The Man who fears the sky

I very much doubt that I am the first poet in the long history of our fraternity to lie awake at night and imagine away the roof over his head.

I tend to lie very still on my back (a legacy of an early childhood in callipers for which I have been dubbed by my cover girl, Suzie, “the crippled foundling”), and when taken by one of those desolate moods that visit the sleepless on a still night, I seem to be able to feel that whole vast empty expanse of sky pressing down on me. 

But slowly an even more oppressive thought springs to mind, namely that nothing but air, the colourless tasteless mixture of gases I use to breath and make words, lies between me and the infinite cogitations of chance events that drive the cosmos into which I was born with my crooked legs and hazy provenance.

As more and more of us become cocooned in the perennial urban twilight, it is easy to forget or overlook the hold the sky still has on our subconscious.

For instance, it is currently nesting season in the mountains where I live, and I feel my hair stand on end at every flap and whoosh above my head as I walk my dog through the gauntlet of magpies and currawongs in the scrub near my home. Surely this is a primordial reflex we have inherited from a time when the sky was even more menacing than it is now, although considering the satellite that is plummeting to earth as I write, we have managed to populate it with our own litany of perils. 

And as we delve deeper into the machinations of the cosmos, I mean the clockwork Newtonian stuff, we have become increasingly aware of the likelihood of a meteor striking us anywhere at anytime, one of the rare occasions when knowledge does not in fact equal power, but something very different altogether, the  colourless, odourless plague of our time. 

As a child I was lucky enough to drift through the clouds to the far side of the world. I seemed to spend half my days up there amidst the fluffy castles and kind old rabbit men while scouring for whales in the ocean miles below. I was entranced by the silent world of the sky and did not feel the weight of it then as I do now, for it did not seem an empty desolate space then, but one filled with a benign spirit. 

What has changed, I wonder? Am I merely growing old and deaf to the whispers of God, of that Great Other? Or do I merely see as far as the miracle of the wingtip and not to the clouds beyond? Are human achievements any less miraculous than a wave breaking on the shore? God, after all, did not invent the aeroplane (to paraphrase an acerbic Frenchman). Is this inability to see past the wingtip a crippling malaise in one who purports to be a poet? And could it be the source of this shapeless, floating anxiety I suffer along with so many of my contemporaries? Is the man who fears the sky the one who knows too much or too little?

* The title of this post is borrowed from a poem in Beyond the Terminus (Bluepepper), due out some time next year. 

REDRUM

Coming up at

The Red Room Company 

Clubhouse...

We've got an incredible line-up at The Red Room Company Clubhouse over September. Make sure you pop in and catch some inspiring, entertaining and informative events!

Three UK Poets Read at the Clubhouse

When: Wednesday September 7, 6.00pmWhere: The Red Room Company Clubhouse 77 George Street, Sydney (downstairs)What: Head to the Clubhouse for a night of poetry with visiting UK poets, Tim Claire, Luke Wright and Hannah Jane Walker, fresh from a tour of Scotland (via the Melbourne Writers Festival)

Pot Luck Poetry

When: Friday, September 9, 6.00pmWhere: Kings Cross Hotel, 244 - 248 William Street, Kings CrossWhat: Start seeing stars at this poetry reading, panel and discussion of all things astronomical.This special Clubs and Societies event features poet Kit Brookman, members of The Astronomical Society of NSW and astrologer Yasmin Boland.Sweet Damper and Gossip Society Low Tea

When:Sunday, September 11, 1:00pmWhere:The Red Room Company Clubhouse 77 George Street, Sydney What: The Delirious Bakery is a site-responsive bakery that collects and dispenses dissent via recovered oral traditions. During its residency in the Clubs & Societies historic basement storehouse, the artists and guests will host a series of ‘low teas’, where tales about the darker side of The Rocks are exchanged with each sticky bunPredominantly Orange Book Launch & Exhibition

When:Thursday, September 22, 6:30pmWhere:The Red Room Company Clubhouse 77 George Street, Sydney What: Photographer Jon Reid has elevated the humble traffic cone into the realms of art with his quirky documentary project Predominantly Orange. The limited edition book and exhibition launching September 22 is the culmination of five years of observation of the ubiquitous orange markers.Here-There-You-Me: Moments of Interaction in Art

When:Saturday, September 24, 2:00pmWhere:The Red Room Company Clubhouse 77 George Street, Sydney What: Presented and curated by The Rocks Pop Up Project, our second in a series of collective artist talks featuring, Sean O'Connell from Gaffa; Makeshift, MCA Primavera 2011 and current Red Room artist in residence; Chelle Dickins of Curly Music Box and Henry Wilson.

