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.

The other thing I struggled with was fitting the damn poems on a single card in a way that still left room for the address, the stamp and the air mail sticker. I came up with all kinds of tricks to squeeze the buggers on there, from multiple cards (three cards for my third poem) to squishy teeny handwriting, invoking the old right-hand-hanging-indent trick I first saw in a collection of Shakespeare’s plays when I was eleven, and utilising creative stamp positioning. In the end I discovered that the best way to fit a poem onto a postcard is to write a short poem. Whodathunk?

It was wonderful getting a new I. Alvarez poem (on time) every week. Ivy seemed to be delving into a wellspring (I think that’s a mixed metaphor, only I’m not sure what delving actually is) of dreams and fairy-tales, turning out some darkly surreal prose poems as her half of the bargain. Some of the lines images from her five poems still rattle around my head at random, like “white coal is chalk” and the bit about spoons with heft scooping the eyes out of baby animals.

For my part I felt that the five poems I sent to Ivy were quite eclectic, and a bit patchy too, compared to hers, which seemed coherent and confident to me, but perhaps that’s what it feels like reading your own work in progress. I liked the ones about sorrow, zombies and cowboys/aliens the most, and the one about commuting the least.

I did get a nice bit of feedback from a friend of Ivy’s about my final poem, a riff on zombie movies (that was actually rejected by the zombie issue of cordite, but which has been reworked a bit since). Apparently Ivy’s friend read it and said, “It’s like a movie.” So there’s that.

All in all a great way to spend November, cantilevering the guilt from falling steadily behind the prescribed NaNoWriMo wordcount with the guilt from sending inferior poems late halfway across the world. I recommend it to you all.

In point of fact, Ivy and I both enjoyed the writing and workshopping and reading of each other’s work enough to agree to continue to swap poemstcards on a slightly less frenetic schedule (though I did completely blow the first deadline by three weeks – I blame Christmas), and I’m thinking of maybe doing something similar with some other poets sometime down the track too.

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)

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

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.

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.

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.

Finally, Island replied to my query about my August submission (“Thursday Morning”, “The Faint Red Impression”) by telling me that they no longer reply to rejected submissions, only accepted ones, so if I hadn’t heard in three months then I should just assume I’d been rejected. They didn’t reply to my follow-up email asking how strict they were with their 3-months-and-you’re-out rule (e.g. if I submit on 16 August do I have until 16 November, or should I allow until the end of November before assuming it’s a no-go?). Which is probably for the best.

This slightly confounding approach to rejection was clarified a little when I submitted three short stories to them this morning and got a letter of receipt explaining that it’s only POETRY that doesn’t get a reply if it’s rejected. Probably because of the higher volume of poetry that they receive, but still, it seems kinda rude to poets (quiet, you).

So, for those keeping score at home here’s the current state of play for the poems mentioned above:

• Again! – 4 rejections – I think this is a nice, light-hearted, sweet little poem but it’s hard to find poetry journals who are interested in publishing light verse these days, so I’m not sure what I’m gonna do with it right now.
• Forty Dollars – 4 rejections – ditto.
• Commensurate with Skill – 4 rejections – I reckon this one is due for a revision. I noticed an ambiguity in it the last time I read it in front of an audience, and I think I know how to fix that.
• The Big Four Zero – 3 rejections (4 if you count a poetry comp I didn’t win with it last year) – Happy with this at the moment, so it’s gone back out into the world of submissions and is currently sitting with Westerly.
• Accidental Earthlings – 3 rejections – This one needs a revision too, I think. I suspect it’s not making its point very strongly. I’ve got some ideas about how to make the conceit a little clearer, though.
• The Faint Red Impression – 3 rejections – I think this one’s fine too, just a matter of finding a home that suits its temperament. I’m thinking of sending it out to Southerly.
• Thursday Morning – 2 rejections – Happy with this one too – also thinking of sending out to Southerly.
• This Morning as You Lay on Your Back I Saw – 2 rejections – I think this one needs some work too. Not sure what at the moment, but I’ll have a play and see what comes of it.

That works out to a total of 25 (or 26 if you count the poetry comp) rejections for 8 poems, an average of 3.125 (or 3.25) rejections per poem.

I have other poems and stories out there in the wild at the moment, searching for homes in many and varied places, so I’ll keep you posted on how they fare. You know, just in case you’re interested.

(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.

(click for empoesizenation)

It didn’t work out exactly that way. Instead of writing brand new poems, I ended up sending Ivy poems that I had already written, but which I wasn’t yet satisfied were finished. For the first week I tried to write an entirely new poem, but struggled to get something done in time, so instead simply sent an existing poem that I was pretty sure Ivy hadn’t already read, but which seemed like it was about the right size for a postcard (I was almost right – I had to squeeze the last line into the bottom corner to make the whole poem fit).

