reeling and writhing

a thousand tiny poems

Andrew Burke, WA poet, puts in an appearance in Part Two of Radio National's Poetica program on haiku and senryu this afternoon.

Part One can be listened to here - Part Two no doubt will also turn up at that recent programs podcast link sometime in the next 24 hours. In the meantime, State times and programs are here - looks like there will be a repeat next Thursday.

Thanks to Andrew for passing on the news, and my apologies for letting the end of the week run away so quickly without posting on it.

I know I won't be leaving here... with a tail

This news post has been shuffled about a bit, but, to begin again, I must share this link with my eldest daughter, who had an old copy of Coles' Funny Picture book when she was small.

As noted on the Speakeasy blog and elsewhere, the Franz Ferdinand Book Group is reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
This post and comments are an interesting sample of what's going down on their English tour...

The newest Meanjin is cram full of people from Sarsaparilla, who have done themselves proud! and RMIT's new Harvest mag is in the shops too.

Go find 'em - Laura Carroll's fine piece on Jane Austen's right to be single AND romantic, and Ampersand Duck's account of designing The Lost Dog are there for the reading. You have been told.

In other news, we will now be able to find out when our local member speaks in Parliament, via OpenAustralia.org. Link via Libraries Interact, authored by cyberlibrarian Kathryn Greenhill.

And finally, a blogger I know nothing of has, via Terry Teachout of About Last Night, reminded me of US poet Kay Ryan, and this very funny, though lengthy anecdote she shared quite a while back about the American poetry fest/bunfight, AWP.

Here's Ryan in the middle of an AWP panel on creativity, wrestling with the presenters' promiscuous use of the words 'mentor' and 'workshop':

Because it seems to me so deep and intimate, I have always had a very cautious feeling about this word mentor, as something far beyond the teacher of a class a student signed up for. It would be specific to two people who found some particular affinity, a relationship that would develop gradually. It would rarely occur. 

When I was a young writer, for some years I only knew one poet, Rosalie Moore, thirty-plus years my senior. We got to be friends and she was encouraging to me, but we barely understood each other at all. We stayed friends until she died in her nineties.

Occasionally over the years someone would refer to Rosalie as my mentor and I always felt an electric shock, like red cartoon arrows flying off my body, like bristles. Rosalie wasn’t my mentor. She would agree with that. I just don’t think the word should be used casually. It should be deep. Some people have mentors, some never do. I didn’t.

Workshop. In the old days before creative writing programs, a workshop was a place, often a basement, where you sawed or hammered, drilled or planed something.

You could not simply workshop something. Now you can. You can take something you wrote by yourself to a group and get it workshopped.

Sometimes it probably is a lot like getting it hammered. Other writers read your work, give their reactions, and make suggestions for change. A writer might bring a piece back for more workshopping later, even.

I have to assume that the writer respects these other writers’ opinions, and that just scares the daylights out of me. It doesn’t matter if their opinions really are respectable; I just think the writer has given up way too much inside. Let’s not share. Really.

Go off in your own direction way too far, get lost, test the metal of your work in your own acids. These are experiments you can perform down in that old kind of workshop, where Dad used to hide out from too many other people’s claims on him.

Said blogger pointed me to this lovely piece in the Yale Review on Marianne Moore. (And yes, I have tarted up this post - I started rereading the Ryan piece and simply had to sample it.) So thanks, Patrick and Terry.

Sydney and Melbourne have poetry in motion

In real time, and at rather short notice (I am sorry, Kris!!) you can hear plenty of live poetry read tonight at Kris Hemensley's bookshop, Collected Works. New books by Greg McLaren (The Kurri Kurri Book of the Dead) and Meredith Wattison (Basket of Sunlight) are being launched, in a showcase for Sydney press, Puncher & Wattmannn. Supporting poets include Carol Jenkins, David Musgrave and Simon West, for a 6 pm start at the First Floor of the Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street (entrance just in from the corner off Flinders Lane), Melbourne.

In Margaret Throsby's beautiful Classic FM interview series, the latest download on this page will be up in a couple of hours (and I will update it then). Don't miss it, it is today's broadcast is a repeat interview with choreographer Meryl Tankard and is up to the usual standard of brilliance, including music from the work she is presenting with the Sydney Dance Company in Melbourne from next week, Inuk 2. The only thing missing is being able to see some of the dance.