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

Another Song for Clare

I wove a song for Clare, tonight
when the stars were bright, yet wan
against the horizon's paling edge
where the sun rises past the lake-set sedge,
and where the geese worship the morning light
along with the swan;
I wove a song for Clare, tonight
when the stars were bright, yet wan.

*****

Another Sonnet (for Clare)

I could easily, and happily, spend
all day and every day watching your face,
the way some men spend all day and every
day watching the skies, through a wide plate glass
window, against which a summer fly butts
its head, again and again, while the dust
glissades along slow shafts of sunlight, like
clouds over the face of the earth's ovals.

I have spent many lazy hours lying
on my back in the Liddiard Road school
oval, watching the clouds above me, while,
like a chattering presage of summer,
the other kids are playing cricket, with
a ball with a red I remember still.

*****

August (for Clare)

I am deep in winter, with a cold breeze
walking across my back, and addressing
the palms outside of my window. The sea
is faint to my ears, as I pause my pen
from writing, and easily find a rhyme
for the sonnet that's sinking over faint
blue-lined paper, then open a moment
to breathe, and to write a message of peace.

This message I write, it is mainly verse,
it is mainly rhythmic, and mainly vain
as well, knowing that nothing written means
what the writer dreams, but reader only,
not novel, not drama, not poem nor prose,
not knowing if dreams are alive, will lift.


- Phillip Ellis 2011

Phillip Ellis is the editor of Australian Reader and author of The Flayed Man: http://www.amazon.com

Red Room Events

Clubs & Societies at Queensland Poetry FestivalWhen: Saturday August 27 at 10.30am
Where: Theatre Space, Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, 420 Brunswick St Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
What:Queensland Clubs & Societies poets Angela Gardner and Brett Dionysius meet The Red Room Company’s Johanna Featherstone and their partner clubs, the Australian Transgender Support Association of Queensland and The Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, at this free event for the Queensland Poetry Festival.

Korean poets read at The ClubhouseWhen: Sunday August 28 at 6.00pm
Where: The Clubhouse, 77 George St, The Rocks, Sydney
What: Four prolific and highly-regarded Korean poets Hwang Dong-kyu, Park Ra-youn, Park Hyung-jun and Kim Ki-taek read their work at a special event in the Clubhouse.


Clubs & Societies at Melbourne Writers Festival
When:Sunday August 28 at 7.00pmWhere:ACMI: The Cube, Melbourne
What: Poet Ali Alizadeh has been attending meetings of the Existentialist Society, while Omar Musa has been floating high above Melbourne with the Melbourne Motorgliding Club. The poets share their experiences with The Red Room Company’s Johanna Featherstone at this free event.

For more information just click on the post heading.

I wanna shock yer jocks!

Amanda Palmer, lead shriek of Boston’s Dresden Dolls, who last year decided to take to some of Radiohead’s exquisite masterpieces with a ukele wielded like a child’s plastic hammer, follows what is fast becoming a well-worn path amongst northern hemisphere gliterati of Aussie-baiting in a rather transparent attempt to snatch a bit of publicity and no doubt boost flagging sales of the afore-mentioned EP. First she baited us with her ode to Vegemite titled, well, Vegemite. “It tastes like sadness/it tastes like batteries/it tastes like acid”, begging the question how she could possibly know how the latter two taste and still be with us. Now she appears to be appealing to Bill Gates to send us a ship-load of PC’s.

