tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32959991615455535082024-03-06T02:50:52.297+08:00Fremantle PressFremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.comBlogger410125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-782779124445912042011-07-28T10:50:00.002+08:002011-07-28T10:55:09.550+08:00AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Michael Heald<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI_GXtEDMupuBrm1KmlIRO-CfeMIsrY0Q6TrjruxQmLax6y7fz1xTPqFHxaZWBrSskthkYPzjEHytyHHgKFdNgzI4GyGQATbHJuP_-dRHLW_Fb5l9iw254w5x-qD8c55D7sAxPGRqtikE/s1600/P1000775.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI_GXtEDMupuBrm1KmlIRO-CfeMIsrY0Q6TrjruxQmLax6y7fz1xTPqFHxaZWBrSskthkYPzjEHytyHHgKFdNgzI4GyGQATbHJuP_-dRHLW_Fb5l9iw254w5x-qD8c55D7sAxPGRqtikE/s400/P1000775.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5634230518952327922" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Q: What are your main interests in <em>The Moving World</em></strong><strong>?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">In this book I am primarily interested in the way that meditation can change one’s experience of self and world.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">In my previous work I have been strongly drawn to experiences of impermanence, interconnectedness and the paradoxes and inadequacies of selfhood. An abiding interest has also been the apparent instability of human goodness. In this book, I have turned to face these issues directly, as it were, embracing a traditional technique, Vipassana, to which they are central.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Q: Author Tim Parks calls your poetry ‘an invitation to Vipassana’. Can you tell us about the role of Vipassana meditation in your life? How and when did you start practising?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I have always been interested in Eastern cultures. Over the years, I adopted many of their principles, and tried meditation from time to time, based on my reading. About ten years ago, I decided it was time to learn meditation properly. I looked around for a short course. When I came across Vipassana, in the tradition of U Ba Khin, I was puzzled to find that a beginner could only take a longer course of ten days. After reconciling myself to that, I booked in for a ten-day course in the hills outside Melbourne.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I went there with many preconceptions and illusions, not the least of which was that I would be able to pick and choose when I wanted to sit, rather than stick to the rigorous timetable, which involved rising at 4 a.m. and sitting for a total of ten hours per day. There was no coercion at the course, and one could take short breaks at will, but it was, nevertheless, a very challenging experience.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I had also supposed that I would be able to use whichever meditation technique I wanted. However, we were taught a very specific technique, that of paying attention to bodily sensations, and there was an emphasis on the importance of a sound and consistent technique. The need for the ten consecutive days of practice, without talking, in order to allow the mind to quieten down a little, and in order for concentration to be mustered to the point where the sensations could be held onto long enough to be observed, became very apparent. In fact, this experience of attaining, albeit to a very modest degree, a level of concentration which is not really available in ordinary life, which allows the perception of processes always present but beneath awareness, was terribly significant for me. It showed me, I suppose, that meditation is real, and that it is different from other ways of perceiving, other ways of knowing. Giving a sense of this reality and difference, I would say, is a major driver, now, of my artistic and also critical work.<strong></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I have completed quite a few courses since then, and meditation is part of my daily routine. I find that the technique has enormous benefits for daily life, in terms of getting beyond the knee-jerk reactions of the small self or ego. For me, too, it is a way of exploring facets of existence I have always been intensely concerned with.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I also feel that meditation has world-changing, as well as self-changing potential. I know that this can sound Romantic or triumphalist or utopian, and I don’t underestimate the intractability of social structures. However, such structures are composed of and operated by human minds. And in this era when our very survival as a species is threatened, as well as the survival of the other creatures and ecosystems which have supported us, I don’t think that it’s a time to shy away from large aspirations. So meditation, for me, is also a vital part of my social engagement: part of the aspiration to reduce suffering at large, not just my own!</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">It is probably also worth saying that I generally do not call myself Buddhist. This is partly because it is not necessary for a meditator to be such. Also, the word ‘Buddhist’ can refer to a great variety of things, many of which I would have no problem in identifying with, but also including, perhaps, beliefs or practices which do not sit well with meditative principles. However, it is often difficult to avoid using the word ‘Buddhist’, and on the whole I don’t think that is something to be overly worried about.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong> </strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Q: The collection unfolds in a way that feels organic, almost inevitable. Did you write the poems in their published order or did the order evolve after you had finished writing?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I’m very pleased you find that the collection reads in that way. In fact, the poems are not presented in the order of composition (which would present a problem for me anyway, since I am always working on many poems at the same time). Yet I feel that the principles of sequencing and grouping I have used are to an extent organic. A broad framework is that of the journal: a speaker reporting on his experience as it proceeds, a record of the spiritual quest, so to speak. Within that, the second part, ‘the stunning serene dis- / integration of daylight’, presents the immediate experience of sitting in meditation. In the third part, ‘to point at what I’ve seen’, the speaker self-consciously employs analogies to illustrate how key philosophical issues manifest themselves in meditation. And in the fourth part, ‘actual light’, he addresses directly some of the terms commonly used to refer to meditative experience, seeking to explore their adequacy. In the fifth part, ‘movement that has never / opened its eyes’, the speaker turns his attention outward, considering the social and domestic worlds in the light of his meditative experience. The final part, ‘the moving world’, contains poems in which Vipassana itself is not an explicit component, although there are, of course, continuities of sensibility. The poems in this last part tend to proceed through contemplations of the mineral, vegetable and animal-human worlds.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">So the sequence doesn’t proceed in a simply chronological way - the very first part, ‘that fabled direction / <em>inward</em>’, is a kind of preface to what is already known about the journey and the poems – but does perhaps trace a partly temporal process of first encountering experience, then reflecting upon it, and then applying it. Some of the poems also emerged in dialogue with that evolving structure.<strong></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong> </strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Q: Some poems in the collection, like ‘Speaking’, deal with the inadequacy of language in mediating experience. How do you reconcile this inadequacy with the act of writing poetry?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Yes, this is a significant issue. I think this is partly why Robert Gray and Tim Parks refer to the poems’ ‘daring’ and ‘ambition’. I am very conscious that meditative experience raises problems for language, both in terms of how it can be articulated, and in terms of whether it should be.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Meditative experience is difficult for language to deal with because most language has a metaphoric base originating in sensory experience, and also utilises many conceptual dualisms. In meditation, the containments and logics of those two procedures tend not to apply. To give just one example, the physical and mental domains, during meditation, become more difficult to distinguish from each other.