Postcards from Ivy: Part 2

With November receding far into the distance – how was THAT for a December that got a bunch of chemicals dumped on it in the middle of a lightning storm, hah? – it’s time to reflect upon the remainder of my poetic postcard correspondence with Ms. Ivy Alvarez. So here are some more poemstcards for your perusal and handwriting interpretation (PS – here’s part one).

I can’t speak for Ivy, but I continued to bodge up drafts of existing poems for these cards, making it less of a generate-new-work project as a revision-of-old-work project, but writing is writing and I do precious little enough of it at the best of times, so I’m going to call this a win, even though I was egregiously late with my cards a couple of times.

Musical Interlude: Unabashed vol. 26

Unabashed vol. 26, posted with vodpod

I commute. I commute to a different city. Only three days a week, but still. It’s a bike ride, then an hour-ten-minimum intercity train ride and then another ten-fifteen-minute suburban train ride to the office. Same again at the end of the day, but in reverse, of course. And to get to work on time I need to start the morning commute at around 6am. This can be a bit of a downer sometimes, especially in the cold, dark depths of winter. So to keep the mood chipper over the years I’ve complied a series of the most upbeat, fun, singalongable mood-altering pop songs I can lay my hands on as a kind of audio prozac antidote for the early morning commute.

With the launch of the delightful 8tracks last year, a tracklist-sharing service that isn’t beholden to the service’s own library of music, I am now able to inflict these mixes – which go under the series name “Unabashed” – upon the internet proper. I’ve held off for a while but you know? Fuck it. Here’s a dose of Unabashed vol. 26 for you and your ear-holes.

One caveat: there may be cheese in your future if you choose to press play. But it’s glorious cheese. Just relax and go with it.

So you can listen to it right here or you can head over to 8tracks – whatever floats. And here’s the track listing, just so you know what to expect:

1. Theme from Magnum P.I. – Mike Post & Pete Carpenter
2. I Pop A Shot – They Might Be Giants
3. Speedball – Adam WarRock
4. Mixed Bizness (Cornelius remix) – Beck
5. Resurrect – Self
6. Kill Your Television – Ned’s Atomic Dustbin
7. Pure And Simple – Lightning Seeds
8. Band On The Run – Paul McCartney & Wings
9. Come On Eileen –  Dexy’s Midnight Runners
10. For Nancy – Pete Yorn
11. Helpless – Sugar
12. Heavy Metal Drummer – Wilco
13. Forever And Ever Amen – The Drums
14. Amnesia – Machine Translations
15. An Argument With Myself – Jens Lekman
16. Porcupine Eating A Carrot – Parry Gripp
17. The Perfect Kiss – New Order
18. When You Were Mine – Prince
19. A Trick of the Light – The Triffids
20. I Will Possess Your Heart – Death Cab For Cutie
21. The Mate Ship – Casey Benetto (from Keating The Musical)

Why do you write poetry? – Libby Hart

I asked a bunch of poets the above question in order to revive an old regular feature from this blog. I’ll post their answers until I run out or get distracted…

Libby Hart says:

“I often say that I didn’t choose poetry, it chose me. I’m not really sure why it decided to tap me on the shoulder. There have been moments in my life when I really wish I knew the answer to that question, but each time I ask it I come up empty-handed.

I came to writing poetry later than most poets I know. Yes, I wrote the obligatory angst-ridden poems in my teens yet I didn’t take up writing poems again until I was in my mid-twenties and I did not take it as seriously as I do now until I was in my early to mid-thirties.

All I know about poetry is that it hovered around me like a longing before I began writing it. I couldn’t label it then but I know it was just there in the shadows waiting until I was ready. At the time I was an avid reader of poetry (and still am of course, any writer is an avid reader). But I suppose it was my own insecurities that blocked me from allowing myself to say: Yes, I could do that too.

In so many ways poetry is an apprenticeship that perhaps you never graduate from. I always love reading and re-reading that story by Annie Dillard about French workers. When an apprentice gets hurt or is exhausted, the experienced workers say to him or her: It is the trade entering your body. Poetry enters the body everyday. A non-poet will call this hooey, but every poet will know what I mean. It enters you and you enter it. There is mystery and joy and heartbreak and exhaustion. Sometimes all at the same time.

I write poetry because I don’t have a choice. I write poetry because it is sanctuary. I write poetry because it gives me a voice. I write poetry because it allows me to unravel a situation, an event or a subject and make sense of it. Poetry is mystical and mysterious, and I honour it as best as I can.”

