Maged Zaher's latest collection Thank You for the Window Office was recently published by Brooklyn-based Ugly Duckling Presse.

Maged is from Cairo and is currently living in Seattle. This book consolidates his distinctive poetry and furthers his three earlier titles. There is a fresh, nearly-aphoristic tone. The lines give the impression of effortless arrangement. Maged uses just the right amounts of scepticism, enquiry, humour, politics, relational aesthetic, desire and reflection. The cover image is complicated. The poems embody a cultural critique that's open and modest even when it's very smart. Here are a few sample poems (random selections, not in sequence)-

    Hello roller coaster
    Hello soup du jour precious feelings
    Here we do sales
    There they do shopping
    In the resurrection's parade
    I took a different name
    Which was an inevitable twist to the plot
    Yet someone in the organization had to ask:
    "Is people management an essential skill?"
    The bohemian is still alive

              :::

    The poet at the soccer game
    Reciting from Homer's Twitter feed
    Tires everywhere
    Piles of used Xboxes
    The bearded folks surrounding the entrance
    One of us will get to be the boss
    And feel the joys of the class system
    Monsters have a different value system
    One will die of fear
    And although the guru said nothing about jerking off
    I will manage to wear green
    And offend no one today

              :::

    They stare at blue lines
    And sell media to everyone
    Bikes are here to stay
    Some agitation is needed
    Because some poems are deeply Maoist
    Mistrust goes a long way
    I need to list all the patents we hold
    Give me value or give me death

              :::

You can find more praise, another sample,
and information about the book here
Read Los Angeles Times' Book Critic, David Ulin's review here

---

      A few places - last week in Melbourne - click here

---

                        Washing Day

---

                                                         The Mutts

---

new zealand electronic poetry centre presents -

Announcing the launch of completed SHORT TAKES ON LONG POEMS, (click the title), featuring videos of readings and presentations from nzepc symposium held at Old Government House, Auckland on 29-30 March 2012, and complete materials for American poet Rachel Blau DuPlessis' visit to the University of Auckland, February-March 2012.
              

Rachel Blau DuPlessis in New Zealand

            

Symposium programme and abstracts

            

LOUNGE 34: videos of 11 Australian, New Zealand and American poets

            

SHORT TAKES: 21 video presentations from the symposium

            

Oneroa Long Beach Walk Poem: symposium collaboration on Waiheke Island

            

Gallery: a selection of photos by many hands

            Tapa in Old Government House, (photo by Susan Schultz, March 2012)

---

The fifth and final instalment of Fifty-one Contemporary Poets from Australia is now published here in Jacket2 magazine. It includes poetry by Justin Clemens, Bonny Cassidy, Michelle Cahill, Michael Brennan, Ken Bolton, Judith Bishop, Louis Armand, Chris Andrews, Elizabeth Allen, Ali Alizadeh and Adam Aitken, along with artwork by Louis Armand and Ken Bolton.

---

November Poetry at Sappho's

Toby Fitch presents November-Poetry-Night :

Jill Jones' new book - Ash is Here, So are Stars
(launch talk by Pam Brown)
plus
Keri Glastonbury (Grit Salute)
Eddie Hopely (Rude Door)
& open mic

Tuesday 13th November
19:00 until 22:00
Sappho's Wine Bar/Cafe courtyard
51 Glebe Point Rd
Glebe
Sydney

---

Lee Salomone—altre voci / other voices—Australian Experimental Art Foundation, September 21st—October 20th; Jeffrey Smart—Master Of Stillness: painting—1940—2011—Samstag Museum, October 12th— December 14th ; Katie Barber—Perceivable (painted) Objects—Sam Howie—Apainting— jointly at Felt Space, October 3rd—October 20th; Mark Valenzuela—Entry—Nexus, September 27th—October 26th; Pat Brassington—at Greenaway Gallery, September 19th—October 21st; Jeffrey Harris—My Father’s Table—Light Square Gallery, October 10th —November 1st; Matthew Bradley—Space Chickens help me make Apple pie—Fontanelle, September 23rd—October 28th;

Ken Bolton's latest form guide is now online here.

