official statistics indicate 90% of stock-photo subjects regularly enjoy listening to my mp3 poetry recordings. 10% did not know the archives exist, but now intend to check them out at the first available opportunity.
‘dog days’ is new today.
26 Monday Feb 2007
Posted Uncategorized
inofficial statistics indicate 90% of stock-photo subjects regularly enjoy listening to my mp3 poetry recordings. 10% did not know the archives exist, but now intend to check them out at the first available opportunity.
‘dog days’ is new today.
24 Saturday Feb 2007
Posted meme
inwell richard tagged me to list my 10 favourite movies. i’m unsure about this one, mainly because my knowledge of ‘film’ isn’t that great. i’d like to be a buff, but other things intervene. that said i will attempt it.
(in no specific order)
1. Annie – John Huston. my sister paula & i watched this like 73 times. that’s gotta mean something.
2. The sound of music – Roger Wise. ditto (anyone ever see the british ‘doctor’ movies? we had ‘doctor in the house’. it doesn’t make the list, but man i could recite the script if need be.)
3. Adaptation – Spike Jonze. as an adult i’m a sucker for textual films, meta & stuff.
4. Vanilla Sky – Cameron Crowe. never have seen the original, shoot me for that.
5. Mullholland Drive – David Lynch. why can’t movies be symbolic, structured around strange emotions?
6. Dogville – Lars Von Trier. ditto + philosophical discourse?
7. The Nostradamus Kid – Bob Ellis. australian movies were bound to come up…there are more, but my mind is americanised…
8. Being John Malkovich – Spike Jonze. okay, guess i’m a fan of this team…
9. Kill Bill 1 – Quentin Tarrantino. i wasn’t happy when she brought it home that night, but this sure is classy. reminds me of the time my sister bron rented ghostbusters, & i cried for an hour because i thought it would scare me. no i won’t put it on my list, but…
10. Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain – Jean-Pierre Jeunet. & the only thing that now occurs to me is that more films are surfacing, how can this list ever be adequate?
what happens now, am i supposed to tag someone & ‘meme them’? i don’t know if i want to put that pressure on anyone. let’s do it this way – if you are a regular reader of my blog, & you have not been tagged by someone else in the ‘sphere, you now are. unless of course you don’t want to do it. no bad luck will come your way. in fact, good luck will come everybody’s way. regardless.
goodnight.
23 Friday Feb 2007
Posted review - me
inapparently, some of my poetry is reviewed in the first edition of ‘Inside Poetry‘, an internet radio show run by Rick Mullin & James Knowles. I haven’t heard what they have to say yet, my internet connection is being surly tonight, & i won’t hear if for another hour & 47 minutes it seems. but hey, it’s all good. anyway these guys are intelligent & entertaining critics from what i’ve seen on the miporadio forum. have a listen.
in other news i’m drinking VB original ale tonight. a day full of Brave New World & the contexts that create utopias, dystopias… & my wit is receeding. or is that a line from a poem i wrote. exeunt.
21 Wednesday Feb 2007
Posted review - micro
inbefore i got this book in the mail i read on someone’s blog that it had a lot of sex in it: i was a bit nervous about that. maybe that’s just my thing to deal with. anyway i’m over it. Super 8 is one of the most original things i’ve seen in quite a while. why? i guess i can’t leave it at that. the poems in this chap are all in some way floating about old porno films. it’s an unusual choice but it works, it does. for a start i know where i am with this entire chap – there’s no disjunction, there’s no incongruous ‘leap’ to some subject unrelated, like some memory of childhood (man i’ve been there done that). this book flows seamlessly.
…yr creamy skin laugh if you want
about it go right
ahead
i keep re-reading that short section because the syntactic mixing works really well. i don’t know why, but i love it the subject / formal mix. like a coda where the drums & bass stop & leave a single sound fading out. maybe.
so the book is sexy, erotic & fully deals with you as a reader / viewer. you are in the loop, entering the frame, & so forth. how do you find beauty in certain situations – is it all a way of seeing things, or the way things are seen for you by a camera, by a poet? this – ‘grave loop’ – is beautiful:
these 2 girls
in a coffin
floating in a swimming pool
fucking each other
the smiles the shaky hands…
it is like so many of the other poems, it’s a moment of beauty & vulnerability isolated, taken from super 8 film & made into poetry. all the flaws of bad movies are our flaws, are of our own characters & lusts.
the words throughout are sparse & pared down perfectly: they all perform their own actions. each poem positions you as a outside the moment of film, but wanting in on the moments: “supercharged / both whisper / more” & “drive she sd / no one will see”.
you know what, Richard Lopez is a great poet & though i’ve only read one previous chap, i could say this is book shows a development in his style. i’ll say it anyway. i love Super 8 & i’m going to show it to lotsa people. that’s all there is to it. get a copy.