Stay tuned for more answers or submit your own for consideration to adamford [AT] labyrinth {dot} net (dot) au

Review: Feynman

Yesterday arvo I was once again upon the airwaves having a nice old chinwag about comics with the delovely Lorin Ford (no relation) and alicia sometimes (also no relation). The topic on our lips this time around was Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick’s comic biography of US physicist and pop cultural icon Richard Feynman, fittingly titled Feynman.

And here’s what we said:

Once again, on listening back I realised that I had begged one of Lorin’s insightful questions, namely whether the biography tended to lionise Feynman or display him in a more critical warts-and-all light. To which I should have responded by pointing out that since the book is told in Feynman’s own words, excerpted from his own memoirs and lectures, and since Feynman could fairly be said to have had a reasonable ego on him, the book isn’t what you’d call harsh in its criticism of things like his involvement in developing the atomic bomb, or his reputation as a womaniser, or his arrogance in general, but neither does it completely sweep such things under the table. Feynman was certainly a man who could admit his own mistakes,which he did in his own writing, and that aspect of his personality is reflected in Feynman. It’s certainly not a hagiography, then, but it’s definitely a celebration of his life and achievements.

As I said in the review, with Feynman Ottoviani and Myrick have put together a very good and beautiful-to-look-at Richard Feynman primer that, while not necessarily bringing anything new to the table, still offers a great introduction to the man.

Feynman is another amazing addition to the ever-growing stable of amazing comics coming out of the First Second imprint, which is fast becoming my favourite graphic novel imprint for its willingness to publish such a wide range of stories that that demonstrate the infinite potential of the comic form.

Australian Women Writers: 2012 Challenge

So I’m going to do the Australian Women Writers Challenge in 2012.

It’s been set up by the Australian Women Writers organisation to counteract the bias toward reviews of male authors in the Australian literary landscape. And while I hope you don’t think I’m big-noting myself by including myself in said landscape, I’m definitely partial to this cause, and happy to do whatever I can to shine more light on talented Aussie writers who happen to be women as well.

The challenge involves making a public commitment to reading and reviewing work by Australian women writers in 2012. There are various levels of commitment one can commit to, but given my bookishness it would seem remiss of me not to take on the Franklin-fantastic level of the challenge, which commits me to reading at least 10 books and reviewing at least four of them over the course of the year. Sounds positively doable.

This morning I stood ahenny before our bookshelf and noted down a few titles that have been on my “meaning to read that” list for a long time now, and cast my eye over the competitors in the recent Meanjin Tournament of Books, and came up with a nice list of fiction including The Man Who Loved Children, The Lieutenant, Gilgamesh, Mr. Scobie’s Riddle and Carpentaria. But then it occurred to me that that list was completely bereft of poets, so I quickly put together a list of poets who I’ve been meaning to read more of, including Gwen Harwood, Dorothy Hewett, Mary Gilmore, Tracy Ryan, Vicki Viidikas, Pam Brown, Jill Jones, LK Holt, Joanne Burns and Libby Hart. That’s eleven right there.

So now I just have to work out whether I’m going to go poetry-exclusive, or whether I’ll cantilever the two. Or whether I’ll just see how I go, and if I feel like I need to have a novel on the go as well as the poetry, I’ll pick one of those books up there.

Kind of weird to set out a list of everything you’re going to read for an entire year. Of course I’ll probably fudge things and find other stuff I want to read, but this kind of commitment is always of the fluid and non-binding sort, so no stresses and let’s get started, hey?

If this sounds like something you’d be keen to do too, AWW is looking to sign up as many folks as they can to this, so head over to check out the rules of the Challenge and sign up, why don’t you? I’d be glad of the company.

Rejected: My kids, my wife, my bald head, summer, pizza, earthlings, window-cleaners…

Time for the latest tally of rejection!

Overland finally got around to knocking back the other two poems that I hadn’t heard from them about, so I sent them two more (“Again!” and “Forty Dollars”) for consideration and they knocked them back too – quite quickly this time, only taking four days to pass on them. Which is efficient, if not especially encouraging.

Southerly also knocked back four poems (“Again!”, “Forty Dollars”, “The Big Four Zero”, “This Morning as you Lay on Your Back I Saw”), but the email they sent me was all about how they’d recieved so much short fiction lately, which makes me think they sent me the wrong form rejection letter, which further makes me wonder if I should get all pedantic and confirm that their poetry editor also didn’t want the poems. Probably not.

