new address for this blog

http://poeticise.wordpress.com/

Poeticise has moved!

And then, in a twinkling of an eye, or at least an hour or so, it was moved!

I’d wanted to be using wordpress instead of blogspot for some time, mainly for its flexibility and ease of use, but have always dreaded moving and leaving the old posts behind. I started blogging the week of 9/11 and was with blogger for a long time.

So, I was surprised and pleased that I was able to bring all the old posts along from here to wordpress and that poeticise was available at wordpress.

The new blog is at http://poeticise.wordpress.com/

Thanks blogger for getting me started in blogging and hosting this site for the last five years.

Please update your rss feeds if you’re one of the 11 people subscribing to this blog!

Cities of Liquid Light

A new collection of poems by Melbourne-based poet, artist and teacher Amanda Wilson, who died in 2005 aged 44, will be launched at La Mama Theatre, Carlton, on Saturday, 16 June (Bloomsday) at 2 pm.

Alex Skovron will launch Cities of Liquid Night, published by Papyrus Publishing, and the commemorative occasion will include readings from Amanda’s work.

For more information phone Alex (9532-8697) or Jennifer Harrison (9529-1460). All welcome.

Australian Poetry Centre

It's an impressive sounding name, but if the launch of the Australian Poetry Centre last night is any guide, it should live up to it.

Located in a beautiful 19th century mansion in St. Kilda called Glenfern, the Australian Poetry Centre looks to become a centre for poetry in Victoria, and indeed Australia.

At the launch last night Chris Wallace-Crabbe spoke about the vision of the APC and there were readings by John Clarke, Francesca Haig and Dorothy Porter.

Clarke read a series of very funny poems based on the premise that most of the world's great poetry has been stolen from Australia, Francesca Haig read a series of haunting love poems from her first book of poetry, Bodies of Water (FIP) and Dorothy Porter read sections from her most recent verse novel, El Dorado. (Picador 2007)

The wine flowed and the conversation spilled out of the old drawing room on to the front verandah and into the garden as well.

Funded at least partly by the Copyright Agency Limited, and supported by an enthusistic board led by Melbourne poet, Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe, the APC aims to

• strengthen the presence and profile of Australian poetry within Australia and overseas
• promote the writing, reading, and appreciation of poetry as an integral part of personal and community life

Australian Poetry Centre

Australian Poetry Centre

The Australian Poetry Centre at the Glenfern mansion in St Kilda will be officially opened for business this Thursday evening and I'm going along for the launch. I've got high hopes that this centre will help build a new poetry focus in Melbourne.

The launch will feature readings from Dorothy Porter, John Clarke and Francesca Haig.

fourW

Saw a comment on an earlier post from fourW and thought I'd give it more prominence.

They say: fourW is one of australia's longest running (& best...) annual anthologies of new poetry & prose. We publish regional, national, & international work.Submissions are now open for 2007 & close on June 30

fourW

A life in words

Good to see David Malouf reflecting on a life in words in the AUSTRALIAN today. He talks about the inter-weaving in his own work between poetry, prose, prose-poetry and all the things in between.

The article begins:

"ONE life, one writing," Robert Lowell proclaims in one of his poems in For the Union Dead. It's a condition any serious writer takes for granted, and living up to it is what such writers use as a test of their integrity, of whether what they are tempted to write belongs to the real body of their work. In the end a writer is the work that appears under his name, not a personality or character; all that in time gets lost. What remains, embodied in the work, is a consciousness with its own peculiar preoccupations, quirks, questions, doubts, insights; a set of responses to the isness of things, the great plural world of phenomena -- light, colour, landscape, atmosphere, all the tumbling paraphernalia of living and, more quietly, a voice with its individual cadence.

The full text of the article is HERE

Watching for whales

Received some nice news this week in that my new poem Watching was commended in the The Inverawe Outdoors Poetry Competition for 2007, a competition for nature poetry.

I wrote the poem about a whale watching experience a year or so ago when local radio was announcing lots of sightings of a whale in Port Phillip Bay off Mornington. I found myself, with a group of like minded strangers, standing on a hill in the cold, scanning the grey water for signs of other life. Needless to say we didn't see a thing and after about an hour we all started drifting back to our cars.

