Queensland Poetry Festival 2017: Distant Voices

QPF 2017 kicks off next week and I’m thrilled to be attending and to be involved in a number of events.

These will be co-presented by Verity La and will introduce the journal’s Clozapine Clinic mental health writing project to the Festival. A huge thanks to Festival co-directors Anne-Marie Te Whiu and David Stavanger for inviting us to take part and help shine some much needed light on the critical issue of mental health.

At 10-11am on Thursday 24 August at Brisbane Square Library there will be readings by me, Tim Heffernan, Alise Blayney and Ariel Riveros Pavez along with members of Words on the Street (from Brisbane’s School of Hard Knocks), performing work that draws upon lived experiences in the mental health system.

At 11 30am-12 30pm I’ll be chairing ‘Thieves of Fire’, a panel discussion with Tim, Alise and Ariel about how mental health has shaped their work and how the power of poetry can assist in reclaiming one’s voice in times of psychological distress.

At 6-7 30pm my co-judge Nathan Sherperdson and I will be presenting the Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award at the Festival’s Opening Night in the Judith Wright Centre. There’ll be drinks and music in the foyer from 5 pm – woohoo!

On Friday 25 August, 12-1pm, I’ll be appearing with Haider Catan, Ariel Riveros and Max Ryan in Before the Sky: Poetry Readings.

This will be followed at 2pm by Pray Ho’tell, where poet and mental health advocate Alise Blayney will screen a short film and talk about the work of her former partner, and late surrealist poet, Benjamin Frater, exploring the relationship between automatic writing and the schizophrenic vernacular.

These are FREE EVENTS, as are 75% of the other exciting things on offer over the four days of the Festival. So if you’re within hollering distance of Brisbane and love your poetry, spoken word and music, come along, say hi, and join the festivities!

 

 

‘Family Tree’ Published in the Canberra Times

I’ve had a poem published in the Canberra Times! Which feels rather exciting as it means that ‘normal’ people (you know, not just those strange ones who buy poetry books) have clapped eyes on it. Wonder what they thought?

A big thanks to former CT poetry editor, Melinda Smith, for accepting the poem, and to new ed. Lizz Murphy for sending through the pic. I’m a big fan of both these poets’ work, so it’s a thrill to be published by them!

HUSH, My New Chapbook, From Blank Rune Press

I’ve recently had a chapbook—HUSH—published by the wonderful small Australian Blank Rune Press. The publisher, Valli Poole, was a dream to work with—she’s so passionate and particular about what she does, and as a result the books (which she hand-makes) are exquisite. Blank Rune only do a very limited print run, and Valli has told me HUSH has almost sold out. But I have a few copies to sell, so if you’d like one, please hit me up! They’re $15 (which includes postage). Here’s a little taster from the book.

Facetune

I crop your girth of grief
so it won’t show.
Coruscate your under-eyes
in the hope that hope might grow.

Destain your teeth, raze blemishes,
out damn spot!
Blood the lips, lend bloom
to what’s worn off.

I pray I could move deeper—
sweep the lungs. Restart
the heart, the mind;
unspool the past.

Return us to the prescient game
I played,
when my unconscious
conjured you this way.

 

Thrilled to be Judging Queensland Poetry Festival’s Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award

‘LS06’, 2011, by Michael Zavros. One of five images in this year’s QPF Ekphrasis Award.

I’m thrilled to have been asked (along with Queensland poet, Nathan Shepherdson) to co-judge this year’s Queensland Poetry Festival Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award.

This award, now in its third year, is named after one of Australia’s premier art dealers, Philip Bacon. The word ekphrasis comes from the Greek ek (out) & phrasis (speak), and is a rhetorical device in which a visual object, usually a work of art, is described by another artistic medium – in this case, a poem under 12 lines in length.

Open to all Australian residents, the award is now accepting entries, and will close at 5pm July 10th 2017. The overall winner will receive $500 in prize money, the runner-up will get $250, and the top 3 poems will be published online at Verity La. 