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">It is important to be aware, however, that I say (in the prefatory poems ‘Speaking’ and ‘Listening’, for example) that I am not trying to recreate my meditative experience in the reader. I say that this is not possible. I am, rather, attempting to articulate my own<em>response</em> to that experience. This renders the linguistic challenge more manageable, and is also the way in which I reconcile my act of writing with the principle, which I fully endorse, that meditative experience must be had at first hand.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">That being said, I do inevitably need to evoke something of the quality of meditative experience in expressing a response to it, and so the linguistic dilemma is not entirely avoided. However, to my mind, the articulation of experience to some extent beyond conceptual classification has always been a major part of poetry’s endeavour. And so I feel that the challenge here is perhaps different in degree, but not in kind, from that which most poets face. I also believe that one of the most valuable aspects of poetic language is to serve as a reminder that our namings are always to some extent provisional and inadequate, rather than being a sure basis on which to understand and manipulate the world.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I would also say that, in terms of my approach to language, it may be conspicuous that these poems do not express what the critic Stephen Burt, to paraphrase him slightly, calls the pathos of lost epistemologies, by which is meant the mood of despair and disorientation often resulting from postmodern skepticisms about language’s, and indeed the mind’s, ability to know and understand the world. Even though my work is acutely conscious of the sources of such skepticism, and is in accord, in a way, with approaches to understanding which recognise the limits of language and of certain mental procedures, nevertheless in these poems about meditation, it is more a case of the wonder of epistemologies found than the pathos of those lost.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Q: In the book’s acknowledgements you mention poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Thomas Hardy. Can you tell us how their poetry has influenced your work?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Hopkins is a poet whose work often seems to deal with kinds of experience not dissimilar to those yielded by meditation. His line from ‘God’s Grandeur’, for example, ‘There lives the dearest freshness deep down things’, which I refer to in the ‘Vedana’ sequence, could hardly be bettered as an evocation of the profoundly tender and pristine contact with the world which meditation begins to enable. Yet also, of course, Hopkins seemed unable to integrate or stabilise his experiences. I find that the same thing is true of many other Western artists, and this phenomenon is one of my major interests.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">With regard to Thomas Hardy, he is someone I read a great deal of when I was developing as a poet. His principle that one must take ‘a full look at the Worst’, a full account of the harshest realities in forming one’s artistic vision, which I refer to in my poem ‘The Full Look’, is analogous, for me, to the first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhist tradition, which is an acknowledgement of the existence of suffering, or unsatisfactoriness, in our lives. This is the starting point of the meditative quest. It is a much misunderstood principle, often interpreted as a pessimistic vision of life, when in fact it is both profoundly insightful as an analysis of the human psyche, and also profoundly optimistic, because it forms the basis for positive action towards addressing one’s own, and other people’s suffering. As a poet, then, I felt that Hardy could be trusted to have made this basic acknowledgement, and that his poems, therefore, offered genuine, hard-won insight and hope. I felt that his being labeled as a ‘gloomy’ poet was as fundamentally mistaken as Buddhism being labeled ‘pessimistic’. </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Q: What do you hope this book will give its readers?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I am hoping to give readers a sense of the actuality, the physicality, of meditation, in contrast to the abstract, dualistic descriptions which tend to be used. And also to bring meditation clear of the often rather literal-minded religiosity, and sentimentalised spirituality of our times. Perhaps, rather than ‘kitchen-sink realism’, I could say I am attempting ‘meditation-cushion realism’, if ‘cushion’ wasn’t too closely associated with ‘armchair’! But anyone who has meditated properly knows that it’s anything but a passive, uninvolved leisure activity.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Often, also, the terms which are used to indicate meditative experience are negations: emptiness, detachment, non-self, and so on. These terms are highly inadequate, misleading, and of course off-putting. They are often the result of poor translation, associated with a lack of actual meditative practice. In this book I am hoping to breathe some life back into such references, and thereby change the linguistic image, if you like, of meditation.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I am also hoping to give readers a sense of the potentials which are made available by meditative practice, potentials for reassessing and re-energising one’s life. And to give a sense of how some perspectives and attitudes which are entrenched in our culture are not as solidly based or inevitable as they might appear. I’m referring to attitudes towards despair and consolation, towards suffering and death, towards the natural world, and towards the possibilities for change, for example.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">And I am, of course, primarily trying to convey my own sense of wonder. In this respect, my aim is that of most poets: to express that which has struck me with extraordinary force.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Q: What are your current or future writing projects?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I do feel that the kinds of experience which are dealt with in <em>The Moving World</em> will continue to form a major part of my work. Indeed, I have already written pieces which can add to the ‘Vedana’ sequence, making use of different metaphoric possibilities. I have also recently finished more poems similar to those in the second part of the book, which try to render significant modulations of consciousness occurring in meditation. And I think that the process of relating this experience to events in the world at large is very much an ongoing process, which will produce more poems.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I am also very interested at present in exploring the nature of certain modes of being which are sometimes seen as opposed to the meditative endeavour. I’m referring, for example, to animistic and shamanistic modes, and even perhaps ‘artistic’ or imaginative modes, which are often associated with traditional indigenous cultures and with deep ecological orientations. These are often characterised as being based on an emotional or intuitive responsiveness and participatory openness to the world, as opposed to what is perceived as the renunciatory, cool, disciplined, ‘rational’, and even perhaps ‘unnatural’ procedures of meditation. I feel that this opposition is illusory, arising from dualisms around mind / body, spirit / matter, reason / emotion, which ultimately don’t hold. So I’m very interested to explore how these different modes are interconnected: to discover forms of synthesis which could also find poetic expression. </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-87467813380420697962011-07-27T11:04:00.002+08:002011-07-27T11:06:52.498+08:00Performance poetry with Scott-Patrick Mitchell (edited extract from Performance Poetry as an Acoustical Ecology)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRC2HHEI7cQeDvNExrBryBAkF3noPdkLAo-feYWJybuY29QmjU98hjG2WKxrbSYditLksJt-o6L4ovpOqxlEfq7kRbSKIXbZQHB24-3Z3O0Skp0As8dDI5gd4vVpOcABlE_kMOXTopU68/s1600/S-P+Mtichell+photo.