Go Jonny Go

Radiohead's guitarist and creative powerhouse, Jonny Greenwood (with all due deference to the genius of fellow band member Thom Yorke), has once again proved why Radiohead are the contemporary creative outfit with this orchestral piece "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", here performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at last year's proms at the Albert Hall. News this week is that Sydneysiders will be able to judge its merits for themselves with a series of recitals in late May at Angel Place. Check your favourite venue guide for details.

 

Poetry Events

Saturdays 5 & 12 June

PLAN TO BE PUBLISHED with Les Wicks
at the NSW Writers’ Centre, Rozelle 10am – 4pm

One of the best known poetry workshop

templates in Australia will be on offer in Sydney.

Be inspired! Be published!

More details: http://www.nswwriterscentre.org.au/html/s02_article/article_view.asp?keyword=june2010 or ring 9555 9757

Exceptional, supporting yet challenging, showing (and earning) respect, a privilege to

attend this leader’s workshop;

serendipity but fabulous; contributed very generously ­ great value for money;

I got more from two days with Les’ workshop than I did over a postgraduate year at university

One of the best-known poetry workshop templates in Australia. OK, you write and are starting to think it may be better if your work gets out there into a wider world, on to the next level. This is for you, all styles, all ages. Les' workshops are known for their constructive and friendly orientation. This workshop will have an emphasis on the nuts and bolts of establishing a poetry audience. A key component of the two days will be traditional workshopping where 3 of each participant's poems are discussed (don't worry, it's not intimidating, we just work together to make a good thing a little better). But this won't be all that's covered. Participants will benefit greatly from applying insider's hints on how the poetry scene works. Poems are examined with a view to finding outlets that fit your style... all in addition to intensive editorial feedback. Other topics include running your own projects, taking up opportunities offered by the internet and, of course, getting your book published. Everyone who so wishes will have their poems published in an established internet magazine. Experience has shown this approach is highly effective… combining practical information with an artistic dialogue among peers over a solid block of time. 

LES WICKS is widely published both in Australia and overseas, an accessible poet with 8 collections to his name. He's been involved in dozens of editing projects over his 35 years as a writer and has done his popular workshops from Hobart to Byron Bay to Perth.

Enquiries ring 9555 9757
 
Full price $270, NSWWC members $190, Conc members $165

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Date: Friday May 21 Voices from Underground

An interactive performance by the Sydney-based group, Harbour City Poets, presenting all-new poems and a new chapbook. These edgy readings feature buried Sydney, from the city margins to the centre. Political, ecological and social issues surface from its history to disturb the smooth façade. Expect sewers and cemeteries, the Police Museum, convicts and larrikins of the nineteenth century, The Rocks (earliest Chinatown), rat plagues, jails, in fact anything subterranean (literally and metaphorically) that our poetic ventriloquy can re-create.

Time: 5.30-7pm
Venue: Sydney Philharmonia Choir Studio
Cost: $5 at door (cash only)
MC: Margaret Bradstock
Time: 5.30-7pm

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Auburn Poets and Writers’ Group (APWG) 22nd May

Zalzala: Inner quakes and after-shocks       10.00am

Event:  ZALZALA: Inner Quakes and After Shocks

Date:    Saturday 22 May

Time:    10.00 am

Venue:  Bangarra Mezzanine

Address:   Walsh Bay, Sydney

Entry :    Free entry

Earth Quakes:  

Listen as APWG goes under the skin of culture shock.

Cultures within cultures:   intersexions of body and soulful words, dislocations  of place and inner languages, a collidescope of climate changes in the whether.

Tremors of the heart:    A collaborative spoken-word performance in English, Tamil, Arabic and Farsi, creating rhythms and linkages between the experience of change in culture and climate.

Shocking:

For further information please phone Auburn Community Development Network (ACDN) on

Tel. (02) 9649 5559 or

Email:  Alissar Chidiac at ACDN   auburnarts@acdn.org.au

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Friday the 21st of May
Red Room invites you to "Poems to Share at SWF!"
When: 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Where: Pier 2/3 Cafe, Sydney
 
On May 21st, The Sydney Writers' Festival hosts a Red Room event,
celebrating seven years of successful collaborations with Australian
poets. Come and mingle with ten of Australia's top poets!
 
