This has
nothing to
do with
poetry.

Ah, Ernesto

Malest,
Ernesti, tuo Marco,
malest, me hercule

et
laboriose, et
magis magis in

dies
et horas.
For how can

any-
one let
the only Latin

hay(na)ku
pass unremarked?
Magis, Magus. (a)More.

Betabet

 
 
has been picked up by Geoffrey Gatza's BlazeVOX books & is now available as a pdf file (with a much more modern cover than it used to have) here. For those of you who like the feel of a book, it is, unfortunately, no longer available as a POD.

Oban 06

A goodly number of you took part in last year's New Zealand electronic poetry centre built live on-line anthology Fugacity 05.

This year they're doing it again with Oban 06. & it's your chance to become part of history. Because unless there's ever a poetry festival in Tierra del Fuego or Antarctica, this is the furthest south anybody's ever going to be published from.

The details:

OBAN 06

is the title of nzepc’s online poetry anthology, building 21-23 April 2006 as part of the BLUFF 06 poetry symposium in Southland. Bluff’s famous Oyster Festival happens over the same weekend.

Bring a poem on a disk to any of the symposium events OR email your contribution to nzepc@auckland.ac.nz between 21-23 April.

We aim to build a local and international poetry anthology over three days, launching Sunday 23 April in Oban on Rakiura (Stewart Island). We welcome your poem. We’d like it to engage with time and place, transience and duration, memory and forgetting, coming and going, poetry and oysters – any or all of the above.

If you could see this jet
fire-seeded sky,
chill here with me
on a plastic chair
on the veranda, we'd hear Bluff hum
while lines of sodium and magnesium
bridge and wharf lights
bleed to black,
inexactly
as on other nights, other verandas,
another port - a kauri pew,
wings on the sill of an inside-out
lit window,
scrying the dark
insistent stars, fireflies -
we have talked of poetry.

      : Cilla McQueen. ‘Antiphony (Letter to Peter Olds)’


Anthology compilers: Brian Flaherty, David Howard, Michele Leggott, Cilla McQueen and nzepc team

Submission guidelines

• work should be your original composition
• if it has been published elsewhere, please include acknowledgement and publication details
• the compilers reserve the right to copy-edit contributions before uploading
• copyright for individual contributions to the anthology remains with the author

contradiction hay(na)ku

working
on something
that doesn't work

The evil eye

One of the joys of what I shall euphemistically describe as reaching a certain age is having a doctor tell you that what's occurred is because you're old.

I have what he told me is a conjunctival haemorrhage. In other words, I'm safe if, in the next few days, I get into a situation where my opponents have been told not to fire until you see the whites of my eyes. My left eye has next to no white in it, is red, from a burst blood vessel.

& the reason for it? No specific reason, just age, old age - amended to as you grow older after I cast a one-eyed sideswiping glance at the doctor. Just happens, nothing you can take for it, do to it, doesn't affect your vision. Only wait till it goes away, a series of colour transformations, red through to yellow, just like a bruise.

Today the
postman brought
me an
invitation from
Torquemada
to attend the
Inquisition. Specified
dress. Either
full Inquistorial regalia &
bring a bag or
sackcloth & ashes
& come as you
are. That's the trouble
since Dubya assumed
the Papacy. No
middle of the road
to walk down
anymore.

A word for Tom

Alphabeckett

Galatea's erection

is actually Eileen Tabios' new review blogzine Galatea Resurrects (a poetry review), but since it's up for the first time, I pay homage to its initial erection.

Lotsa reviews. Lotsa & lotsa reviews. To quote THE EDITOR

This issue inaugurates itself with 25 new reviews of 27 poetry publications and a poetry video, e-reprints of ten reviews previously published in print publications, and a section of three featured poets partly chosen by two guest editors. The gratifying response suggests this venture is a good idea, notwithstanding its sloppy birth during one of my bouts of insomnia -- or a better idea than I even anticipated.

Well then: Let's see! And party!

Definitely!

Harry Potter & the half-arsed Politician

"His only function is to let you know
what Harry Potter's going to look like
when he's old."

Billy Connolly on Australia's Prime Minister John Howard

He stumbled
in the face
of such
fierce repartee.

from: Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher

There is coral below the surface,
There is sand, and berries
Like pomegranates grow.
This wide net, I am treading water
Near it, bubbles are rising and salt
Drying on my lashes, yet I am no nearer
Air than water, I am closer to you
Than land and I am in a stranger ocean
Than I wished.

Barbara Guest (1920 - 2006)

Still
hot in
the early afternoon.

It's
getting cooler
in the mornings.