I can’t answer for the level of accommodation tour managers extended to Ms Palmer on her recent under-the-radar solo tour of Australia, but according to a story in today’s Sydney Morning Herald, she appears to have formed the impression that one of the wealthiest, most secure and technologically advanced societies in human history has somehow missed the cyber-boat. The less-than-erudite Ms Palmer, whose Brechtian sensibilities appear to justify lyrics that extend to the frivolous when they are not completely non-sensical (and delivered to my asbestos ears with all the subtle harmonics of a mid-air collision), proceeds to offer we Antipodean Luddites some timely lessons in such cyber-trinkets as Twitter, suggesting we join the gang at the cool end of the playground before we start dragging our knuckles on the ground. I was going to publish Ms Palmer’s open letter to we poor Croc Dundees lurking in the scrub in our convict stripes, but I figure I have already made my point, and I see no reason to offer this one-woman cabaret from the troubled north any more publicity. 

Except to add that, if the Herald can be trusted (an admittedly big “if”), then who at the Australia Council thought it a good idea to post such dross on its web page? The irony, of course, is there for all to see, with the notable exception of the author. 

And while we are on the subject of those educated beyond their means, why is it that the most humourless man in Australia, Gerard Henderson, can continue to maintain the existence of political bias at the ABC while allowing the increasingly incendiary and ill-informed remarks of shock jock Alan Jones to pass through to the keeper? Yes, that is a cricketing analogy, Gerard, for whose frivolity I immediately apologise. 

The point has already been made ad nauseum, probably because it is worth repeating, but the increasingly barbed nature of public discourse in almost all the major OECD nations is already proving murderous, as witnessed by the recent tragedy in Norway and incidents such as the shooting of a US Senator some months back, and Jones’ recent nigh-criminal suggestion that someone should put our Prime Minister in a canvas bag and throw her into the sea does nothing but sharpen the barbs in the ears of the suggestible. 

It seems poets (that is real poets motivated by something other than their egos) have something to teach these self-appointed windbags about the value of labouring over every word. Is there perhaps a correlation between the proliferation of open-mic nights and the parlous state of public discourse?

Blow wind, Blow

The winds we endured in the mountains for the best part of a week earlier this month were one of the most hair-raising experiences of my lengthening life.

Katoomba is a relatively old town by Australian standards, and appears to have been built around stands of giant ghost gums, one of which came down in the small hours with a terrifying crash only metres from my house while I lay in the howling dark waiting for the first cracks to appear between my walls and my ceiling.

After such a night, the ensuing days of blackout in the freezing depths of a mountain winter were a comparative cakewalk. Pubs, I discovered, have generators.

The winds peaked at 140 kmh, but it was not so much their power as their relentless nature that proved so daunting to those who lived through them. One cannot help but feel very tiny indeed in the face of such blind fury, and with people reduced in scale they seemed suddenly more open, less occluded by the trivial and ephemeral. The whisky helped, but more than once it struck me what we have lost as a people in a very short space of time, less than a generation in fact.

Surveying our damaged town over the following days, we were all struck by how the felling of a tree here or there had so altered the aspect of familiar streets, exposing little nooks and crannies we did not know existed (Katoomba is very much a town of nooks and crannies), opening large tracts up to the sky for the first time in many years.

As so often happens, crisis wrought what has turned out to be a welcome change in many lives choked with the weeds and thorns of their own petty concerns, change we either lacked the courage or vision to enact ourselves.

I put it forward as a fitting theme for 2011, from Tunisia to Fleet Street to the carbon tax debate in our own new-look parliament, shaky as a spring lamb. Change wrought more by accident than design, and thus perhaps all the more lasting for it.

New Poetry and Art by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Salome

(For Jo)

The shape of ambition. Sometimes it is the silhouette of a woman, naked except for a bolt of sheer cloth draped over her head and falling all the way to the floor.

Below the silken undulations can be seen her silhouette, dancing. With an upward curling index finger it beckons me to the corner where shadow and light meet.

Other times it is the fat, dark crazy drawing of a bird that I once did but will probably never show anyone even though I have become an expert at imitating its call.

'Monte Cristo" by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Chet 1988

His face, deep worn grooves clusters of lines, sentences. All the tragedy of his own making but when he picks up the horn we are thankful for his pain. 

- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2011

For more info on this contributor, just click on the post heading.

