Monday, December 05, 2011

New Poetry by Ivan Jenson













Sweeping generalities
(under the table)

Just because
everything
is falling together
doesn’t mean
it isn’t falling
and just because
everything
is coming together
doesn't mean
it can’t come apart
so I am going
to go through with
my obligatory
responsibilities
with white trash
panache
and allow myself
to be midwifed
into mid-life
and then
I will party
crash the pearly
gates
with my
never-said-I-was-a-saint
VIP pass
which I stole
from Paul
to give to
Peter


- Ivan Jenson 2011



Undercurrents

The small chill
that runs up one’s back
and blows through
the stark naked branches
of these trees in the boroughs
where the bread winner lives
and the toaster burns
the bread
his wife planned to
sweeten with jelly
as the kids rush
to the bus like
a school of little
kisses and under
their winter caps
a list of secret wishes
to grow up and out
of the house with
the broken dishes
and those angry exchanges
about Daddy
and the pretty sitter
or mom’s lost dream
of being an archaeologist
where she might have
uncovered the happiness
she has lost
like an Aztec treasure


- Ivan Jenson 2011


Ivan Jenson’s Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and Interview magazine. His art has sold at Christie’s, New York. His poems have appeared in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Camroc Press Review, Haggard and Halo, Poetry Super Highway, Mad Swirl, Alternative Reel Poets Corner, Underground Voices Magazine, Blazevox, and many other magazines, online and in print. Dead Artist, a novel by Ivan Jenson is available at Amazon.com in paperback and as an eBook for the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook, and on Google's eBookStore.




Friday, December 02, 2011

New Poetry by B.Z. Niditch








RIMBAUD'S TIME AWAY

Snow kisses
even in the desert
alphabet of words
on your foreign tongue

the sun consumes you
by a ripened earth
a revolver
by blank pages

an exile
as all oppressed
with inquisitive
olives

overlooking
pictures
and long prayers
of the departed.

- B.Z. Niditch 2011

B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher.

His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review,; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest); Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others.

He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

New Poetry by Howie Good










IT’S A BATTLE

1 Bull Run

Everything you do
with a horse,
Buck says in the movie,
is a dance.

Think of horses
with blood streaming
from their nostrils

lying on the ground
hitched to artillery guns,

the sad wind blowing
on a city afternoon.

2 Fort Donaldson

General Grant stands
knee-deep in blue grass.
Cows disturb his sleep
with what may be a smile.
There’s a haze between him
and the rest of the world.
You’re right, he likes to say,
if you think you are.
He entertains the troops
in camp with shadow puppets
that otherwise reside
in the cracks and crevices.




3 Shiloh (Day 1)

The kinds of books I write
aren’t the kinds of books
I like to read, carts loaded
with the groaning wounded.
Tonight we’ll water our horses
in the Tennessee River.
The stars will be hard to see.

4 Shiloh (Day 2)

First light lost its hat
in the sudden start.
No one stopped
to pick it up,
the sun like a pond

turning red
from the blood
of the men killed
and wounded
around it.


- Howie Good 2011


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection, Dreaming in Red, from Right Hand Pointing.

New Poetry by scott-patrick mitchell









he dances like a presence
                      for stee

long limbed & oranging, he
ribbons ceilingward to fall
profound, tumbling, ground
expectantly opens geodesic
arms, eager to embrace his
impact

. his legs catch him
, thighs tight as though a
lover he is riding for dear
life

. which is what mortality
offers: hymning the holy
grace calves speak via
pointe & prancing

. the
stars tell him to follow
them: home, they say
, is the destination you
return to once weary or
broken or have had your
hearts made wide sky
open

. in the meantime
, silk ties around his
alabastering. tights &
eyes bright, he charms
hope to give him the
scope to make gasps
occur in every world
he visits

.

- scott-patrick mitchell 2011

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis









What Truly Never Ends (for Clare)

I keep wanting to begin these sonnets
with "Time is like..." and so forth. Suddenly
it seems less amusing than wearisome
to me, as if I cannot think about
anything other than this theme, this one
never-ending refrain of story. This
is what it is like for me, echoing
so softly, like cat purrs in hollow rooms.

But what truly never ends for my mind
are the echoes of your name in my room--
the word 'fern' reminds me of your country
for one thing, and ferns are etched in my mind--
and I can't stumble around in my head
without these joyous reminders of you.


- Phillip Ellis 2011


Waitomo (for Clare)

In a certain land, in a certain cave,
glow-worms breathe blue light into the darkness
over the water, and having seen them
suspend their filaments, and set their lures
for whatsoever may fly nearby, also
having seen their constellations, I know
that this certain cave, in this certain land,
is nothing short of beautiful, like you.

I have not dreamt of comparing you
to these glow-worms: you do not emit their light
in the darkness, rather, when it is night,
you are as a constant pole-star in skies
that this mariner reads as he travels,
marking his charts with sonnets, villanelles.


- Phillip Ellis 2011


A Villanelle for Clare

For I would write a villanelle
for you, O Clare, alone and sweet,
for you, as sweet as any bell

that ever rang, and I'd write well
with rhythm fair, and tripping feet,
for I would write a villanelle

that would delight to make you swell
with happiness, that is complete
for you, as sweet as any bell

I've ever heard, from birds in dell
or church in Armidale, for, Sweet,
for I would write a villanelle

for you alone, as well as tell
the world your songs are fair and fleet,
for you, as sweet as any bell,

I would but write, not terzanelle
nor rondelet nor ode complete,
for I would write a villanelle
for you, as sweet as any bell.


