dairy entry / barbers-&-(co)

*Warning: if you are attempting to vote for me in the uber-important blog battle, go here & comment. Do not let typing space die! This header shall appear atop every post until the contest culmination. & every post until then will, in some way, detail my journey through this ‘blog-battle’. Will I grow as a person? Will I become less than before? What am I dwelling on right now? We shall see…

barbers-&-(co)

day one a year six of frenzies, the battle

passes me by my whole family a daze,

a bo derek mist splayed over c-block,

transcending stomach contortions.

 

she’s got a kill look. perverse dominatrix of the

bad-boys battened down headspace, maybe, but still.

we’re scrubbing desks & avoiding eyes.

 

spend time only with your own considered physicality,

surprisingly, come up with delusional tactics & steal

coils of magnesium. i might spurn my own sickness.

flip you for it. many of many are discarded;

some, later employed.

 

comprehension sheet.

token of affection.

Motion silences Curnow (Blog Battle)

Nobody will ever really know why explorers like Burke & Wills sought to break new ground. The point is not to know these reasons however, nor to research the actual stories of said explorers properly. The point is these guys were groundbreaking and their names are now famous. We all seek to parallel explorer’s feats in whatever field we operate in. You me & we. We want to find the new ground & then live there. We want to pioneer. 

This is why I am pleased to announce here what is without doubt an Australian & worldwide first: a poetry blogging battle to the death.

These are the rules, proposed by the poet, playwright, flaneur, & sometimes-blogger, Nathan Curnow (& then carefully checked ny myself, of course):

The tally is of comments posted on our “Blog Battle” posts which remain up and open for three weeks (culminating in the Melb Four W launch). Thereby the competition shall be declared over and the winner annouced.

The poet who receives the most comments on their blog will bask in validation, knowing that it truly confirms their poetic worth, the relevance of their practice and their place in Australia’s literary canon (the variety of commenters will also be taken into account too (so you big fans out there can’t simply comment 100 times, Australian Idol like, to ensure your favourite wins)).

In turn, the loser must abandon their blog FOREVER. 

So, what can I say to make you support my blog & not Curnow’s? Well attacking others is always a good way to make yourself look better. I happen to know Curnow personally, so I think I have to now take this opportunity to reveal a few facts about him. Firstly, Nathan often claims to be related to New Zealand poets Allen Curnow & Wystan Curnow. Why does he do it? He thinks this will somehow open doors for him. He once said to me – in a private conversation he asked me never to repeat – ‘If just a handfull of people mistake my name for that of a famous Kiwi poet, & then buy my book about ghosts, the deceit will have been worth it’. Is this the type of artist you want out there blogging with impunity?

& furthermore, Nathan uses his literary ’skills’ to get away with even more reprehensible acts. I have in my posession notorised documents proving Nathan does not give money to any recognised charities. None at all. I was at his house once & someone from OxFam came knocking. Nathan answered the door, & rattled off what could ony have been a pre-rehearsed story about all the charities he does support, & about how there had been a terrible car accident that had recently left his wife with two broken legs & many medical bills. The farce ended with Nathan giving the doorknocker the names & addresses of four unsuspecting friends, people he claimed were ’sure to have lots of spare cash’. After closing the door Curnow lit a cigarette with a pre-polymer $50 (he has a desk drawer full of these & keeps them for such occassions) & laughed in an evil way. I just couldn’t laugh with him.

& finally, we shouldn’t let a vitriolic character assasination end without referring to the ‘poetry’. Is Curnow’s work popular, accessible? Nathan was at Booranga for a residency last year. During that time he wrote one new poem. (I believe it to be only one. Two weeks worth.) We had a workshop during this time, the type of thing where you bring along a new piece, read it, gain feedback etc. Nathan read his Booranga poem in due course. A young girl – possibly 16 or 17 – said after hearing the poem that she ‘didn’t understand any of it’. Her words struck a chord, because where at first I was thinking I was missing something in the poem, & that I should be looking for a deeper meaning, I now saw the the truth. There was no deep meaning in the poem. It was completely incomprehensible. 

& it’s not just the everyday folks that have problems with his work. Simon Patton reviewed Black Inc’s ‘Best Australian Poems 2008′ recently, & he spoke not too kindly of Curnow’s piece. I did think ‘Those Adamant Shapes’ was a fine poem indeed, & I also know Jaya Savige thinks so too, but after reading Patton’s comments I changed my position. I may be paraphrasing very liberally & maliciously, but I believe in this review he categorises Curnow’s style, his way with words, as a ‘veil of sameness’. So. Boring & incomprehensible. A winning combo?