For the remainder of the month I compromised. Instead of writing new poems, I sifted through my unfinished poems pile to find things that I thought were close enough to done to be able to be finalised with a couple of days’ revision. It was a good opportunity to readdress some nearly-there poems and get some feedback from Ivy about them.

(click for emlargification)

I found the process of copying out poems by hand in particular – as opposed to typing them on a screen – a very fruitful process. There’s something in the act of holding a pen and guiding it across the page that engages the mind in a way that’s distinct from the way it’s engaged when tapping at a keyboard. Maybe it’s the fact that the words come slower, which allows you to give them more consideration as they emerge.

(click for emphaticization)

I’ve often turned to recitation as a way to give a poem a different kind of analysis while writing. Reading a poem aloud can give you a sense of the way the words fit together in a way beyond the visual, and in the same way writing them out by hand created a certain tactile sense of composition that was again distinct from the visual or the aural. It felt like a great discovery of a new obvious technique that I had always had at my disposal.

So anyway, here’s the first four postcards that Ivy and I swapped. I’ll post the rest at a later date, once they’ve all arrived.

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.

***

I spent the weeks between the heat and the final writing a new poem called “Second Comes Right After First”, a word-play-laced satire in a similar style to “Are We There…” all about how coming second is philosophically and mathematically superior to coming first. I memorised the hell out of it and mumbled it to myself over and over again in the shower, mopping the kitchen and cycling to the station. I started to imagine what I would do if I won the state final and ended up in the nationals. I liked the idea.

As the final approached I started seriously thinking about winning strategies. I recited both poems one after the other to see if they felt good enough to win over a crowd of strangers. In the end I decided to go with “Are We There Yet?”, which felt stronger somehow, more able to cut through any indifference an audience might harbour. It made sense, too – “Are We There Yet?” was a proven winner, the poem that had got me this far. The other poem felt a little bit like it was being too clever and self-referential, like you wouldn’t really get it if you didn’t know that I’d come second in the heats, and with the rules of the slam denying me the luxury of providing necessary context with an introduction (you’ve got two minutes to perform and the clock starts as soon as you say your first word), it felt like too much of a risk.

The final was pretty nerve-wracking. I was scheduled to perform as the second poet in the second half of the evening, which meant that I spent most of the night pacing up and down, mumbling the poem to myself and not taking in as much of the show as I might have. By the time I got on stage I was pretty wrung out. I paused for a moment and then went straight into it, and it wasn’t long before I could tell that the audience wasn’t digging me as much as the home-town crowd had been a couple of weeks earlier.

I left the stage happy with how I’d performed – not ecstatic, but happy – but I wasn’t surprised when the scores I got were kind of meh. I don’t know what they added up to but I remember seeing a seven-point-something and a six-point-something – enough to know that I hadn’t placed anywhere near the top two scores of the night so far.

***

What surprised me the most was how upset I was at not winning. I don’t like to think of myself as a competitive person, but as I watched the rest of the night unfold and saw the two eventual winners take the stage to rousing applause I was deep in a spiral of jealousy and recrimination. It was pretty confronting.

I tried to work out for myself what went wrong. First I externalised the blame. The acoustics were shit. The judges were idiots. The audience too. How was I supposed to follow a mid-show stand-up routine with something smart and subtle? The whole setup was crap – slam poetry was an inherently simplistic phenomenon that rewarded bland, obvious platitudes and rejected sharp, insightful intelligent writing.

Then I internalised it. I had read badly. I had been too nervous. My poem was actually crap. I had foolishly performed an ironic, overly wordy too-complex poem in front of an audience expecting honesty, straightforward language and passion. I was an idiot.

I wasn’t really comfortable with either conclusion, though. I wanted to try to find a way to resolve my feelings about not winning without resorting to either blaming myself or Slam Poetry Itself for what had happened.

***

I spent a good chunk of the weekend working through the emotional miasma, and in the end I think my poor showing comes down to a combination of things. I still think that “Are We There Yet?” is a good poem, but I also think it was the wrong poem to read that night. I don’t know how I could have avoided reading it, though – it was the only piece I had prepared to read apart from “Second Comes Right After First”, which I think would have gone down even worse. I also thing my nervousness lent a tension to my performance that accentuated the arrogance of the poem, however satirically that arrogance may have been intended.

