To see some photos from the MCA talks on Sunday 28th June click here and for information about the event, read on -


today’s young appreciators
(my dream a drink with John,Pam & Vicki)

      Elizabeth Allen    on   Vicki Vidiikas
      Tim Wright         on   Pam Brown
      Keri Glastonbury   on   John Forbes

In this event, three young Australian poets will pay homage to the work and influence of three major poets who were working in the 70s and beyond, and who feature in the exhibition.

Elizabeth Allen is a Sydney bookseller and poet. Her essays and poetry have been widely published in Australian magazines and journals. Her chapbook, Forgetful Hands, was published by Vagabond Press in 2005.

Vicki Vidiikas was a well known poet around Balmain in the late 1960s. Her experiences in the heady world of dope and sex in Sydney and India were the materials of much of her sharp, knowingly sapient poetry. She took chances in both her life and her writing. Vicki's 1974 collection of prose pieces, Wrappings, revealed her as one of the most talented poets of the decade. She died, at the age of 50, in 1998.

Keri Glastonbury is a poet and lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle and is the poetry editor of Overland magazine.

John Forbes was a true original. Although his output was modest it was intense, deft and often funny. His poems probe Australia's cultural and political place in the world, often via art. He founded Surfers Paradise magazine. Forbes' considerable influence and the 'luminous hum' of his brilliant poetry is greatly valued in Australian poetry. He died suddenly, at the age of 47, in 1998.

Tim Wright collaborates on editing When Pressed, an online journal,(whenpressed.net), and writes an occasional blog (swimswam.wordpress.net)

Pam Brown's first poetry book appeared in 1972, her sixteenth, Authentic Local, is due out in 2009. She has been active in publishing, screenprinting, rock music, theatre, film and the web. A stalwart of that disorganised band, the leg-pulling opposition in Australian poetry, Pam was poetry editor of Overland for five years and is now associate editor of Jacket magazine.(jacketmagazine.com)


         Vicki Vidiikas in 1974

         John Forbes, mid-90s



         John Forbes, poem & video art at MCA, 2009

         Pam Brown, four books at MCA, 2009

    Micky Allan : draft print for cover of Pam Brown's
   'Country & Eastern'


Avoiding Myth & Message:
Australian Artists & the Literary World

Free entry

Museum of Contemporary Art
Circular Quay,
Sydney

Sunday June 28, 2.30pm

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             Scroll down to the previous post for the MCA event on Sunday June 14th                 and to see photos from it click here

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Hear the curator of this exhibition, Glenn Barkley, in conversation with artist Christopher Dean, on Sunday June 14th at 2.30pm. At the MCA. Plus readings from Rudi Krausmann, Joanne Burns & others. A free event. Further info here.



Later on the same Sunday, June 14th at 6pm
the launch of George Alexander's new book Slow Burn
at upstairs at 49, gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe
further info here

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ka mate ka ora



k a   m a t e   k a   o r a    # 7

May 2009       www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/kmko

The New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc) is pleased to announce the seventh issue of Ka Mate Ka Ora: A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics, with a special colloquium feature

*   1,000 Words or a Picture: Could Poetry be a Contemporary Art? A ka mate ka ora colloquium with contributions by Pam Brown; Martin Edmond; Sue Fitchett; Brian Flaherty; Tony Green; Paul Hartigan; David Howard; Lesley Kaiser and John Barnett; Jan Kemp; Richard Killeen; Cilla McQueen; Selina Tusitala Marsh and Tim Page; Ann Poulsen; Jack Ross; Lisa Samuels; Helen Sword; Fredrika van Elburg; Ruth Watson and Albert Wendt

*   Paul Millar, Interviewing Hone Tuwhare at Kaka Point, 3 December 2007. With photographs and audio

*   Ian Wedde, Mahmoud Darwish 1941-2008

kmko is edited by Murray Edmond with assistance from Michele Leggott and Hilary Chung at the University of Auckland, and with the support of a team of consulting and contributing editors. It publishes research essays and readings of New Zealand-related material and welcomes contributions from poets, academics, essayists, teachers and students from within New Zealand and overseas.

for information click here.

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Censorship doesn't go away - to read Elizabeth Farrelly on the Sydney Writers Festival's censorship of the UTS student journalist newspaper click here (from the Sydney Morning Herald)

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Astrid Lorange tells what's up in Alexandria, Sydney now the neighbourhood's real gone :

"As part of There Goes The Neighbourhood, an exhibition/residency project curated by Ked de Souza and Zanny Begg, we are re-enacting Allan Kaprow's artwork, Push & Pull: A Furniture Comedy For Hans Hoffmann (1963) at the Locksmith Gallery in Alexandria, from Thurs 28 May - 11 June.