Celebrate the work of the Red Room Company and contemporary Australian
poetry at the Sydney Writers' Festival. The Red Room has organised a
special event for the SWF, gathering ten prominent Australian poets
featured in Poems to Share, our new set of poetry cards produced in
collaboration with our design partners, Corban & Blair.
 
Each poet will read their piece from Poems to Share, and also share
another with the audience. Along with the readings there will be a
discussion on the notion of sharing and its relation to poetry;
perhaps an anecdote of a book lent, or a poem read aloud by a lover,
or a favourite poem long kept tucked away.
 
The audience will be seated at tables with the poets, able to share
their own ideas and impressions of the event.
 
Visit www.redroomcompany.org to see more information about the event.

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DiVerse and the S.H. Ervin Gallery

Presents

Poetry from the Salon Des Refusés 2010

A poetic rendering of the S.H. Ervin Gallery, Salon des Refusés exhibition.

Sunday the 23^rd of May 2010 at 3.00 pm.

Part of the Sydney Writer’s Festival for the fourth year, DiVerse perform their specially written poetry, based on the art works of the Salon des Refusés.

The DiVerse poets have been invited to write ekphrastic responses to this eclectic selection of works.

S.H. Ervin Gallery
National Trust of Australia
Watson Road, Observatory Hill, The Rocks, NSW 2000
National Trust Reception: (02) 9258 0123

Friday the 21st of May
Red Room invites you to "Poems to Share at SWF!"
When: 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Where: Pier 2/3 Cafe, Sydney
 
On May 21st, The Sydney Writers' Festival hosts a Red Room event,
celebrating seven years of successful collaborations with Australian
poets. Come and mingle with ten of Australia's top poets!
 
Celebrate the work of the Red Room Company and contemporary Australian
poetry at the Sydney Writers' Festival. The Red Room has organised a
special event for the SWF, gathering ten prominent Australian poets
featured in Poems to Share, our new set of poetry cards produced in
collaboration with our design partners, Corban & Blair.
 
Each poet will read their piece from Poems to Share, and also share
another with the audience. Along with the readings there will be a
discussion on the notion of sharing and its relation to poetry;
perhaps an anecdote of a book lent, or a poem read aloud by a lover,
or a favourite poem long kept tucked away.
 
The audience will be seated at tables with the poets, able to share
their own ideas and impressions of the event.
 
Visit www.redroomcompany.org to see more information about the event.

The "Clare" Suite by Phillip A. Ellis

"Silver Linings (for Clare)"

I will let the clouds come. From horizons
they will glide, at first a white, then a grey
as they meet up, join in a panoply
that may ferry rain. They may well flatter
the skies from New Zealand to New South Wales,
decorating the satellite photos
as they pass silently over the lands
underneath, with watery breath bated.

But the clouds you see are the clouds I see,
perhaps, and will trap the sun's rays; it seems
a strange thing to say, there's silver lining,
but when clouds are heaviest, pressing down
and muttering thunder, the thought of you
cheers me up to no end, and I am glad.

*****

"Firelight (for Clare)"

In the firelight of my childhood, when youth
was yet to be prized by me, evenings spent
before the burning ashes and the hearths
of reverie were not lost to my thought.

Now I remember them, and find it hard
to see in the ashes the same landscapes,
and wonder if it's poverty of thought,
or hardening of the mind's arteries.

I don't need to dream in firelight to see
you, nor do I need a bed of glowing
ashes. All that I need is the merest thought.

And like the ashes you will glow, brighter
than the copper sun at sunset, winter
days, when the wood is brought out, piled up, lit.

*****

"Tinnitus (for Clare)"

I have been thinking of you in quiet
moments, when the winds of the world are thin
hissings in sound-ravaged ears. I would wake
out of a dream of being cisgender
and adoring just you, with quietness
and a sense of peace, and I would hear this
noise, and I would think of you then, and I
feel the soft seep of endorphins within.

You are never really far from my mind,
just as the hissing and whistling never
really fades, just sinks under. Sometimes I
forget that I hear them, unlike thinking
of you: too many good things exist, and
each reminds me, in its own way, of you.


- Phillip A. Ellis 2010

New Poetry by Michael Lee Johnson

Charley Plays a Tune

Crippled, in Chicago,

with arthritis

and Alzheimer's,

in a dark rented room,

Charley plays

melancholic melodies

on a dust filled

harmonica he

found  abandoned

on a playground of sand

years ago by a handful of children

playing on monkey bars.

