourselves law to decide
propriety over fate
turning
in our minds
mother love
into a mirror of hate.

Frozen in fear and rage, children swept out in the storm,
trapped in a self-made cage we had hoped to protect us from harm.

Gaea, we cry, why do you treat us so angrily?
What will it take for us to wake up and see it is we who are wrong?
To hear and be aware of Gaea's song singing in our blood?
To learn the cycles, the seasons, the reasons for fire, wind and flood?

To redefine our race, to find out that our place is here among our Gaean kin?

The telling of new tale must begin.

Gaea opens to sunshine to ease our agitation
Easy winds, easy gushing of summer rain
Feeding the greedy young grains,
growing along the plains, the flowers of the storm.
Feeding the beasts of the field,
continuing the cycle, as all is revealed.

Love is the web,
craftily spun by great mother spider,
Gaea's familiar,
weaving magestic grace
no longer concealed. It was never our place
to control, nor others' to steal.

Gaea creates in intricate arrangements,
feeding us all of us all, a transformative stew.
So much energy wasted; painful lies to find our way through
our beings to create such beautiful
children, reaching out to become and be free,
enjoying our destiny,
as Gaea's beloved.

Arising in the circle, giving voice to pain -- grateful to Gaea's grace, dancing in her cleansing rain,
we sing in voice united:

It would be so nice (paradise)
You and I
Floating in the sunlight
Ready to break free
To be
Exactly who we are.

(c) April 9, 2006 Laurie Corzett

A Photo Poem

Photo Poems or Image Poems

Hi
Does any one have any information on a useful source for photo poems or image poems. I have been searching the net for information, but so far have only come up with sites that talk about poems written to an image or photo. I'm sure there are also photo poems that don't have any text at all. But then of course, that raises the question - is it then poetry? I'd love to know what others think.
Maureen

A Literary Bone to Pick

ABR's Review of WESTERLY Vol 52 2007
Georgie Arnott's review of Westerly in ABR's April 2008 issue (there's even a date typo on the cover!) is less impressive than the poetry content she talks about. It's not hard to see that the four poets she praises are all from the Eastern States. Not one mention is given to a West Australian poet. Considering the recent struggles by Westerly to gain funding to continue/ or increase journal issues, and the tight squeeze for WA poets to get published in their state (although this writer sees the new literary journal 'indigo' as saviour!), this review, regretfully, shows a lack of sensitivity by focusing on the East! To all "WA reviewers" - we need to review our own magazines for ABR!
Helen Hagemann

Kanomi (Nth Keppel Island) poetry wokshop in paradise, do you fancy that?

Kanomi (North Keppel Island) is a truly beautiful and eco smart environment off the coast of Yeppoon, Central Queensland, and unlike its sister island Great Keppel, is not an open tourist Island, as much of Kanomi is classified for use by Queensland Education Department,(which includes other stakeholder status).

The workshops are very relaxing and the environment is outstanding: shared community huts facing the foreshore and ocean; numerous eco smart projects; full internet access and office facilities; great catering and many walking tracks (don't bring the hairdryer).

Last time I was on the Island, dolphins were visable daily, and even followed the boat from the Island well past the half way point towards the mainland on our trip home. The workshops cater to all levels of writing skills and mixed genre, poetry is always well catered for, even if you want to skip the bulk of workshop process and just write, worth thinking about?
Here is the blurb from the Uni, and when it's up on the website, I'll post a link and a picture...



Footprints in the Sand: Writing as a Journey

Idiom 23 Magazine’s workshop on
Creative Writing and a Sense of Place
North Keppel Island Environmental Education Centre

September 12-14, 2008

Writer in Residence Dr Lynda Hawryluk
with Kristin Hannaford, Louise Waller and Steve Butler

Cost: $160 includes boat trip, share cabin accommodation and meals.

Transport: Departs from Roslyn Bay Marina for North Keppel Island at 10am on Friday and returns approx. 3pm on Sunday. (Saturday morning departure can be negotiated for visitors travelling long distances).