Who is Ken Bolton? Click here to find out.

---

Ken Whisson - As if

A brilliant, extensive retrospective
at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Curated by Glenn Barkley (MCA)
and Lesley Harding (Heide Museum of Modern Art).

Read art critic John McDonald's review -
Outside of the awful mainstream

                  Imaginary America, 1974-75

Glenn Barkley, curator's floor talk
Thursday 8th November 6.30pm - info here.

For more information visit the MCA link

                  Books and Landscapes 1987-94

---

New Zealand artist & poet Greg O'Brien presents
Conversation with Rosemary Dobson on Raoul Island
a suite of drawings in memory of poet Rosemary Dobson

At Slot Gallery
38 Botany Rd
Alexandria
Sydney

Until November 17

Gallery information - click here

---

Dear visitors to the deletions -
I'll be posting over at the Southerly blog throughout October.
The first one is here.
Week two - click here.
Week three - click here
Final post - week four - click here.

Thanks for the space Southerly editors.

---

AVANT GAGA #4 - a night of experimental...

October’s poetry night at Sappho’s will see the 4th instalment of ‘Avant Gaga’ — a gala night of experimental poetry — this time with special guests Pam Brown, Ken Bolton (Adelaide), and Amanda Stewart, and hosted by Toby Fitch.

PAM BROWN
Pam Brown has been around the Sydney poetry realm for a long time. She recently edited 'Fifty-one contemporary poets from Australia' for 'Jacket2' where she is an associate editor. She has published many books including, this year, a pocket book of ten poems, 'Anyworld', from Flying Island Books and a booklet, 'More than a feuilleton', from Little Esther Books. A longer collection of poems, 'Home by Dark', will be published by Shearsman Books in the U.K. in 2013. In a parallel life Pam lives in the bustling town of Asbestos in South-Eastern Québec; in real life she lives two suburbs away, as-the-mynah-bird-flies, in Alexandria.
http://thedeletions.blogspot.com.au/

KEN BOLTON
A gay, light-hearted bastard, Ken Bolton cuts a moodily romantic figure within the dun Australian literary landscape, his name inevitably conjuring perhaps that best known image of him, bow-tie askew, lipstick-smeared, grinning cheerfully, at the wheel of his 1958 Jaguar D-type, 'El Cid'. Born in Sydney in 1949 he works at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide and edits Little Esther books. He has published a good deal of art criticism, some of it collected in Art Writing (Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia). He edited 'Homage To John Forbes', the book on Kurt Brereton, 'More Is Plenty', and wrote the monograph 'Michelle Nikou'. He edited the magazines 'Magic Sam' and 'Otis Rush' and has published numerous books of poetry. Wakefield Press published 'The Circus' in 2010 and Vagabond Press 'A Whistled Bit Of Bop'. Earlier titles include 'At The Flash And At The Baci' and 'Untimely Meditations'.
http://www.eaf.asn.au/kenbolton.html

AMANDA STEWART
Amanda Stewart is a poet, writer and vocal artist. Much of her work is informed by ideas from linguistics, philosophy and science. She has created a diverse range of publications, performances, radio and visual works, locally and internationally, over many years. During the 1980’s and 90’s she worked full-time as a radio producer at the ABC and since then has worked freelance as a writer and performer in literature, music, theatre and new media contexts. She is a cofounder of the Australian text-sound ensemble 'Machine For Making Sense' and the Netherlands trio, Allos. Her Book and CD set of selected poems 'I/T' is available from splitrec.
http://www.splitrec.com/

OPEN MIC
To read your work in the open mic reading, just turn up on the night and put your name on the list. 2 minutes each so we can fit everyone in. And, because ‘Avant Gaga’ is a particularly playful night, why not muck around with your poem — swap the lines around, turn it upside-down, change every verb, read it into a computer translator and have it spat back out — experiment with it and see what happens; you might even like your poem better than before.

FOOD & WINE
The wine and tapas bar will be open so you can have a meal and glass of wine while you're there if you fancy it. The Soup season at Sappho’s is over, but it’s Spring, so get your vernalagia on ...