But then what should the poet-blogger really be blogging about? I know for sure it is not the blatant mundane ephemera that Curnow holds up as a shining example of his talents, Thar. It’s just ludicrous. When I think of the best blog postings in the universe, my mind naturally drifts to such posts as blogging / ethers / anti-coterie / installment 1, or cool as a criteria, or the poetic masterpiece i’ll wait in the car. Just compare these things with Thar. Nuff said.

So, all you need to know is your comments matter. Just comment. You don’t have to say anything at all profound. Just let me know you’re out there. (By the way Nathan I think we should disallow the counting of anonymous comments. Fair?) Despite all I’ve written, this will possibly not be too easy. Curnow tends to succeed at things. He has published a book, won some grants, had a few plays produced… Whatever low things he has to do to get the comments, you can be sure he will do them. Only you can stop him. Comment!

Since Curnow posted a little bit before me there has been some time for the online community to have their say. Let’s finish up by looking at a bit of the breaking commentary:

 

 Marieke Hardy (literary semi-celebrity & noted semi-pioneer of the m-book): ‘I am following this contest. Derek Motion follows me on Twitter, & now that I know about the battle, I will most probably also follow him.’

 

 

 

 Tara Moss (author & snake afficianado): ‘The facebook dance-train is crap. I am not interested in such things. I hope Derek Motion dances on the ashes of Curnow’s blog.’

 

 

Kyle Sandilands (living epitome of ‘gaffe’): ‘Nathan Curnow has tuckshop lady arms.’

 

 

 

Kevin Rudd (PM): ‘I’d turn gay for Derek motion.’

 

 

 

(Ps. Comment!)

no content

 

got my copies today. my poem seems to read better by simply being in a book. it did look weird in its original incaration, crammed into a little box in the arts page of The Age.

the poems are in alphabetical order, mine appearing just before les murrays.

i haven’t read the book yet, but if moved to do so i will post later indicating what i think of it.

published by black inc.

up front!

I sat in the shed (where – unbeknownst to me at this point – I would end up sleeping for two weeks when we were evicted from a shared house (for owning a dog)). The ruse is always music rehearsal. Instead, musicians gather to smoke bongs. This was happening within a circle. The circle was always open to more than just musicians. You could join if you had some money.

I had acquired the habit of writing things down in a little notebook and on this particular evening I decided to write everything in real-time. Someone would say something and I would write it down. I described the scenery as literally as possible too. I would even attempt to transcribe my interactions within the group. This was possible to a certain extant – the group’s overall level of interaction was, somewhat lethargic.

Some of the writing of this evening parallels the intro to Frente!’s ‘accidently Kelly Street’. This proves informative. It was very much in the order of ‘Here’s a door and here’s a window / Here’s the ceiling, here’s the floor’. I didn’t advance to the far more complex rendering of a room evidenced with ‘The room is lit like a black and white movie…’, perhaps because I had a away to go with developing my techniques, but, I do think the shed in question may have been lit like a black and white movie (I mean, I admire the way the actual lighting techniques used become irrelevant with this simile: it is all about the viewer, how we sentimentalise things in our mind (black and white movies are shadowy, stark, late-night, two-tone – simple)).

Getting to this point you have to ask yourself what was going on in the song. It is deceptively simple, and not just simple in the simple way that ‘deceptively simple’ can often be used to mean. The song seeks to deceive you by pointing out a simply message that has been relayed many times before. This is the ‘And if you walk real slowly / you can feel the planet breathe’, also ‘Throw away those keys start walking / Watch those tiny things go by’. It’s all about slowing down, tuning out so to speak, and allowing the real messages of the planet to come to you. It’s like what Dransfield wrote years ago about people in their fast cars not hearing the music of the birds, or something.

The deceptiveness however is in the sweetly sung chorus, ‘accidently Kelly Street’. If the song’s frame of reference came about by accident the verses undermine this. Angie sings ‘I know that my decision / to change my life was not that hard’. What was the decision? What brought it on? Could it have been in fact a random real-estate-based transition? A move to a rental house where perchance the people happened to be friendlier than the last place lived in? If so, the whole way of seeing things that is giving the song life (‘It’s Sunday everyday’) could in fact ‘crash on down’ but for complete exterior reasons. Bad shit happens. If instead of ‘friends and strangers’ you start accidently running into ex-lovers or drug dealers you owe money to, your optimistic outlook probably won’t help. Then the next decision to change your life will have to be a repeat: a move to another house, another street. And who’s to say that will work out?

