criminal daze

Yesterday I went to see Matteo Garrone’s film of Roberto Saviano’s novel about the Camorra syndicate in Naples and Caserta, Italy - Gomorrah. It’s a powerful exposé of corruption and of the brutal methods used to recruit young men who become so entangled in the web of crime that they have no choice but to continue living in a truly violent world. Only a few can even contemplate escape. Mattone deftly mixes and melds five stories into one. An extraordinary film of a cruel and frightening aspect of Italy that tourists only hear, read or see films about.




This afternoon I went to hear Peter Doyle give an illustrated talk on his cultural history of Sydney in the 1920s via records of criminals of the day. He has just published another book Crooks Like Us, after having spent many, many hours delving into the forensic photography archive at Sydney’s Justice & Police Museum.








Peter Doyle curated an exhibition of photos and published an accompanying book City of Shadows in 2005.



                                                Peter Doyle

Many Sydneysiders also know Peter as “Peter ‘Rockin’ Doyle”, the amazing guitarist from the bands Wasted Daze, The Magnetics and The Bopcats that played around the inner western suburbs in the mid-late 1970s.
Since then he has completed a PhD, written a novel, The Devil’s Jump, and finically researched the police archives to write the criminal history books and he is now an academic teaching media at Macquarie University. Of course, he still likes to boogie - the Doyle-Bongers Downhome Quartet – a roots blues jazz funk steel guitar and saxophone combo was getting into the groove as I left the event.


     Click to enlarge -Assembled bands The Bopcats, The Layabouts, Ratbags of Rhythm
      Peter Doyle in white shirt fifth from the right

---

I like this perplexed question from a review of a new blockbuster anthology of Australian literature in today's Sydney Morning Herald.

Rehab for Everyone

hands so cold 
             fingers cold 
tucked under legs
   sitting in insect hiss 
           low white noise
   gas heater undertone 
        no other sound 
                              nothing 

almost asleep, 
       a car pulling up the hill

        a currawong 
  does that shrill thing 
                    into pink air

a huge open yawn 
           almost breaks my jaw

  the pen that makes the marks 
            alters the angles of the letters

a patch 
       of  yesterday’s chocolate 
              stuck to my corduroy sleeve -
a signal 
         imagined and interpreted

we look back 
            at the years in the tops
     waiting to be taken out of time

red brick 
       wall map of Australia 
      grass green carpet
mustard coloured plastic chairs 
          clumpy piling on the mittens

mitts on the keyboard 
         pushing thoughts and jingles
                                                out 
   to Dublin to Seattle, 
            Adelaide, Kane`ohe, 
                       Faversham, Glebe

sadly notating dim trivia 
        me-minus-you 
                    outside community

literary festivals 
           can’t help anyone 
       like a rehab book sale

making mistakes, 
             so different 
      from being morally wrong

in an unsettling world 
              it‘s a rabbit life,
built the walls from Castrol cases 

black tyre ribbons
                  strewn 
       like a giant’s licorice 
under the striated cutting
             siding on the highway, 
say goodbye 
           to the Woodford bends

sometimes the clunky 
             can incandesce 
      but I want to know
how to vitalize gawkiness, 

      sometimes 
I’m in my no-mind     sometimes 
          in a technological mindlessness 
  sometimes nowhere near limber, 
                          although that’s unusual

some people 
          just float along all the time 
     accumulating the placid

       sometimes 
 when you think you’re going down 
                   you’re not,
you’re going straight ahead 
                         to a utopia of modernity.

                     Russolo, Carrà, Boltonioni, Marinetti, Boccioni, Severini

---

This blog seems to have become a kind of 'what's on' space lately. I hope to post some actual ideas, notes, poems, maybe even thoughts here again soon. In the meantime, I am happy to have been invited to read poems at the RhiZomic readings in Newtown, Sydney at 7pm on Wednesday evening, July 29th. Please come along if you're out and about in Newtown.

---

To see some snapshots from the Museum of Contemporary Art event on Sunday July 12th click here and to read about the event's intention scroll down to the previous post

   a roneo is a roneo is a roneo
    (from screenprint & staples to www)

Panel: Ken Bolton   Lucas Ihlein   John Tranter
Chair: Pam Brown

What do you do when transnational publishing companies don’t dig your poetry?
Go underground and diy. Take control of your aesthetic and represent your culture properly! These men have done it and will tell you how and why:

Using pens & pencils, roneo duplicators, staples, and silk screen printing, Ken Bolton and his gang made beautiful books, magazines and posters. Ken was the founder & editor of Magic Sam and Otis Rush magazines. He is a poet and art critic and the publisher of Little Esther Books. He lives in Adelaide and manages Dark Horsey Bookshop (eaf.asn.au/darkhorsey.htm) at the Experimental Art Foundation. Ken was at the hub of the hip, arty resistance of the late 1970s.

Lucas Ihlein is an artist who creates and harnesses social situations through communicative exchange. Since 2005, he has been working on a series of blog-as-art projects about particular locations (lucazoid.com) Lucas was a co-founder of the SquatSpace collective (squatspace.com) which engages in the politics (and pleasures) of space in Sydney. In 2004 he helped establish the Network of UnCollectable Artists (NUCA) (uncollectables.net) He designs and manages websites. He is also involved with Big FAG Press, an offset printing collective in Alexandria (bigfagpress.org)

Editor of the highly acclaimed, very contemporary online poetry magazine 'Jacket'(jacketmagazine.com) John Tranter, vaguely remembers the 70s even though he spent some of them living in Singapore and Brisbane. He was the publisher of Transit books and produced many poetry programs for ABC radio. John is a poet with many titles published both in Australia and overseas. His most recent collection is Urban Myths (UQP). He will talk about what to do now - diy on the www. Distribution? - no problema!

Chair : Pam Brown (once known as Cocabola)

             Ken Bolton, Magic Sam silkscreen cover at MCA 2009

             Magic Sam case at MCA 2009

          John Tranter, silk screen poster, late 70s, at MCA 2009


Avoiding Myth & Message:
Australian Artists & the Literary World

Free entry

Museum of Contemporary Art,
Circular Quay,
Sydney

Sunday July 12, 2.30pm

---

                   Micky Allan, silk screen poster 1978 at MCA 2009


                          presented by


                              thanks to Morgan Smith & Glenn Barkley
                             further info click here

---

                                       Vale Pina Bausch

                                  (Photos by Uli Weiss and Guy Delahaye)

---

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

---

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

---

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

---

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.

---

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)

---

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

---

       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

---

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.

---

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 -

---

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

---

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 :

---

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.

---

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

---

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.

---

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

---

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

---