Call for Submissions

The snows have come and the trees are stripped bare, and as always with the dramatic change of season, I am in the mood for poetry. So I am putting the call out for submissions of no more than three poems or short prose pieces. Check the submissions guidelines in the right toolbar for the complete lowdown.

40 Days of Poetry

Visit any of the City of Sydney Libraries during August and September to find your poetic voice during the 40 Days of Poetry.

Find your poetic voice in the library When: August 1st to September 9th What: Each day, a poem and a writing exercise from our Poems to Share box set will be featured in each City of Sydney library branch. Library-goers are encouraged to respond to the exercise, and submit a poem to the Poetry Mailbox in the library, or via email. The best poems will be featured on the Stacks website, as well as having the opportunity to be published in the Sun-Herald. This event is part of the Stacks project, which culminates in a screening of 'The Analogue Crusader', an animation about the sweet but sad life of a man who made his living selling poems. Who: Participating libraries are: Ultimo, Customs House, Surry Hills, Waterloo, Glebe, Kings Cross, Newtown, Paddington and Haymarket All library visitors and staff are welcome to submit their poems. The Red Room Company publishes new poetry by Australian writers, in unusual ways.

Alison and Leopold

To some it is a literary masterpiece, cluttered and idiosyncratic as the city it chronicles. To others it is the world’s longest obituary, but whatever your view, one thing is clear, and that is that 107 years after poor Paddy Dignam was finally laid to rest, James Joyce’s Ulysses remains the only book in the Anglo sphere (apart from the Bible) to have its own day.

He is gone from mortal haunts: O’Dignam, sun of our morning. Fleet was his foot on the bracken: Patrick of the beamy brow. Wail, Banba, with your wind: and wail, o ocean, with your whirlwind.

So settles the cloud of tobacco, stout and grief between Bob Doran and Alf as they spy Leopold Bloom hovering outside the chemist shop on an errand for his wife, Marion of the bountiful bosoms. Bloom, the eternal outsider, child of Abraham in an Apostolic nation, and bookish to boot.

I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That’s a straw. Declare to my aunt he’d talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady.

As any of my legion of drinking buddies both past and present would blearily attest, I identify strongly with Leopold Bloom.

But there is another reason Bloomsday sounds a particular note for me each June. For it was on the evening of June 16, 1996 that my good friend and drinking buddy, Alison Gooch, was run down and killed by a drunk driver on the sweeping bend of King street just south of Newtown bridge. Fifteen years and I can still hear her laugh.

Vale “Bootsie”, and your lovely mother, Robin, who passed away last year.

New Poetry by Mark O'Flynn

PADDOCK

You’ve been watching the dead sugar gum

watching it patiently until you decide to cut it down

then you’re all action.

You traipse through the moonscape about its base

place your hand where the beautiful wood

is oiled and burnished by the necks of cows



choosing a spot for the first bite of the axe.

Eventually the tree collapses into hoof prints

and a brief eruption of twigs then silence.

Birds soon orbit their confusion. Cows stare.

It takes all morning to chop it up into manageable

lengths, leaving behind the branches filled with ants.



They’re not all you’re leaving.

Firewood warms you twice, they say,

three times really, after you barrow

it back across the paddock to the dark verandah

where winter finally moves in the shadows

of what you are preparing to abandon.



- Mark O'Flynn 2011



CRUSHED THUMB



Months past the battered blood

growing slowly from the nail


once crushed beneath the physical logic

of a hammer’s sarcasm,


now lifting, the dusty cuticle peels,

a pistachio shell of flaking blood,


xylem beneath, as the mutant nail

corrupts and rises, a smudge of cracked paint.


Long beyond the memory of iron

all trace gone of the original misdemeanour,


the curse, the shaking fist;

the sucked phalange.


- Mark O'Flynn 2011

Vale Bob Gould

News came today of the untimely demise of one of the true legends of Sydney bibliophilia and out-and-out ratbaggery, Bob Gould.

According to the story in one of Bob’s most detested rags, The Sydney Morning Herald (Broadsheet of the Year!), Bob was doing his usual Sunday morning grumble sorting through books at his legendary fire-trap at the top end of King street, Newtown, when he somehow fell and hit his head. He slipped out of our reach before the ambulance could arrive from a couple of blocks away. He was 74.