Inquiries to: Dr Liz Huf
07 49232573 or 07 49383746
l.huf@cqu.edu.au

How to be a poet

how to be a poet

in the mornings
leave the dishes
they will get done - later

go outside
dream a little
listen to the trees talking
the air whispering
birds gossiping

let your words slide
drop off the page
cluster into twos and threes
let them dance
forming their own rhythm

in the evenings
leave the dishes
they will wait till - later

go outside
taste the darkness
savour smells
jasmine, woodsmoke
eucalyptus after rain

let your words discover
small silences
let them drift
pooling in shadows
bubbling into poems

© Heather Matthew 2008

how to be a poet

read everything and everyone
over and over
ignore the naysayers
all the time
pull the knives out
one at a time
look in the mirror
face the image
and don't moan
if you don't like
what you see
ask yourself 'so what'
about everything you write
don't just want to be a poet
don't just try to be a poet
and if you are still writing poetry
don't expect to be published
don't expect anything
not everyone is a writer
not everything is worth reading
life is more important than dreaming
about life and writing about dreams that
are replacing living your life
and for goodness sake, don't
think that just because it seems
like a good story, that if you write
it down, somebody else will think
it is great, there is no great
just the slog and the life and the
poetry and the chance that
you might get it right

draft

Spectare’s thoughts absently

caressed his anger
like a suppressed familiar cat,
half-forgotten as myth. Its threadbare
fur prickled. Its claws bit,
for company, and he felt
imagined pain his owned, his very,
and went out into it, the story,
donning a voice like a coat,
to stand before the self-sure,
feeling as absurd as a man
with a cat on his head,
in the bared town-hall square

like a box orator shouting
at enmities of air:

There are still stars unnamed to us, and more.

(I've been nudging this around in the past week - David Bircumshaw)

Launch of Indigo Journal #2

For all WA poets, or WA visitors
Out of the Asylum Writers' Group with Christchurch Grammar Centre for Ethics invites you to the launch of Indigo Journal Volume 2.
Featuring Frank Sheehan in conversation with Les Murray
Friday 28 March @ 7.30pm
Christchurch Chapel Queenslea Drive Claremont. RSVP by Friday 21 March to dwcontac@bigpond.net.au or 9335 3736

strangling heaven

How do you know that
you're strangling heaven?
Taught to irrelevant
standardized scales
Taught to be standardized,
Christian White Males
or wherever you're placed
and timed
Taught to believe the sublime
is but an affectation,
drug-induced hallucination,
not to be relied upon
when creditors come to call
demanding payment
for providing you with life.
Selling your soul for nickels and dimes,
the working-class creed.
Giving in to everyday crimes,
habituated to need
secondhand pleasures,
pirated treasures
that never succeed in
destroying the pain,
the long season of Hell
you strive to explain
"it's his fault" "it's their fault"
"it's my fault"
all victims of blame.
And you're strangling heaven.
You're making it impossible to survive,
denying your passion to thrive,
denying your worth,
the blessing of birth onto
this mortal stage.
You pace in your cage
as if castrated of will.
And heaven so wants you,
surrounds you, offers
your most deeply hoped for love,
boundless happiness, life eternal,
every pocket of your soul
exquisitely fulfilled.
Heaven offers you her open arms,
and you, in your hellish nightmare,
strangle her
unaware.

(c) March 12, 2008 Laurie Corzett/libramoon

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com

International poem of the week

I loved this poem of the week that came through my email via poetry international.
http://international.poetryinternationalweb.org

GARMENT


Will it stretch that far? Will it go round three
Continents or four, three hearts or more,
And still slide through a ring ?
Worn and unravelled night and day without
A break, past two time zones, retain
Its sleek, original shape?
How many machines can we put it through,
How many phones, planes, taped voices
And still find it wearable?
Is our love elastic, or some finer,
clinging, skinlike, inward-breathing weave
To make all this bearable ?


© 1993, Ruth Vanita

Ruth Vanita is a poet, editor, translator, academic and activist. Her book of poems, Play of Light (Penguin India) was published in 1994. She is Professor at the University of Montana, formerly Reader at Delhi University. She was founding co-editor of Manushi, an influential journal about women and society, from 1978 to 1990.

http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=11022

William Baylebridge Memorial Prize

It seems that I've won the 2007 William Baylebridge Memorial Prize for my book A Letter to Egon Kisch. I'd always thought that this prize was for a first book (and it clearly states on the cover that this was my eleventh), but anyway I've quickly spent the prizemoney in case they discover the mistake and want to take it back. Does anyone know enough about this to put my mind at rest?

Wollongong reading

Rocket Readings featuring guest poet David Brooks
+ Open Mic readings from local poets

David Brooks is the editor of Southerly, and author of poetry collection Urban Elegies and novel The Fern Tattoo. This event will also feature open mic readings – sign up on the night for your three minute slot.

When: 6.30pm, Tuesday 18 March, 2008
Where: Music Farmers cafe, 5 Crown Lane, Wollongong (laneway opposite the western entrance of Crown Street Mall). Please note that the Music Farmers cafe will be open, BYO if you are dining at the cafe, coffee and softdrinks also available.
Bookings and information: SCWC 02 4228 0151 or scwc@1earth.net
Cost: Free event. Your donation gratefully accepted.