The picture above is what we all hoped to see, but didn't! It's a sperm whale diving from FLICKR I'll post the poem sometime too.

Winter Grace by Jeff Guess

Picked up a copy of Jeff Guess's most recent work Winter Grace from a local bookshop tonight. Guess has been based in Adelaide for a long time as a writer and teacher with eight books to his name. Winter Grace was published by Five Islands Press in 2004. I've only had a brief first reading but I like the history theme that connects much of this connection.

Jeff Guess Home Page

Australian Poetry Centre

More details about the emerging Australian Poetry Centre in the latest PAF newsletter. Teresa Bell (pictured) has been appointed as Director and Bridie McCarthy as Office Manager

The centre will be bsed in Glenfern, an historic National Trust house in East St. Kilda

Poetica

Home page of ABC poetry program that is still going strong. It's on t 3.05 on Saturdays on Radio National. Coming up in April:

April 14th - Genii Loci - the life and work of Australian nature poet, John Anderson
April 21st - They died young - an anthology of famous poets who didn't make it to 40
April 28th - Kickers and knockers - poetry and songs about Australian football

Produced by Australian poet Mike Ladd

POETICA

Last Draft

Found a copy of John Millett's autobiographical verse play, Last Draft, in a bookshop this week and have enjoyed it. Millet was editor of Poetry Australia for 28 years an won the Victorian Premier's Award in 2000 for h is book, Iceman. Christopher Koch calls Millett's work, 'surely the finest body of verse dealing with World War Two to be written by an Australian.

Last Draft was published by Five Islands Press in 2002.

The State of the Rivers and other books too

With Five Islands Press quietly packing up and shutting shop, full ownership of the remaining copies of my book The State of the Rivers and Streams has come back to me, and I'm going to distribute it myself via the web. I'm also offering a great deal on all three books! More details on my web site here

The Pastoral is alive...

Alive and well actually, if you look at examples like the shortlist for the ABR Poetry Prize in this month's Australian Book Review.

The finalists are:

• Sanctum by Alex Skovron
• Full Bucket Moon by Ross Clark
• The Fledglings by Robert Adamson
• The Fencer and His Mate by Kathryn Lomer
• The Red Sea by Stephen Edgar
• Guidance and Knowledge by Anthony Lawrence

All but the first are concerned with the natural world, or set in a rural landscape: milking cows, axe-men and their craft, a north-west bay at sunset, the music of spur-wing plovers. They're about other things of course, but it's interesting to see the prevalence of the natural in our suburbanised world. My favourite of this lot? Probably Anthony Lawrence's driving meditation on birds, his father and knowledge.

Still Glides the Stream

A friend put me on to this book, Still Glides the Stream, which is subtitled 'The natural history of the Yarra from Heidelberg to Yarra Bend' and consciously draws attention back to the natural history classic by Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne, one of my all time favourite nature almanacs. A big claim; I'm looking forward to seeing how this exploration, of an area I've come to know in the last couple of years, compares to White's famous book.

It's published by Australian Scholarly Publishing

Poetry at Fed Square

First installment: Saturday 10th March. Two featured readers:

Julie Jose, Julie was born in the Western district and her mob comes from Gunditjmara, up Warrnambool way but she has lived in Wathaurong country, Geelong for over 20 years and is a Wathaurong Community woman. Julie, a member of the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative in Geelong is currently working on the reclamation and teaching the Wathaurong language, which is the ancestral language of the Aboriginal people of the Geelong area' , and has been in that role for 12 months. Prior to this position she worked as a Koorie Educator at primary schools in the Geelong area for 5 years. This inspired her to become a teacher and a role- model for her Community. Julie had the notion of being a classroom teacher with a Koorie perspective but since commencing work as the language worker she has a goal and a vision to become a specialist Aboriginal language teacher in the future and to make a difference towards Aboriginal education, culture and understanding. Julie has completed her studies at Sydney University, where she gained a Masters degree in Indigenous Language Education . This experience and learning is a great opportunity for her to understand the complex linguistics associated with Indigenous language and she is really energized about this learning journey.