He hears bedlam when he buys fish at the local market

and the skeleton bones of the fish show through.

He lies on his back riddled with pain,

pine cones fill his pillows and mattress;

praying to Jesus and rubbing his rosary beads

Charley blows tunes out his

celestial instrument

notes float through the open window

touch the nose of summer clouds.

Charley overtakes himself with grief

and is ecstatically alone.

Charley plays a solo tune.

- Michael Lee Johnson 2010

Harvest Time

A Métis Indian lady, drunk --

hands blanketed as in prayer,

over a large brown fruit basket

naked of fruit, no vine, no vineyard

inside -- approaches the Edmonton,

Alberta adoption agency.

There are only spirit gods

inside her empty purse.

Inside the basket, an infant,

restrained from life,

with a fruity winesap apple

wedged like a teaspoon

of autumn sun

inside its mouth.

A shallow pool of tears

mounts in native blue eyes.

Snuffling, the mother offers

a slim smile, turns away.

She slithers voyeuristically

through near slum streets

and alleyways,

looking for drinking buddies

to share a hefty pint

of applejack wine.

- Michael Lee Johnson 2007

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois.  He is heavy influenced by:  Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and Allen Ginsberg.  His new poetry chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are available at: http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7.   He also has 2 previous chapbooks available at: http://stores.lulu.com/poetryboy.

Joh at the Bay

 

After all the tireless support she has lent Australian poetry over the last decade, it behoves me to call your attention to a rare reading by Johanna Featherstone (director of the seminal Red Room Company) of her own poetry during this year's Sydney Writer's Festival. Johanna, who I admit is a very dear friend, is attractively reticent about her own poetic efforts, considering how gifted she is at promoting the outpourings of others (precious little of which lives up to her enthusiasm). But I have read enough of her work to know she has a keen eye for the tender absurdities of our condition, and will no doubt be an engaging reader after so many years of practice at public speaking.

When: Sunday, May 23 2010, 1pm-2pm

Where: Bangarra Mezzanine, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay

Cost: Free, No bookings.

ANZAC DAY

 Lest we Forget

Our friends......

New Poetry by Benjamin Dodds

Archibald’s Fountain

After the washout,

we were so wet it was stupid.

We didn’t even get an overture

before dawdling out

into the darkening evening

with the rest of the cackling crowd.

Three or four islands of friends sat hopefully 

on the drenched Domain lawn,

quietly fooling themselves.

If ever there was an event

to be cancelled for rain,

this was it.

I smiled at new families and old friends,

all out for a night of free arias in the open air,

all soaked to the bone now.

But nobody ran.

You can’t get wetter than drenched.

It was Sydney in summer

and no-one was cold.

As we crossed the road back into the park,

I conjured an image:

a silently packed Opera House theatre,

the audience wearing their best

as the roof hinges open 

and the rain comes down.

Corporate-sponsored programmes

curl around hands like wilting posies.

That night we swam 

in the fountain

in the park

with the Greek gods 

and a goddess

and a bronze turtle.

Today I dug up a photo;

I’m wearing a white plastic sheet,

Jesus sandals 

and the dripping rictus of a smile.

I think it’s Theseus

whose bronze scrotum

I cup in my hand.

I only remember this night 

and this photo 

because of Alison Clark 

and her poem 

about these same sculpted figures.

She has dusted off this stupid image

of my wet and juvenile self.

- Benjamin Dodds 2010

 

For more info on Benjamin simply click the post heading.

New Poetry by Ashley Capes

gatefold sleeves

the oarsmen shout

and the crash of waves

echo in their mouths

through so much black

the moon drops closer

for a better look

their buttons taste like salt

and the bunch of muscles

reminds me of my father

working with his saw

at home mum is cooking

playing Hawkwind while

I look at the LP, discovering

gatefold sleeves

the boat rolls around and

across parts of the water

their gifts are reflected.

