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Blue glow

crows crark
over darlinghurst,
we order 
black beer

*

sitting on wet sand 
watching steepling surf,
a huge dirtywater tide
threatens bondi

*

your sudden
and beautiful exit 
frightened me

*

I was going to say
how we took cocaine
and danced, in ultimo,
when we were older 
than we should have been

but it was your funeral,
it was too sorrowful,
now I’m stuck 
with platitudes 
you’d find funny, 
anyway
I can say anything 
in a poem 
you’ll never read
                             
*

artificially overlit
groves of myrtle
staged for you,    
and never televised
(not as if we didn’t try)

the secrets 
you mentioned
on your second last day
are secret still

*

three storms in three hours,
hailstones ripping holes
in the nasturtium leaves.
blackout  -   
using a torch to find a candle 

*


I’d never tell anyone,
but just look at this,
what I’m doing now

daily crumplings

will this
take my mind off things
when
I could simply spend
more and more time
watching tv ?

*

to be here 
knowing you’re not
gets me down

the latest person 
I had to tell
said
‘she was someone
I always thought
I would see again’

*

you’re not around,
you’re only a dream,
always
so anti-sentimental
you drank whisky
after everyone else 
gave it up

*

you loved
the halloween parade song
and the wooster group

our own theatre 
was courageous,
not ‘showy’,
and failed 
its experiment

new york
can wait -
I’m sorry, new york,
you’ll have to wait

*

helplessly,
I placed two perfect
nasturtium leaves
in the card from morocco
and brought them 
to your delirium

*

you read my prose
from over twenty years ago
at your mother’s funeral

the piece that says
‘we don’t die alone’
and that 
‘maybe love
comes to us from the dead’

I decided 
not to read it 
for you

two decades later
I’m not at all
certain of it

*

I’d like to sleep
tonight
all night long
in the blue glow



(in memoriam Jan McKemmish, 1950-2007)

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A reading in memory of Jan McKemmish

On Saturday November 29th at 3pm

Jean Bedford
Pam Brown
Michael Hurley

Gallery Courtyard
University of Technology Sydney
Broadway


Part of Creativity and Uncertainty Conference
For a map of UTS click here

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listening to

Soul singer, a family member of the great Staple Singers (known as ‘God’s greatest hitmakers’) Mavis Staples visited Australia for Womadelaide in March this year and showed that she is still singing strongly at 68 years of age. I bought Mavis Staples’ 2006 version of Curtis Mayfield’s soundtrack from the 1977 film A Piece of The Action from a wonderful music store in Richmond, Virginia a few weeks ago.



Barky’s Spirituals at 18 East Broad Street, Richmond stocks every spiritual and soul album under the sun - from Clara Ward's gospel singers, Paul Robeson, Mahalia Jackson, Curtis Mayfield, Ray Charles, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson etc etc etc - you know - everybody on Stax, Tamla Motown, Philadelphia International and subsequent soul-gospel recording companies. Barky Haggins, the proprietor, said that he'd been in business for over fifty years. Barky’s has a plain, undecorated interior but the CD racks and stacks along the walls are a treasury of wonderful music.





                       Barky Haggins, the proprietor


(dear deleted, remember, click on the images to enlarge them)

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            Adam Aitken launching True Thoughts

Thanks to everyone who came along to the booklaunch at Gleebooks and, afterwards, to the pub yesterday afternoon. It was a really nice way to see the new book of poems on its way into the reading world. To read Adam Aitken's launch speechette, click here

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A reminder that you are invited to celebrate
the publication of my latest book of poems, True Thoughts,
at Upstairs at 49, gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd., Glebe
on Saturday 15th November at 3.30pm.
To be launched by Adam Aitken.
For further information click here.
Everyone welcome

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Ceci n'est pas une oeuvre d'art,
c'est une alarme au Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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On his blog, Graveney Marsh, Laurie Duggan recently wrote a post titled author author - comments about Australian poets writing collaboratively.
I'd like to respond with a few notes on my own experience of collaboration and in that way correct Laurie's information on the chapbook Correspondences (published 30 years ago).