Carla Sari, Italian by birth and education, has been writing poetry in English for the last 15 yeas. Her poems have been published in literary magazines such as: Studio, Quadrant, Poetrix, Hobo, Arena,Redoubt, Arts Poetica, Linq, Centoria, Papyrus Publishing, Weekend Australia, Still (UK), Melbourne Poets Union Journal, Wagga Wagga Writers Writers, Pelt, various MPU anthologies and chapbooks, and the online magazines, Divan and Stylus. Her main concerns are: family life and relationships, otherness, the comfort of Visual Arts.For the past few years she has become interested in short poetry such as Haiku and Tanka. She has been published in six countries and has won first and second prizes and numerous awards.She has been anthologised in Australia and the USA.

More detailed HERE

World Poetry Melbourne

Stumbled upon this wordpress blog today, part of a group who are involved in Poetry at Federation Square, a program of some of the best local poets alternating between the FAW and the World Poetry Group.

World Poetry is a Melbourne, Australia-based organisation formed in 2004 with the express aim to help create a more inclusive literary scene. From its very beginning it has operated under the auspices of Multicultural Arts Victoria.

In brief, World Poetry ’s raison d’être is to be inclusive, to work towards the recognition of literatures outside the English language sphere

World Poetry Melbourne

Workshopping Poetry

I haven't been to a poetry workshop for quite a while, so am thinking seriously about heading down to a local one tomorrow night; even though the poetry theme for the evening is 'narrative'; not what I tend to write.

I have workshopped a lot of poetry with students, theirs and mine, and there is a skill in getting that balance between everyone smiling and saying 'how nice' etc. and too hard criticism.

So I was interested when the workshop leader emailed me some workshop guidelines and etiquette including:

• Using phrases such as ‘I liked it’ or ‘I didn’t like it’ are meaningless unless backed by concrete examples; e.g., ‘The metaphor opening the poem works for me because it strikes me as original yet it reminds me of Shakespeare….’ Be specific.

• Write your comments on your copy of the poem before handing back to the poet (and sign your name). It can be difficult to remember everything that was said during the workshop – written critiques are useful to reflect upon later.

• Handle other people’s poems with respect, i.e., do not doodle on them, leave coffee rings on them or let the dog eat them.

• Return all poems – if you wish to keep a copy, ask the poet first.

For some reason I hadn't really thought much about the mechanics of the paper-shuffle, and that the idea of bringing copies of the poem was for you to write something and give the paper back.

Dover Beach

I've been thinking a bit lately about some of the Victorian poets, like Mathew Arnold, Tennyson and others who I think have been a bit neglected due to a general distate for that age, and all they stood for. So, in the interests of maintaining the rage, here's one of my favourites from that funny old time:

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I found this online at Victorian Web.

The Power of Photographs

Picked up a book at the bargain basement at Readings tonight called Beach by a British photographer called Mike Perry. Powerful understated direct glances at a stretch of non-descript British coastline, some stones, shingles, small waves, the pull of wind on the surface.







Nothing startling here, just the simplicity of the ordinary landscape. The photographs are understated, soft in tone, plain, without human or animal figures, without narrative.







Yet, I found something powerful and moving in this plain-ness, this un-averted gaze, in the currents of light and dark. Something like poetry in the avoidance of narrative, in the captured moment, in the sense that this was both a real beach and a metaphor and somehow important.









And it made me think (again) of the power of the photographic image as well as its linke to poetry and poems.

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The Great War

Last year I read Les Carlyon's history of Gallipoli, this year I read the larger and sadder history called The Great War. Even in a Melbourne summer I found this gloomy and sobering stuff; so many lives, so many meaningless battles, so many random deaths. Carolyn brings the individuals (mainly VC winners admittedly) to life and is able to also paint something of the strategies and the larger picture of the war as it evolved. My grandfather fought somewhere in France in WWI and it's almost incomprehensible to me that someone I knew and talked to as a child also had a life in this man made hell.

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The Sea

Ah, for the restorative power of the sea! I spent last week at Wilsons Promontory and feel all the better for it!

