Bob Arnold's southern Vermont-based press Longhouse currently has a "lost" and then found booklet by Lorine Niedecker available. It's called Homemade Poems. It's edited by John Harkey and published by 'The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative'. John Harkey says-

My zeal for textual knowledge in this case drove me to seek out Homemade Poems in the New York Public Library's Berg Collection of English and American Literature, where the book is held as part of Cid Corman's papers. Encountering the book that day — spending time reading its poems in just the form Niedecker had so deliberately inscribed and arranged then — immediately stirred in me a conviction that the textural production itself, in some form or version, deserved a much wider readership, a life outside of the archive.

You can enquire about obtaining a copy by emailing poetryATsoverDOTnet. Read further about Lorine Niedecker and view photographs and some of her rare paintings by visiting Bob Arnold's blog A Longhouse Birdhouse.

(For over forty years Longhouse has been producing poetry books, chapbooks and pamphlets by many, many poets including Carol Bergé, Gerard Malanga, Rosmarie Waldrop, Maurice Scully, Cid Corman, Joseph Massey, Janine Pommy Vega, Thomas A Clark and Tom Clark, Theodore Enslin, Ian Hamilton Finlay and so many others, and, in 2010, a pamphlet of my own poems, Sentimental).

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Coming up next week -

Melbourne Poetics Research presents:
A Ken Bolton Day
at Monash University, Thursday 21st June
Click here for program.

Plus:
Collected Works Bookshop presents:
Friday 22nd June at 6pm

John Jenkins and Ken Bolton launch their latest collaboration, Lucky for Some. Already have a copy? Lucky you! But come along anyway. The two authors will read from Lucky for Some plus a favourite each from their nine other co-written books, including Airborne Dogs (1988), The Gutman Variations (1993), Nutters Without Fetters (2002), Poems of Relative Unlikelihood(2005). John Jenkins is a Melbourne poet. Ken Bolton lives and works in Adelaide, and has hardly ever read poetry in Melbourne. As for the pair reading together from their collaborations, this is very rare indeed!

Wine & nibbles.
Everyone Welcome!
at
Collected Works Bookshop:
Nicholas Building, Level 1,
37 Swanston Street,
Melbourne

For more on the chapbook click here.

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No future ..

and some small jubilation down my street in Alexandria, Sydney ..

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This is such a great birthday greeting. I have to post it. It's my birthday today and it's Agnes Varda's, Emperor Renzong of China's, American rapper Big L's
Thirtieth of May - enjoy the day.

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                               Vale Michael Callaghan

Michael Callaghan, the artist behind the iconic If the unemployed are dole bludgers, what the fuck are the idle rich?, has died at his home in Exeter. In 2009 he was the recipient of the Nugget Coombs Creative Arts Fellowship. Michael was a founder of Redback Graphix in Wollongong and spent some years making brilliant posters in Sydney at the Tin Sheds, Sydney University's art workshop.

Back in 1978 I wrote and worked on a film, Cattle Annie,
directed by Gill Leahy in which Michael played a street punk -

       PB, Michael and Doco on location,1978 (photo by Micky Allan)

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Next Tuesday in Adelaide :

australian experimental art foundation
& Dark Horsey Bookshop present:

THE LEE MARVIN READINGS
Convened by Ken Bolton

The new writing performed
Every Tuesday in May
Dark Horsey Bookshop
EAF, Adelaide
7.30 for a prompt 8pm start.
Price $5

TUESDAY May 22

LEE MARVIN IN AN EVENING WITH LOU COSTELLO
Aidan Coleman * Kerryn Goldsworthy *
Steve Brock * Pam Brown *

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And even more - Coming up in May

UWA Publishing presents

Kate Lilley
Ladylike

to be launched
by Pam Brown

Friday 11th May
5:30 for 6:00 pm
at the Common Room
Level 4
Woolley Building A20
Science Road
University of Sydney

The publicity says :
Ladylike is Australian poet Kate Lilley’s much awaited second volume of poetry, following her 2002 debut Versary (Salt Publishing).

The title poem of this collection (‘Ladylike’) draws on pamphlets associated with the notorious case of the bigamist Mary Carleton, who was executed in 1673, and texts contemporary with it; women from Sigmund Freud’s case studies provide the material for the series of poems, ‘Round Vienna’; and the poem ‘Cleft’ is dedicated to Kate Lilley’s mother, Australian literary giant Dorothy Hewett.