I first began collaborating with other writers in the theatre, writing group-developed scripts for the Lean Sisters performances throughout 1977.
       Water Show poster & photos from The Leans Lurch Left        and The Crunkboonk XmasShow, Lean Sisters, 1977 A year later, Correspondences, published by Tom Thompson's imprint, Red Press, (in 1978) wasn't a collaboration at all - it was a shared book. At the time Joanne Burns and I were both writing poems as letters to friends, lovers and, in my case, to punks and rock stars like Patti Smith. Tom published each set of poems back to back. A photographic centerfold by Micky Allan separated the sections. Micky and I screenprinted the book's title in various colours on the cover at the Tin Sheds Art Workshop.        Centerfold : Joanne Burns and Pam Brown with boys' toys - 31 years ago in 1977 My next actual collaboration was with the musician and composer Elizabeth Drake. These were short pieces of text accompanied by sound composition on audio tape, piano and saucepan lids. Under the title And That Is Very Interesting, (taken from Gertrude Stein), we performed them at Bondi Pavilion Theatre as part of Futur*Fall, a conference centering on, and visited by, French theorist Jean Baudrillard in 1984. We later performed the pieces again in the Writers' Tent at the Adelaide Festival for the Arts as part of a small series of performances called Miss The Opera House Lights in 1984. After that, I collaborated with Amanda Stewart, (the sound poet who had performed with us at Futur*Fall), and Carol Christie and Jan McKemmish on compiling montaged texts for voices. We performed Professional Mourning By Generic Ghosts at the University of Technology Sydney, The Return Of The Dead I. Modes of Goo in 1986, at Writers In the Park, at the Harold Park Hotel in Glebe. (The title 'Modes of Goo' was appropriated from Meaghan Morris) After Amanda and Carol moved back to their individual projects, Jan and I continued with the montage process and wrote As Much Trouble As Talking performed by the actors Eva Sitta and Katrina Foster, with sound by Elizabeth Drake, lighting by Lee-Ann Donnelly, directed by Helen Grace and with a collaboratively-designed set, in a season at Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney in 1988 and later edited for national radio broadcast on the ABC's The Listening Room in 1989. Jan and I then spent three months as playwrights-in-residence at The Performance Space and developed two scripts Short Term Ideas and The Entire World Is Where It Is in 1989 (each performed as one-offs at The Performance Space).                                                 Poster by Jan Mackay I think I have sought "community", or, at least, a kind of like-minded "scene", throughout my writing life. In Adelaide in 1982 Sasha Soldatow and I formed the Bon Mot Gang in anticipation of a potential issue at the forthcoming Adelaide Festival Of The Arts. And, of course, there was an incident of censorship that gave the Bon Mot Gang a platform of protest in the Writers' Tent. Our protest and a report on the act of censorship made the front page of the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper the following morning. In 2002, the Oahu, Hawai'i-based poet, publisher and academic, Susan Schultz and I compiled a long poem called Amnesiac Recoveries for our Department of Dislocated Memory for the web site International Corporation of Lost Structures. We sent each other poetic sequences via email and would build the poem as we continued. Our different writing styles are quite evident in that poem, but our similarities are in the political concern. I think the book Let's Get Lost that Laurie mentions in his piece, is less a collaboration and more a correspondence. (emailed letters and poems sent from separate and distanced locations by myself, Ken Bolton (a long-time wonderful collaborator himself - with John Jenkins - see author author) and Laurie Duggan to each other over a period of six months in 2003). But my recent collaboration farout_library_software was a definite collaboration. The poems came together in series of lines, bit by bit, accumulating and continuing as a process via email over 18 months. A year after the poems were published by Susan Schultz's 'Tinfish Press' I finally met up with my Seattle-based, cyber-collaborator, Maged Zaher, in Washington DC in late October 2008.                                  Maged Zaher, Washington,DC October 25th '08 In poetic collaboration, just as in theatre or film making, you sometimes have to suspend your attachment to what you might have thought was one of your best ideas for the sake of the smooth concurrence of the task at hand. And a note - thanks Laurie for representing my sonnet at the Reality Street book launch That was very generous.
please note, dear visitors to the deletions that you can visit links by clicking on the darker grey text within the post and that you can enlarge the images by clicking on them

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Invitation to a Booklaunch

Salt Publishing
warmly invites you to celebrate
a new poetry collection
by    PAM BROWN




























to be launched by
ADAM AITKEN

Saturday 15th November
3.30 for 4pm
at
upstairs at 49
gleebooks
49 Glebe Point Road
Glebe
Sydney    rsvp 9660 2333

Everyone Welcome

To read a sample from the book visit Salt Publishing

Available from Gleebooks
Also available online from Salt Publishing
and, yikes, Amazon UK & US

Distributed in Australia by Inbooks

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Only thirteen days until the vote in the USA. I attended a rally where Barack Obama spoke to around 12,000 people at the Richmond Coliseum here in Richmond Virginia this morning. If the reception of the crowd is any measure - he'll win the Presidency.