Since '63, Push & Pull has been re-enacted variously. The basic premise is that a room-space is filled with furniture and then, for a period of time, is inhabited and altered by participants. See the project blog (with info from Kaprow's original instructions, details on the development of this iteration and time/dates etc./).

We invite you to come to Locksmith over the next few weeks for some pushing and pulling. The room will be filled with objects, people, sounds, smells and ideas. Things will be moved, tangled, painted, tinkered, consumed, destroyed and regenerated. The artwork will occur in the activities and dynamics of playful collaboration. Flotsam will be gleaned from the Redfern area (or from your house!) and composted in the gallery. A gift ecology will emerge.

My idea is to use the space as a temporary workshop. Bring a half-made project, hammer and nails, laptop, soldering iron, collaborative partner, sketchpad, spreadsheet or wood lathe. Setting a up a working bee or planning session. Push and pull the furniture into a productive nook. I'll be bringing a teaset and kettle and some chests of earl grey. Please come have a cuppa and a play.

The room will start to be filled this Thursday (28th) at 6pm. Come along with a longneck and some domestic rejectamenta! After this first night, the space will be open and playable Fri - Sat, 1pm - 6pm and then Thurs - Sat 1pm - 6 pm for the next two weeks."




deletionists, remember to click on images to enlarge them - click on greyer text for links

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       Antipodean Default Mode

       they were living in Australia
       two heads were better than one
       they were living in Australia
       across the Tasman Sea from New Zealand
       they were living in Australia
       where the universe turns on at sunset
       they were living in Australia
       every minute of every day
       they were living in Australia
       learning the lesser lesson
       they were living in Australia
       deliriously
       they were living in Australia
       hoping for the best
       they were living in Australia
       along a slinky desert edge
       they were living in Australia
       unpacking the national library
       they were living in Australia
       with biodegradable mousepads
       they were living in Australia
       everything had seen better days
       they were living in Australia
       just for the heck of it
       they were living in Australia
       once in a lifetime
       a long lifetime not a short one
       they were living in Australia
       to forget about you
       they were living in Australia
       like true blue Americans
       they were living in Australia
       waking in fright
       they were living in Australia
       never looking back

A poem I wrote after hearing John Ashbery read 'Default Mode'
at City University New York's Graduate Centre on October 30th, 2008

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Happy Birthdays New York Greats

John Ashbery turned 80 recently and so did Kenward Elmslie. To view photos of Kenward and friends celebrating his birthday at The Poetry Project in NYNY click here.

Kenward Elmslie & me & Pete Minter in Sydney October 2005





My 2003 poem for Kenward :

Rainy Day in May
              ‘if only you’d settle down somewhere streamlined’
                                            KENWARD ELMSLIE,Winter Life

ah      chlorophyll afternoon
    green-deepening my day
now I function     do my physio
            
I know       I’m at
       the bottom of the world
but when we say
        ‘local word goes here’
we know what we mean

thousands of kilometres
    from the adirondacks,
schenectady
                orono
where almost-billionaires
      are taking the waters,
         warming the poptarts,
getting a little haptic
    with the  foil-wrapped
cell-shaped chocolates

am I missing anything,
                      down here 
 in murwillumbah
thousands of kilometres
     from granite-ville ?

         *

sorry you were 
 a bit late
    for the fennel snags,   
     and
the sweet purple cabbage,
     too late
   for the salty feta
( we’d already eaten 
                the feta,
      all the feta)
 
& the rain fell down,
  too wet, too sombre & grey, 
                       all afternoon
but      mellifluous tenor,
                 you sang and read,
 a  Babe Rainbow    
      brightening the place up,
                              just  like  (we imagine) at
                                         Touché’s Salon -
  all those  synaesthetic pleasures  
    on,
              as it turned out to be,
    your saddest anniversary


good news was          the G-G quit
          during your show
(god save the queen
   because      nothing     will save 
                     the governor-general)
  thus ending      weeks & weeks 
      of everything interesting
down here in the wilds
   far from 
                  where-ever

note - ‘your saddest anniversary’ - Kenward Elmslie first performed in Sydney in 2003 on May 25th , the anniversary of his partner Joe Brainard’s death.
In the line, ‘good news was the G-G quit’, the ‘G-G’ is the Governor General of Australia,(appointed on approval of the English monarch) who was at the time an Anglican Bishop embroiled in a scandal about the treatment of sexual abuse victims in his church. He resigned on the weekend of Kenward’s visit.

