here and now

Best Australian Poems 2009 is fresh. See Robert Adamson's take on what is happening here and now.

investigations

under-done, undetermined, or under-determined

oversighted, or over-shot

mission, or misinterpreted

shadowing, or shadowy

attention, or attentive

gratify, or grace

regard, or regardless

refuge, refuse, refute, re-fuse

not so personal

What are the other intimacies?

positions

Prepositions and position: Placing in place.
Writing about placing, not place.
Is here a place? Pronouns and position.

" ... certain words of a sentence - prepositions, connectives, pronouns - belong up toward full consciousness, while strange and unused words appear only in subconscious. ... in dream the simple and familiar words like prepositions, connectives, etc. are not absent, in fact, noticeably present to show illogical absurdity, discontinuity, parody of sanity." Lorine Niedecker to Harriet Monroe

future-ish

No-one knows the future,
of poetry.

half-way house

The parrot hangs down from the bottlebrush,
everywhere there’s leftovers from storm.

The rain needs no actual photo, you smell
its rare, pleasant odour on the town’s skin.

There’s the awkward bow to music
you must not make.

There’s no midpoint, only angles between
streets, sightlines along garden paths

to hidden yards

where citizens have no need today
to sneak water from the failing wells.

out of

Sometimes you feel like hedging bets.

Sometimes you want to get things out of the unfinished.

But what keel is ever true or even, flexing at horizons?

At least a vote of confidence,
to be shipping seeds without contracts.

Let us anticipate our emergency release.

green wire

Too many things are bad, you can only transgress
your own unpopular culture.

What is missing shines, lovely allure,
a partly-closed door, chasing window,
half-tongues of music budding ear,
green wire, grass.

Each awning offers branding, water beads
on Segafredo, and you smell it
or a body’s brief cerise.

13 October - a little birthday 'I' piece

I am known mainly
by my breathing
even among all
the other signals
I steer my time
in a part of the air
the tolerant
collaborative air
is it possible
rather than corrosive
everything drops down
eventually
then flies
smaller and smaller
the huge receding sound
so long ago
if you knew me
in, around, then out
speech
and then the signing
of the sound
written, traced
on the wall
my crystal spit
and the breath
to get there

questions, questions, questions - lyrically speaking

Some hot discussion on the 'new lyric' in Australian poetry over at Pam Brown's new place for talkin' about poetry.

Questions Pam put up for discussion:

• How much does the concept of the new Aussie lyric have to do with formalism?
• How different is this new Aussie lyric from the earlier notion of lyric as an instrument of personal expression?
• Is the new Aussie lyric consciously engaged in thought and its processes in language?
• Is this re-emergence of the lyrical a trend against/an escape from recent movements and influences in poetry?
• Could the new lyrical engage with notions of authenticity (originality/faking), appropriation (copying) involving the persona of the poet?

Someone added an extra question backchannel which Pam placed upfront:

"I wondered if an extra question could be added (which you imply up front), about the gendering of this new eruption."

and Pam proposed a further question in the comments:

"I wonder why there is never any wit, anything funny or (dreaded term) humorous in the poems of other new lyricists?"

The debate has become somewhat sidetracked by discussions of prizes and awards (yours truly confesses to have been a part of that) but maybe the comments will again look at questions, questions, questions.

ecopoetics is fresh

The latest issue of ecopoetics has appeared. It includes a selection of Australian poets, edited by Michael Farrell.


ecopoetics 06/07 2006-2009

Emily Abendroth, Fatho Amoy, mIEKAL aND, Kristen Andersen, Karen Leona Anderson, Stan Apps, Robert Ashton, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Christine Boileau, Timothy Bradford, Pam Brown, Julieann Brownton, James Bunn, Andrew Burke, Bonny Cassidy, Louise Crisp, Justin Clemens, Jon Cone, Jack Collom, Matthew Cooperman, Gregory Day, Tyler Doherty, Thom Donovan, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Theodore Enslin, John Estes, Kate Fagan, Michael Farrell, Alec Finlay, Lisa Fishman, Benjamin Friedlander, Forrest Gander, Jody Gladding, Liberty Heise, Krista Ingebretson, Jill Jones, Patrick Jones, Michael Kelleher, John Kinsella, Kyhl Lyndgaard, James Koller, José Martí, John McBain, Ray Meeks, Graeme Miles, Stuart Mills, Peter Minter, Luis-Aguilar Moreno, Derek Motion, Jesse Nissim, Alistair Noon, Lucas North, Antonio Ochoa, Peter O’Mara, Isabelle Pelissier, Carol Quinn, José Rabéarivelo, Daniel W. Rasmus, Joan Retallack, Sarah Rosenthal, Linda Russo, Kate Schapira, Andrew Schelling, Jared Schickling, Jonathan Skinner, Gary Snyder, Juliana Spahr, James Stuart, Alf Taylor, Angélica Tornero, Rodrigo Toscano, Lauren Tyers, Erica Van Horn, Stephen Vincent, Damian Weber, Simon West, Les Wicks

$17 Postage included; outside US & Canada, add $5

notes from a talk (including stein09)

Non-compliant. Disloyal. Not making exclusive claims. Non-singular vision. Inconsistent. Non-hierarchical. Non-categorical.

To make meaning work - not tied up, and definitely living in the world (not a closed loop): ‘A composition of the prolonged present is a natural composition in the world’ - Gertrude Stein. [The ‘prolonged’ is as much the point as the present, to me. As is ‘in the world’.]