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRC2HHEI7cQeDvNExrBryBAkF3noPdkLAo-feYWJybuY29QmjU98hjG2WKxrbSYditLksJt-o6L4ovpOqxlEfq7kRbSKIXbZQHB24-3Z3O0Skp0As8dDI5gd4vVpOcABlE_kMOXTopU68/s400/S-P+Mtichell+photo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5633863030242514082" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Mention ‘performance poetry’ and people invariably roll their eyes. You see performance poetry has a bad rap, but this is because few give themselves over to performance in the truest manner. I am somebody who can proudly says that they are indeed a poet … and a performing one at that.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">This has, in part, something to do with the fact that I am currently studying a PhD in performance poetry at the WA Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). I am the only person in the state studying performance poetry at this level as far as I am aware … and with just cause too: it is a poetic form that is so excitingly fresh.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">My golden rule to poetry is <strong>Be The Experiment!</strong> You cannot achieve anything by merely thinking about it… unless the goal is to merely think. Learn to set yourself parameters. Stick to them. Make your own rules. Provide justification as to why they are your rules. Learn to be scientific about poetry. Approach it with rigour. Have fun, naturally, but don’t flit across forms mastering none: develop your own poetica. This way, you learn how to write by investing the head and the heart together. Be the experiment. Yield new thoughts.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">When judging submissions for <em>Fremantle Poets 3: Performance Poets</em> a number of factors were looked at. Naturally a primary consideration was voice, the power it gave to the statement, the clarity it contained, its ability to create range plus the poets ability to affect and connect, especially through pre-recorded electronic means. And, as a performance poet, these are some things you should consider:</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>PROJECT</strong>: sit at the top of a flight of stairs. Recite your poem so it touches the bottom step. Keep reciting over and over. Modulate the volume until you can hear it touch a tipping point in the distance. Once it comes back to you and you can hear the resonance and echo of yourself speaking, while reading, and it’s clear and precise … that is when you are ready to perform. This is called projection.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>(LET THE VOICE) CIRCUMFLECT</strong>: it is the lilt, the wave, the pitch and fall of the voice. Learn how to make it bend – not the poem, your instrument: your voice. Spend time by yourself making all the noises you possibly can. These noises should make you laugh. They should also weird you out a little too. And there’s no need to bring them to the stage … in fact, please don’t … but you have to know how your voice will bend – and eventually break – so that you can master its scope.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>(NEVER!) EXPECT</strong>: if performance poetry were all about the parties and fast cars, we’d all be rock stars. But we ain’t. You should never expect applause when you perform, not after any poem, no matter how good you thought it was. Humility is your greatest weapon. Strive to be unique, not modern. Be humble, yet certain. Do it for the poem. </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">If all else fails, read poems to yourself in the dark of a winter night, or pre-dawn of a summer morn’. Allow yourself to fold up into the most ingenious shapes and hide there between the words as they jostle and awake.</p><div><br /></div></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-21756204861182320942011-07-26T10:58:00.003+08:002011-07-26T11:01:40.673+08:00Rose van Son wins online Tanka competition<span style="font-weight: bold;">Judges’ Report</span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;">There were a number of strong entries for the 2011 Fremantle Press Online Tanka Competition. The judges, Wendy Jenkins and Andrew Lansdown, settled on a shortlist of three tanka and, after some to-and-fro, selected ‘Old Flame’ by Rose van Son as the winner:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"> </p> <h2 style="margin-left: 72pt;"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;">Old Flame</span></h2> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">all the candles lit</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">just a flicker now and then</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">the bowl tightly fits</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">what is left of you and me</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">murmurings behind closed doors</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><b style="">— Rose van Son</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">As Wendy commented in a recent post, ‘ “Old Flame” <span style=""> </span>uses metaphor to evoke the passing of time and dying down of love’s first flame’. Both Wendy and Andrew felt that ‘Old Flame’ had a mysterious, open quality. It is an atmospheric poem, conveying both visual and emotional shiftings of light and shadow.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Rose van Son handles the tanka form skilfully, keeping the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure, with each line consisting of a balanced phrase, and achieving a shift of thought after the third line. Rose also handles the title well, making it an integral part of the tanka, and using it to focus the reader’s perceptions. (Note: Using a title with a tanka is an acceptable innovation—for although traditionally tanka do not have titles, they are often accompanied by ‘headnotes’, consisting of a phrase or a sentence explaining the poem’s setting, etc.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Two other tanka entries deserve particular mention: ‘Treasure’ by Annamaria Weldon and an untitled tanka by Gary Colombo De Piazzi.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <h2 style="margin-left: 72pt;">[Untitled]</h2> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">portion of each breath</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">arrested within the throat</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">neither in nor out</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">words almost formed in the mind</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">struggle in the vocal chords</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><b style="">— Gary Colombo De Piazzi</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;"> </p> <h2 style="margin-left: 72pt;">Treasure</h2> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">Cupped by sand, three eggs</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">lustrous as black-speckled pearls.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">Hooded plover’s nest, </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">set in samphire and limestone –</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-indent: 0cm;">treasure trove at the tideline.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt;"><b style="">— Annamaria Weldon</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0cm;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Concerning Gary Colombo De Piazzi’s tanka, the judges’ comment in a previous post bear repeating: ‘<span style="" lang="EN-US">This tanka is an excellent example of a traditional tanka following the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure. The break of thought and rhythm at the end of the third line is in keeping with the poem’s theme of the difficulty of articulation and utterance.’</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Concerning Annamaria Weldon’s tanka, the judges were particularly impressed with its visual richness. The location of both the eggs (‘cupped by sand’) and the nest (‘set in samphire and limestone’) are depicted with clarity and intensity. Indeed, the tanka illustrates how a poet can create vivid imagery simply through precise description and careful diction.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Well, to all the entrants: thank you for your entries. To Rose van Son: congratulations and happy reading!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><i style="">As winner of the competition, Rose will receive copies of three poetry books recently launched by Fremantle Press: </i><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/newreleases/1250?keywords=moving">The Moving World</a><i style=""> by Michael Heald; </i><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/newreleases/1251?keywords=argument">The Argument</a><i style=""> by Tracy Ryan; and </i><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/newreleases/1252?keywords=two%20poets">Two Poets</a><i style=""> by Andrew Lansdown and Kevin Gillam.