I’m travelling to Canada with a big bundle of poems translated into French by Jane Zemiro. Jane was occasionally assisted on details by French friends Daniel de Rudder of Nîmes and Loire Valleyites Danielle Fauth and Luc Martin who came to dinner at our place a few nights ago and happily ended up fine-tuning some of the translation during the nightcap hour.

I'll be participating in the ten-day-long Trois Rivières International Poetry Festival in Québec, then to Montréal for a few days. The last time I was in Québec it was summer. I wrote a poem that was a kind of inaccurate report on Montréal for a younger Australian poet, Cassie Lewis. This time I’m hoping the city will be toned golden with autumn. I’m also aiming to write a few lines for poems in these northern cities.

And it looks like I’ll just have to be there to experience more, more, more of capitalism’s implosion and a carnival of election bumper-stickering, so thence to Philadelphia, Pennysylvania where I’ll be reading at Robin’s Bookstore with Magdalena Zurawski
and Ron Silliman, courtesy of CA Conrad.

Then I'll travel down to Richmond, Virginia to read poetry at the University of Richmond, hosted by Brian Henry.

And then to Washington, DC to visit some museums and meet up with Maged Zaher, with whom I co-wrote farout_library_software.

I’ll spend a day in Los Angeles checking out the star-studded boulevards on the way home.

À bientôt mes amis.

I’ll be back here at the cyberface in early November.
Hope to see you at the Sydney launch of True Thoughts at Gleebooks
on Saturday arvo, November 15th

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                                                               detail from a photo by Trish Davies

It was an enjoyable book launch last Saturday, attended by a bright group of Blackheathens, a sizeable sprinkling of mountains residents from a little further south and a straggle of Sydneysiders. Here is a picture of Carl Harrison-Ford saying the things he liked about reading True Thoughts. Click here and scroll down to read Carl's speechette.

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A reminder - come along to the book party at Hat Hill Gallery in Blackheath for my just-released collection 'True Thoughts' (Salt Modern Poets) on this coming Saturday afternoon. For directions, times, information click here

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The famous Lee Marvin reading series in Adelaide continues to captivate the cultural minds of South Australian poetry fanatics.
The readings are on every Tuesday night.
Click here for the upcoming October program of luminaries and legends, entry fee, times and location.

                Lee Marvin - "I always enjoy these poetry readings - they're so captivating"

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Listening to



This is a beautiful album of hymns by the 16th century Tudor composer Thomas Tallis, arranged and played here by Andrew Robson (alto sax), accompanied by three other Australian jazz musicians - the amazing Sandy Evans (tenor & soprano sax), trombonist James Greening and double bass player Steve Elphick

By evening, I prefer a more bluesy tone in religious music so, as the sun goes down, I’ve been listening to the sultry, mellow, funky soul of Tina Harrod’s new album Worksongs.

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'Twelve Canoes'
a great new web site in Yolgnu and English
                                click here

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I’ve been scanning some old poetry book covers for my revamped web site. My very first book was a pocket-sized publication printed in clandestine, at night, on offcuts in a big offset printery in Melbourne where a budding-publisher friend of mine worked during the day. It was called Sureblock, a word that had come to me in a dream. The cover image was a detail from a picture by Maurits Escher. The little book was 12cm x 16cm. On the title page - a nicely anarchic instruction to ignore copyright and the first page carried a dedication to two outlaw cowgirls and a quote from Antonin Artaud that I often find myself agreeing with to this day, thirty six years later.