TUESDAY OCTOBER 9TH
Starts at 7.00 pm in the back courtyard/garden at Sappho's.
51 Glebe Point Road, Glebe
Sydney
Phone: 9552 4498
Look forward to seeing you there.

---

                                                            Instructional Drawing, 2012 by Erwin Wurm

---

Looking east, looking in.

In Brisbane recently I listened to poets, novelists and publishers from Oceania. From countries that have experienced colonisation by France and a Maori novelist, obviously from Aeotearoa/New Zealand. The main question was largely about writing in French, in local languages, and the experience of translation in a post-colonial era.

Having been involved in several Trans-Tasman poetry symposiums that aimed to make a bridge between poets from Australia and Aeotearoa/NZ (and, this year, with Hawai'i and China as well) I know some of the difficulties of distance and disconnect that exist in the South Pacific region. In Brisbane novelist Witi Ihimaera suggested that instead of looking north (to Europe, USA etc) Australians could concern themselves with looking east. I think he made a good point. And in ensuing discussion the suggestion was made that we also look to the interior towards the indigenous Aboriginal people. It was a welcome reminder. The Pacific Islands Forum exchanges ideas, funding etc at an international government level and met recently in the Cook Islands. The Festival of Pacific Arts was held in July this year in the Solomon Islands. I've visited and attempted to explore some aspects of the cultures of Nouvelle Caledonie, Aeotearoa and two of the Mascarene islands to the west of Australia as well, across the Indian Ocean to La Réunion and Mauritius. Looking west.

The topic in Brisbane generally veered towards French-language writing and the identity of, say, a Kanak writer in relation to that. Someone remarked that Australian, Vanuatuan, Pakeha (etc) writers don't describe themselves as 'British-Australian' writers and neither do writers from the "French" Pacific think of themselves as 'French-Tahitian' or 'French-Kanak' (etc) writers.

The talks were at the new State Library and the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane right next door to the Queensland Art Gallery where there was an exhibition of portraits from the Prado Museum in Madrid. The entrance to the Gallery has a hologram of part of the Prado - it kind of cried out for a pose. I took a few photos - you can find them here.

If you're interested in reading work by some of the authors in the photos, one of the publishers is 'Au Vent Des Iles' and the web site is here.

        :        :        :        :    :        :        :        :

In the September issue of Art Monthly, Susan Cochrane, author of Art and Life in Melanesia has written an extensive illustrated report on this year's Festival of Pacific Arts. She notes, towards the end of the article : "As far as mainstream Australia and its art aficionados are concerned (with a few exceptions), the Festival of Pacific Arts, the world's largest indigenous arts festival celebrating the cultural life of our Pacific neighbours, slips right under their radar. It does not even raise a blip."

Currently, Australians mainly know about the Pacific politically, as a 'Pacific Solution' - somewhere for the Federal Government to place hundreds of refugees in the hope of discouraging their arrival by fishing boat in our country. They are to be kept, awaiting 'processing', on what is continually referred to as the 'remote' island of Nauru, in Micronesia, and on Melanesian Manus Island in the Asian Pacific just north of Papua New Guinea.

---

Recycled Dreaming
An Open Letter Project
Curated by Bronia Iwanczak

at Cross Arts Books
33 Roslyn Street
Kings Cross - Sydney
October 3rd - 31st

Opening with readings/performance
Wednesday 6pm - October 3rd
Everyone Welcome

---

The publisher -

Little Esther Books
(for Feral & Boffin
of Feral, Boffin + Distingué)
Box 10114, Adelaide BC, SA, 5000

The blurb -

The book -

a limited edition - six new poems - available now
aeafbooksATaeafDOTorgDOTau

---

I've been reading the third issue of VLAK magazine. Among the many formidable articles, poems and dynamic graphics, my attention was taken by David Vichnar on Christine Brooke-Rose (the great British experimentalist you've never heard of) who died earlier this year and whose last book Life, End of I read, and loved, a few years ago.

