So, this is where I’ll be for the next few days. 

 Come along.

 Particularly good will be a group performance of pieces  responding to Brennan’s Wanderer sequence.

 Other things will be good too, no doubt.

 I’m on thursday. I forget when exactly. Check the online  program.

giant squid

sure, we took stock of her peter carey impersonation that night,
a lot. summer on a boat begets the impractical – i mean, you know.
you liked licorice & still have a good arse. seagulls. random spurts
of fight; peals of bottle breaking through. why aren’t we naming
things anew? neologisms pretty as fairy-floss, like boredom.
there’s money left under cushions hinting at the keys, stuff always
remaining conspicuous. i’m not going to read the book, & wish
i could have said that: appeared coolly integral. song after song
a backdrop to mixed metaphors, wandering out of speakers. ack.

 

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my life of crime

You Are Kidnapping

You love to be in control. You are incredibly dominant. A part of you even likes to make people suffer. It’s all about power!  You love to take risks, especially if the potential payoff is huge. But you wouldn’t be in crime only for the money. You’re twisted enough to just enjoy screwing with people.

What Felony Are You?

i’d glimpse

 

 

lagoon eyed teens laugh at        your ode

wildcards fuddling un-                        arty the statues ap-pear

                       slow mall design faster              chickens wore happy

forget red signs shifting

 

bald spot to an amphitheatre

      ears like coke      (bark bark bark until silence would be dull)

 

my jewellery your public affairs to the stars tone flagrant

mix-up get suited up for a                                 brief fling thing down

 

i’ll tell you things in different         skirts blue odours disclosure like it

all was a time past & here’s looking back

 

the roaming an institute of cheerleaders    with potted plant modals

                                                          sitting too still tense

 

& often as you brooch moves

            true i forget

 

towards a scared opera house business

parks finite less i’m uncertain

                       an act of bliss in swift bakelite

                                                            momentum very faint what’s

 

fun now pills are straight-faced                                tampered beats love electro-proof

 

the fridge magnet; what it says about you

gumption in evacuating the living-room a wistful
leasehold expires transit Busy all aspects in general
sure-footed cartoon-like in arrears / (we hope you
(& your guest / party / group) find some of this (objects
atmospherics / intentions) amenable) / idiom matters more
than Colonialism you know eucalypt impressions kept
at bay working-horse-stories battened down under threat
of solipsistic typhoons / (we had hoped to do more
for you (we had ideas) but we’ve realised we don’t know
what you like (or are like)) / i touch you & we talk
in the early morning window opened weather there’s
a Frequency in some things / (we think most things are best
left up to you, &, we do not mean to be rude in stating this
(we, of course)) / wave to the people go on

 

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siete un idiota

it always happens. i write up to 30 poems during the month of june, expressly for blogging purposes, & then there is a slackening off. although there is so much writing that i keep to myself, keep secret, for the purposes of winning prizes, diaristic purposes, the annals of history…

i am trying to do a bit of writing for the critical animals festival. i shall be there very briefly, just allowing enough time to give a paper & enjoy a collaborative performance i’ve organised. come along to newcastle if you want, 2nd October, check the blog for more exact details.

doing a lot of thinking relating to arts funding too. nsw seems to be in a mess. nevertheless, we’re all putting our hands up again, some, like me, looking to ensure they have an income for 2009. sometimes, i find the whole process ludicrous, even dishonest. at other times i think i may as well be looking to secure money for literary activity in this area, if the government is dishing it out. the good part about my job is though, that occassionaly i get to contact people, writers like myself, & go ‘hey…you wanna come visit? do a few workshops? we’ll pay you’. that’s nice. filling out forms, acquitting projects, talking yourself & your efforts up, that’s bullshit. 

anyway, this post on my blog i miei fascini interamente rovesciati has over a hundred hits, & seems to be my most viewed post ever. strange that. can i discount the fact that when people comment on your posts, they are inexorably drawn back to see if their comment has made an impact? sure. why not.