Throughout this collection, Kate mines the areas of her scholarly specialisation – the early modern period – as well as contemporary popular culture and matches it with some of the twentieth century’s enduring interests such as psychoanalysis and Freud. Ladylike is a valuable addition to Australian poetry at large and will be of interest to readers of poetry, early modern history, Freud and early psychoanalysis.

Pam Brown says :
Kate Lilley's trim poems linger in thresholds between the material world and otherworlds of slippage and undersound. Women and girls - strumpet, slattern, coquette, rubbermaid, princess - wayward, proclaimed, scandalous, diminished, wronged - are recovered and redeemed. In the dolour of grief, mother and daughter coalesce imperceptibly and mourning is immense. Ladylike loves language literarily. Kate Lilley is a mistress of adverbs and discrepancies. She adroitly melds the seventeenth century with the nineteenth and the twentieth, with its cinema classics and Freudian psychosexual dreams and neuroses, into the televisual synthetics of the twenty-first. These poems are compelling and exquisite.

Kate Lilley was born in 1960 and grew up in Perth and Sydney. After completing her PhD on Masculine Elegy at the University of London she spent four years as a Junior Research Fellow at Oxford University. Since 1990 she has taught feminist literary history and theory at the University of Sydney and has published widely on early modern women’s writing and contemporary poetry. She is the editor of Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings. Her first volume of poetry, Versary, was published in 2002 and awarded numerous prizes internationally.

For further information click here

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More - Coming up in May

THE LEE MARVIN READINGS
Convened by Ken Bolton

The new writing performed
Every Tuesday in May
Dark Horsey Bookshop
EAF, Adelaide
7.30 for a prompt 8pm start.
Price $5

#1 MAY 1 LEE MARVIN IN AN EVENING WITH LOU REED
Linda Marie Walker * Cath Kenneally * Shannon Burns * Gretta Mitchell

#2 MAY 8 LEE MARVIN IN AN EVENING WITH LUKE ALTMANN
Christine Collins * Nicholas Jose * Rachael Mead * Rory Kennett-Lister

#3 MAY 15 LEE MARVIN IN AN EVENING WITH LOU DIAMOND PHILLIPS
Ken Bolton * Steve Brock * Lauren Lovett * Carol Lefevre

#4 MAY 22 LEE MARVIN IN AN EVENING WITH LOU COSTELLO
Pam Brown * Aidan Coleman * Kerryn Goldsworthy * Stephen Lawrence

#5 MAY 29 LEE MARVIN IN AN EVENING WITH LE LOUP GAROU
Jill Jones * John Jenkins * Chelsea Avard * Mike Ladd

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Coming up in May

    Giramondo Poets present

    Kate Fagan
    First Light

    to be launched
    by Pam Brown

    on Sunday 6th May
    3:30 for 4:00 pm
    at Gleebooks
    49 Glebe Point Road
    Glebe, Sydney

    RSVP: (02) 9660 2333

The publicity says: First Light observes the details of the world with curious and restive attention. It explores the threshold between things and words, seeking out places where music and language are equal in charting human experience. Some poems sample from other writers to create new works, often as gifts for friends. Some meditate on the tipping point between poetry and prose, or revisit established forms, such as sonnets and love letters, to stage a conversation between poetry and song. Alongside these more experimental sequences is a series of discrete lyrics, ‘Authentic Nature’, which responds to specifically Australian habitats – political, cultural and ecological – while asking about the role of ‘nature’ in poetic writing. First Light is a book of sonic discovery, philosophical insight and formal playfulness; a precise study in the music of thought.

Kate Fagan’s previous collections of poetry include The Long Moment and return to a new physics. Her poems have appeared in major anthologies, newspapers, journals and on ABC TV. An acclaimed musician and songwriter, her album Diamond Wheel won the National Film and Sound Archive Award for Best Folk Album. She lectures in literature at the University of Western Sydney.

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Shearsman Books in the UK has published another extensive selection of the indefatigable, inimitable Ken Bolton's poems from 1975 to 2010.

To read a sample from the book and for further information click here.