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Wendy Jenkins</b> and <b style="">Andrew Lansdown</b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Claire Miller, Media and Promotions Managerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05906635034409552028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-5563579802351014412011-07-21T09:59:00.001+08:002011-07-21T10:08:12.975+08:00AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Andrew Lansdown and Kevin Gillam<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Can you tell us about the significance of the title of each of your collections, <em>The Colour of Life</em></strong><strong> and <em>Songs Sul G</em></strong><strong>?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">AL: The title <em>The Colour of Life</em> has, to my mind, two implications, or applications. Generally, the colour of life is the range of moods and emotions arising from the range of situations and perceptions depicted in the poems in my collection. Specifically, the colour of life is the sense of aloneness and longing that surprises us, ambushes us, repeatedly throughout life. It is a form of grief – grief felt, often, without evident cause. It is not a denial of the loveliness and happiness of life, but an underlying sense that something is missing and/or amiss. Well, so much for attempts at definitions! In the end, the colour of life can only be truly expressed in poetry or prayer. I have attempted to capture and convey it in poems such as ‘Happiness’, ‘Human’, ‘Me’ and ‘The Colour of Life’.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">KG: The term ‘sul G’ is an indication to a string player (violinist/violist/cellist) to play the melody exclusively on the G string. Technically, this is probably more difficult, but the tone produced is much richer and warmer. So <em>Songs Sul G</em> refers to a collection of verse with a degree of intensity.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Andrew, you often work in the Japanese forms of haiku and tanka. Why?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">AL: I work in whatever poetic form will yield at the time of working. Often I do not know what form a poem will take when I begin writing it. The appropriate form becomes clear only as the poem progresses.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">As evidenced in <em>The Colour of Life</em>, I work in rhyming couplets (eg, ‘Prayer Against Pain’), rhyming quatrains (eg, ‘Train to Wyong’), free verse (eg, ‘The Nemesia’ and ‘Boat’), unique syllabic structures (eg, ‘Menace’, with 8 couplets of 6- and 10-syllable lines, or ‘End of Day’, with 10 tercets of 7-, 5- and 7-syllable lines), sestina (eg, ‘Sestina on a Journey’), choka (eg, ‘Renewal’), and villanelle (eg, ‘Prayer’). However, the forms most represented in<em>The Colour of Life</em> are haiku and tanka.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I have found over the years – and increasingly in recent years – that haiku and tanka often suit my poetic purposes. I love the compactness and balance of both these traditional Japanese forms. And I love the discipline of writing in objective forms that compel and enable me to distil setting/subject/theme/mood in just 17 or 31 syllables.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I have also found it rewarding to group haiku together under a common heading. Such groupings are called ‘gunsaku’. The haiku in a gunsaku have a common setting or subject or theme or mood, and yet they do not build on each other, like the stanzas of an English poem or the interdependent poems in a sequence. The haiku in a gunsaku are autonomous poems, poems in their own right: but gathered together they enrich each other and create an impression that is greater than they would/could achieve individually. (Tanka can also be gathered into gunsaku, although <em>The Colour of Life</em> does not contain any of these.)</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Kevin, I have had the privilege on different occasions to hear you read or play or sing your poetry. As a musician, are words immediately aural to you as you write them?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">KG: Yes. I like the feel/sound of words in the mouth and off the tongue. I have a slight obsession with counting syllables! I’m also constantly searching for opportunities to employ internal rhyme, which I believe to be more powerful and more subtle than end rhyme.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>What is your writing space like? And how would you describe your writing habits?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">KG: I don't have a dedicated writing area or room. I work in all spaces … car, lounge suite, kitchen table. My writing time is on walks or when doing water aerobics/walking. This is the head-space that I need in order to create.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">AL: My writing habits are not as strict as I would like them to be. So many other things in life push in and push poetry out. I write mostly in my study, at my writing desk, in front of a large window that lets me see a birdbath, arrow bamboo, and an almond tree. Although I try to write every day, I do not always write poetry. Stories, novels and essays also have a claim on me.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Andrew, you have been publishing poetry for nearly four decades. What inspired you to write then? And what inspires you today?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">AL: I was inspired to write at the age of sixteen when I heard a boy my own age read a poem he had written. I was astonished that someone like me could do such a thing and I desired to be able to do it, too.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Also, at the time, I was listening to traditional and contemporary folk music by artists such as James Taylor, Donovan Leach, Melanie Safka, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Steeleye Span. This type of music, of course, places great importance on the lyrics. I think this influenced me, too.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">What inspires me to write poetry today is the sheer love of poetry. I love reading it. I love writing it. I find it to be the perfect literary form for the expression of grief and joy and every emotion in between.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Kevin, what writers inspire or influence your poetry?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">KG: Elizabeth Jolley, as a practitioner and sharer of ideas/methodology, Dorothy Porter for her sheer economy/density of language and poetic technique, Seamus Heaney for his joy in diction, and Tim Winton for superb flow and extended metaphor.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>Poet and critic Lisa Gorton notes that both of you ‘treat poetry as a work of intimacy, not performance.’ In the process of writing this book, have you learned anything from each other’s work?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">AL: Kevin and I were not involved with each other when we wrote our poems and compiled our collections. It was, happily, Fremantle Press’s initiative to place our collections together under the <em>Two Poets</em> cover.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I am very pleased to share a book with Kevin. As readers will discover, Kevin and I write very different sorts of poetry. Yet I think our collections complement each other precisely because they are so different in style and sentiment.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">As for learning from Kevin: I cannot point to anything specific. However, I am convinced that reading good poetry contributes to one’s understanding of poetry, which in turn contributes to one’s ability to write it. On that score, I presume Kevin’s poetry has influence me in subtle, if indefinable, ways.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I think Lisa Gorton is right to say that both Kevin and I ‘treat poetry as a work of intimacy, not performance.’ Implicit in her words are several truths about both of us as poets: we write with sincerity; we do not write to show off; and we write with craftsmanship and rigour.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">KG: I really respect Andrew’s use of form, the discipline behind it. I also love the way he embraces the ‘now’, truly milking the moment of all its possibilities and truths.