The tapa notebook

When I was back in New Zealand last year for the New Zealand electronic poetry centre’s 3rd birthday celebrations, I was given two notebooks. Exquisite things. White, white paper, unlined, & bound in tapa cloth. One was for my eternal unseen use, the other was to be returned to the University of Auckland Library where it would be held in their Special Collections.

The books frightened me with their pure intensity / intense purity; but after about six months I steeled myself sufficiently to start using the one I had to send back –the second still sits beside the pc; I use a crappy old notepad if I feel the need to write something down when I’m out. The first entry was ambiguous. Typed out & posted later to the pelican, it is not made clear whether or not it was written within those covers. (It was.)

Over the next six months there were more entries, more poems – or the early scratchings of them – added. Eventually it was full enough for me to feel comfortable about sending it back. I was asked to write something about it, responded with a poem which also was posted to the pelican &, in a sort of Möbius strip, is also reprinted & linked to on the nzepc page that has pictures of the front cover & several inside pages of the notebook.

from: The Tapa Notebook

This book is
contra-
diction. The cover
tapa cloth, traditional.
But the paper inside
high-tech, high
gloss. So much
dioxin used. So
white I am
afraid to write
on it. An impediment
to speech. Contra
diction.

 
(above) a page from my tapa notebook

The scratchings on the page above (clicking on the photo will allow a larger view of it) eventually became #83 in my Series Magritte, the poem below.

Deep Waters
for Alfred Hitchcock & Tippi Hedren & Alex Gildzen

Unlike most
of Magritte's birds
is neither egg nor
simulacrum. With
blood. Wondering
which way to turn.
Le sang froid will
take the woman's
coat from off her
back. Or. Le sang
chaud will whisper
in her ear &
wake her from her
statuary. Or even le
sang très chaud.
Will influence a
Hitchcock movie.

 

9/13

This written for the future,
something to look back on, to see
what my thoughts were
at the time. A commentary on what
is now before me, how you feast
on the dead, play replay after replay,
from different angles, rewritten
as choreography, a Hollywood blockbuster
with the producers wanting to make sure
the audience gets its money’s worth. It is
what you’ve come to expect; but most
movies are cleaner, have stars that are
paid more for their one performance
than this whole episode would have cost
to carry out. Think on it. Brood on the
implications of what you’ve learnt
in the two days since. The stand-in pilots
had work visas, lived next door,
supported themselves & contributed to
the economy of the country
they have just put on notice. The airlines
paid for & provided the bombs.
The extras paid for their own parts.
There was no need for rehearsal.


9/13/01
Published in the Muse Apprentice Guild
Included in Sun Moon's Mother

a littoral reading

It's National Poetry Week in Australia, & the local activity will be a group of Central Queensland poets, including Louise Waller & Kristin Hannaford, who'll be reading on the beach at Yeppoon this Friday.

An eclectic list

Veteran TV presenter, interviewer, writer Melvyn Bragg's South Bank Series on U.K. ITV next year will be on twelve British books that changed the world. It's a most interesting list, not all of which are books, that ranges from the Magna Carta to William Wilberforce's first speech against slavery, from Darwin to the rules of soccer, from Sir Isaac Newton to Marie Stopes.

How to move to the left, whilst standing still

It is probably a good indication of just how far to the Right the ruling Australian Liberal Party has moved when I hear a radio interview with a member of their junior coalition partner, the National Party, in which he says that these days the Nationals, which has its major constiuency amongst regional & rural Australia, are a force for moderation.

When I first came to Australia thirty-five years ago, the Nationals, then called the Country Party, were less liberal, more conservative, than their senior Coalition partner. But in the years since, or at least in the last fifteen of them, the Liberals have moved further & further to the Right, & so it is true to say that the Nationals, who haven’t moved at all, are now the more liberal, less conservative party, & probably do have some moderating influence.

But. The crypto-fascists fundamentalists Liberal Party are now so deeply entrenched in power because of the lack of a strong opposition party that they could almost govern on their own. Which is what the Nationals are afraid of. So, because the need for power, or at least a portion of it, over-rules everything, they still go along – most of the time – maintaining the coalition, upholding its rightist, righteous stance.

Check them out (x 26)

Lorna Dee Cervantes has finished her wonderful hay(na)ku series Towards a New Beginning of the Alpha bet.

A-Z.
Brilliant. Compelling.
Definite eye fodder.

Grand
hay(na)ku. I
joyously kongratulate Lorna.

This

has been posted elsewhere, but it's just too good to go past.

Go in to Google, type in failure as the search term & see what the first out of 220,000,000 results is.

Since the word doesn't appear anywhere within the link, I can only assume it's a deliberate action on the part of Google (or at least I'd like to think it is). &, if it is, I applaud them for it. & if it's not, it demonstrates that the psychic power of the world can influence search engines, because it's what a great many of us are thinking about the man in question.

lipstick!