Photo: Warrick (sunset at Norman Bay)

Jane Williams

Just learned about a new Australian poet with a web presence. Jane Williams is based on Tasmania, the author of two books of poetry from Five Islands Press, most recently The Last Tourist. Her web site is HERE

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Blue Dog

Received the newest issue of Blue Dog, just before Christmas with some good poetry and the latest newsletter from the Poetry Australia Foundation announcing the formation of the National Poetry Centre in Melbourne through the support of the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) PAF says:

CAL is providing an initial sum of $140,800 to assist the Poetry Australia Foundation in establishing the Australian Poetry Centre at historic Glenfern, East St Kilda.

CAL is a not-for-profit, member-based organisation, whose role is to provide a bridge between creators and users of copyright material.

"For the first time, poetry will have a fully professional organisation, enabling it to take its rightful place among the major art forms," said Ron Pretty AM, Director, Poetry Australia Foundation.

"You only need to look at the popularity of poetry readings, writing courses and competitions to see just how big poetry is in Australia."

"The interest and energy in Australian poetry is there. What the Australian Poetry Centre will do is focus and co-ordinate that energy to further stimulate the growth of, and interest in, Australian poetry here and overseas."

The centre will coordinate a series of programs including organising tours, workshops and promotional activities for Australian poetry, and forging links with overseas poetry organisations and other writing organisations within Australia.

The centre will also work to improve the teaching of poetry in schools and tertiary institutions and assist in the publication of Australian poetry by developing a national system of distribution.

CAL Chair Brian Johns says the centre will pay particular attention to the needs of poetry organisations in regional areas throughout Australia.

"This will be a national centre, built to serve the interests of all established and budding Australian poets - from the bush to the urban poet," said Brian Johns.

My Book of the Year Awards!

Just in time for Christmas, I've put together my book of the year awards. They're online here

Eric Paul Shaffer

If you try to write poetry yourself, there's only two reasons to read literary magazines; to be reassured, or to be disturbed. And, of course, the chance you'll find someone new, whose work you didn't know.

That was the case with me with Eric Paul Shaffer, who has two lovely poems in the Island 106.

Shaffer lives in Hawaii and I particularly liked the ending to his poem Arrival:


. . . The places urges words into the air like stars
rising over the volcano, the place speaks with your voice
and the place makes you say, 'Here, this is the place.'

Shaffer's mot recent book is Lahaina Noon, published by Leaping Dog Press. There's a bit more of a biography there which says:

Eric Paul Shaffer lives in Kula, on Maui, with Veronica and Harlequin on the sunset slope of Haleakala. He is author of four books and a chapbook of poetry, two chapbooks of fiction, and non-fiction articles and reviews. His work appears in Ploughshares, North American Review, ACM, American Scholar, Threepenny Review, Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bakunin, Malahat Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and the anthology 100 Poets Against the War. Shaffer received the 2000 Potent Prose Ax Prize for Poetry, the 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature (presented annually to an established writer in Hawai'i), a fellowship to the Summer 2006 Fishtrap Writers Retreat and Workshop, and the 2006 Rupert Hughes Writing Award (3rd place).

Island magazine 106

Just got the latest issue of Island Magazine, a journal that comes out of Tasmania, and one which has a lot of time for poetry. This is that rare thing in literary magazines these days; an issue without a theme, with poetry from Sarah Day, Martin Langford, Jeff Guess, Bruce Dawe, Geoff Page and others.

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The Solitary Walker

I enjoyed John Bennett's article in the most recent Southerly, 'Get out of the house, go for a bushwalk; disciplining the flaneur*, not the least for its inclusion of a new quote about the virtues of walking. Bennett quotes Rousseau from a book I hadn't heard of called Memoirs of the Solitary Walker (great title) and this quote:

...never have I thought so much, existed so much, lived so much, been so much myself, if I dare so, than on these [journeys] I made alone and on foot.