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Gehry in Prague

Californian architect Frank Gehry and his Czech co-architect Vladimir Milunic designed and built the Dancing House (Tančící dům) between 1992 and 1996.
Soon after its conception it was dubbed 'Ginger and Fred', as it dances around the corner like the famous Hollywood movie stars Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

It begins a row of buildings facing the Vltava River, on the Rasinovo Corner, opposite the bridge in Nove Mesto. To see images of the building works click here. My photos, taken in April, follow -

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Steve Evans' annual map of what some poets are reading is gradually appearing on Third Factory. My own 'Attention Span' entries for 2008 are up on the web HERE

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Helen Grace in Hong Kong

Australian artist and critic, Helen Grace, who is currently living and working in Hong Kong, has an exhibition opening there on Friday 15th May :

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I've put some photos that I took at the Micro Festival Poetry Series
in Prague & Brno in mid-April, on the web HERE

my may events

I'll be participating in the post-show forum
8pm Saturday 9th May
Carriageworks
245 Wilson St
Eveleigh
Sydney
02 8571 9099
Click here for a map
and here for further information.

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Thursday May 21st at 2.30pm - Bangarra Mezzanine, The Wharf

Book launch : Harbour City Poems published by Puncher & Wattmann, edited by Martin Langford, is an anthology of poems either about Sydney, or which have had their sources in the life of the city. It is an historical anthology, incorporating poems from the earliest convict days through to the present. This reading explores the way we have thought about Sydney, from the anxieties and puzzlement of Botany Bay through to the tensions and delights of the contemporary city. The historical poems - some famous, some not so well-known - will be read by actors, followed by a reading of contemporary poems by their authors John Tranter, Adam Aitken, Paul Dawson, Kate Lilley and Pam Brown

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Thursday May 21st at 4pm - Bangarra Theatre, The Wharf

Book launch : Motherlode published by Puncher & Wattmann, edited by Jennifer Harrison and Kate Waterhouse, is the first major collection of Australian women’s poetry in over a decade. It reads as a modern narrative rather than 160 individual poems, from poets including Judith Wright, Dorothy Hewett, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Judith Beveridge, Bronwyn Lea and others. Twelve Sydney poets will read about contemporary identity - in relation to mothers, grandmothers, children and the world. 'Motherlode' traverses nature, iconography, pregnancy, birth, childlessness, loss, daily grind, politics and ageing, with edge and intelligence. Launched by retired academic Elizabeth Webby.

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Sunday May 24th at 2.30pm - Bangarra Mezzanine, The Wharf



Metaphors of Space : An architectural display and poetry reading that blends the narratives of sustainable, urban and indigenous interpretations of home and public space. Convened by Chris L. Smith from the University of Sydney, who will speak about ‘Autopoiesis: Poetries and Architectures’, it features the work of several young emerging architects. There are cameo readings by David Musgrave, Elizabeth Hodgson, Peter Boyle, Pam Brown and Andy Quan.

This spatial reading event is presented by Mascara Poetry, City of Sydney and MCHP Architects

To see a list of poets participating in this year's Sydney Writers’ Circus click here

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politics

In Prague recently, I had some conversations about what living in the Czech Republic is like nowadays for women, for unemployed people and for Romany gypsies. I am grateful to Bernie Higgins, Louis Armand and Vincent Farnsworth for their information and insights. Vincent provided me with a couple of web sites (in English) that publish reports of some of the many problems, especially in relation to the Romany community :
Aktualne : Czech News    and    Romea : Romanies

                                 Romany Music Festival in Prague, 2008

               A Romany house in Vitkov that was attacked by arsonists on April 18th.                     Three members of a Romany family, including a two-year old girl,
                    were badly burned.

"Enough is Enough" demonstrations are planned to occur across the Czech Republic on 3rd May 2009

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Dobrý den from Malá Strana

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Meanwhile, this week back at the Sydney theory ranch, John Hawke’s book Australian Literature & the Symbolist Movement will be launched by Jacket magazine editor and poet John Tranter.



The promotional text says :

Australian literature was never all billabongs and stockmen.

Ahead of other English speaking cultures, Australia absorbed the Symbolist message freshly worked out in Paris-initially in Brennan's Bulletin pieces of the 1890s. Symbolism introduced a metaphysical, intellectual strand throughout the 20th century, visible in the work of Kenneth Slessor, Judith Wright and Patrick White, and in the reactions of Hope and McAuley.

John Hawke follows this rich and complex tradition into recent poetry; he compares the impact of Vitalism, promoted by Norman Lindsay and manifest in such poets as Slessor, Francis Webb and Douglas Stewart.

His book also investigates fascinating dialogues involving P.R. Stephensen, Jack Lindsay, A.R. Chisholm, Randolph Hughes and others, and the extremist views which grew for some of them out of their positions on the Symbolist aesthetic.

This reappraisal of literary tradition shows the landscape of Australian writing in a completely new light.

