The famous Lee Marvin reading series in Adelaide continues to captivate the cultural hearts of South Australian poetry lovers.
The readings are on every Tuesday night.
Click here for the upcoming June program and for further information (like where to find them).


                Lee Marvin - "you can relax outside with a smoke during the break"

---

If you haven't heard the resounding clamour of brou ha ha over the Australian photographer Bill Henson's censorship by the New South Wales police force then you won't know why I'm putting this poem on the deletions. You might enjoy reading it anyway. I wrote the poem five years ago, in 2003 in Rome, Italy, when I was living in the Australian poets' studio. Although by no means an extensive analysis, the 'problem' considering Bill Henson's photos and advertising comes quite late in the poem, so, if you're interested, bear with it. The poem, No action, first appeared in Let's Get Lost published by Vagabond Press in May 2005 and will be included in my Salt book True Thoughts, forthcoming in August this year. To see some of Bill Henson's recent photos click here.
I am opposed to censorship.

No action



 humidity’s lassitude 

                    makes me feel

that I should 

               return immediately

                       to Sydney

    & join a group to

                  combat complacency,

BE political, be GREEN,

           remembering all that

     little-johnny

                            -rhetoric  ;

what did

            the Prime Minister think

he was doing 

         when he began to preface

everything he said

                        with

         ‘generically speaking’ ?



		*



but here am I

       for half a year,

(only five months to go)

                   inactive, remote,

yet,

         in touch !              via 

BBC World Service

               short-wave radio,

France 2 TV (tv we can

                              understand,

unlike 

     the well-known-to-be-loony-cliché

  of Italian tv).  

on BBC    World Service World Today

              I hear how 

littlejohnnyhoward

                 ‘walks on water’

                          for the ‘Australian public’

       despite   ‘many cock-ups’,

     and then ..



                    begin this poem

with 

     “I’ve been reading

                       a biography of

          Samuel B. Beckett”

  (his ‘B’ 

           being for ‘Barclay’

           being my ‘B’ too,

                                          maternally, Scottish) (this is

                            incidental, but, incidentally,

                                Beckett is (was) & I am

                                                             also Huguenot )

   

                                      he says ( in 1940)         that he lives

                                                        ‘fatalistically’

                             that politics is useless, 

                                                         & talking politics, worse.

                              he’s right,

                                               I drop my fervour.

                            



               			*



I have taped

                a photo up -

   early C20, earlyish -

                         a man in a suit

     and hat 

               (that dates him)

frozen mid-air 

                       mid-leap 

                 like his dark reflection, 

caught 

           in a huge lakelike puddle, 

    a wooden ladder,

                             three metal barrel hoops,

a pile of other stuff, lumps of dirt

       or coal, maybe, 

                              left lying there,

and a pile of stone

                         arranged in a corner

of the tall wrought iron fence –

     near a huge wallposter

 of Baltic dancers or acrobats,

                where another man, in an overcoat,

 figures     and  is reflected 

                                    passing beyond the fence

                in black & white

                                    or selenium.

          I think it’s      Gare St Lazare



		*

          

‘around the corner’

                    sings Willy de Ville,

still hoping to meet an angel

   around the corner

          in 1983 – (retro even then)  -

I listen to him, one of my favourite

                                       rockers,

in the poets’ flat in Rome

                          in 2003      

    around the

                      oleanders,

         oath dreaming,

I swear to you

                    like Al Martino,

but I think

               I missed Mars’ 

 60,000th year return,

                 that light in the night sky

may have been it                or a satellite

   or media craft,

                         and now

there’s too much helium

                    in the big U.K. balloon

      and its rising’s

                            cancelled.

a little blue hot-air balloon

     rises daily

         over Villa Borghese

or thereabouts,

      from the kitchen window

                           vantage



		*



Ken has sent 

       a poem-as-catalogue-essay

      about

                     Peter Black,

                  a New Zealand photographer,

where he compares Bill Henson ,

                                loosely, or, indirectly -

yesterday, I read  

    (someone called) Andy Grundberg’s

notification 

            of Lux et Nox    ( and there

I can hear

             Aussies,     

       Les Patterson & like-voices,

                                         phonetically

- lucks ett nocks),

                     the coffee table 

  Bill Henson.

            Andy says Bill’s pictures

     set up a narrative

                        that fails,

the ‘haunting quality’ (heard that

                  expression ?)

of the pics

     isn’t ‘dimmed’     but     the ‘viewer’

is ‘left’

          with

‘a nagging sense of having revisited

             an old Calvin Klein ad campaign’



       –        this     in  Bookforum,

    Artforum’s book quarterly.

          (not that I’ve ‘visited’

                      too many Calvin Klein ads -

   except on the railway station

                waiting for the train

 to take me in my job’s direction,

and the billboard 

                    the bus passes

           at the top of 

                  William Street, King’s Cross)



I’ve never 

                enjoyed ‘haunting qualities’

and I’ve never liked the pictures –

               Bill Henson’s

      nor the Calvin Kleins.

 you can buy

     those CK underwear copies 

in the nightmarish

    Sunday flea market

                   here on via Portuense,

one of the oldest roads,

    imperial 1st century A.D.,

             entering Rome.       it’s  like

Parramatta Road -     only narrower -

    for the tumbrils, chariots

                                             & Smart Cars



but there’s also

                 a vicarious 

nothingness -is-commerce

                    in that soft-focus slickery

     in the Hensons.

             Calvin Klein ads

are  overtly

                       to-be-expected  -

gym & anorexia  combo



		*



then Samuel B. Beckett

        forwent

                the apolitical and became active,

dangerously, in

the resistance &, later, in the maquis

                          against the Nazis.

not fighting for ‘France’,

             fighting for his friends’ liberty



     a person,

any artist or poet 

           could only hope 

                     to be as 

          courageous as

                                or, at most, as definite

---