I remember Bob as a gruff but affable enough chap who would answer any enquiry with an impatient wave of the hand in the general direction of the hectares of books all around him. Not as pretty, perhaps, as Bernard Black, but hatched in the same jar of ether, Bob was a committed left-wing activist to the end, railing against the direction the Australian Labor Party had taken (by which I assume he meant NONE), and just about anything to do with John Howard, including his tilt at the vice-presidency of the International Cricket Council.

Bob’s bookstore, Gould’s Books (the only surviving child of 12), was as idiosyncratic and unyielding as its proprietor, only surrendering its treasures to the truly persistent. But both loom large in my Newtown (read elastic adolescent) psyche, and although a legend passes I know Sydney well enough to sit here perched in my icy mountain aerie shivering but secure in the knowledge that some equally frustrating and inspiring individual will pick up the mantle, if not quite the business model itself.

Rest easy, Bob, wherever you find yourself.

Invitation to This Floating World

You are warmly invited to the book launch of This Floating World by Libby Hart

Saturday 18 June 2011 from 3.00pm

Collected Works Bookshop

Nicholas Building

1st Floor, 37 Swanston Street

Melbourne

Kris Hemensley will launch the book and there will be wonderful music from Sean Kenan and Graeme Newell.

If you are unable to travel to Melbourne for the launch but you are interested in ordering a copy of This Floating World please see www.fiveislandspress.com/newbooks.html to order online or see attached order form to order the old-fashioned way.

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

"A Is for a Shyness"

A is for a shyness that does not speak,
except in prosy rhythms, metaphor,
knowing well the poet cannot contain
the poem, nor the cage the flying sparrow.

E is for every vowel that escapes my mouth;
how can I speak without them, without you?
I is for industry's yearning to turn
solid white paper to sound and writing.

O is for the sun that is my polestar,
that I will follow assiduously
for as long as I can, knowing full well
that I will one day die, and leave you here.

U is for umpteen rhymes that lie frozen,
wrapped in virgin straw for my notes to you.

*****

"The Edge of Space"

I return to these thoughts
alike a dog picking
the more edible of
portions from a man's vomit:

this universe is more
than eyes can catalogue, count
out with tweezers, even
computers, like the grains of
sand in a man's closed fist,

for who can count emptiness
around us, or even
grasp at the slipperiness
of a boundary we
do not even know is hard

or fast, or diffusive
and thick--do we slow or stop
at the very edge of
this universe?--can we say
or even guess at this

matter?--will there be matter
or space?--such questions, such
that I cannot answer, here
in four quintains, and two
quatrains: it is with this, then,

I return to these thoughts
alike a dog picking
the more edible of
portions from a man's vomit.

*****

"Of Songs and Sonnets"

Wandering mind--
let my mind speak to you
about the passing moon,
or of satellites around another star,
perhaps.

If night told rhymes,
these would be mine,
or weren't they mine
to start with?

Listen....

- Phillip Ellis 2011

Author:
The Flayed Man: http://www.amazon.com/
A Harvest: Poetry: coming soon

Editor: AustralianReader.com http://australianreader.com/index.php

Blogs:
Wet Ink for Hungry Minds: http://australianreader.blogspot.com/
The Cruellest Month: http://the-cruellest-month.blogspot.com/

Red Room at the Writers' Festival

You are cordially invited to join the inaugural meeting of the Clubs and Societies project at the Sydney Writers Festival.

The Inaugural Meeting of The Clubs & Societies Project

Sydney Writers Festival

4:00pm - 5:30pm Saturday, 21 May 2011

Pier 2/3 Club Stage, Pier 2/3 Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay

To secure your club seat, RSVP 02 9319 5090 or email tamryn@redroomcompany.org

This is a free event

The Red Room Company Club cordially invites you to attend the first club meeting of our major project for 2011, Clubs & Societies. Poets from across the country will be joining a range of clubs and societies to find out what goes on behind the locked doors of Australia’s clubrooms. The poets learn the cryptic lingos of fanatics and aficionados, and become the poet laureates of these secret societies and cultural clubs. At the Sydney Writers’ Festival, five of these poets will initiate you into their new worlds. After this event, you’ll never look at the rest of society the same way again.