John Hawke is a Senior Lecturer in English at Monash University. He completed doctoral studies at the University of Sydney, where he received the University Medal and the Dame Leonie Kramer Prize. (not that Dame Leonie [one of Barry Humphries' greatest characters] had any personal involvement in the award choice). Between 1997 and 2006 John taught literary theory at the University of Wollongong. He is also a widely published poet.

6pm Thursday 30th April
gleebooks,
49 Glebe Point Rd,
Glebe, Sydney
RSVP: 9660 2333

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Minding mice at a crossroads: Mike, Jill, Phil, David, Louis, Annette, Maurice, Mary, Pam on the way to Brno

Trevor Joyce has put his photos (including the above) from last week's Czech Poetry Micro-Festival: Prague & Brno up on the web - to view the pics, that include photos from every reading, click here

Here is one of my photos of Trevor at the reading at Sklenena louka in Brno on April 16th :


The festival organiser, Louis Armand, has posted photos tracing the progression of the poetry events on Facebook here.

Louis Armand, after the last reading at Shakespeare & Sons, enjoying a glass of smooth South Australian red provided by Dianne Cornell, the Australian consul.

I'll be posting more on Prague, Kutná Hora and Brno soon.

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ahoj from praha

            A person looks at a work of art called 'Relief' by Jan Fisar
               in the Czech National Gallery in Prague
                                                                        (Foto by Michael Farrell)

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praha

I’m off to Prague to read poems and check out the Czechs, nashledanou, ahoj!

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coming up in april

To see some of John Tranter's photos from the heady party at the opening of the avoiding myth & message exhibition last Monday night click here.



The intersection of Australia’s literary and contemporary art worlds is the subject of a new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, opening this autumn.
avoiding myth & message: Australian artists and the literary world presents works by 28 contemporary Australian artists whose practice has been informed by literature.

later,
& like any poet
avoiding myth & message
to fake a flashy ode, consider
what model of Australia as a nation
could match the ocean, or get your desk
to resemble a beach/

The exhibition title is a line taken from John Forbes’ ‘On The Beach: A Bicentennial Poem’ (extracted above). Curated by Glenn Barkley and running from 7th April until 12th July 2009, avoiding myth & message takes up major themes within the Australian literary and visual traditions; themes which often overlap, such as landscape/interior, text and image, urban life, politics and the personal. Predominantly an MCA collection-based exhibition, it will include ephemera, publications and media-based works produced by artists and publishers from 1968 onwards.

It includes artists who have worked in an illustrative mode; artists who use words and texts within their work; and practitioners who adopt a more poetic, narrative-based approach inspired by literature’s ability to create a visual world based on language.
Works range from Vernon Ah Kee’s vinyl wall piece ‘Many lies’ (2004) which has been specially reconfigured for the exhibition cascading down an 11 metre wall, to Sandra Selig’s ‘Surface of Change’ (2007), a work created using pages from a children’s science book that have had words removed, leaving a new kind of poetry.

Destiny Deacon, Rosalie Gascoigne, Shaun Gladwell, Robert Macpherson, Noel McKenna, Ruark Lewis, Mike Parr, Imants Tillers, Jenny Watson and zinester Vanessa Berry are included.

Two works from the early 1970s by Mike Parr, ‘Wall Definition’ (1971) and the seminal conceptual artist’s book, ‘Black Box of Word Situations’ (1971–91), will be displayed as they were in Inhibodress when first exhibited in 1971.

Key collaborative book works and journals such as A Package Deal Assembly Book, Magic Sam, Surfers Paradise and Cocabola’s Funny Picture Book will be included in the exhibition, as well as individual writer and artists’ texts and publications, performance footage and works that trace the emergence of feminist, multicultural and gay voices within the literary and artistic scenes. This historical (1970s) section of the exhibition will also include a number of texts reproduced straight onto the wall, as well as works and publications by major figures within the Australian literary and artistic worlds, such as Rudi Krausmann, Tim Johnson, John Forbes, Ken Bolton, Tim Burns, TTO, John Tranter, Anna Couani, Vicki Viidikas, Pam Brown and Micky Allan.

MCA Public Programs are an integral part of the exhibition and many of the works have a performative or interactive component, with a number of poetry readings and talks scheduled to take place throughout the exhibition.

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(I’ll post further information on the winter series of events co-ordinated by Morgan Smith of gleebooks closer to the dates in June and July.)

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Congratulations Tim

The latest issue of overland includes some terrific poetry thanks to the energised selections (poems by Stuart Cooke, Trisha Pender, Chris Brown, Berndt Sellheim, Jessica Tyrell, Michelle Cahill and others) of the recently appointed (well, last year) poetry editor, Keri Glastonbury, plus there is the wonderful PRIZE WINNING (do italics still signify irony?) poem emoticon by Tim Wright. The prize was awarded to him last weekend in this funny looking building in St Kilda, Melbourne. It's a poetry centre.

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