What $100 Million buys you these days

or: Poetry? I thought you were giving it for poverty.

or: I'll do you an obscenity for $1 if that's what you're after, & throw in a blowjob for free.












Twenty-three Ways to Say I Love You
Valentine's Day poems from the PoetryFoundation.org archive.


Almost Brand New
Publishers select their favorite love poems from recent books.


Ted Kooser Sends His Love
Selections from the Poet Laureate's annual Valentine's Day postcard poems.


Forgotten Love
Discover why Tagore is one of the most beloved poets in Asia.
(from Poetry Magazine)

PLUS
Hearing Voices at the Met
Fra Angelico and the dramatic monologues of Browning. By W.S. Di Piero.


Two Drama Kings Take on a Master
Paul Giamatti and Alfred Molina Read "Fra Lippo Lippi" and "My Last Duchess."


Reading Guide: Robert Browning
In the realm of the world-class talkers.


The Diction of Dance
Applying poetics to dance: a review of the most recent New York dance season.


To Infuse (As Life) By Breathing
Facing a grim diagnosis, a man has a charmed collision with a poem. A story by Elaine Segal.


Would She Have Been a Blogger?
A letter from the editor about this new site and the founder of Poetry.


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

Check out

the latest issue of MiPOesias & The not-so-Violent Femmes.

A couple of days ago

I was wishing I could be in Finland with my friends. Now it seems, according to this link that Marko Niemi has sent me, it mightn't be that difficult to get there.

But a couple of apologies. To my friends in the Americas, I'm sorry I didn't drop in & say hello when I was in the neighbourhood. & to Lars Palm in the Canary Islands, oops, sorry. You're either underneath my landmass, or that's me sitting across the table from you in the outdoor café on the beach & I haven't introduced myself.

There should be

some sort of moratorium put in place by Blogger that prohibits, for a number of months anyway, the acquisition of names of blogs that have been terminated by their owners.

I am overwhelmed by grief. For the past few days I have been greeted by the dreaded blog not found when I've tried to visit Kirsten Kaschock's Negative Wingspan. Now there's a blog back there, but……

The name is no longer in caps but in lower case, & napisan would be a better name for it based on the only post. It is possible that it's all a huge joke, & the links would seem to give that a whiff of creedence. But it's not clear(water), & it's not a revival, & it's a sad suicide note, if that's what it is.

So, I'll leave the link in the sidebar for a couple of days, & if the diapers haven't been changed by then…..

Couldn't resist

this word verification.

Can't decide whether it's to do with Dr e-Jeku & Mr e-Hyde, or the beginning of the climax of one of Tom Beckett's "deleted sex scene hay(na)ku competition" entries.

I always say

I won't respond to tags. But every so often I get tagged by someone I like, & my resolutions go out the window.

This time the evildoer was Rochita the Raindancer who also tagged Eileen Tabios, & since Eileen - bitch - has decided to respond, now I feel obliged to as well, though my answers will be nowhere near as interesting as either Eileen's or Rochita's.

Three books I can read over & over

I've read a lot of books over & over over the years. Singling any out - if that's the correct term when you're dealing with more than one - is hard, but I'd probably go for:

1) The New American Poetry edited by Donald M. Allen.
2) The Maltese Falcon by Dashiel Hammett
=3) the Collected Poems I, 1909-1939, of William Carlos Williams
& Driftglass by Samuel R. Delany

Three Places I've lived

1) Hokitika (the first place I ever lived)
2) Sydney (where I lived the longest, & will probably go back to)
3) Rockhampton (where I'm living now)

Three TV shows I love

Owned up to these before.

1)The West Wing
=2) South Park, & Doctor Who
3) Buffy

Though, showing my age, I would have to say that my alltime favourites would be two documentary series, Kenneth Clark's Civilisation & Jakob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, both of which also fall into the books over & over category.

Three highly regarded & recommended TV shows I've never watched a minute of

You did say 300? Oh, only three. OK. 1) Survivor
2) Friends
3) The O.C. Can I keep on going?

Three places I've vacationed

What's a vacation?

Three of my favourite dishes

1) Fish & chips in certain places at certain times
2) My three cheese / bacon / potato / egg / pecan / carrot / tomato / sun-dried tomato / sultana (or golden raisins as Tom Beckett told me they were called in the US) & lettuce salad
3) Lamb Rogan Josh (because I cooked it tonight, & there's enough left over for tomorrow)

Three sites I visit daily

You know who you are.

Three places I'd rather be right now

1)Finland (with my friends)
2) California (with my friends)
3) Anywhere but here