Jeneris

All the places of possibility
open to my scrying eyes
I am the universe of time and space
awaiting birth
Your eyes draw me
they fill in the lines
with infinite perspective
I have breath and depth
heartbeat and color
You draw me outside the lines
I am your forever love,
your fatally flawed hero
In the ethers where we touch
magical manifestation shines
the singularity collapses
a new universe
comes to life

(c) March 5, 2008 Laurie Corzett/libramoon

On being a Poet

(I'm soaking my necklace in coca-cola)

I thought it could be
the tilt of my hat
or the way I held my glass
but the words kept interfering
trying to tell me something else

even when I gave up wearing black
words did not give up on me
& my fishnets have long
been hidden in a drawer
along with my feather boa

this flamboyance once needed
to be a part of the act
as if these props & the bottle of Chablis
were all that kept me writing

now I notice lines of determination
etched into my face, drawing down
my mouth into mean & ugly
or tilting my eyes to laughter
joyful, derisive

& the words keep coming
spilling over the pages
create their own life
ask their questions, like
where are you taking us now?

Judith

March Project

on being a poet


the wonder of it all
shaping language to hatch
& re-hatch the pallor of a sparrow,
bush turkey compressing leaves

to see the poem just right, to catch
the underbrush of a metaphor
before it is lost in uncut grass

the ancient burning patience
one needs to track a poet’s last winter,
or hold summer voices in your
hand. bundle them into your backpack

to be stung by words like a bull-ant,
staying in the woods to feel the shape of it

or perhaps dwell in the oval of a new phrase,
where your children used to play, their tiny spirits
whirling round, running out of a last stanza

they circle round and round
throw their wishes down. hear a gifting
sound – ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo?

then suddenly it all takes shape,
holds court, sparrows out, kingfisher rare.
it could be a forest call, or as loud as leaf fall;
a fine thing like cornucopia

unforgettable lines
sunning themselves as bees
in forsythia

Helen

light-trap press - edition one announced

light-trap press have announced their first publication, holding Job's hand

This is the first of several editions planned by the press.
I'm so over the moon about it, and I (almost) can't wait to feel the book in my hands.

You can read more about light-trap here.
http://www.light-trap.net/

foam:e Issue 5 goes live

With great pleasure, I declare foam:e issue 5 is launched - happy reading folks!
http://www.foame.org/index.html

There's a plug in the editorial for poneme and our new blog.
Some great reviews and interview, heaps of local and international poets who sent outstanding work for this issue. I'm really happy to have been along for the ride...

sweet dreams

I fall asleep with the smell of sugar
sweet cloying, it fills my nostrils
sticks gritty at the back of my throat

outside the mill’s siren thrum
presides over flatlands of cane
broad rivers, lakes of overflow

at night it becomes a lighted ship
twin funnels pluming smoke
I wake to warm rain and molasses

Heather

some news on lou-waves

I hope fellow poneme bloggers don't mind me putting a plug in for my long overdue news post on lou-waves http://lou-waves.blogspot.com/ but it didn't seem right to post the whole thing here, and I will have some follow up announcements and posts, which I'll include here and on my own blog shortly.

PressPress Chapbook Award

If you could pass this on, I'd be grateful:



best
Chris

Hope and Sandals

shuffling yours and hours
you come to a sudden cliff
hot autumn winds make
nerves and skin erupt

take the easy way out
and lie down or
walk to the letterbox
in hope and sandals

today's snail dries out
in the letterbox oven as
the driveway burns your feet
no news or cheques

no matter tonight
is the third episode of
that gangland series
just the ticket to

take your mind off



Andrew Burke

And the winner ...

will be announced right after the words from our sponsor.

How to be a poet

A new idea and inspiration for this month's project.

A poem posted by Andrew from Wendell Berry

How To Be a Poet
(to remind myself)

i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

by Wendell Berry

Wednesday crows

I do miss the sounds of roosters crowing in the mornng. 

Andrew's crows do the same thing.

Here's his Wednesday lines:

Every Wednesday
they string-up
lines

all across
suburban skies
four black lines

before the blue
of a startling
clear sky

then birds come -
twenty-eights to crows -
to perch and

meditate

Andrew Burke

Ruby Tuesday

Feels like a red gem of a day.

A poem or two:

Tuesday morning wind
has blown the birds away
and plants sweep
the garden back
and forth.