I also want to recommend Marjorie Perloff's Poetry on the Edge: Reconceptualizing Lyric. She begins with a pertinent question "What happens to poetry when Everybody is a Poet?", referring to the plethora of graduate degrees in poetry in the USA that Jed Rasula addressed in his 2011 lecture The Condition of Poetry When Everybody is a Poet. To reduce her cogent analysis to one of several quotable remarks - "In the current climate, with literally thousands of poets jostling for their place in the sun, a tepid tolerance rules". In Australia we can reduce 'thousands' to 'hundreds' but a similar orientation applies.

And the third essay I want to mention is about the literary interview - Interviewing - in which David Hayman, professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, affably recounts his introduction to writers like Alain Robbe-Grillet via Samuel Beckett and his experiences in visiting, interviewing and corresponding with Robbe-Grillet, Maurice Roche and Phillipe Sollers in the mid 1970s. (Interviewing is followed by one of Sollers' blocks of prose H (PART 2))

VLAK magazine raises the temperature on anything 'tepidly tolerant'. (sorry deletions visitors, I couldn't resist a bit of copy-writing).

VLAK is produced in Prague. It's edited by Litteraria Pragensia director Louis Armand with, from around the globe, Edmund Berrigan, Ali Alizadeh, Stephen Mooney, David Vichnar, Stephan Delbos, Jane Lewty and Peter Cockelbergh

You can see the complete author list and buy a copy here.

---

Shikibu Shuffle

I recently received a box of an array of newly published pamphlets and chapbooks from Ottawa's above/ground press. One of them is a collaboration between the two well-known poets: Perth, Australia-based Andrew Burke and Perth, Canada-based Phil Hall. It's a really nice chapbook with a glued cover image (I think each cover is different), a bright orange fly leaf and a line drawing that resembles a rubber stamp, and could be a rubber stamp, on the title and end pages. There are fifteen short, minimal poems riffing on a tenth century Japanese poet. The suite is at once kind of dainty and perky. It's called Shikibu Shuffle.

The introductory page reads:

"Happy fate brought a poet from Perth Western Australia and a poet from Perth Ontario Canada together in 2009.

Then Andrew had a heart attack and was queued up for life-saving surgery.

With nothing to do but wait, kept alive by sprays and medical potions - to distract himself - Andrew agreed to work with Phil on a collaboration.

Andrew suggested the Japanese court poet Murasaki Shikibu (973-1014); her 5-line form might be a place to start.

Phil was thinking of Ornette Coleman: two quartets facing each other and going at it (1960).

We wrote in 5s back and forth, then shuffled our silence-inducing cacophony into 10s, then improvised from there...

Andrew's operation was bumped once, and then happened. He's fine.

The shuffle served its purpose, and now surprises and delights them both."

      3.

      I watch my chest
      rise and fall in the mirror

      nature in the raw

      nothing I see or think
      means anything to me

      then I plan to tell you about it

      and into each dull thunk
      like lemon on fish

      comes flugelhorn

      a faint zing

      11.

      Talking to the air

      I break cobwebs
      on the line

      cello   kite  fishing

      making lurid
      the net result

      while hammock hook shines

      sun holds   motes float

---

Andy Carruthers, Sam Moginie, Pam Brown & Chris Edwards with Michael Farrell's latest book open sesame (at gleebooks, Sydney, on the occasion of a Vagabond Press chapbook launch of six other new books) Sunday, 29th July. Vagabond poet Adrian Wiggins took the photo.

See this link for the Vagabond Press launch.

open sesame - cover detail from Wilderness by Juan Davila.

For information click here.

---

The fourth instalment of Pam Brown’s feature Fifty-one contemporary poets from Australia (ordered, “[i]n the interest of objectivity” by “a recently invented ‘downunder’ method — the reverse alphabet”) includes work from Jane Gibian, Claire Gaskin, Angela Gardner, Liam Ferney, Michael Farrell, Kate Fagan, Chris Edwards, Laurie Duggan, Anna Couani, and Stuart Cooke, along with artwork by Angela Gardner and Chris Edwards. It has just been published in Jacket2. You can read the poems and see the artwork here.

---