*webster's sez:
Main Entry: fla·neur
Variant(s): also flâ·neur /flä-'n&r/
Function: noun
Etymology: French flâneur
: an idle man-about-town

Diane Fahey Launch

On Sunday I launched Diane Fahey's new poetry collection, Sea Wall and River Light. This is Diane reading from the collection at the launch in Barwon Heads. I've put my thoughts about the book online on my poetry page HERE

Photo: Warrick Wynne

Newcastle Poetry Prize Results 2006

Poetry News:

Open Section Winner
Nathan Shepherdson, Eve 1528

Open Section Highly Commended
David Musgave, Open Water
Judy Johnson, Michelangelo’s Daughter

Open Section Commended
John Jenkins, Maxwell’s Field
Kylie Rose, Doll Songs

New Media Section Winner
Philip Norton, Hypnosis

Local Section Winner
Judy Johnson, Michelangelo’s Daughter


Anthology Contributors
M. T. C. Cronin, A Single Now
Adrienne Eberhard, Knots
Brook Emery, Uncommon Light
Marcelle Freiman, Masha
Philippa Garrard, Poems written after the sea
Jane Gibian, Vessels for the lapse of time
Judy Johnson, The Last Tuniit
Jean Kent, In the hour of silvered mullet
Martin Langford, A Suite for Embroideries
Kate Middleton, Autobiography (with Robert Smithson)
Tracy Ryan, Scar Revision
Alex Skovron, Palimpsest
Patricia Sykes, the joyful mysteries
Gillian Telford, Some Rooms
Mark Tredinnick, Lake St Clair Cycle


FROM:
Micky Pinkerton
HWC Admin & Newcastle Poetry Prize Coordinator
Hunter Writers Centre
PO Box 71
Hamilton 2303

First Swim

There's something about the first swim of the summer; arriving at the beach and its startling light at the end of the week, the cold salty embrace, those hesitant first strokes. The start of summer, that old buoyancy.

Photo: Warrick Wynne

The Poetics of Space (cover)

Promised to scan the cover of the recent Southerly, so here it is!

The Poetics of Space

Don't think I've ever blogged about Southerly, the famous old literary journal that's been coming out of the University of Sydney for years, but it's a journal I've always liked, and always aspired to be in when I was just starting to write poetry. It finally happened, and I was so proud, picking up that magazine with the little drawing of the cherub thing blowing the breeze of change.

However, the newest edition, Volume 65, No. 3, 2005 looks great, right up my alley too in term of a uniting theme (which is very much the go with these journals these days), The Poetics of Space. This is the first issue published by Brandl and Schlesinger and it looks good too, solid looking with a front cover photograph of a paddock and gum trees; I'd scan the cover for you if the scanner was handy.

But it's the contents that look even better: new poems by John Kinsella, Kevin Hart, Brendan Ryan, Tracy Ryan and Les Wicks + essays by John Kinsella, Treatise on Rooms and Windows and John Bennett, Get out of the house, go for a bushwalk; disciplining the flaneur and much more! I haven't read any of it yet, but I love the idea of the John Bennett essay. I've thought about walking a lot over the years, even blogged about individual walks at times, and read thoughts on walking from poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge and Thoreau, good walkers all. There's something about the pace and the action and the freedom to meditate that's good for poems to emerge.

Southerly is available at good bookshops like Readings. The Southerly website is HERE

Channel Marker

Don't quite know what it is (but it's something about wood and water I think) but I love the sculptural nature of some of these pylons and channel markers in Port Phillip and Western Port Bays, and the colour of the water as it shallows here. There is poetry everywhere.

Photo: Warrick Wynne

Dian Fahey Launch Details

Sea Wall and River Light

One of the last books to come out of Five Islands Press, which is closing down in its present form, is Diane Fahey's new collection Sea Wall and River Light and I've been asked to launch the book at Barwon Heads on November 26, which I'm very excited about.

I've enjoyed reading Diane's work for a long time, even before I met her at Varuna many years ago now, but this new collection, a series of sonnets based around the river and shoreline of Barwon Heads, is probably my favourite work from her yet. I'm unsure of exactly where and when the launch will be, but will add details here when I know. Meanwhile, the book is already available in good bookshops.

Collected Works

Just reiterating the value of a visit to Collected Works Bookshop in Swanston St., Melbourne. Definitely the best poetry collection in town, though unfortunately not the best web site!