The song is thusly mired in despair. The true message is happiness is fleeting. You’ll find yourself living in house one day where everything just seems to gel. At such a point, it makes sense to warble about how you ‘never thought life could be so sweet’ (it is definitely sensible – check the prettiness, loveliness, and stick-in-your-headdness of both Hart and song). And sure, it probably will make you ‘feel good’, even about the way you’ve been, the horror that has been your life trajectory up until this point. But the pivotal metaphor (one it seems that is not undermined by the presence of any other logic or feeling) is the optimism that comes crashing down ‘like a house of cards’. We know Frente! Can’t continue to play the ‘change my life’ game with a regular run of fortunate good results. Life is random and bleak. Kelly Street is a Utopian fantasy. Just watch the drummer waltz through the video-clip. He doesn’t look happy with this stylization.

tInA reflectioNs

they’re up now, on cordite. 

if i’d blogged it here, i would have been far more flippant, employed more brevity, & either increased or decreased the amount of times i say ‘i had a beer’. i would have been far more or less, more, or less, in general.

one who fights against

my reading of blogs has been constrained as i make a final attack on the thesis, so i’m possibly a little late in reading the full discussion on lyric poetry, & many other arising issues, that was originally on pam brown’s blog, but is now hosted on its own site.

i won’t volunteer anything on the issues raised, but the dynamic interests me. who knows who, & what sort of feelings are bubbling beneath the surface posted opinions? there are times when the things we usually keep for a more ‘gossipy’ forum almost emerges…

it’ll probably become a landmark document simply because of the various ‘known’ poets that have weighed in. (excluding kickknees, of course. his take on things makes a mockery of the whole serious discourse).

showing off, oblique

this is the final online venue for announcing my latest career move. ASA & Ozco have granted me money to write. i am now an emerging writer. so for the first half of 2010 i shall be writing, which i would have done anyway, but i will have money for food, beer, childcare etc…

there are at least 2 of you out there who don’t utilise the twitter, or mybook, so now you know.

congrats also to astrid, fellow emergee.

castle of youth

i can’t travel. i keep waking in the middle of the night, thinking i’m elsewhere, making movements to remedy the situation, to hop out of bed & locate myself in an alien landscape. i can’t sit still on trains because a huge tongan bloke on the way to the footy will always get on & crowd you into a 2 hour cramp that will last for days (he sits contentedly moulded into the space between seats, dozing, wheezing).

laura just kept opening bottles of champagne though we had no interest in the art. i watched swathes of simpsons & seinfeld, content to be un-adult, because foxtel is only for hotels. 

i’m reflecting in a grander way & so you will just have to wait for that. try not too anticipate to hardly.

you are the author of this post

in the idea for a story i take the car off the paved roads & venture down one of those unsigned tracks in the mountain country. it winds & winds, but eventually i confront an explorer, aged almost 200 (looking much like the last knight of the holy grail in that indiana jones movie), still exploring.

we discuss the idea of physicality. driving a car, i claim, is the last truly physical action we learn. we learn to eat, to walk, to control our bowels, to write, to engage in various sporting activities… but then we learn to drive. it’s difficult because we’ve already mastered so much & feel complete. once we’ve learnt the skill though, we shut the door on bodily learning.

the explorer disagrees. he thinks sex is the last thing. but i win because he doesn’t really know what a car is, mine being the first he’s ever seen, & therefore doesn’t have the knowledge to argue for too long.

needless to say, the explorer imparts various secrets to me. then we develop a furious feud, wrestle furiously, & both fall to furious deaths at the bottom of a cliff. luckily we realise we are not dead after thinking for a while that we were.

i will be in newcastle soon, part of the critical animals program under TINA. i will be doing things – writing in a collaborative space, reading stein aloud, & talking about experimental poetics. the explorer is coming with me (i don’t let him do anything without me – the world is a scary place).

in the experimental poetics discussion i will be talking about a poem of mine that is soon to be published in black inc’s Best Australian Poems 09. i will discuss how i used the experimental method of ‘plagiarism’ (to which i will give the more academic term of ‘trace’) to generate this particular poem.

my poem ‘learning about explorers’ is in this journal ecopoetics. i haven’t seen the journal yet. i wonder if anyone has a copy… my explorer is no help with this matter. he’s actually been quite gloomy since i brought him into modern society / my house. & he keeps bitching on about how he’s an idea stolen from a coetzee essay, has no real identity as such, blah blah blah…

glob

i wrote the asal paper on blogging. talked it up even. & now find i have nothing at all to blog. & less motivation. this might change of course.