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>What is the greatest challenge that poetry presents to you, and how do you overcome it?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">KG: The next poem! I overcome it by not worrying about the rate at which it appears … some days it’s just a few words, other days large slabs will be completed. Each poem has its own time.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">AL: My greatest challenge in writing poetry is overcoming the feeling, as I face a blank page, and as I begin to toy with images and ideas, that I can’t possibly write another poem. At the start I feel I can’t do it; and at the end I feel I can’t do it again. I overcome this by persevering with the poem at hand – and by remembering that I have had these feelings many times before and many times before they have proven wrong.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong>What writing projects are you currently working on?</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">KG: Working on a cello/spoken word performance piece for primary school aged children, tentatively titled ‘the story of C’.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">AL: I am working on another collection of poetry, provisionally titled Gestures of Love. It will consist of poems written solely in the traditional Japanese forms of choka, tanka, haiku and gunsaku (haiku or tanka groupings).</p></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-17124749276588895702011-07-20T16:13:00.002+08:002011-07-21T09:18:04.295+08:00Last Chance to Enter Tanka Comp.<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">This Friday 22 July is the closing date for our online Tanka Competition. Entries will be judged by well-known poet Andrew Lansdown (a master practitioner of the form), and Fremantle Press poetry editor Wendy Jenkins.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Recent entries show many of the possibilities of the form. ‘Treasure’ by Annamaria Weldon is intensely visual, a frozen moment, while ‘Old Flame’ by Rose van Son uses metaphor to evoke the passing of time and dying down of love’s first flame.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Treasure</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Cupped by sand, three eggs</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">lustrous as black-speckled pearls.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Hooded plovers nest,</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">set in samphire and limestone-</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">treasure trove at the tideline</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> - Annamaria Weldon</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Old Flame</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">all the candles lit</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">just a flicker now and then</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">the bowl tightly fits</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">what is left of you and me</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">murmurings behind closed doors</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> - Rose van Son</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Wendy Jenkins</p></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-32963943638763500782011-07-15T10:45:00.003+08:002011-07-18T09:04:10.916+08:00Friday afternoon with Barbara Temperton Poetry Editorial Advisor of Westerly<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6UgJA4GL91fZuU0nf4tRVvGQA7-1fgYJ6vJSahJQ0kpzo8FXw66mcrrqnFaLzDheiBajMa3agmWdQYu8P8vZrNAEtQqc2aiNim-_fXQtjS2EYeQuZEd-7kZgCWDkj1cY5UgT3YOazPU/s1600/Westerly-51-frontcov.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 282px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6UgJA4GL91fZuU0nf4tRVvGQA7-1fgYJ6vJSahJQ0kpzo8FXw66mcrrqnFaLzDheiBajMa3agmWdQYu8P8vZrNAEtQqc2aiNim-_fXQtjS2EYeQuZEd-7kZgCWDkj1cY5UgT3YOazPU/s400/Westerly-51-frontcov.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5629404885250841138" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I love the ability of poets to both observe and express the human condition, the transformative process that occurs when a poet has been out in the world, watching, listening, recording, taking the time to allow poems to bubble up to the surface, dwelling in ideas and images, catching the thoughts that are thinking themselves.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><em>Westerly</em>’s aim is ‘to generate interest in the literature and culture of Australia, particularly Western Australia, and its neighbouring regions in South-East Asia and the Indian Ocean’. Information about <em>Westerly</em>, including the contents of past issues, is available at http://www.westerlycentre.uwa.edu.au/magazine, as are the submission guidelines.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><em>Westerly</em> is published twice a year, but it is worth noting that from time to time an issue will be dedicated to a particular topic, which may exclude more general submissions. For example, of the last five issues two were on special topics (Aboriginal writing and Western Australian writing). The next issue (56:2) will focus on South-East Asian writing and is to be guest edited by Shalmalee Palaker (UWA) who will be soliciting contributions. I am reading poetry submissions now for the first issue in 2012.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The assessment process involves packages of poems being sent to me via the <em>Westerly</em>office. I’m looking for the best poems and my interests are wide-ranging. I seek well-crafted pieces, contemporary in their focus. There are no restrictions on the form a poem takes or its content. I read everything at least once, if not more, and will go through the stack of the selections I shortlist again before returning them to administration for processing. Once submissions have closed for an issue, all the shortlisted poems are returned to me for my final selection. Whether or not the poems I select are published is dependent on several factors: mainly the length of poems (we don’t have a set requirement for line length, which allows us to be quite flexible in this regard), and the amount of space available, taking into account short fiction, articles, reviews, etc...</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The acceptance rate for poetry submissions to <em>Westerly</em> is approximately 5%. For example, around 230 poets submitted approximately 690 poems for consideration for Issue 56:1. There were 35 poems on my final shortlist. Of these, the editors – Delys Bird and Tony Hughes-d’Aeth – selected 28 poems for publication in the journal. (This figure doesn’t include the solicited works in the Dennis Haskell tribute).</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">In regard to submitting poems to <em>Westerly</em>: First have a look at several issues of the journal; then visit the website, read the guidelines for submission and comply with them. Submit no more than three previously unpublished poems. (We once received a submission of over 40 pages containing an equivalent amount of poems. I only read the first three.) Submit your very best work. I can’t emphasise enough the importance of ensuring that the work has been through a process of development/workshopping, and has had some kind of editorial/informed input. An interesting metaphor or a clever rhyme is not enough, the whole poem has to work so make every line count. Please wait for a response before you submit more poems. Sometimes a poet may submit a number of really strong pieces and have them all shortlisted. However, in order to publish as many poets as possible in the limited space available, I have to make very hard decisions and only one or maybe two of an individual’s poems may make it through to the final selection.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">- Barbara Temperton</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-72160304748180191632011-07-14T12:14:00.002+08:002011-07-14T12:18:42.703+08:00AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Tracy Ryan<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfop_v7RBPQgZWTST6g5I_VcAdzuQOVM2SoZb0Dh06XcBU1hNMyjiY5ii-qo4cRjGFAmbRnDLeFkjZq3CyYcIs87ecPMQdkAd9Mx8T00qtLlk05Hgc-jbWPHgm7dGrCMFKLau8JYteNnE/s1600/P1000788.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfop_v7RBPQgZWTST6g5I_VcAdzuQOVM2SoZb0Dh06XcBU1hNMyjiY5ii-qo4cRjGFAmbRnDLeFkjZq3CyYcIs87ecPMQdkAd9Mx8T00qtLlk05Hgc-jbWPHgm7dGrCMFKLau8JYteNnE/s400/P1000788.