Postcards from Ivy – Part 1

(click for embiggenation)

In late October Ivy Alvarez put the call out to poets to send her one poem a week on a postcard throughout November, in return for which she would do the same. I was interested in the idea, not only because of its promise of delivering brand new I. Alvarez poems straight to my mailbox, but also for the inspiration it would hopefully give me to write some new poems myself, and to  discuss them critically with Ivy. A sort of workshop-by-mail, if you will.

Slammin

• Attention conservation notice: I wanted to win something and got grumpy when I didn’t, but I’m feeling better now. Plus some thoughts on the nature of poetry slams.
• Keywords: slam poetry, psychobabble, rationalisation, competitive arts.
• Word length: 2,252 words.

So last week I competed in the Victorian State Finals of the Australian Poetry Slam at the State Library of Victoria. Which was nice.

About a week or so earlier I’d signed up to read a poem in the Castlemaine heat of the slam, thinking it’d be nice to get up in front of a crowd in a funky bar and perform. I hadn’t really done any readings since moving out of Melbourne almost six years ago, unless you count launching The Third Fruit is a Bird, but that was a very different kind of reading.

I had no real expectations about winning, but the prizes were pretty cool, so I had decided to approach the slam heat as professionally as I could, choosing to read “Are We There Yet?”, a poem that I thought fit the slam-poetry style well (based as it was on the monologues of early-’80s rap), and rehearsing the poem in the weeks leading up to the heat so that I could deliver it from memory instead of reading on the page, just like all the famous slam poets do.

***

I was really happy with my performance on the night. It felt like it had a certain energy to it, and it was fun adopting the persona of a big old arrogant ego-poet while I read. I got a pretty good score from the judges, and because I went on quite early in the night, it meant that I could spend the rest of it basking in the glow of a good performance well scored while sinking a few sherbets and enjoying the rest of the slammers’ words.

In the end I came second, which was lovely in a self-affirming kind of way. I could have used the $100 first prize, but the winner, Luka Lesson, was certainly much more of a slam poet than me – charismatic, impassioned and political – and anyway the second prize of a membership to Australian Poetry was probably what I would have spent the $100 on.

I got a bit of a shock when the MC, the redoubtable Emilie Zoey Baker, announced that first and second place winners had both won places in the State Final. I had joked earlier in the week with friends about keeping the date of the State Final free because I didn’t know if I would be in Melbourne or not that night.

Why do you write poetry? – Michael Farrell

I asked a bunch of poets the above questions. I’ll put their answers on this blog until I run out or get distracted…

Michael Farrell says:

“klare [lanson - see Klare's answer here - ed.] mentioned poetry writes me & i subscribe to this theory yet i cant hold onto it (or it cant hold onto me) – theres always more than one reason to write, more than one theory of the process, though one may dominate for a time. the idea of entertainment is close to me in reality at the moment as i have a group of friends to read poems to – but while that may help me write, i dont think my poems are that different than those ive written during the many years when i havent had a group i belonged to. im letting myself be more spontaneous. but its never natural, its always art .. or at least a theory of..”

“pop music is such a big part of my poetics, that entertainment has necessarily always been in there .. though it wasnt till i read ohara that poetry was confirmed for me as an entertainment possibility. the first famous francis bacon – the cultural critic – said something about people doing what they can do best – what they can make their name at – fuck knows why but that ended up being poetry for me – im sure i couldve been a a quite good accountant – but would thatve satisfied my ego?”

“i think perhaps poetry is a sublimation of song for me – does that sound hyperreactionary? being too shy to let song out except on a page .. but theres a bit of folk/storytelling culture in there too.. why then arent my poems all simple lyrics or narratives? too many things to hide .. too much complexity to process .. ? it started when i read german expressionist drama .. remember i was only twenteen .. a good catholic country boy looking for the easiest way to go bad .. then i read joyce .. stein.. it all proceeded to blow my mind .. id read enough nme by then to know thats what i wanted to do .. i write poetry to blow peoples minds .. even if i have to get up their nose to do it .. & if i fail & if i fail every time .. maybe those failures are just preparation for the final ex(im?)plosion ..”

More answers soon. Stay tuned, or submit your own to adamford {TA} labyrinth {TOD} net {TOD} au.

W.D. Snodgrass: After Experience Taught Me…

After experience taught me that all the ordinary
Surroundings of social life are futile and vain;

         I’m going to show you something very
         Ugly: someday, it might save your life.

(Full text here)

Happy Remembrance Day.