- Ashley Capes 2010

New Poetry by Stuart Barnes

MIRAGE

Dionysus (is) the Master of Illusions, who could make a vine grow out
of a ship’s plank, and in general enable his votaries to see the world as the world’s not
E.R. Dodds

… and after the event – dust motes round and brown as rabbit dung, a tongue like

a feral cat’s in my ears, the metallic black spider scraping its fangs against

the cracked and peeling wall (for thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

that then I scorn to change my place with kings) – and after the dawn –

apocalyptic eye of heaven, Seven Sisters dimming like Technicolor images of

childhood, blazing Botticelli clouds in a perfect eggshell blue sky (a death

and a resurrection breaking with the everyday change of light) – and after the quest –

no change for a cab, kilometers of sooty footpath on legs as wobbly and slimy

as a newborn lamb’s, zombie hands grabbing at hopelessness (the scared septuagenarians

scuttle away muttering ‘filthy junkie’ under their blue-blooded breath), a moment’s rest

at a rose garden to admire the pearly patina on a drop of dew on a leaf (so

strange the things you’ll do when you’ve had a man shriek hell across your back) – and

after the attempt – honk, whoosh, the rusty track, a landslide of malign rocks ahead

and beautiful green at my back, the chain link a fence between me and certain death –

I stood at the head of our bed and pawed at your pillow and clawed at your face

and cried ‘I’ve been raped’ and you stared at me with your ice-blue Great White eyes

and replied ‘You’re a liar’ and I came to realize the last twelve months of our

life – morning coffee (extra sweet), Eurythmics cranked in the fire engine red Alfa,

days spent combing the sands at Honeymoon Bay for shells of Tasmanian giant

crabs, evenings huddled happy as albatrosses around candles, Japanese and wine –

had all been one big Bacchanalian lie …

- Stuart Barnes 2010

(Quotation: lines from Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare)

Finally the leaves are turning and the flood waters are gurgling down the Darling river from Queensland, left into the Macquarie and heading for me, but before I either freeze or drown, I am CALLING ALL POETS. Refer to the submissions guidelines in the sidebar beneath the Persian Phoenix.

The Carnival (Third Instalment)

The Carnival at Perugia is a rather dull affair. The Bishop will only condone so much competition for his whores, and the local children only visit it at night to rattle the cages. It is more a collection of tepid curios, such as the two-headed kitten, or the talking bird. It has had a number of homes but is at present positioned adjacent to the torturous trickle of the Fontana Maggiore.

   Perugia would appear to be a town after Pistoa’s heart. The Carnival here is overseen by two wizened old Tajiks with smiles like cuts who seem to pass their days tapping at the rows of bamboo cages in a vain attempt to raise a sullen growl from the mangy, wall-eyed occupants. That the Bishop condones this travesty at all is only due to the fact that now and then one of those strange creatures arrives from the steppes, each one a little bigger and more horrid than the last, to pique his much-lauded scientific curiosity and perhaps arouse the fleeting interest of the townsmen.

   I know of only two other towns whose garrisons have allowed these creatures inside their walls – Lucca and Spoleto – and neither town has fared well by it. The hideous spectacle of these creatures, the lurid tales of them tearing entire caravans to shreds on the Magyar plains, attracts a gawking rabble from miles around, and inevitably some village simpleton will be goaded into lifting the latch on one of these ferocious, terrified things, with horrific results, especially at Spoleto, where it was said the streets ran red for days.

  The Bishop at Perugia takes no such risks with his congregation and has pulled many strings with the Chinese to have their local armourers forge a steel cage that he has hoisted twenty yards above the square whenever one of these pit-eyed, hapless things happens his way. One must always consider the sergeant of the watch. From there the only danger the creature poses is if some drunken soul trying to evade the watch happens to pass under it as it is voiding, for I hear its waste can scald the flesh like lime.

  We have been asked to look over the pinions and rigging, and also to satisfy ourselves as to the integrity of the iron bars against which the last of these creatures beat its brains out. For it is rumoured that the town burghers have paid for another one to be brought inside the walls to deal with the dogs. As journeymen we hear nothing but rumours.

  It is rumoured, for instance, that they cannot abide closed spaces and will not cross a threshold if there are more than three candles burning inside. But such knowledge, if knowledge it is, must have been acquired through the most arduous system of trial and error, and I for one would not like to test the theory.

*

  The Chinese will not let us leave until we have been paid. It seemed an oppressive system at first, and one that seemed to single out journeymen, but over time we have all learnt to see the sense in it. If we are not paid, then we cannot produce the receipts that are our pass out of the gates. And if we cannot leave the town, then we soon become a burden until the required payment and receipt is forthcoming. Our kind do not bring any more coins into a town than we can leave with. At the gate, of course, the Chinese take their cut, but who would begrudge them such a tax for such a service? They too issue a receipt. In fact my bag is a clatter of these little chits like the footsteps of my life.