19 Monday Feb 2007
Posted poetry
innever one to admit the technical details / never much liked the short back & sides look / what is it oxalis poisoning my dream of parsley on demand / i curse that / queensland minister says we don’t want southerners takin our water / it is my water anyway / the tone the mood the difference / people behave differently online / my friend poses as a young german girl & lures men / says he it is easy to pull up a map of hamburg / on google / he has no embarrassment at this / i post poems at times / they sit there blankly facing a blank environment / silent it is / like a line thrown out / that is if you are into fishing / on the coast last year i read a book / vikram seth wrote it / the words covered a lot of music / also adultery / that disturbed someone / again there’s us having this discussion / how can someone write about something without at least entertaining the notion / there’s books about criminals / worse types / i don’t wade into this argument again / queeensland farmers wade in their burgeoning streams dams creeks / they splish & slash merrily / my friend is late getting here / but then what did i expect
18 Sunday Feb 2007
david i’ve been thinking about your
dangerous driving
how buckmaster killed himself methodically
& also persiflage the word of the day / this another
riotous evening at the
athletics oval
(yesterday things clouded over late &
talk was of rain – regardless today looks to do the same)
i mean what are results
the benefits of cross-referencing are
becoming less clear (i like to stay inside
it helps at times)
trekking further down or up an
‘idea of mountain’ & lessons have little
to no benefit / god i prepare
to acknowledge method as a means to purpose
then what (& such missives always have
this post-edit archness don’t you think –
i could name a few, things people have writ)
the cloud happens / i surveyed the journals
today they all seemed
a load of shit
esp. skimmed quick the archbishop’s poetry &
anything that labelled itself ‘opinion’
love other thoughts
much gratifies your sense of
outsiderness doesn’t it
spurious parents are eagles
measuring discus throws out there
in the sun, they look
proud don’t they
15 Thursday Feb 2007
Posted journals
inthe procrustes myth is one favoured by critical types. just a thought.
so i venture out to the library to do some serious work, but i end up leafing through the next round of journals that came in over the summer holiday (yes i am the scum who does not subscribe to journals but reads them for free, & even sends work to them).
read through poetry in the latest issues of meanjin, southerly, westerly & overland. great poem by sarah holland batt in meanjin – ‘The Idea of Mountain’. she has much writerly talent, look out for her future books & stuff. many other good things, works by jill jones, mtc cronin, michael farrell….
overall i still want more from the aus. journals. westerly only comes out once a year – sure it gets loads of good writers submitting, but how can (i think) 12 to 15 poems be representative of what’s gone on in a year? southerly looks very nice – the spacing is more open, & i think maybe the paper is of better quality – but it seems to be quite random if & when the thing is published, & there isn’t enough work in it. overland – the left-wing political rag – doesn’t publish much poetry either. the reviews can be quite refreshing, but the poetry hit & miss. i guess out of these publications meanjin is the best, mainly because it is fairly regular, & publishes a good mix of well-known & new poets. also the issue themes are not too often obscure or irrelevant.
of course there are some our library does not get, like famous reporter, blue dog & quadrant, & i must work on getting them to do so. i’ve said enough.
15 Thursday Feb 2007
Posted review - micro
ini was surprised a while back to receive a book in the mail, & a request from harpercollins that i should email my 300 word review back to them in a few days. i completely forgot i signed up for that. but anyway it’s here, with a number of other reader-reviews. what can you say in 300 words anyway? i used around 450, but even with that one can’t go into much detail.
the book is knockabout girl by pip newling. i guess it’s a book i wouldn’t have bought & probably never would have read otherwise, but it was good. entertaining, a page-turner, & all that. & it wasn’t too ‘light’, cos if it was i would have dissed it for the very same qualities.
so, where are the poetry books being sent out to ten ‘average’ readers?
13 Tuesday Feb 2007
well nothing that exciting…however i did just perform a major update of my blog links. i’m pretty sure now that all blogs i get feeds from are listed over there on the side. it was an interesting process – some of the blogs haven’t been updated for months (cassie lewis has disappeared, michael farrells’s ‘culture changing mission seems to be on permanent hiatus, astrid is on holiday perhaps…); & then there’s the level of familiarity to consider: there’s no-one on this list i have met in real life, so no relatives et cetera. there are people i have had much communication with though, like richard lopez, people i have exchanged thoughts & poetry, & would never have happened without this cyber-environment. then of course there are people whom i just observe quietly. love blogs.
there are probably many more out there that i should be reading. but it’s difficult to really say what you want in a blog – i want the new poems, i want the cultural reviews & stuff, & i want the snippets of life, of personal rant – but sometimes a writer just appeals to your sensibilities. you know i like reading christina stead & pam brown & don delillo & brett easton ellis & john forbes. they speak to me in some way.
if you know of anyone else i simply must read, leave a link for me. or if i have linked yr blog incorrectly, let me know.
also watching bladerunner again for teaching/study purposes. harrison ford shits me with his faux-dark-ruminations. as richard said a while back i think, rutger hauer is the star of the film. his need for more life is palpable.
hey i did have the blogger title-bar-thingy forcibly removed from my code. now with the new version it is back. dammit. how do i get rid of it? will they delete my blog if i do it again? do they care? who are ‘they’?
08 Thursday Feb 2007
Posted Uncategorized
inwow why can’t i seem to post on this blog regularly. i must have nothing to say. been reading an old selected poems by Pam Brown. it’s fantastic. the clash of the i & the you. i don’t know anything else.