The Great Big Show

For the past year I have been poring over books and maps and unpublished diaries and digging deep into my troubled soul in an attempt to piece together some sort of narrative thread set against the tragic events in East Africa between 1914 and 1918. I am pleased to announce my efforts are at an end and that those who wish can assay the results for a nominal fee by clicking on The Great Big Show post heading. The work has still not been finalised and obviously does not have an ISBN, but you are more than welcome to buy a draft paperback if you are so inclined. Downloads of the complete story are going for US29c, paperbacks for slightly more, although that is withouth Susie Bower's fantastic cover art. All the same it may fetch a bit on ebay one of these days when paper is truly short. Future of the planet aside, it really is about me now and I would welcome feedback from poets and historians about anything but me (but mostly the book at the post heading).

Writing and Society

The Writing and Society Research Group is pleased to present the first in its 2007 seminar series -

Samar Habib On Female Homosexuality in the Middle East

Friday 9 March2.00-4.00pm

Bankstown campus Building 1, room 1.2.36

Samar Habib, author of the forthcoming book Female Homosexualityin the Middle East: Histories and Representations, discusses the writing and research for, as well as the cultural and political import of, this new work.

Subsequent seminars in the series include:

23 March Ivor Indyk, The awkwardness of Patrick White

20 April Ross Gibson, The idea of repletion in crime-scene photography

4 May Glen McGillivray, The Osama Show: theatrical metaphor resurgent

18 May Paul Sheehan, Thomas Bernhard's art of excess and renunciation.

All on Fridays, 2.00-4.00pm Bankstown, Building 1, room 1.2.36

THREE HOURS

I have been used to adoration

only at night.

The quiet, the soft

places of thought and response,

analysis and even temper.

An extended road where focus is rewarded,

challenge is invited and fulfilled.

But now I have seen you twice.

Two early mornings,

leaving me drained,

a broken clock without function.

I have turned

around

to face the day.

Three hours earlier

and the world is new,

smelling the new smells,

greeting the starkness of green and blue

where before were grey and silver.

Now I can see you

and not be broken.

My hours are open and

I will have patience

for your confusionand your stealth,

the strength of your desire for love

that strangles your ability

to accept it.

I will repeat my offer

with the sun for my sponsor,

disarming you

with sunburned smiles

and strong brown arms

like your own,

easing the transition

from a non-committal twilight

to a fierce noon.

- Jason Monios 2007

Jason Monios lives in Edinburgh. His publications include Acumen, Poetry Scotland, New Writing Scotland, nthposition, Umbrella and The Guardian.

New Poetry by Joel Deane

BOOK OF NUMBERS

Should I find something more
than a number—

a name that might have been;
a word that might remain

once the name has left a scar—
I will whisper it

to a world that will not listen.
A world worn out by words.

I will repeat it for this brevity
the damned call eternity.

I will give it life.

- Joel Deane 2007

MIDTOWN

If you encounter a man
wearing no shoes

selling mini-umbrellas

- six dollars a piece
- ten dollars a pair

Something is falling.

- Joel Deane 2007

Joel is a Melbourne-based poet and novelist whose poetry has been published in magazines such as Antipodes, Australian Book Review, Overland, Quadrant, Meanjin, Cordite and Famous Reporter. His last book was Subterranean Radio Songs (Interactive Press, 2005).

New Poetry by Jane Williams

Churches of the developed world

(a partly found poem)

to light a candle

drop any coin into the slot

(more coins may be required

for longer prayers)

on medical advice

communion is to be made by

receiving the bread only

(salivation is to be kept

to a minimum)

not in use

the alms box owing to recent

forced removal of padlocks

(bag checks now operate

in this church)

under electronic surveillance

you

(and you and you and you ...)