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5629057031777777074" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(71, 57, 40); font-family:georgia, times, 'times new roman', serif;font-size:10px;"><p size="1.2em" style=" margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><strong size="1em"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Tell us about the genesis of </span><em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Argument</span></em></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I was reading the letters of Heloise and Abelard, who were real-life lovers in the 12th century and horribly separated, eventually becoming a nun and a monk. He urges her to</span></p><p size="1.2em" style=" margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> renounce their former love, a very physical affair; she argues for hanging on to every detail! The argument between them seemed very much a tussle between an earthy zest for life and a resigned, spiritual death-wish. I wrote a sequence of poems about them, and then started to see other areas in which similar themes cropped up, and the book took off by itself.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Referring to the book’s title, Dennis Haskell has said that your “‘argument’ is argument in the older sense of the word, a discussion of the self with the larger whole …”. What does the collection’s title mean to you?</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> For me, it’s primarily the argument with death, or the argument between the life-urge and the death-wish that you find in the natural world as well as in cultural expression. We know where we are headed; we don’t like to believe it most of the time, and I think the “arguments” we put up against it are energetic and impressive. Eros and thanatos: not as separate as we might think. So there are poems of profusion, abundance, life and love, alongside poems of decay, night, phobia, renunciation. And linking them, motifs of fire (which can belong to both) and ice (likewise)…</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You have been publishing award-winning poetry for nearly two decades. In what ways has your poetry changed over time?</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I started writing mostly very sparse lyrics of short lines. Now that’s less often the case: I like a more expansive line. Probably many of the themes are similar, but perhaps looked at differently as I’ve aged. Mostly I don’t look back over long-past work, so it would be for readers to say!</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You are also the author of three novels. What is the process for you in deciding whether to render content into verse or prose?</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> The idea tends to come ready-made as one or the other. I don’t generally write narrative poetry, so if I get a narrative-shaped idea, it will become a novel. Probably with short stories there would be more overlap (a short story can have the image-like concision of a poem) but I almost never write short stories. Either I have a long, narrative-shaped idea, or a poem-idea.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Do you write your poetry with a particular type of reader in mind?</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> No, although I suppose I assume they already like to read poetry, or are willing to approach it on its own terms, rather than expecting it to be expository and prose-like. Having said that, I don’t think my poems are particularly inaccessible or difficult.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><strong><span class="caps"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">JRR</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Tolkien famously wrote in 1955 that ‘cellar door’ is generally thought of as ‘beautiful’, or euphonic. What is a word or phrase that you consider beautiful and why?</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beauty (with words as with anything else) is a subjective thing, and I don’t believe words or phrases can be isolated like that.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It’s like the way some people believe certain languages “sound beautiful” and others “sound ugly”. To me, that’s a myth, and reflects more about the person’s subjective associations with the language and culture, than about anything factual.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You can create relative euphony in a poetic line, but it will not be perceived that way by everybody. Also, words are pronounced in many different ways by speakers of the same language. (“Cellar door” will sound different in Scotland, Australia and Singapore…).</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But I do enjoy clever puns, tongue-twisters and verbal wit, even if that’s not “beauty”.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What projects – writing or otherwise – are you currently working on?</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> There are always poems going on. I’ve also finished writing a psychological suspense novel, and am planning out another novel. Also I’m constantly engaged with translating poetry (from French and from German); I love that process.</span></p><p style="font-size: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; "><br /></p></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-73805237607841219392011-07-14T09:58:00.000+08:002011-07-14T09:59:30.375+08:00Tanka update<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; ">This tanka by Gary Colombo De Piazzi is an excellent example of a traditional tanka following the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure. The break of thought and rhythm at the end of the third line is in keeping with the poem’s theme of the difficulty of articulation and utterance.<br /><br />portion of each breath<br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; ">arrested within the throat<br />neither in nor out<br />words almost formed in the mind<br />struggle in the vocal chords<br /><br />Gary Colombo De Piazzi<br /><br />Andrew Lansdown and Wendy Jenkins</span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-77140280702813128262011-07-11T14:24:00.002+08:002011-07-11T14:35:59.195+08:00Fremantle Poetry Month Second Update<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLlznqu5ElOG61lLydbt8GvNF7T9qecfhhGDRLbyz0PLyp0B4Cu5Q7pihbDM9jjdemrpnOFRC8TDh8VY03TqJiZ4r5G5Oys71isd4CMmim6uzsnh7thAJqTfI96prgsSfwaW2ykd1QkhM/s1600/Thonglines+037.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">As T.S. Eliot said ‘Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.’ Find out which kind of poet you are by entering our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/fremantle-press/talking-about-tanka/10150228849408015">cantankerous tanka</a> competition. Updates from judges <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/304/Wendy+Jenkins">Wendy Jenkins</a> and <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/609/Andrew+Lansdown">Andrew Lansdown</a> will be posted each Tuesday until Friday 22 July when the competition will be closed. This is an amazing opportunity to receive professional feedback on your work.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">This week’s Friday afternoon with the editor will be with critically acclaimed and Fremantle Press author and <em>Westerly</em> poetry editor, <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/375/Barbara+Temperton">Barbara Temperton</a>. She will discuss her tips on writing poetry and what she looks for in selecting submissions for<em> Westerly</em>. Ask Barbara a question and we will post the answers to the best on Friday. Our favourite question will win a copy of <em><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/newreleases/1252?keywords=fremantle%20poets%202&x=0&y=0">Fremantle Poets 2: Two Poets</a></em>. Again general questions only: we cannot accept any submissions.