Justine Larbalestier has been listening to the radio too - I haven't had a chance to check this out yet, but she says the poem that this program from Ramona Koval's Book Show featured is the last thing she read that made her cry for home. (In Justine's comments, Garth Nix pops up and tells us something startling about the copyright on that poem - Kenneth Slessor's famous  'Five Bells'.)

And it looks like Perry Middlemiss of Matilda's stint on the Book Show was put ahead a bit  - I found it here. He sits in with John Derum and academic Phil Butters in a segment on C.J. Dennis' verse satire, The Glugs of Gosh. So another thing to listen to over the weekend. I do hope Perry hasn't been trying to hide this from us...

new Australian songs in a book near you

From Giramondo Press comes news of the launch of Alan Wearne's latest book of poems.
The Australian Popular Songbook, 'a collection where Wearne has tapped deep into our musical culture',will be launched by Melbourne poet alicia sometimes at Readings Carlton bookshop tomorrow evening.

Thursday 10 April, 6 pm start please, at Readings, 309 Lygon Street, Carlton. (Readings advises that no bookings are required.)

New Year for all us vague hicks

From the to:read tag in my del.icio.us account, in the holidays, this little Christmas gem fell, perfectly formed:

It doesn't matter to my husband, this social self; he doesn't care that I am Irish in an old-fashioned way, with a new lick of French. My Agnès B cardigan, and my vaguely hick Hermès scarf: these are certainly not the things that make me beautiful to him. Sometimes I would like to be understood by him, in a venal sort of way, but mostly I am content. I do not know why my husband chose to love me, but I know that, for both of us, it is a great romance...

Another great line...

We are not happy, exactly. But we love each other very much, and this charges our lives with shape and light.

That's it. I went birthday shopping for youngest son on Tuesday, and just had to pick up The Gathering while I was there. I'm not going to get to it quickly - the reading list for the year is about to be written, it's been weighing on me somewhat while I've been having a so-called 'break'.

I also grabbed Garrison Keillor's anthology of Good Poems, mainly because in his introduction he discusses the editorial principles used to select poetry to read on the radio. Irresistible.(yep, I am vague, and I have  corrected that mispelling. NOT a typo. A genuine mis-remembering. It's a very dark wood I live in.)

And to get back into the swing of things, and remind myself that yes, the calendar did get changed, I also wish to share with you this great New Year's Day photo my daughter took as we walked in Albert Park earlier this month.

I hope she enjoys some fireworks this year, whoever she was.

summer interregnum: in which Australia's Best Small Publisher discovers Web 2.0

Well, speaking of holidays, I'm certainly having one. No action here until late January. Come what may, I am going to wrestle this To Read tag in del.icio.us to the ground. Either it goes, or I do. (Well, half of it, anyhow. Half of me....ecch.)

We have a camp for oldest son planned, and some time down the beach without him - bless my in-laws for having a house, and keeping it nice for us. In the meantime, there are links, here, here, here - all down in the right sidebar too. Have a great holiday season, everyone.

And even if you are not a Victorian, don't forget the State Library's Summer Reading program. Here's a post on their blog by Michelle de Kretser, author of The Lost Dog, on Kris Hemensley's truly great poetry shop, Collected Works, well worth a visit, on the first floor of the Nicholas building in Flinders Lane. It's right next to the Victorian Writers' Centre's current offices, at least until some time in 2009, when the VWC will move to the Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas at the State Library.

Not quite sure exactly where I'm starting with my summer list (which contains the De Kretser title), but my daughter tells me I must watch Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep. And I am telling myself that I will read youngest son's gift of Best Australian Poems 2007. And mebbe some French lit, now that Figaro's warmed me up. And The Orphan Gunner, since Jo Case gives it such a glowing review in the summer edition of ABR that I've put in a Christmas request for it. And and and....

BTW, there be some busy fellows at the best Small Publisher for 2007, Black Inc. Wouldja just look at this! all the Web 2.0 goodness hitting Oz Publishing! Jeeminy. (Incidentally, this was recorded at Collected Works in early December or thereabouts.)