-Jane Williams 2007

Begging the question

who worries over this woman

fingering you are my sunshine

on the piano accordian

squat as an invalid's breakfast tray

above her outsized lap

tack suited against the swank

of the common wealth bank

when she reaches the end

she knows to start over

hour after hour

this music by numbers

this empty chocolate box
open for business

its heart shaped lid

inviting payment for services

and begging the question

- Jane Williams 2007

New Poetry by Wayne H.W. Wolfson

Leviathan

A storm, bad ideas and urges. Lightening, blinding silver-purple flashes.
On the line next to the forgotten laundry, a neighbor’s chimes buffeted by the wind. A novice playing a frantic song too fast.
I hate this too, but would be lost without its familiarity. Buildings sway, the sky darkens further, I join in singing the refrain.
The storm.
Flashes of lightening, the final beating of a dying leviathan’s heart, lights up the sky. Blinding silver, burnt ozone offering. I sweat copper, it makes you happy.
Despite how jumpy the thunder makes you, I can not stay awake.
In my sleep I felt a bite. I know it is just chemical. We were holding hands as if, like Sunday.
The city is all decay and late night secrets. That is mine.
Desire, cash, gloom and retreat. A kingdom whose demise is announced in-between thunder claps.

- Wayne H.W. Wolfson 2007

Call for Submissions

I haven't forgotten my threat to start posting excerpts from my verse novel, so poets and poetry lovers consider yourselves on notice. Just click on the "email me" tag in the top right hand corner and submit anything up to five poems, a 1000 word comment or review in the body of the email. NO ATTACHMENTS PLEASE. I have a very good turnover time, and that applies to most things I do. Probably why I haven't got a girlfriend...Anyway, be that as it may I see no reason for not submitting something. The worse you will get is silence, as I won't comment on subs unless I can see some way of working with the author to make them more suitable for posting under the Bluepepper. There are no payments and thus no guidelines.

Seasons Greetings

In keeping with the Christmas spirit, Shane Warne, history's greatest leg-spinner, has given the Test batsmen of the world an early present by announcing his retirement from the game at the end of the Sydney Test Match. To those of you from non-cricketing nations (my condolences), Warney is a kind of antipodean Babe Ruth whose ability to outfox batsmen has enthralled millions of us for the past 14 years. His departure, though premature in my opinion, will at least bring back some equilibrium to a game utterly dominated by the Australians for more than a decade. God bless you, Warney, and thank you, but may no team gain such ascendancy over the Noble Game again.

The Stinging Fly

Some of you may be wondering what I've been doing since my last posting. Well, amongst other things I have been savouring the delights of Irish literary magazine The Stinging Fly. Although it won't interest those who only read things they are in, this admittedly Celto-centric little mag is my find of the year. After a previous issue devoted solely to the fine art of the short story, the current issue returns to the bubbly mix of poetry and prose from many of the leading lights of Irish letters. Special mention needs to be made here of Kevin Barry's story Last Days of the Buffalo, one of the finest pieces of short writing I have read in years. The editors appear to be a lively crew obviously in love with the job who are always hunting around for international contributors (yes, that means you dear reader). Click on the post heading to see how you can get hold of a copy. Subscriptions are ludicrously cheap. I promise you won't be disappointed.

Giramondo Press

Late last year Giramondo published three collections of essays by distinguished Australian authors - Gerald Murnane's Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs, Beverley Farmer's The Bone House and Louis Nowra's Chihuahuas, Women and Me. Together with John Hughes' award-winning The Idea of Home: Autobiographical Essays, published the previous year, these four collections form an impressive series.


For this Christmas, they are offering all four titles at a price of $75, including postage. That's a big slice. Or, if that's too big a bite at once, any two titles for $40, or three titles for $60, including postage. That's Nana's sponge plus the sherry!

Either email your order through the links on the post heading (ie click the big words north), or follow whatever nineteenth century prompts they chose to still display.

For information about other Giramondo titles, please click the big words, also. Or not.

We believe you until we doubt you.