 

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hyperlink blender, or, becoming a fan of ‘a fan’

last night i was browsing (i don’t ‘read’ much, unless i really put my mind to it) the latest overland. in particular i ingested a few of the passages from an interview with writer cate kennedy. i’m not sure that i’ve ever read a kennedy short-story, though i hear from others she is a good writer, & i hear from others still (you know who you are) that she is ‘lovely’, lovely in the hannie rayson mould, lovely in that ‘you gotta care’ way.

what struck me was a point where she says ‘don’t talk about what you do – this will only take time away from the actual doing’. (i’m paraphrasing not quoting, i could retrieve the journal, it’s sitting in the next room, but, i might lose my train of thought, or something). this advice to wannabe writers – it’s strange. maybe only becuase it seems like i can’t pick up a journal, or even innocently stroll past a festival-appearance, or web-browser randomly displaying a poetics blog without running into an interview with cate. i’m unsure why she would say something like that. maybe i should read the interview in more depth. maybe it becomes contextualised, later. but still. i don’t see how talking about what you do can be a negative thing. what if you’re driving somewhere, or walking through the city with someone? tasks that in a sense forbid the activity of writing. you talk about what you’re doing, planning, in these situations. it’s an act of clarification.

& while cate keeps talking (there’s also an ‘in conversation’ featuring her & alice pung (october booranga resident) that you can watch online) & dolling out the advice to aspirants, she’s undermining the usefulness of this particular piece of advice. a lecturer once advised me to move in the absolute opposite direction: you have to be wary of not sharing your work, placng yourself amidst the body of work that’s out there. & i’ve taken this on i think. talk / articulate / learn / share / do.

someone please leave links to all the online things i’ve mentioned. i don’t have the time for that. or am i really just going off to the scour the web for images of playschool presenters, to find out what they were like when younger? i guess you won’t really know. does the gmail green-light suggest to you that i’m on the computer all day, dilligently studying? or does it suggest i’m procrastinating to the edge of distraction, letting any vain tangent have its way with me? i should talk about it more. it doesn’t do to be secretive. 

 

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thimble

right. humdrum as our prerogative, inventing the day
athwart blown iron-filings, swift from the sill, not
massive like the worlds. talk of kilometres? thrusting
gravity between clothing & sky i’m a narrative grandly
& the nettles lurking subtext. holding your little hand
we rounded on the placid thatch of roses – wooded layers
an impractical sticky hexagon. directions, any compass
you’d face holds a secret population, their own quests &
churches telegraphed. our crawling sprites worship a swan,
a thing never seen this side of slagged real-estate, this fiscal
garden, at least. move along love: desist purplish intrigues
with batteries & that tightly focussing torch. we’d face all
tunnels together – boredom a duress. yeah.

 

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black mouse

someone got here by searching on ‘hot day’. get the hell out of here, hot-day-person. you’re not wanted.

oh, i don’t mean it, not really. stay hot-day. read me more. i’ll talk about hot days if you want. is that what you want?

or was that just a passing fancy? i’ve looked up the weather before, on the internet, it was when i was travelling somewhere kinda distant, to see some bands in a fetival. it was open-air; i had a practical concern. so you see i understand you a little bit more: you’re not some kind of weather-weirdo. in fact i shouldn’t have labelled you hot-day. it’s frankly insensitive, plain stupid even. i apologise. let’s call you gerald (short for geraldine, should you be that way gendered).

so, gerald. what do you want to read about? my day perhaps? the various ephemeral inanities? well, caleb & i cooked lasagne; i recently ate a tim-tam; the reserve bank lowered the interest rates. fascinating picture, no? what do you think about sarah palin’s daughter hey? leave a comment. hook me up.

or maybe that’s not the register you desire. i should be using this space to to write of poetics. the relationship between canonic australian poets & celine dion, just for instance. there’s something in it, something academic, something cool.

gerald / geraldine / hot-day – you are my only friend. don’t leave me hanging.

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