It's only a small request, but in addition to this amazing development (first vlogged Melbourne publishing event, isn't it?), links to individual catalogue titles would also be good, guys. I really enjoyed Helen Garner's speech at the Newcastle launch of Best Australian Stories, too, and you can watch that here.

Not sure if it's just my computer struggling with the visuals, as we do have some kind of passive-aggressive relationship with Media Player - but the sound is all good, and I look forward to seeing more Black Inc launches publicised in this way, if just for the sheer joy of being able to listen to an appreciative audience lap up the words of Oz lit luminaries like Rose and Garner. If you want to find the text to the bulk of Peter Rose's launch speech, most of it appears in his introduction to Best Poems '07, which he reads to the audience in confident (and totally unwarranted) apprehension that they will inevitably fail to do so. He ends with a passionate call for wider reading of new poetry, not simply in the 'sleek digests' of annual anthologies:

    We delude ourselves if we say that Australian poetry has never been so robust. When was the last time you heard a poem being discussed around a dinner table? New films, plays, novels, biographies, exhibitions, magazine profiles - they crop up all the time. But a poem? Inconceivable.

What is going on here? Why has the public lost faith in contemporary poetry - all poetry perhaps? Why is so little said and written about this defection? Poetry is the great fillip and inheritance. A culture that is indifferent to poetry is deficient and derelict. No young person's education can be deemed complete without a rich and active appreciation of poetry, but how can they hear about it if we don't voice it and feel its force - if it is not a potent feature of the culture in the first place?

I encourage readers who enjoy the poems in this book to seek out the collected works of the poets that interest and speak to them. Anthologisation, despite my resistances and frettings, is a reward for poets, but a wide, intelligent readership is a much greater one.

shelving demons

The old brain is, if not reeling this week, occasionally struggling to recalibrate. Liberals falling like mountain ash in a high wind, people openly denouncing WorkChoices in post offices - who'd a thunk it this time last week? David has written one of his finest to mark the occasion (and Ampersand Duck has drawn for it as well.)

Till the end of the year you can cast your vote for a book cover at the Book Design Review blog. Some speccies there, including Marina Lewycka's latest, Strawberry Fields. Link via Chekhov's Mistress.

From Alex Ross's blog comes this extract from a book on pop which gives some background on Roberta Flack's classical training.

I would demur, however, at this writer's claim that Flack 's 'distinctively spare arrangements, predilection for spaciousness, and cool reflective tone' stem from an understanding of Lizst - spots of Bach, yes, but Lizst?

The Free Range Librarian, K. G. Schneider, (who contrary to my earlier posting, is not interchangeable with Jessamyn West, no matter how wonderful I believe they both are) will tell you here why Library Thing is the goods, and why authors should be members. (Don't go anywhere near Shelfari.)

Visited:

Lisa Gorton's launch, Thursday 29 November and heard Chris Wallace Crabbe say that her work in her first collection is 'an achievement that glides so smoothly that you get out of winter in a day,' a line from one of the poems in her first collection, Press Release.
I am surprised it is the first, I seem to have been reading her poems around the traps for ever.

And finally, was delighted by:

this post, book designer Ampersand Duck again, at Sarsaparilla on the design of Michelle de Kretser's new book, The Lost Dog.

making it ever new

I simply had to blog this. From Nextbook, news of the publication in translation of the poems of Polish Holocaust survivors and sisters, Henia and Ilona Karmel.

I think the last eight lines here are particularly fine.

Verses

I bet you’re thinking “Not more poetry!”
You might even add,
“Please, even if it’s not bad.”
But guess what? This isn’t verse at all.
It’s made with the ink of tears.

God has sent down a spell
and a wall and every word
inside is cursed.
This is not poetry. It’s an alarm bell.

It’s a scream, a thunderburst,
syllables in a rush.
The same old sounds
you always hear but now insane.

The universe is distressed
when no one knows how to say things fresh:

“Sorrow, reverie, lamentation, dream,
chaos, wilderness, ruined youth,
disease and desire
for help or revenge . . . ”

That’s the kind of poetry
that this is.

Ilona Karmel

salt from the earth

There is a wonderful post over at Chris Boyd's blog celebrating the life and deploring the untimely loss of Tanja Liedtke.

Salt Magazine is now relaunched online as a free journal! Wow. The first issue is truly beautiful - poems from a galaxy of stars.