He is inside his head
as usual
wind whistling in one ear
the other leeward
and nostalgic for

childhood holiday camps
by the Indian Ocean
dogs' ears pinned back
all eyes
on the horizon.

He leans
and turns the hose off
hand over hand
he wends it around
the half wheel rim
screwed to the porch.

Andrew Burke

Monday, Monday

Love that song with Mamma Cass's distinctive voice.

Monday on poneme...mmmm. More great offerings.

Monday means nothing
in China where
you work seven days a week.

Monday means nothing
much when
you're unemployed
in Australia.

This Monday I bring
the washing in from
Sunday and wake my wife
late.

Monday's mudlarks play
flying leapfrog over bins
out for collection
on brown summer verges

Andrew Burke

monday's wet notes

# in the furtherest place from height

discussion lower than everything else
so still now whatever wounded grunt
was ever free for all the talking
political tally doesn't catch the
message from the gun (a low day
then) talk lower than everything else
so still in the ground

# thought the poet had a pure heart

for all the rabid iniquity
thought a calm breath
filled need found hope was a willing
motivation towards relinquishing

thought the poet has her own perspective
thought that was clean thinking wiped assumptions
wiped the generalisms found a pure heart
only worked in first drafts

Louise Waller

Sunday reflections

Its Sunday and the church bells are ringing. Well they are if you live near a cathedral or church which still tolls the bell.

The start to the week, this day of the sun. A time for reflection on the week past, the week ahead.

Here's two reflections of Sundays past: 

The Old Methodist Hall 

I went looking for the old Methodist Hall. The one with the stage filled with boys and girls. The one where Eden’s apple could inflame; Jonah being washed by a whale; no rickety old ladder for Jacob’s climb. In my Father's house are many mansions. As a child, I knew mansions of the doomed, valleys of the shadows of death. I could recite the Psalms, and knew the songs of my father's religion. Give me that old time religion. It was good enough for my grandfather. It was good enough for my mother. It was good enough for my brother. No handclapping or dancing in the Methodist Hall, only Sunday School, catechism, the young layman's guitar - a modern hook for boys and girls. Hallelujah. Hallelujah, Praise the Lord and pass the biscuits. I learnt the Gospel, according Matthew; recited all the names of books of the bible. I would to go to Galilee and stand on that shore. I would walk my feet sore in the bosom of Abraham, if I could see his face. If I could see his face. Jesus was a mystery man who never had a face. I remember his soft hands, ginger beard, long flowing robe. He walked amongst thieves, murderers, tossed gamblers from a sacred temple. Yes, Jesus loves me. The bible tells me so. I went looking for the Methodist Hall, couldn't find that old time religion. It was late Sunday, no tolling bell, no organ, only a wagtail on a missing spire. Church supplanted with a section of shops. Old choristers and angels held in the body of wayward lotions, massage oils. Some keep the Sabbath in surplice; I just wear my wings, and instead of tolling the bell for church, our little sexton sings, wrote Dickinson. Gran used to say, "God lives behind our eyes, and all they see." I went looking for that old Methodist Hall, and found that little girl, still down on her knees.

Helen Hagemann

Presbyterian Sundays


My father strode briskly to church every Sunday
psalm book in hand, money for the collection plate
securely licked into a printed offering envelope.

My mother and I in matching straw hats
short white gloves and little handbags followed.

His was a family tradition of ministers and missionaries
where children and wives walked behind in duck formation.

I have photos of them all in hats sweeping along
the Presbyterian streets of Camberwell
not a smile between them.

Heather Matthew

A retrospective Saturday poem

Like Julie Christie at the Oscars this is a little bit 80s

Saturday horoscope with Crystal
(a good day for family activities)

now, as four, we travel
taking the 210 bus
over-full with race bound gamblers
we stop short of the race track
to indulge in the school gala
each of us tracking
our favoured activities
a kind of gambling
with different odds

returning home
with our winnings
three chickens
two bottles of wine
a pie plate
not to mention
one shied coconut
there is room
for conversation
on a less crowded bus
advice from an older woman
on how to make stuffing
recalling past experiences
of boiling rice in the outback
where no bread was available

we had bought bread
with lunches in mind
marmite sandwiches
& cheese on toast

this conversation
changes our plans
stuffed chickens
with fruit juice
& cheap wine
make their contribution
to family dinner party
while on TV, David Lange
our Prime Minister, gives
the best Oxford Debating Speech in years
& receives a standing ovation

Judith McNeil

Sunshiny Saturdays

Its a sunny Saturday morning. A day for eating pancakes and doing the Saturday wash.