Philip Bacon has selected five paintings from his own collection to which poets can respond. You can download the guidelines, submissions form and images here. 

I love reading – and writing – ekphrasis, and look forward to seeing how poets respond to these exciting images. Please consider entering, and don’t forget to check out the website for QPF 2017. The festival, themed Distant Voices, will take place August 24 – 27, and will include 80+ sessions, 120+ artists, and poetry in all its forms. The full program won’t be launched until 21 July, but the website already contains loads of information, and many other QPF 2017 Poetry Awards are already up and running, so check it out!

 

Truncated

 

Truncated

I contemplate your arc, which has been cut.
Your projected ghost limb twitching in the glare
of my grand truncated hope.
Grief breaking bounds and bearing us
fused into myth.

Listen, I’m a mother, your mother —
It’s my job to scout ahead.
Even in a world that scoffs
at maternal prescience
I persist,

baying like a bitch at spectres —
no one heeds me.

Your sight’s been severed;
you can’t see what I see,
the absence
of what could have been.

But you sense it, approaching,
and I watch as you race
with determination
to recalibrate
your fate.

 

This is one of two poems I’ve had published in the second edition of Have Your Chill, a magazine published by Pete Spence’s legendary Donnithorne Street Press. This poem will also appear in my upcoming chapbook, HUSH, to be published in June by another incredible independent Australian publisher, Valli Poole’s Blank Rune Press. My thanks to both of these publishers for their inspirational work.

 

 

 

Hush Published in Cordite Poetry Review

Image by Therese Ritchie

I’m chuffed to have my poem Hush appear in the recent Confession Issue of Cordite Poetry Review. There are some extraordinary poems in the issue, as well as some stunning photography by Therese Ritchie. My thanks to editors Keri Glastonbury & Kent MacCarter!

Hush

You’re bloated and there is
fear in your gaze.
You’ve demanded the right
to be this way and I
have acquiesced.

Mirtazapine bought no peace.

Food wrappers, razor blades, beer bottles, bong.
Your body is an energy pushing
pain into a form which it commands
the world to witness —

I witness you.

I look into your eyes and whisper
— with my eyes — I see you.

Bitch, you shoot, from the dark side of your mouth,
your head in chaotic orbit.

I’m whatever you need me to be, baby.
Let’s croon the moon to sleep like we used to.
Hush.

 

A Word from the Wise Guy

I’ve had some poems published in Have Your Chill, a magazine published by Australian poet and publisher Pete Spence. The magazine also includes poems by fellow Aussies Robbie Coburn, Valli Poole and Ariel Riveros Pavez, along with a swathe of international poets. Pete is renowned for publishing innovative independent print magazines via his Donnithorne Street Press, and I’m proud to have my work included in this one.

Here’s one of the poems, ‘A Word from the Wise Guy’. It’s a found poem sourced from the Introduction to The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.

 

A Word from the Wise Guy

Speaking Personally
(and if a man speaks
any other way shove
a pellet up his arse) beyond
a certain frequency the Sacred
is UNNECESSARY.

I have no precise memory
of the borrowed flesh
of the human form
—a condition of total exposure
tilting quixotically at NOTHING—
but in my psychic delirium
apparently I took notes:

Protoplasm Daddy
Step right up
and crank one in the Mother Cell;
there’s room for one
more back-brain baby—
shack up at your peril!

But it’s COLD OUTSIDE
and so nice-warm in here
with NAKED entities man and bestial
piled high on thermodynamic
tranquillizers, energizers, hallucinogens,
The Living Source and my own
special cure for the hourglass run-out
a spine like Fro-Zen TIME
approaching metabolic ZERO.

Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus:
How long will this trip last?
Mutatis mutandis:
As long as we can keep it going . . .

So Slow-DOWN dross eaters;
no mater how
you jerk
the handle the result is—