Poets in Attendance

Since Kit Brookman trained as an actor, he's used to being around stars, so we've paired him with the Astronomical Society of NSW. Kit will be packing up his telescope and heading up to their Dark Sky Site, trading commas for comets and ellipses for eclipses.

Nick Keys will be converted into ones and zeroes for his collaboration with Dorkbot Sydney, a group of digital artists, hackers and nerds who do strange things with electricity. He'll be travelling through cables for his appearance on the day.

Candy Royalle on the other hand, will be there in full body and spirit. Candy writes and performs a no-holds-barred, full body-contact kind of poetry, so she's the perfect choice for the rough-and-tumble women of Roller Derby.

Jonathan Hill, a South Coast writer and passionate advocate of social justice and Aboriginal rights, is working with men from Club 2540 in the Oolong House drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in Nowra.

While back in the heart of Sydney, Pip Smith will be sharing stories and verse with the visitors of the Wayside Chapel.

Club President Johanna Featherstone will be calling the meeting to order.

The Red Room Company publishes new poetry by Australian writers, in unusual ways.

Copyright © 2011 Red Room Company, All rights reserved.

5 Poetry Journal

The accomplished poet, Libby Hart, has just launched a great new on-line journal, Five Poetry. I have taken the liberty of posting her editorial for Issue One below. Or click on the post heading to see for yourself.

EDITORIAL

Five (English). A cúig (Irish). Fimm (Icelandic). Cinco (Spanish). Fyve (Scots). Five is the third prime number. Five is the number of appendages on the majority of starfish. Category 5 hurricanes are the most destructive on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. The five basic tastes are sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. The book of Psalms is arranged into five books. Muslims pray to Allah five times a day. The term “five by five” is used in radio communication and indicates perfect signal strength and clarity. The traditional Japanese calendar has a five-day weekly cycle. “Give me five” is a common phrase used preceding a High Five. Ancient Greek philosophers believed the universe to be made up of five classical elements, these being water, earth, air, fire and ether. And five is also the number of poets showcased in this first issue of Five Poetry Journal, a journal that aims to publish up to twenty five poets (in five issues) this year.

The overall look of Five Poetry Journal is plain and unassuming – everything that the poetry is not. The reason for this is because I wanted the words to speak for themselves and to allow a reader to enjoy such poems without distraction. I am absolutely thrilled to include the following five poets in this first issue of Five Poetry Journal. Although style and vision are diverse among this small but impressive group, there is an underlining element that subtly unites and speaks of the human condition, whether it be in high winds, discussing matters of the heart or through wry observation.

John Sibley Williams tackles life sideways most beautifully. Pippa Little writes of legacy, of the personal and sensual. Mary Branley covers the waterfront of grief for an ill friend and reflects on the familial and the landscape in which she resides. Eamon Ó Cléirigh’s raw poems hold a fire of faith and anticipation. His poem, ‘I Am’ echoes Amergin. And lastly, Ian C Smith and his ‘black heart’ wryly comments on memory, mortality and misanthropy.

Welcome to Five Poetry Journal, I hope you enjoy reading the first issue.

Libby Hart



It was great to see mention made of Sydney poet Michael Dransfield in the final episode of the brilliant mini-series on the birth of Cleo Magazine, Paper Giants. It was an admittedly brief cameo referencing the young genius' tragic demise at the ripe old age of 24, but it underlined what a poetic presence Dransfield was at the time. In light of this and the fact that we are around about the 38th anniversary of the poet's death (he died on Good Friday, 1973), I thought I would post a short poem he wrote when he was still in his teens.

Sea

You eat ships

you taste wrong

you isolate and desolate

you are not home to men;

yours is the

subtlest beauty

Michael Dransfield (1948-73)

Come in Spinner

  Despite concerns to the contrary, my comment regarding the inestimable Tug Dumbly being the first poet to bring down a government in this country has borne no more bitter fruit than my good friend referring to himself in a phone message last Friday evening as “Satan here”. Unlike a few of the more earnest and hidebound among us, poets the calibre of Tug understand that Mirth and Muse are two sides of the same coin. For both are symptoms of Fate.