New Poetry by Jane Williams

Political poem

this is not a political poem I don't write political poetry
about banda aceh and inappropriate tsunami
aid like boxes of breast implants wigs fur coats
or the fight for east timorese independence the subsequent
donation of buses too wide for the narrow roads of dili
too expensive to run for longer than a joy ride left to rot
this is not a political poem I don't write political poetry
about one size fits all campaign speeches
promises self fulfilling as a five o'clock shadow
suits climbing the ladder corporate or social it doesn't matter
to people wearing next to nothing trying to divine water from rock
this is not a political poem I don't write political poetry
about the price of petrol or a family holiday to alpha centauri
ski slope cheek bones bee sting lips
the colour of poverty the weight of guilt by omission
my enemy's enemy is my friend and what's mine is yours
but don't worry
this is not a political poem I don't write political poetry

- Jane Williams 2006

Jane Williams' most recent collection of poems is 'The Last Tourist' (Five
Islands Press 2006). She lives in Hobart,Tasmania.

New Poetry by Elizabeth Webb

Gifts

The intricate, filigree traceries left by a wave on wet sand
The round, curled, sweet shape of a shell
Filled with the sea's whispers and quiet roaring.
The crisp, new smell of an unopened book
With pages unthumbed and not yet
Softened by the wandering eye.

The satistfying, strong push
Of feet against pedals
And the whirring, zooming,
Flashing world, free-wheeling
And swooping down the beckoning path.

The tang of salt against skin
And cool green water buoying up
Bodies, closing a shimmering
Canopy over dripping heads for a moment
Before they burst back through
To the crash of spray and blue sky.

The brush of long grass against bare feet
And the solid, sweating, rippling, rolling body
Of horse beneath me
A ride along a road overgrown
With wild plants and creeping weeds
In gathering dusk and a pale moon overhead.

Clear voices ringing out old songs
To welcome in the Christ child
The press of hot bare legs together
In faded shorts
The golden smell of flowering silky-oak
A threat of dry, fragrant smoke
And the chortling noisy-friar bird
Black bald head bobbing
In the windy tree-tops.

The comfortable, square shape
Of a wombat trundling along
An early morning walk, unafraid.
A prickling of echidna spines
Potruding from its shallow hiding place
A confusion of mad black choughs
Bustling and pecking and chirring
And chatting softly
As they pick through the fallen leaves.
The high mournful call of currawongs
Circling and landing on a waiting branch
The hard blue of the sky, the sifted dusty soil.

The whistling flash of a wood-duck's wing
A flotilla of black swans with wax-red beaks
Honking like lost souls as they drift into the shore.
The warm wet startle of a dog's lick, the delicate dry
Touch of a bird's feet
As it sidesteps along an arm.

The glimpse of a smile, an uplifted eyebrow
The lowering of lashes, avoiding eyes, outstretched fingers
The fine skin behind an ear
And the secret whiteness of a soft exposed belly
The drying splash of tears, flowing growing lines
Of good talk and full silences
A bubbling spring of laughter
And the lilt of a known voice.

All these things I gather in a box of dreams
And leave it open, quietly
At your waiting feet


- Elizabeth Webb 2006

Elizabeth is an undergraduate student at ANU in Canberra.

Black Inc.

Black Inc. November Events

The Best Australian Essays 2006 edited by Drusilla Modjeska
The Best Australian Stories 2006 edited by Robert Drewe

The Best Australian Essays 2006 contains life and travel stories, explorations of art and politics, that will illuminate and divert. Not only does each essay stand alone as one of the best of 2006, new editor, Drusilla Modjeska has created a collection that maps ‘…something of the rhythm of our concerns and thinking at this moment in time’.

In Best Australian Stories 2006, one of Australia’s most acclaimed authors, Robert Drewe, edits this best-selling series for the first time. Drewe has put together a sparkling, often surprising, collection. This is the perfect book for catching up with the best short work that our fiction writers have to offer.

Celebrate the release of The Best Australian Essays 2006 and The Best Australian Stories 2006 with the editors and contributors to both collections.