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">On the wintry evening of July 7 we launched our poetry 2011 titles: <em><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/newreleases/1251">The Argument</a>, T<a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/newreleases/1250">he Moving World</a> and <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/newreleases/1252?keywords=fremantle%20poets%202&x=0&y=0">Fremantle Poets 2: Two Poets</a>. </em>There was an impressive turn out at the Fremantle Arts Centre from poetry appreciators and writers alike. The evening ran smoothly, launched by His Worship the Mayor Brad Pettitt and the audience was treated to some brief but excellent performances by <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/news/229">Liana Joy Christensen</a>, Caitlin Maling, Amanda Joy, <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/news/229">John Charles Ryan</a>, <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/311/Michael+Heald">Michael Heald</a>, <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/309/Tracy+Ryan">Tracy Ryan</a>, <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/609/Andrew+Lansdown">Andrew Lansdown</a> and <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/608/Kevin+Gillam">Kevin Gillam</a>. Some of the presenters were selected to be a part of <em><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/news/229">Fremantle Poets 3: Performance Poets</a></em>. Find out who <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/news/229">here</a>. I’d also like to say a special thank you to Anna Dunnill and Kiki Hunwick, the co-curators of Thonglines, for creating and running the Thonglines slideshow that played throughout the night. The art exhibition is on display in Clancy’s throughout July.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Stephanie Sutcliffe, Marketing Assistant</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: normal; font-size: 16px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLlznqu5ElOG61lLydbt8GvNF7T9qecfhhGDRLbyz0PLyp0B4Cu5Q7pihbDM9jjdemrpnOFRC8TDh8VY03TqJiZ4r5G5Oys71isd4CMmim6uzsnh7thAJqTfI96prgsSfwaW2ykd1QkhM/s400/Thonglines+037.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627977164553068178" style="float: right; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px; " /></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: normal; font-size: 16px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; ">One of the thongs on Christmas Island before it was used in the Thonglines exhibition.</span></span></div></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-36450017048891025422011-07-08T14:24:00.002+08:002011-07-08T14:29:05.875+08:00Some poetry submission tips from Wendy Jenkins and Georgia Richter<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Are you considering submitting poetry to Fremantle Press?</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">A good place to begin is by visiting our submissions guidelines page on the Fremantle Press website:</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/resources/submitting">http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/resources/submitting</a></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Here we call for poetry submissions to be accompanied by a covering letter including a brief description of the work and an author bio with publication history and awards. If performance is an important element of the work, the letter should also list recent performances and readings.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Manuscripts should be a minimum of 60 pages of poems (one poem to a page). Spacing is best at 1.5 with a font size of around 10–12 pt, and with generous margins: go for whatever is comfortable to the eye.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Fremantle Press publishes two or three volumes of poetry a year. Every other year, we will publish a themed composite volume which will be our main vehicle for introducing new poets – 2010 for example was <em><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/1143">New Poets</a></em>; 2012 will be <em>Performance Poets. </em>Calls for submissions to these volumes are broadcast widely through writing networks.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The remaining spaces on the list are hotly contested. There are always more poets than places. We must consider how best to support established poets while providing space for new voices coming through.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Successful manuscripts will be arresting in their language use, and the submitted volume will generally have a sense of unity or cohesion. Successful new or emerging poets who submit their work have often already taken the MS through an editorial process with a trusted mentor or editor or with writing peers. To this end, we encourage poets to be involved in a poetry community as much as possible: read and listen to the work of other poets, and, where possible, work with others (individuals, community writing groups) who themselves have experience of reading, writing and editing poetry. Gain as much publishing experience as possible via submissions to journals, or making your own zines or posting individual poems online. There are many ways to find an audience for poetry.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><em><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/304/Wendy+Jenkins">Wendy Jenkins</a>, Manuscript Assessor & Poetry Editor,</em></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><em> </em></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "><em> </em><em><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/606/Georgia+Richter">Georgia Richter</a></em><em>, Poetry Publisher</em></p></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-51966249602074946382011-07-06T13:00:00.002+08:002011-07-06T13:07:45.359+08:00Talking about Tanka<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWVbKGVP8nOE2r85kiB5hwTqfQbWgJrst_SusCrxQ9tyM3IrrBP4ZDvAwK-hyaQ0QW53MEkYNSE4-vBUlRkIZiYEEpMq3FjJCRzeSw1LZ9KY3NWNBzGlmEtzbvyhIH8E9X85JqD4ky-4A/s1600/signal+tanka+image.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 282px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWVbKGVP8nOE2r85kiB5hwTqfQbWgJrst_SusCrxQ9tyM3IrrBP4ZDvAwK-hyaQ0QW53MEkYNSE4-vBUlRkIZiYEEpMq3FjJCRzeSw1LZ9KY3NWNBzGlmEtzbvyhIH8E9X85JqD4ky-4A/s400/signal+tanka+image.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5626100012371170706" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">The tanka is a poetic form with a long and rich history. It originated in Japan in the sixth or seventh century and quickly became that nation’s dominant poetic from. The first national poetry anthology, <em>Man’yoshu</em>, compiled in the eighth century, contains 4,500 poems, of which 4,200 are tanka. The 21 imperial anthologies compiled between 905 and 1439 contain over 33,600 tanka.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">The Japanese word “tanka” means “short poem” or “short song”. True to its name, a tanka is a short poem consisting of five lines and 31 syllables. The lines are measured by syllables and form a pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables respectively.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Arrangement of lines by syllables is a key feature of the tanka and this feature can be reproduced as effectively in the English language as in the Japanese. The 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure guides the phrasing of the poem and lends balance to not only the individual lines but also the poem itself.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Poets writing tanka in English today often abandon the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure—and often create impressive poems in the process! It remains a moot point, however, as to why such poems should be called <em>tanka</em> as opposed to <em>free verse</em>.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">In my own practice of writing tanka, I have viewed the 5-7-5-7-7 form as <em>the ideal</em> to be<em>aimed for</em>; but I have accepted that this ideal cannot always be attained. After all, the ultimate purpose of writing a tanka is to produce a <em>poem</em>. If the traditional structure gets in the way of the poem on a given occasion, then it should be abandoned or altered for the sake of the poem.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Within the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure there is considerable flexibility of arrangement. Many of the Japanese tanka collected in the tenth century imperial anthology titled<em>Kokishu</em>, for example, have a tripartite arrangement, with breaks (in rhythm and/or thought) after the second and fourth lines. Other tanka in the collection tend to be bipartite, with a break or shift occurring after the third line.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">I have often employed this latter technique in my tanka. Here’s an example from my book<em>Counterpoise</em> (Angus & Robertson, 1980):</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong>Cricket</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">An amber cricket</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">makes her way mechanically</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">across the concrete.