- Phillip A. Ellis 2011


Author:
The Flayed Man: http://www.amazon.com/
Symptoms Positive and Negative:
https://sites.google.com/site/symptomspositiveandnegative/
A Harvest: Poetry: coming soon

Blogs:
The Cruellest Month: http://the-cruellest-month.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

New words and pictures by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Pastis

My drink, a spoon. I do not know why it was there. I wave it, which didn’t seem right. A prop, the play somebody forgot to stage.
The glass tapped. Shimmering circles, limpid greens, Degas, giving up a secret.
Regardless the force applied, it always starts at the edge.
Varied rhythms. Salome, her veils, backed by a Bop quartet.
No good without your dance.
Falling, the sound of tin, the spoon kisses table.


- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2011


Orange Action Bag (watercolor) by Wayne H. W Wolfson



To Leave

It was my last night here. She had gotten me all kinds of things I could not take with me, to do so would have been a pain in the ass. I think she knew this and wanted to test me.
A bunch of bottles which would surely break en route and flowers. I don’t know what she expected me to do with those, carry them cradled in one arm as if I had just won a pageant?
There was something about them which rubbed me the wrong way, despite their bright colors. This too she knew and every time she ran out to get some last minute ingredient for dinner she would return with more.
On the table a green glass vase of Jasmine. The exoticism of its perfume gave me nightmares, dying under an alien sun. Slow waves of heat rolling off of everything, having indulged in every sensualist impulse.
She kept waking me up in the middle of the night, making me roll over onto her. In the morning I was tired, which would make my trip seem quicker for being done in a half daze.
At the last minute she manages to get me angry, pulse quickening, I am now awake.
I kiss her good bye and do not say anything to ruin the moment.
One train, all the way into another country, where I will catch a plane out of Heathrow, cutting an ugly gash in the sky as I head home.
A client had been unable to pay and had settled the bill by giving me their expensive tape machine.
I liked it but soon I too would have to hawk it. After all, I needed to eat and there was always new records coming out to add to my collection. I noticed one tiny pink splotch of nail polish on the machine’s underside.
Back home I listen to the tapes we had made, sometimes sitting at a table in the zocalo. Hearing them now, after the fact I get new shades of meaning from some of the things we both had said.
Re-listening, our words and the intent behind them, how sprite like they had danced around over the course of several rounds of drinks.
Far away and removed from all that, there is the odd sensation of listening to two actors reciting lines and lies which I had written on commission.
The lies I tell myself, always stopping before the final act, leaving only one lone voice to solo.


- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2011




Fortnight in the Country (Watercolor) by Wayne H. W Wolfson



Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Calling all Poets



Spring has come to my mountain and I am in the mood for poetry. Bluepepper is fairly ecumenical in its tastes, but even we need rules, so make sure you check the submissions guidelines in the sidebar before submitting. 

Monday, October 31, 2011

New Poetry by James Piatt









The Oaks Trees’ Voices

I hear the memories of
Oak trees’ summer voices,
Theirs is
A woody whispering language;
Their words
Fall like brown leaves
Upon my soul,
Their
Acorn verbs float in the wind
Curling around
Drooping trunks,
Their nouns oaken, and
Sturdy,
Their crusty adjectives wind around
Protruding knots, and
Twisted, crusted limbs,
Their mossy adverbs
Swift as a gale,
Lift me
To heights,
Far above,
My wandering
Winter thoughts.
Then in the threshold of
The icy season,
The brisk winds, swiftly,
Denude the voices
In preparation for the
Long winter, and
The crushing snow, will
Blunt the voices
Until the wakening of
Spring, and
Then new voices of
Blossoms, will
Bring emerald poems
And rhythmic songs of
Praise,
To my yearning
Winter thoughts.


- James Piatt 2011




James earned his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, and a doctorate from Brigham Young University. He has had one hundred and sixty four poems published in dozens of print and electronic poetry magazines, journals and anthologies; Tower Journal, Contemporary American Voices [featured poet], Long Story Short [featured poem], Vox Poetica, Pens on Fire, Word Catalyst Magazine [featured poet], Kritya: A Journal of Poetry, Taj Mahal, and Phati’tude Literary Journal [Interviewed poet] are just a few.

Monday, October 03, 2011

New Poetry by Benjamin Dodds











My Sky

Sometimes at 3 in the morning
there’s nothing I wouldn’t give
to see an ovoid capsule
settle with an almost inaudible thrum
on Downstairs Lisa’s immaculate lawn
just below the bedroom window
of my first storey Petersham flat.

When I’m in that mood
I’d even settle for a did-or-didn’t-it-happen
flickering-out of my private patch of stars
that might have been caused
by the silently passing magnetic swell
of something slow and immense across the sky
but it’s only the knowledge
that this will never happen
that lets me enter the sleep
of these uneventful nights.


- Benjamin Dodds 2011

Monday, September 26, 2011

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. 

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

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.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

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

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

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.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

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?


Wednesday, July 20, 2011

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.




Monday, July 11, 2011

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.

Friday, June 24, 2011

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.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

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.
Clubs and Socs Website

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

Thursday, June 16, 2011

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.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

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

Monday, May 23, 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.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

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.



Wednesday, May 11, 2011

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/

Friday, May 06, 2011

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.

Thursday, May 05, 2011

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


Wednesday, April 20, 2011

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)

Monday, April 18, 2011

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.