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                       thursday arvo. Sydney Park

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Here is a link to the penultimate poem in Kevin Davies' book and below, a copy of the paper I presented on it at The 'short takes on long poems' Symposium in Auckland, New Zealand/Aotearoa on 29th March, 2012. Below that you'll find the slides used in an accompanying power point - made as a diversion for the listening audience.(Click on the text documents' titles for a full screen version).

Duckwalking but No Guitar
Here are the slides -
Duckwalking a Perimeter Slides

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short takes on long poems
Auckland and Waiheke Island, Aotearoa-New Zealand 28-30th March 2012

          Poets gather on Waiheke Island to inscribe poems on the sands of Oneroa Beach

I've uploaded an album of photos of the symposium and the extras here.

                         Rachel's grid for 'Drafts' (with Kate Lilley)
Renowned US poet and critic, Rachel Blau du Plessis, crossed the Tasman Sea to visit Sydney yesterday. She had been invited to present her reflections on the long poem and her own practice in writing 'Drafts' at the University of Sydney. This was followed by a reading of her poetry and, later, dinner in Chinatown.

You can see some photos of the Sydney occasion here.

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k a  m a t e  k a  o r a
a new zealand journal of poetry and poetics

A new issue of ka mate ka ora focusing on the myriad facets of poetry translation was launched in Auckland last Friday. It includes articles by Laurie Duggan, Jack Ross, Jacob Edmond, Cilla McQueen, Jane Zemiro and others. Read the journal here.

                     The editor, Murray Edmond, launching 'ka mate ka ora' in Auckland

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Poetry reading in Auckland to begin the Poetry Symposium,
short takes on long poems.

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Anyworld, a pocket book selection of ten poems.
Published by Flying Island Books in February 2012.

For further information or for copies of the book email the publisher - macaustories@yahoo.com

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A poetry symposium coming up in Auckland, New Zealand at the end of March - short takes on long poems (click on the symposium title for program & info | plus, here is a link to Duckwalking a Perimeter, the poem I'll be presenting - for anyone who's going to NZ).

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In An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, originally published in France (Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien) in 1975, Georges Perec notates the comings and goings from a couple of cafes, a bar tabac and a bench in Place Saint-Sulpice over three days in October 1974.

Georges Perec reading the accompanying book as he listens to Richard Wagner's 'Ring Cycle' in 1972 (photo by Christine Lipinska).

Here is a short extract from the book-

Small poodle-type dog.

A sort of double of Peter Sellers, with a very pleased expression on his face, walks by the cafe. Then a woman with two very young children. Then a group of 14 women coming from the rue des Canettes.

I have the impression that the square is almost empty (but there are at least twenty human beings in my line of sight).

A postal van.

A child with a dog

A man with a large "A" on his sweater

A "Que sais-je?" truck: "La collection 'Que sais-je' a réponse à tout [The 'Que sais-je' collection has an answer for everything]"

A spaniel?

A 70

A 96

Funeral wreaths are being brought out of the church.

It is two thirty

A 63, an 87, an 86, another 86, and a 96 go by.

         Georges Perec in 1976

On her blog When Is A City, Christina Juhlin selects some quotes from Georges Perec on writing urban and ordinary life here.

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more from paris

                                         Mina Loy, 1917 (photo by Man Ray)

Mina Loy wrote two pieces on Gertrude Stein. A few decades ago now, I read Gertrude Stein in The Last Lunar Baedeker, a selection of Mina Loy's writings edited by Roger Conover and published by the North American poet and photographer Jonathan Williams' press The Jargon Society, in the UK in 1982. You can find that lengthy piece here.

              Cover of 'Stories and Essays'. Mina Loy,1905 (photo by Stephen Haweis)

Now, in Stories and Essays of Mina Loy edited by Sara Crangle, published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2011, there is a shorter piece on Gertrude Stein. Mina and Gertrude met in Florence sometime around 1910 or 1913, and became friends. This piece is Mina Loy's introduction for Gertrude Stein (originally written in French) for a Paris salon run by US expatriate Natalie Barney in 1927.

Please click on the images to enlarge them. (The French original follows the English translation). Please excuse the wonky pages.

                                          Mina Loy, 1957 (photo by Jonathan Williams)

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