  According to some, it is my fate to be the curmudgeon of Sydney letters. I do not take the responsibility lightly.

   It appears Tug Dumbly’s fate is to be Sydney literati's favourite raconteur while also blessed with two young mouths to feed. He chose to star in a tv advertisement endorsing the current  gambling regime. Flags were waved, beaches stormed, and the sonorous term un-Australian wafted forth over the subtle chink of schooner against tap and punter against Fate.

  Meanwhile, it is the fate of an alarming percentage of our fellow citizens to believe that they can stare down Fate. Their collective delusion has built cities in the Nevada desert and torn the heart out of some of our oldest communities. Whether you lay the blame at the “cargo cult” of the welfare state or the surplus-compulsion of capitalism, or simply pure laziness and greed, it would appear that the vast majority of Australians have had enough. Thus, despite my friend Tug Dumbly’s best efforts and a string of spurious and revealing arguments from the Clubs, the minority Federal government will not fall, at least not on this issue.

  Tip: arguing that it is only the revenue from problem gamblers that keeps alive funding for community groups is as big a Furphy as the burglar I once caught napping in my bed.

  In the meantime, good citizens, don’t hesitate to have a flutter on Two-up this Anzac Day. My father used to say it was the fairest game ever devised.

Latest news on Collected Works Bookshop

Report of Collected Works "reference group"  held at COLLECTED WORKS BOOKSHOP, Saturday 19th March, 2 - 4pm

This particular group of friends included Heather Clarke, Steve Grimwade, Kathryn Hamman, Jennifer Harrison, Libby Hart, Kris Hemensley, Ray Liversidge. There were several apologies; in addition as many other people prefer to be in email contact. My report is going out to this variety of friends of Collected Works Bookshop. In addition it will be posted on the Collected Works Bookshop Facebook page and my Poetry & Ideas blog. (Touch all bases!) Please feel free to send it on.

The non-exclusive nature of this group was reiterated. We consider you all good friends of Collected Works Bookshop.  Long may this remain!

Lots of water under the bridge since the initial rallying to the cause in October, November, December '10.
For one thing, John Hunter's creation of the Collected Works Bookshop Facebook Page has proved an invaluable means of communication, especially for publicising the book launches & readings at the Shop. It's also a reflection of the Shop's tone & colour. Readers, writers interacting with the Shop around events, books & ideas.
And the huge success of the pre-Christmas shopping/raffle/auction/benefit (8th December, '10) is still resonating; e.g., although there wasnt & isnt a debt involved, the sum raised on that glorious night allowed us to begin the new year in a better financial position than for some while past.
The higher rent has now kicked in, so whilst the very necessary restocking of the shelves continues we are keeping an eye on the higher outgoings.

The 8th December event reminded us that in the '80s & '90s, Collected Works Bookshop used to hold a Christmas Party. In recent times we have served Xmas Cake (Sheila Anderson's to begin with, Clementa O'Brien's more recently) & Port in the last couple of weeks of December; but  we feel an actual event should return to our calendar! This is an 'action' for which we're all enthusiastic & will now begin to plan it.

An idea fielded at the initial Friends meeting, at Jenny Harrison's house on the 21st November, '10, was that of a Big Read. Philip Salom & Jenny were its proponents, endorsed by the rest of us. Since then, Ian McBryde has made the same suggestion. We well remember the event organized by Ian & Ken Smeaton,  summer 2003, which celebrated the Shop's successful move from 256 Flinders Street to the Nicholas Building. (It was one of two important community initiatives : the other being the very deep hat Barry Hill sent around to colleagues which was to offset the Shop's removal costs. And how! Barry's original petition graces the Shop notice-board.) At the big read ('read a poem, buy a book') a multitude of poets, across the poetry community, read for their  supper, everyone bought a book, & the Shop catered. It was a great event and might yet be a model again. (Photos of many of the contributors to the event are permanently on view in the Shop.) 