 
PR Primeau's PERSISTENCIA*PRESS is seeking erotic poetry for Lipstick!, its upcoming mail micro-series. Lipstick! will appear irregularly and run indefinitely, with each "issue" being dedicated to a single poet's work. Full details here.
 
 

disremember

The city that never sleeps wakes

Went to a show last night by stand-up comedian Wil Anderson. A very funny man & a most enjoyable evening. His stance is the “this guy’s stoned” routine, until you realise how skilfully he weaves his way around, diverts from, comes back to, goes off at a tangent, has nothing to do with, a story that is about he & his girlfriend at an airport being confronted by a sniffer dog. It’s the act of someone with an extremely alert mind, who maintains the tension & the humour for the entire length of his hour-plus monologue.

But. The show started at 7.30 p.m., an extremely obscene hour, but this is Queensland where they don’t have daylight savings because, amongst other things, that extra hour of sunlight will fade the curtains. & we were running a little bit late, so with no time for a meal beforehand, we grabbed kaffee und küchen at the local McDonalds on the way, deciding to have dinner after the show.

But #2. This is Rockhampton. & when we got out of the theatre at about a quarter to ten, nothing was open, or, if they were, the kitchens were closed. Chairs piled up on tables & people mopping the floor, or dark windows. There may have been a truckstop open across the river, but that was in the wrong direction. So, home to a BLT sandwich.

This is a place that claims to be progressive, multi-cultural, thriving. It is, in fact, a place that lives in the past, a time-warp, truly a Rocky Horror Show. & now it’s been announced that the once-a-day direct flight to Sydney has been withdrawn. That connection, kept in the back of the mind, was a lifeline. The fact that you could be back in Sydney in under two hours at least gave a semblance of contact with the real world. Now…..

Betabet

 
when I get round to it, this will be the cover
 

from the wizard of id

 

what happems when you don't renew your domain!

It breaks my fucking heart to see Andrew & Jeannie Lundwall's wonderful Poetic Inhalation site turned into this.

Let me utter a silent prayer that Katrina bankrupts the new inhabitants.

a pause to preen, or: a message from the sponsor

Almost half the alphabet of my series of poems Betabet has now been published or accepted for publication.

Poems have appeared to date in:
     minimum daily requirements
     Moria
     hutt

have appeared today in:
     Starfish

are to appear in the next issues of:
     eratio
     Aught

& hopefully there will be some more additions to the list.

I'm thinking of putting together a pdf file of the poems. If anybody wants a copy, either email me (the address is at the bottom of the links in the sidebar) or leave a note in the comments box.

I wonder

how long it will be before it is announced Haliburton has the contract for the rebuilding of New Orleans....

Terra Nullius

means Empty Land, & was the deceitful principle England relied on to claim ownership of the Australian continent despite the fact that it was already inhabited.

After three days of spring

the summer moves in. The temperature is nudging towards 30º C, the air is humid, the corrugated iron roof makes noises like drops of rain falling on it as it expands in the heat, dark clouds blow in from the sea.

The “official” seasons in Australia were decided by bureaucrats. Ignored the exquinoxes, the solstices, paid no attention to the knowledge that the original inhabitants of the land had garnered over 60,000 years. Instead, just like financial quarters, the seasons start on the 1st of the month.

So, in this time of what I shall call sprummering, it seems like a nice idea to post a poem on the subject & what lies behind it that I wrote a couple of years ago.

Terra Nullius

December 1. Supposedly
the day on which the
season changed. Some-
one's arbitrary determination
after they had shifted
hemispheres & found
their world turned
upside down. A quick fix,
rendering the present
so it reflects a
particular past, done by
attaching the familiar
to the unfamiliar &
throwing names around
to overwrite the
land. Fine at the time,
but pets rearrange
themselves as pest to
overrun it. New grains
don't hold the soil together
the way the native grasses
used to do. & where the
traditional owners of the land
sometimes admitted six,
sometimes two, depending
upon what the weather
was actually doing, now
the seasons come around
on the first of the month,
every three months, a
regular reminder of the
debts outstanding on
something that was
taken, never loaned.

But I did laugh at one item of news last night

On the local news out of Rockhampton, a place known far & wide as Rocky, there was an interview with the head of the local branch of the Australian Medical Association. His name? Dr Bulwinkel.

I kid you not.....

I look at

the news footage of the Battle of New Orleans & am horrified. Is this the richest, the most powerful country on the planet? No-one seems to be arranging for relief to flow or to get it there, no-one seems to be able to get their shit together. How many days is it now?

I look at most of the people in the news footage. Black, & poor, unable to escape. Is this why white Amerika is not coming to help? Some form of racial cleansing?

I look at the news footage & wonder how those who embrace the right-wing pseudo-science of intelligent design will explain this away. The Sodom & Gomorrah theory has already been bruited about.

I look at the news footage & think: Maybe somebody should suggest to the great facade, the great procrastinator, the great insincere puppet aka George W. Borg that perhaps he invade New Orleans. At least that way there would be unlimited people & supplies arriving for a population that actually needs them.

Ain't that a shame

Fats Domino is missing in the floods.