Venue: Gleebooks, 9 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe
Date: Thursday 16 November 2006
Time: 6:30pm for 7pm
Cost: $9/$6 conc. gleeclub welcome.
Bookings: Through Gleebooks- please call Ph: 02 9660 2333 or visit www.gleebooks.com.au

For further information on Black Inc. please visit www.blackincbooks.com

New Poetry by Coral Hull

Unified Field Theory


You are my unified field

where a billion flowers

shine like the stars

and turn into butterflies.




I observed your formation,

like an angel, through monitors,

gravity defied by wings

and past theories deconstructed

into a trillion summers.




You are my unified field,

of collapsing wave functions

in years measured by light.

We enter the reality

of each other in particles.




You are my constant evolution.

Your fundamental existance

falling through my senses

into more and more abstractions

until fields lift into flowers.




Systems are only created

to house our dreams.

We are conscious participants

observing our place in a story

with awe and reverence.




The dawn is a point of creation,

in an ocean of potential

where the beginning is a song

where a butterfly wing

becomes a flower petal,

where an atom or a molecule

is the potentiality

of a shared existance

from a single point of love.


- Coral Hull 2006

New Poetry by Libby Hart

Between

Tolstoy walked out into the snow.
Chekhov may or may not have had champagne.
Sylvia Plath neatly folded a dishcloth in the oven for her head.
Tchaikovsky tried drowning himself, only to stand hip deep
in the Moskva River.
Shelley was more successful, heading straight into a storm with a copy
of Keats in his pocket.
Miklós Radnóti buried his poems in his pocket before someone buried him.
Virginia Woolf had faith in the rock that held her down in The Ouse.

* * *

In the silence,
the car has already turned for Sebald
the cancer already taken Brodsky
the ocean already swallowed Hart Crane.

In suffering,
Rimbaud nurses his bad leg
Jane Austen reflects on her illness
Mary Wollstonecraft insists on bravery.

In the darkness,
Henry James writes invisible words over a bedspread
Keats undergoes his long final nights
Eugene O'Neill waits to die in a Boston hotel room.

In rapidity,
Pushkin falls from the bullet
Marlowe bleeds in Deptford
Hemingway places the gun to his head
while the Brontës drop away
like pearls from a broken necklace.


- Libby Hart 2006




Darwin's Walk

Nobody traipses anymore.
No one lingers over a spot
thinking for 20 years about origins or earthworms,
no one bothers to clock up over 20,000 circuits
contemplating the world.

Each grain of sand, a time capsule
mulled over now by gravel for tourists
who stay awhile
and walk the bended edges of Darwin's imaginings,
just past the kitchen garden and the meadow.

I think imagination needs to be curved.
It has to be full and rounded.
There's no point in narrowness,
it is thin-aired and has its limits.

Bending carries laterality
and room for improvement,
an endless cycle of preoccupation.
Circles are for dreamers

Straight lines, on the other hand
are for middle men
for men in suits,
for bitter wives.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity seems doomed for revision
but Darwin's theory still stands up, more or less
160 years after telling his wife to open
the bundle of papers in the event of his death,
binding its shame in ribbon.

Containing it like a toxic secret
until its guilty knowledge flowered from competition,
allowing polite women to utter the word ape
for the first time in relation to ourselves,
speaking in whispers so as not to upset the servants.


Hierarchies climb and crumble like radiation
each set of rules or animal
replaced by another, and another
like time and the notion of substance.

Walking each day
step after step,
one foot in front of the other.
Murmuring the world,
grasping it slowly.

- Libby Hart 2006



Inheritance

Maybe Samuel Beckett was right,
maybe the tears of the world exist
as a silent relay, circling the earth.

I impart.
My next door neighbour follows,
wearing her tears like jewellery.
They are large, misshapen pearls

And like the ancient Greeks
she'll collect them -
each and every one of them,
to bury them deep inside herself.