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Arriving at Robin's Bookstore in Philadelphia,Sunday,October 19th
(Photo by Jozef Zurawski)




CA Conrad mastering the ceremonies of the poetry reading.
(Photo by Pam Brown)


Attempting to adjust a very fuzzy microphone before reading from 'True Thoughts'
(Photo by Jozef Zurawski)



Magdalena Zurawski reading from her precise, breathlessly paced poetic first novel 'The Bruise'.
(Photo by Pam Brown)


Ron Silliman reading sections from the 1,062 pages of his recently published collected poetry, 'The Alphabet' (including a wonderful poem for Larry Eigner).
(Photo by Pam Brown)

Brief reports on the reading by two gracious poetry bloggers Geoff and Jacob.

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Before & After - Place Riopelle, Montréal getting all steamed up



I am currently reading poetry two or three times a day (and night) in Trois-Rivières, Québec. I will be reading in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania next weekend on Sunday, October 19th. Anyone who`ll be in Philadelphia please click here for further info.



         Hotel window - en l`automne, le simulacrum est fermé pour la saison
         to ``riff`` on Susan Howe, as the US poets might say.

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.

Invitation to a Booklaunch

you are warmly invited
to celebrate
a new poetry collection
by    PAM  BROWN



























to be launched by
CARL HARRISON-FORD

Saturday 20th September
2.30 for 3pm
at
Hat Hill Gallery
3 Hat Hill Road
Blackheath
(See Map for Directions)

refreshments will be served
everyone welcome

---

grateful thanks to
gleebooks at Blackheath
Hat Hill Gallery
Société Jamais-Jamais

To read a sample from the book
visit Salt Publishing

(Sydneysiders please note -
True Thoughts
will be launched again
at gleebooks
in Glebe in November)

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two upcoming art exhibitions

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Excellent News

The Sydney-based literary journal Southerly
has appointed Kate Lilley as poetry editor.

         Kate Lilley with Kenward Elmslie’s Sung Sex at his Sydney reading in 2005

Kate Lilley's first book of poems, Versary (Salt Publishing, 2002)
won the Grace Leven Prize. Her second keenly anticipated collection Ladylike, is forthcoming from Salt. She teaches feminist and queer literary history and theory at the University of Sydney and has published widely on poetry and poetics. Her edition of Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World (1666) is published by Penguin Classics.

For more on Kate Lilley click here
To read my review of Kate’s book Versary click here

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Today I received some very sad news from Michele Cahill, the editor of Mascara Poetry : 'Some of you may know that on Sunday morning our dear friend, Tatjana Lukic, who had been suffering from a brain tumour, passed away, peacefully.'

                             Tatjana Lukic (foto by Karen Bachelor, 2003)

Tatjana Lukic was born in Croatia. She graduated from the University of Sarajevo in philosophy and sociology, and worked as a college teacher, poetry editor and sociologist/researcher in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and the Czech Republic. In the 1980s she published four books of poetry in the former Yugoslavia, and won several national awards. In 1992 she arrived in Australia with her young family as a refugee from the Balkans war. On her arrival here she did not speak English and described writing poetry in English as "one of the hardest and most challenging things" she had accomplished. Tatjana lived in Canberra where she worked as a researcher for a government department, and from where she wrote and translated poetry. Her publications include (Poetry Collections in Croatian): Saslusanje (Nolit, Belgrade, 1988), Izbor (Mali katalog poezije, Osijek, 1985), Sta sutim (Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1984), Povijedanje, zacetak poja (Matica srpska, Novi Sad, 1981). Her poems have been published in Thylazine, Famous Reporter, Poetry Without Borders, Gangway and many others. Her book la, la, la , written with the assistance of a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council, is forthcoming with Five Islands press in 2009.