Here's our Saturday poems:

American style,
Saturday pancakes with syrup
you fashion ears and limbs,
dough menagerie shapes.
Pancakes hot from the plate,
children swoop, as hawks wait
for prey to emerge from grass.

You spear one or two
for the plate, drizzle the maple
and look at me, our children.
Mention in passing that
the coffee tastes like cigarettes.

Kristin Hannaford


Saturday wash


up to my elbows in suds
doing the Saturday wash
dreaming of Mrs Beaton

all her some days finally realized
with the mechanical washing machine
no handle necessary

but the general principles of washing
set forth in her chapter on laundry work
naturally apply to machine washing

first the linen is examined for grease spots
damp stains, fruit stains, ink stains, tea and wine stains
removed according to the chapter on household hints

then each article is entered in the washing book
before soaking in a tub of lukewarm water overnight
to which a little soda or borax is added

early on the following morning fires are lit
hot water procured and the washing can begin
experienced washerwomen rub one linen surface against the other

I plunge into buckets and scrub with soap
doomed to turn all my clothing yellow
no bluing, bleaching or starching will improve their colour

outside the air is fresh, a good drying wind blows
I string out a line of smalls and socks doubling the pegs
sniff the sheets and towels, watch the shadows dance

Heather Matthew

Friday on my mind

Friday. The end of the working week for some.  For those who work at home, its the day before Saturday. 

A little bit of etymology regarding the naming of the days of the week. Most were linked to Roman mythology and adapted throughout the Roman Empire. 

The first day of the week was named after the sun, followed by the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn.

So Monday, lunar for day of the moon, Sunday for the sun and Saturday for Saturn. However because English is a Germanic language the names of the Germanic/Norse gods are substituted for the Roman gods. 

The god for Mars was Tiu or Tiw, the god of war, Woden the god associated with Mercury for Wednesday, Thursday was named for the Norse god Thor, and the goddess associated with the planet Venus, was the Norse goddess Freya or in old Norse Friia.

Here are Friday's offerings:

sand

friday older, young
friday, soiled, clear-
eyed, folded
my folio

friday, walked away
with, without getting
away, friday, it, not
friday, summer, not
stomache, I can't,
friday, not, it

friday, violent, peace
my daughter, dear,
my other one,
friday, footprints
swallowed,

friday, summer, mild
empty and the literal
truth,

the literal truth:
no line on,
filed "friday,
sand"

friday consumed
me, friday,
I am not
consumed.

Simon

Friday poem

i.a tap leaks

a drop

drops onto the

ground onto

a leaf and the

dirt beneath

can't hear the

sound of a

drop hit

ii.greed spills

greed into the bucket

the bucket over full

the whole now

too much



iii.four winds

circle and cross

divisions all four

winds blow



iv.somewhere glass

shatters is

shattering on the

ground in the

stillness under

moonlight an

iridescent pulse



Louise

Day of the week poem project

It started off as an idea to do a February poem project with a day of the week in the title.

Kristin mooted the idea based on a music project the "February album writing month", some examples being "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (U2), "Ruby Tuesday" (Rolling Stones) and "Friday in Love" (The Cure).

We rose to the challenge and over the month elicited poems for every day of the week.

As today is Thursday, here are our Thursday offerings.

Thursday evening on dry earth
by the wetlands
bright orange-striped wasp
and greyhaired spider
fight on the run
wasp dragging reverse
spiders legs leaping
dry brown
blades

They move
jerkily over dry grass
like a toddler's crazy writing
on scrap paper

I stare and can't tell
who drags who pushes
the thought comes to me
I am standing like
my childhood self
staring at the ground
as the world went by

Andrew Burke

Insomnia

Thursday went by as a lisp might catch on the tongue
nagging at sleep, moments reassembled and replayed
as a disc keeps slipping up on an image -
a figure walking and reconfiguring movement
a thousand times, she felt the whirr of the dog catching
its tail, the irrepressible urge to flip darkness
into the breakfast day light, cross-legged on the bed
waiting, waiting for Friday.


Kristin Hannaford

Welcome to the poneme blog

It's been a long time coming - the poneme blog, a dip into poetry both here and there.

Thoughts, ideas, poetry projects. A bit like mucking around in boats - you never know where you end up.

 

poneme started as an email list of poets from Australia, United States and Britain with the occasional European posting thrown in. 

poneme evolved from the first poetryespresso email discussion list started in 2001 by Cassie Lewis, an Australian poet now living in Rochester, New York.

An on-line poetry zine foam:e is another spin-off from this on going loose collaboration of poets.

foam:e is edited by Angela Gardner with guest contributing editors. Issue 5 is due soon.