From Anne, Woolf scholar, at Fernham, a spin-off that looks quite good, all things considered. (Being wise, of course, she has.)

Beware of jealousy, the greeneyed monster - when you look at this cleversocks. He has an online game that's been played by over a million people. Talk of convergence. Now Nation States is being cited in cross-media journals.

september I remember

World's longest INSTALLED novel. (Link via Ben Dooley at The Millions.)

I saw Lee Miller's photos at the Monash Gallery of Art recently. Among several that were astounding, the shot of Miller in Hitler's bath, with the dust of Dachau rubbed firmly into the bathmat, was the one I returned to more than twice. Ali Smith discusses Lee Miller's photography and writing in The Guardian this week.

Speaking of light and shade - Grand Text Auto comes recommended by Christy Dena of Cross Media Entertainment, and I am really enjoying this addition to my RSS reader, especially when catching up on things like this.

The State Library of Victoria gets a mention in here, just after a shot of the Sorbonne's library.
Way to go. And yes, the crowd at Curious Expeditions do credit Candida Höfer's magnificent tome for some of these pictures (which is where I've seen them before.) As well as offering a link to a Flickr account. (Link from the ALIA New graduates mailing list.)

I'd like to see Nabs try this.

In the last of the Melbourne Writers' Festival news, David Prater covers his session with John Tranter, and the Speakeasy at AWM Online is going to be a regular reporting spot for writers' festivals down the coast -they did Byron a few weeks back, and now they're doing Brisbane. So do watch that space.

Melbourne Writers' Festival 2007 - a little blog music

I enjoyed lurking at MWF this time around - highlights included David Prater's launch and Paul Hardacre's interview with Tom Shapcott, Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida's terrific session with Louise Swinn, who asked some excellent questions, Victoria Glendinning talking to Sophie Cunningham about Leonard Woolf, the new media presentations at ACMI from the Story of the Future and LAMP labs, and Alexis Wright and Tony Birch discussing the genesis and publication of her prize-winning, seminal work Carpentaria. I also caught Les Murray, at a very convivial session where all listeners were content to hear him read poem after poem, only briefly stopping for a few questions before they asked him to 'read some more - read the Weeping Man'. (You can hear it there, too.) I was going to blog Eggers and Vida, but Ariel has done a much better job, and you can catch that meaty slice of the conference here.

I wasn't the only punter surprised at the size of the venue allocated to Wright's session - others remarked that a bigger crowd could easily have been accommodated elsewhere. Only 100 odd people can fit into the Tower theatre. This should have been a free session, in the Beckett. At least there was a good long signing session afterwards, as those 100 people obviously had plenty to say to this passionate and remarkable writer, storyteller and advocate.

Carpentaria will be released in the UK next year. This book is not just on the crest of the world literature wave, it is connecting the very lifeblood of our country to it, adding an ostinato to that movement that is sublime and compelling. It will be translated into many languages and read and studied for a very long time. So don't miss out. You have been told.

This festival largely had a good strong vibe, although as Lisa Dempster from Locus Press has pointed out in her constructive and comprehensive list of suggestions here, the prices still put it out of the reach of younger people and students. I get a bit sick of seeing hordes of middle-class couples, walking in a ring, myself - I don't have anything against them, it's great that people are coming with partners and friends of course, but it would be nice to see people from further afield than Camberwell occasionally.

Ian Syson has put it nicely in another context in a review in Saturday's Age, quoting a fictional character from Mont Albert saying that 'Melbourne is the city whose east I know better than its north or west'. Syson adds in a gritted dentural parenthesis that ' if there's a better 14 word critique of the Australian publishing industry than the one able to be inferred here, I am yet to read it.'

That's only going to change for Victoria's festival when the Brumby government comes good with the $250,000 needed to bring MWF's funding up to the level of the Sydney outing, and then Rosemary Cameron can continue the good job she has started of ramping up the diversity of her programming. All those devirginated middle class ladies should have enjoyed themselves at Second Life, when they were over the strangeness - I am looking forward to checking with Jeff Sparrow how that session went, having felt a bit of biblio-tech anxiety over the fact that it was held in a tent.

There's other MWF reports at graphic novelist Eddie Campbell's blog as well, including this salutary note on signing books.