The thinking behind holding such an event acknowledges the ever vulnerable economic reality of such an enterprise as Collected Works Bookshop. It also offers a very simple remedy. As Steve Grimwade reasoned, the $$ figures we're talking about are relatively small. We trust to the average cash-flow continuing, but the injection of a few thousand dollars (via one or two events a year) goes a long way to ensuring the Shop's viability. Naturally we're all aware of the Borders/A & R crash & its reverberations.

At yesterday's (19th March) meeting I was at pains to define & re-present our project. The point about Collected Works is that it isnt just another bookshop (although at a rude survival level it is)!
Collected Works Bookshop survives & thrives today as the expression of an idea articulated in the early 1980s, by a group of Melbourne writers, editors & small publishers, on behalf of & enrolling the support of the writing community, to establish a bookshop which would stock local Melbourne & Australian literature (especially poetry) in a context of world literature. Kathryn Hamman & Libby Hart's specific reference to the current bookshop as reflective of (the) community & important to it, is gratifyingly consonant with Collected Works' original impetus.  
It has always been a writers & readers interjection into the mainstream book trade. The Shop, therefore, is the space where these particular interactions occur : writers with each other (for information & exchange), writers with readers, the small press with the commercial mainstream, local literature with the world.

Collected Works is a special place. Steve asked me what it was Collected Works sought from its organizational colleagues (as it were). Fair question : it's common knowledge now that we were graciously & generously invited to consider relocating to the Wheeler Centre, but declined. Independence is an issue for Collected Works notwithstanding the fact that all of the Wheeler Centre's residents are independent.  For Collected Works, though, a geographical independence is necessary. As supportive as we are of the Centre for Books & Writing, & for that matter, of the City of Literature, Collected Works believes in locational & logistical diversity. Collected Works is its own eccentric self but also a friend, even a potential satellite of & for larger entities like the Victorian Writes Centre, Australian Poetry, Wheeler, MWF et al.
So what we seek is support for the continuing existence of the bookshop assuming the acknowledgment of our historical status & continuing value as a writers' & readers' space. Although it's a fact that Collected Works is mentioned in the UNESCO City of Literature document & referred to in accounts of the contemporary Australian poetry scene, history is often dismissed or forgotten. Believing we're still relevant in this day & age, we'll endeavour to keep Collected Works in mind & in view!

The Shop hasnt had as busy a calendar of launchings & readings for many years as now. Some of this is the result of presses & individuals identifying with the Shop in its hour of need, & some  the serendipity of a normal year. There are three events to come in March, more in May, June, July... (In April I plan to visit family & friends in the UK for a couple of weeks; Retta will keep the Shop open.)

The meetings in future will be occur on a needs basis. Obviously, this can be triggered by the Shop or the commuity. However, email, telephone & personal contact is expected & invited. 

Thank you to everyone for your support hitherto & ongoing commitment.

Love & best wishes, on behalf of Collected Works,
Kris Hemensley    

New Poetry by Jonathan Clare

Writing in The Quiet

If you knew me I'd be a famous man.

Maybe with nothing but at least a friend

if you say goodbye it'd give me a chance to say hello

Because maybe, if you told someone that you knew me

They could know me too

- Jonathan Clare 2011

In The Wild

Students lounging in an air of their own in a bubble a sphere of a world where the population is one but simultaneously everyone.

 Lounging in unconscious content unthinking of anything but the sun and its glare and their squint to protect their eyes and occasionally brushing a hand slowly through their hair.

 Lounging on sandstone created some aeon ago.

 Lounging with their backs to the baroque with their backs to society with their backs to the world and tomorrow.

 Lounging maybe with another but cast off he/she is like some sidekick companion barely even noticeable.

 Lounging with a camera floating and glinting its pink casing away from their face and onto everything.

 What a snapshot.

What a picture to misconceive.

They just snapped a picture of me,

And how beautiful it is to watch the students lounge like reptiles warming blood,

How strange it must seem (vaguely a mist in front of a cloud)

But they caught me with a click and they caught me catching them catching me

Sweetly insidious beings.

Us loungers,

We are the mundane religion

Modestly rebelling against mundane religion.

- Jonathan Clare 2011