Each time is different:
small and barely noticeable
pooled at the lid -
blinking, blinking to remove

Or a heavy stream flowing
along the bridge of nose,
crossing the lips
circling, becoming a slick of salt.

And the relay expands into kilometres
through states and borders,
onto atolls and bridges
and dry land.

And again, there is someone
who will follow the line,
who is picked for the flood.
An inheritor, with an urgency for tears.


- Libby Hart 2006


The above poems will appear in Libby's first collection "Fresh News from the Arctic" to be launched in Brisbane on the 5th of November.

The Muse has Sprung

5th Australian Poetry Festival: Between!

September 1-10, 2006

The Australian Poetry Festival (APF) is a significant biennial program of stimulating readings, panel sessions, discussion and debate, organised by the Poets Union to engage poets and the public in poetry and poetics. The program has grown from a largely Sydney-based event to a national program of parallel events.

The Poets Union committee, members and supporters present a diversity of programs in their own states and regional areas. While the national and regional programs are growing steadily, the Sydney base remains as strong as ever with major festival presentations, one-off readings, and a vibrant mix of local, regional and interstate guests.

APF is also a time of celebration for the Poets Union with the announcement of major awards, the release of new publications, the finals of Poetry Slam competitions and more.

APF was first held in 1998. In some years there is a festival theme, for example, Burning Lines in 2001 and Ngara/Listening in 2004. APF was held during National Poetry Week (NPW) in 2004 and this year is presented as a joint Poets Union and NPW initiative, cementing the relationship between these two major events on Australia's poetry calendar.



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5TH AUSTRALIAN POETRY FESTIVAL:

BETWEEN!
September 1-10, 2006
Third-time APF Director, Martin Langford, announced in March that the theme of this year's 5th APF is Between! 'The 5th Australian Poetry Festival: Between!, will explore interactions, responses and collaborations.

'5th APF: Between! will build on the successful collaborations component in '4th APF: Ngara, which generated some exhilarating and original cross-art works. We expect the Between! theme to result in a bigger range of interactions and collaborations - between poets, between poets and arts practitioners, between poets and other fields, between communities and between states.'



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ANNOUNCEMENTS
Confirmed guests in the major Sydney program include:
John Batts, Judith Beveridge, Margaret Bradstock, Bravo, Colleen Burke, Joanne Burns, Michelle Cahill, John Carey, Jess Cook, Jenni Doherty (Ireland), Stephen Edgar (Tasmania), Dan Eggs (Ireland), Brook Emery, Carolyn Gerrish, Alan Gould (Canberra), Phillip Hammial (Blue Mountains), JS Harry, Gordon Hewitt (Ireland), Rosemary Huisman, Jill Jones, Gorica Jovanovic, Tom Keily, Nora Krouk, Dang Lan, Martin Langford, Kery Leves, Yve Louis (Armidale), Kathryn Lomer (Hobart), David McCooey (Melbourne), Chelley Mclear (Ireland), Chris Mansell (Berry), Gabriella Mehedinteanu, Miles Merrill, Lizz Murphy (Binalong), David Musgrave, Norm Neill, Jenni Nixon, Esther Ottaway (Tasmania), Sheryl Persson, Claire Potter (Perth), Craig Powell, Brendan Ryan, Jaya Savige (Queensland), Michael Sharkey (Armidale), Jutta Sieverding, John Sheppard, Jutta Sieverding, Peter Skrzynecki, George Szirtes (England), Maureen Ten, Tom Thorpe, Helen Turovic, Louise Wakeling, Simon West (Melbourne), Les Wicks, Libby Wong, Fay Zwicky (Perth).