(When I was talking to some of the other slammers I got the impression that they had more than one poem under their belt ready to perform, so that if they thought the audience was veering more toward the personal than the political, they could bring out their “I want to be a better person” piece and leave their “Land rights now” piece for another show. Maybe if I had prepared a range of poems about a range of subject matter I would have been more able to give the audience what I thought it wanted.)

I also think that I’m not really suited to slamming. Throughout this experience, part of the excitement of being involved at this level came from feeling like I didn’t belong, like I had somehow scammed my way into something. To be honest, the reason I chose to perform “Are We There Yet?” was partly because the style of the piece seemed to suit the slam format, but also partly because I wanted to take the piss out of slam poetry. So the prize going to someone more respectful of and dedicated to the form seems like justice.

I’ve performed my poetry a lot over the years, in front of friendly and unfriendly crowds – one spectacular night at Bathurst University Engineering Club’s O-Week ball comes to mind – but if slam poetry tends toward the musical and rhythmic side of things, then when I perform my poems it’s more like stand-up or a recitation. If slam is exemplified by the late, lamented Gil Scott-Heron, then I’m standing at the Emo Philips end of the spectrum.

***

Another thing to take into account is the subjectivity of the whole “judging poetry” thing. It seems obvious to say “they just didn’t like it”, but when you have one group of five random judges selected from the audience give a poem one score, and then two weeks later a totally different random group of strangers drawn from the audience gives the same poem a different score, you shouldn’t really be all that surprised.

The whole premise of competitive art is a contentious one – witness the controversy that arises every couple of years about the Archibald Prize, or the Booker. Whenever anyone says “this example of the artform is the best” there are plenty of people to shout them down and argue the point. Which is as it should be. Art is subjective. Any time you try to apply an objective measure of quality to a subjective quantity you’re going to have trouble.

But even though people get all het up about which painting or book or poem they thought was the best, they’re all still having a passionate conversation about that artform. And that’s pretty fucking cool if you ask me.

***

I think the thing that most prompted me to try to find another way to deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by my performance at the final was the way my mind kept coming back to the idea that it was slam and not me that had somehow got things wrong. Whenever an anti-slam sentiment surfaced I couldn’t help noting its similarity to some of the more ridiculous arguments put forward by anti-slam campaigners, most recently Mr. Christopher Bantick on the pages of The Australian in response to an article by Emilie Zoey Baker about her dream of poetry slams on prime time TV.

Bantick’s been ably put in his place by both Emilie and Alan Wearne, so I won’t go into too much detail in my response to the sentiments that he and other anti-slammers have put forth over the interminable years, except to say that while I think there is some truth in the assertions about slam poetry’s limitations and the kind of poetry it encourages people to write, I never wanted to be one of those “you kids get off my lawn” types, so when I found myself internally ranting about young people today and the dumbing down of poetry I made an executive decision to stop thinking like that. I mean, I’m not a huge fan of bush poetry or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poems either, nor am I any good at writing those forms, but that doesn’t give me the right to say that they’re pointless or that people should stop writing that way. It’s all part of the depth of the artform, yeah?

In the end I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t fucking matter who won (stunning, I know). If you remove the “wah wah I didn’t win” part and kick the “slam ain’t real poetry” complaints to the kerb (because they’re asinine sour grapes and self-interested garbage), the whole night was pretty damn spectacular: a packed house, a dozen poets bringing their A-game to the stage, bonus performances by stand-up comedians, high school slam teams and musicians, an audience roaring and cheering and hooting and hollering for poetry.

***

So big, big ups to everyone who competed in the heats and the finals. The words I saw on display at both events were all spectacular in their own way, from odes to bladder control to slam meditations on World War I, paeans to Zooey Deschanel and invocations of peace and tolerance in our time. All good.

And especially cromulent ups to runner up Luka Lesson and overall winner Simon Taylor, who will be representing their home state at the nationals this Friday. All the best, guys.

It’s good. I’m good. I got two nights out at some pretty special poetry gigs, I saw some amazing writers do some amazing performances, I got to talk loudly about myself in front of lots of people, I got to hang out with some old buddies, I honed two poems to within an inch of their lives and I ended up walking away with the (self-appointed) title of Highest Scoring Local Poet in the Castlemaine Heat of the 2011 Australian Poetry Slam, and if there’s one thing I like, it’s an overly long qualification-laden epithet.

The old Welcome to Chewton sign at the outskirts of my home town includes the snappy, “Formerly Forest Creek, home of the world’s richest alluvial goldfield ever”, so why not add “Home of the highest-scoring regional poet at the Castlemaine heat of the 2011 Australian Poetry Slam” and then go for the trifecta by finishing up with “Home of the most qualification-laden Welcome sign in Central Victoria”?

You know it makes sense.

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.