  For all that, the Bishop cannot be found and we must wait while someone finds him, for he is a busy man and his whores, too, must have their chits. At the hour appointed by one of his minions I wait by the Cathedral steps along with young Francesco who knows his abacus like a second pair of knuckles, and although we wait until it is dark, no-one comes to meet us but an escort kindly sent by the sergeant of the watch to see us back to the tavern where the dogs have scratched deep grooves in the wide oak door and left a litter of fourteen pups no bigger than a man’s thumb that the old Chinese sentries carry around under their jackets like a new heart.

  Tonight they returned, no more numerous or vicious than they were yesterday, but obviously in search of their pups and the skinny old bitch that bled out on the steps of the Cathedral after bearing them. There are three young girls with a pup each here, and no-one and nothing will separate them. Pistoa has one that he holds closer than I have ever seen him hold anything, which leaves ten of the litter gone under old men’s coats to the barracks and beyond. The way those dogs are sniffing at the tavern door, though, they mean to find them.

  Pistoa has often screamed for a sword when he is drunk, but this time he means the kind the Chinese confiscated in every town and village and handed back as coin to every man, woman and child. In the east the sword brandishes a sound it does not brandish here. I sleep through the worst of it, for unlike spendthrifts such as Pistoa I have money for a straw mattress and a pillow. Even the running battle he and his drunken cohorts fought with the mangy remnants of the pack up and down the narrow defiles of the sestiere did not wake me. I have a clear conscience and I grab sleep where I can find it.

  Needless to say Pistoa is in no sort of mood for haggling with a fat priest the following day, so I take what I think is a fair price for his rushed work on the portico, doff my cap to a boy almost buckling under the weight of his accounts, and begin to sort the chits for the men who cannot read.

  “That fat pig can’t even be bothered to see if he’s done us a favour,” Pistoa scowls as he drops those coins like watchmen’s chains into his tired sack. “You’re a priest, who was that the bells announced before?”

  Sometimes I think the joke about my name has yet to wear off on Pistoa because he has suspended his judgment on it. Either he is trying to rile me like a schoolboy, or he is struggling with the urge to confess something to the last man in the world who would understand. Or working. Needless to say, it is only the latter that puts me at ease. I tell him to go look for himself, but judging by the clash of cymbals and the sad gaggle of trumpets it is someone from the east come via La Spezia, come like the rich and powerful have come since the pirates disappeared to see for themselves whether the rumours about us are true. Fat, ashen-faced men with their jowly wives and supple concubines come to lay their coins at our altars and shout their names at the impossible arches and gauge their fortunes by the number of echoes.

  “Let’s go see for ourselves. Drink it down, eh priest.”

  He is like this whenever one of their litters pass, be it some screw-eyed hoary scholar or a pretty merchant’s child-bride, meeting their eye with the same look he would pass over a block of stone before he begins to carve, a look the Chinese excuse because their devils are all paper and because the Carnival has this effect on some.

*

  Pistoa has gone south on some vague promise of work from one of the Bishop’s men. He left with a strange halting gait and that newly-acquired bundle squirming under his jacket. Perhaps he is having second thoughts about keeping it. Second thoughts may be all those dogs were seeking inside the town that abandoned them to the winter nights and those strange creatures from the steppes. Francesco noticed Pistoa’s strange manner too, for as we headed north back to Arezzo I could feel him trying to find a way of broaching the subject without bringing down my famous curses on his head. I have only recently become aware of this reputation I have amongst the apprentices, and I am still at a loss to explain it. I speak when spoken to and find the world too changed, too changeable, to paw over the details of a brother’s walk.

  I used to think Pistoa shared my feelings, but that was all a long time ago, many cold greetings ago on the road out of Dragon Pass. I now realize Pistoa is a man too constant, too wedded to his time, whatever times they may end up being, to have ever looked down and wondered whose feet they are that keep passing under him. For all his proclivities, or perhaps because of them, Pistoa is a man accepted by all and sundry, whether Christian or heathen. Perhaps because he takes the world as he finds it, and knows how to seal a contract with a day before he has even opened his eyes.