The Loft at 105

Celebrated poet and ethnographer
Nathaniel Tarn
reads from his poetry

Prizewinning novelist
Steven Lang
reads from his fiction

The Performance Space, Room 105
UTS, Bon Marche Building 3
Cnr Harris & Broadway

this Thursday 24th August


Nathaniel Tarn is well known both as a poet and as a translator (most particularly of the work of Pablo Neruda), and as an innovative publisher. He was the founding editor of Cape Editions in London in the 1960s and of Cape Goliard Press. He has taught at the Universities of Chicago, London, SUNY Buffalo and the New Mexico Institute of Amerindian Arts. Till the mid-80s he was Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Rutgers. He lives in New Mexico where he now writes, edits and researches full time. His main books are "The Beautiful Contradictions" (Random House); "A Nowhere for Vallejo" (Random House); "Lyrics for the Bride of God" (New Directions); "The House of Leaves" (Black Sparrow); "Atitlan/Alashka" (Brillig Works Press); "Seeing America First" (Coffee House Press); "Views from the Weaving Mountain: Selected Essays in Poetics & Anthropology" (University of New Mexico Press, 1991). "A Selected Poems 1950-2000" (Wesleyan University Press) came out in 2002. A new collection of poems, "Recollections of Being" (Salt Modern Poets) came out in London in 2004.

Steven Lang's first novel, "An Accidental Terrorist", was released by UQP in October 2005, and awarded the UTS Award for New Writing at the 2006 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. It was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize (for best first book). As a manuscript the novel won the 2004 Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best Emerging Author. Lang's other work includes a play, "A Strong Brown God", "The Mary River Diary", which was performed at the Metro Arts Theatre in Brisbane in 1996, and several short stories, published in anthologies and literary magazines.

New Poetry by Megan Boyd

the elephant sits


the family hesitates

there's a large dent in the sofa

it's the place where

the

elephant

sits

the young child knows its there

no-one seems to notice


- Megan Boyd 2004

Megan works as a freelancer autocue gal in Adelaide's film/video market and is about to start teaching sandstone sculpture at the WEA. She has also done two bookcovers for UniSA publications, one of which won the 2005 Chancellor's Award. Megan lives outside Adelaide CBD with her young daughter.

Goose Step

Even for the London Sunday Times (which for mine is little more than a tabloid in tights with its legs spread), the report on German poet/novelist/activist Gunter Grass' confession to being a member of the SS in the dying days of WW2 struck this blogger as a little shrill in both tone and take. I have managed to leave the article in question on a peace bus somewhere, but if memory serves me the word "hypocrite" cropped up a number of times. As did the phrase "bleeding heart" once or twice.

I, too, am disappointed to witness an ageing public figure turn on a penny like this, but then once I had clambered out of the spiritual mire otherwise known as the 1980's (and my 20's), I realised I was also greatly disappointed by one of Grass's last great testaments, The Rat. It is a polemic in the worst sense. I flicked through it recently and felt a blush of shame and wry nostalgia, a bit like flicking through an old stack of Playboy magazines.

I agree with the (anonymous) Sunday Times journalist that the crime here is not the renowned author's membership of what was by 1944 a mere shadow of the SS that held all of Europe in thrall for 44 long months, but that Gunter Grass saw fit to become the conscience of post-war Germany without coming clean about his part in the war until he had reached an age (octogenarian) and time (the world has moved on from the suffocating paradigm that drove his writing) where it seemed the only "senisble" thing to do. Once again I sniff book sales and a cynical manipulation of the media by people whose closest brush with a book was their last drink driving charge.

If you live long enough you will be shown up for the joke we all are. That was the central message I took from much of German post-war literature, Tin Drum included. The world was born yesterday, just a little older than our dreams. It is we who are old, because it is we who measure time, who sort the good from the bad, the dead from the dying. Perhaps we are too ready to forget what it must have been like for those born in the time just before us, or perhaps we are tired of hearing about it while the petty criminals of our own time are left to run riot. Whatever the case may be, it is certainly still the case that the noble often die unnoticed while the craven die with an audience.

Where do we go from here?

it is a strange bird
this world

whose habit is
to fight itself

whose left wing
and right wing

tear themselves
bitterly apart

both on the side
of justice and violence

and whose great beak
gobbles the poor

- Michael Dransfield 1972