I corresponded with Tatjana and knew her as a gracious, enthusiastic, frank, witty and bright poet. Her presence on various online poetry discussion lists was refreshing and always stimulating. With other poets in the former Yugoslavia, she was compiling a bilingual collection of Australian poetry.


TATJANA LUKIC
25 August 1959 - 10 August 2008
Loving mother of Jelena,
Much loved by Jelena, Jovan
and her many friends.

A Service for Tatjana will be held
at 11am, on Monday, 18 August, 2008
in the Chapel at Woden Cemetery.
Burial will follow in the Lawn Section.
After the funeral, Tatjana's friends are welcome to gather for light refreshments at the Common Room at University House at the Australian National University (Liversidge St, Acton).

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The Reality Street Book of Sonnets
was recently released in the UK


Contributors: Robert Adamson, Jeremy Adler, Tim Atkins, Ted Berrigan, Jen Bervin, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Christian Bök, Sean Bonney, Ebbe Borregaard, Jonathan Brannen, Pam Brown, Laynie Browne, Thomas A Clark, Adrian Clarke, John Clarke, Bob Cobbing, Clark Coolidge, Kelvin Corcoran, Beverly Dahlen, Ian Davidson, Edwin Denby, Laurie Duggan, Paul Dutton, Ken Edwards, Michael Farrell, Allen Fisher, Kathleen Fraser, William Fuller, John Gibbens, Harry Gilonis, Giles Goodland, Bill Griffiths, Alan Halsey, Robert Hampson, Jeff Hilson, Anselm Hollo, Lyn Hejinian, Piers Hugill, Peter Jaeger, Elizabeth James, Lisa Jarnot, Keith Jebb, Justin Katko, John Kinsella, Philip Kuhn, Michelle Leggott, Tony Lopez, Chris McCabe, Steve McCaffery, Jackson Mac Low, Richard Makin, Peter Manson, Brian Marley, Bernadette Mayer, Jay Millar, David Miller, Peter Minter, Geraldine Monk, Harryette Mullen, Philip Nikolayev, Alice Notley, Abigail Oborne, Ron Padgett, Bern Porter, Frances Presley, John A Scott, Tom Raworth, Peter Riley, Sophie Robinson, Stephen Rodefer, Maurice Scully, Gavin Selerie, Robert Sheppard, Aaron Shurin, Eléni Sikélianòs, Simon Smith, Mary Ellen Solt, Juliana Spahr, Lawrence Upton, Carol Watts, Ian Wedde, John Welch, Johan de Wit, Geoffrey Young.

And the thing is, there’s a really good deal on postage right now -
free postage & packing until the end of August 2008 on this title (surface mail outside of Europe). Visit the Reality Street
web site to order and to read a review and an introduction to
this rich anthology, edited by Jeff Hilson

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Read my review of Miriel Lenore's poetry collection in the garden in Cordite Poetry Review.

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This is a detail from Micky Allan's engraved glass, polymer resin and pastel painting, Solar Dust II, from a wonderful exhibition called Inner Weather that just closed at the Tin Sheds Gallery in Sydney last weekend. But you can find out more about Micky Allan’s beautiful paintings by visiting her new website

Micky Allan and Steenus Von Steensen are exhibiting their collaborative works The Fall of Night I-IV, (2008 inkjet prints on paper), a montage of Canberra’s night skyline, lake and bush textures, that one reviewer described as "a Pink Floydesque shiver
of apprehension", as part of The Fall of Night: A Group Exhibition at Helen Maxwell Gallery, 42 Mort Street, Braddon, a component
of Vivid, the National Photography Festival, currently showing
all over Canberra.

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Virginia Coventry has an exhibition coming up in Melbourne
later this month



Also in Melbourne :

'Nightladder' exhibition opening (featuring work by Angela Gardner, Lisa Pullen, Gwen Tasker) and a book launch 'holding Job's hand',poetry by Louise Waller and images by Clyde McGill. Published by Angela Gardner & Kerry Kilner's light-trap press, this is the first of their limited edition, fine quality books combining original prints and poetry in an equal partnership between art forms.

at Firestation Print Studio,
2 Willis Street, Armadale
It will be opened by Peter Christoff
6.00 pm - 8.00 pm. Friday 22nd August.

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