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Eggs must be laid and there is</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">so much dying to be done.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">As can be seen, this tanka falls neatly into two parts. The first part (lines 1-3) is primarily objective and descriptive, while the second part (lines 4-5) is largely subjective and evocative.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Here’s another example of a tanka arranged so that a shift occurs after the third line. (This tanka is part of my collection, <em>The Colour of Life</em>, in the book <em>Two Poets</em>, which is scheduled for publication by Fremantle Press in July.)</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong>Signal</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">As I lift the mug,</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">light reflects from its glazing</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">in the black window—</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">faint and intermittent like</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">a lighthouse signal, far off.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">While the incorporation of a pause or shift after the third line is an effective way to write tanka, it is certainly not the only way. Some fine tanka have no specific shifts in thought or pauses in rhythm but rather present a single unfolding statement. Consider this example (also from Fremantle Press’s soon-to-be launched <em>Two Poets</em>):</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong>Lilies</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Lady, the lilies</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">we admired in the paddock,</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">the arum lilies</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">so whitely lovely, have died</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">from the farmer’s herbicide.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">This tanka is essentially a single observation arising from the accumulation, line by line, of specific details (although it is true to say that the concluding couplet rhyme gives the impression of a shift from the first three to the last two lines).</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Finally, consider an example of a tanka (also from <em>Two Poets</em>) that is somewhat irregular in its outworking. It is essentially a unified statement/image, and yet it contains a shift of sorts, and that shift falls in an unconventional place:</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong>Bird and Bull</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">The dotterel,</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">stalking, sniping—so little</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">by the muzzle</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">and muddy hoof of the bull</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">drinking at the dam’s puddle.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">“Bird and Bull”, like “Signal”, works by drawing a comparison, which is a typical tanka technique. Yet while “Signal” draws a comparison to bring out a similarity, “Bird and Bull” draws a comparison to bring out a contrast.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">It is worth noting that the first and fourth tanka above deal with nature, while the second and third deal with human nature. This is one of the beauties of the tanka form: it is suitable for any subject and can capture any mood. Stylistically, it can be imagistic or lyrical or elegiac. Its versatility is limited only by a given poet’s imagination and skill.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">It is also worth noting that these four tanka employ simple and precise language (as is best suited for tanka generally), and yet they are laced with literary devices. “Cricket” uses alliteration; “Signal” uses simile; “Lilies” uses apostrophe, repetition and rhyme; and “Bird and Bull” uses slant (or half) rhyme and alliteration. The tanka poet may use literary devices and figures of speech like any other poet. It is a mistake to think, as some do, that tanka must be devoid of literary devices. The tanka is a type of <em>poetry</em>, which in turn is a type of<em>literature</em>, and it should be treated as such.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Well, these are some ideas and examples to stimulate you to write your own tanka. Get on and give it a go! I look forward, with my co-judge, <strong>Wendy Jenkins</strong>, to reading your entries.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong>— Andrew Lansdown</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Send us a copy of your best tanka to win a professional judge’s report by expert poetry editor Wendy Jenkins and poet Andrew Lansdown plus a complete set of Fremantle Poetry Month titles worth RRP$74.85.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong><br /></strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><strong>Tanka submission guidelines</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Submissions for the competition will open from 1 July until Friday 22 July. The winner will be announced on the Fremantle Press website, facebook page and blog on Tuesday 26 July. The winner will be notified by email.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">The winner of the competition will receive a professional judges’ report from the Fremantle Press poetry editor Wendy Jenkins and poet Andrew Lansdown as well as all 2011 Fremantle Press poetry titles worth RRP $74.95.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; ">Entries will only be accepted via email to admin@fremantlepress.com.au within these dates. Only one entry per person will be accepted.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">By entering this competition you agree:</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Judges decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Entering this competition does not guarantee publication</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">All work must be your own</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">The winning entry and report by judges Andrew Lansdown and Wendy Jenkins will appear on the Fremantle Press website, blog and Facebook page.</span></span></p></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-85466023961151379942011-07-05T13:00:00.001+08:002011-07-05T13:01:54.478+08:00Weekly update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigE-vSUUbLR5eaBUx-G7sddqkl5No4nQpvKF2TUGHf-A3e-J_YY2HY25mRYxA5aOkUlKzNgpb1Llb4RjqazppdTNNsAXIYgF1afdZboEWXlD3PU9XfH5rpOAGcbhwBgSj68q1eb4b-mqp_/s1600/Thonglines%2525202%252520021.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigE-vSUUbLR5eaBUx-G7sddqkl5No4nQpvKF2TUGHf-A3e-J_YY2HY25mRYxA5aOkUlKzNgpb1Llb4RjqazppdTNNsAXIYgF1afdZboEWXlD3PU9XfH5rpOAGcbhwBgSj68q1eb4b-mqp_/s200/Thonglines%2525202%252520021.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5625728987200084882" border="0" /></a>‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears’ to borrow from one of the great poets, Mr Shakespeare. Fremantle Poetry Month is upon us and each week, there will be a rundown of the events that have just gone and the ones approaching. <p> The month began with our first event on Friday, which was a poetry workshop for secondary students at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre. And what an amazing day it was with over 120 students from seven different schools split across two sessions. The morning session run by Kevin Gillam, co-author of <em>Two Poets</em>, focused on the use of the five senses to create unique poetry and creative ways to approach the often agonising task that is beginning. He played his cello to inspire the students and encouraged them to use the music to set the mood of the poems which the students wrote in the workshop. The afternoon session was run by Michael Heald, author of <em>The Moving World</em> whose approach was to get the students to question what poetry is and how it is different from other forms. Taking the students from the intangible idea to the concrete act of writing and reading and then back to the philosophical of questioning and meaning in their writing. Overall it was an interesting and engaging day run by two poets that we are proud to be publishing as a part of Fremantle Poetry Month 2011.</p> <p>Voicebox’s open mike evening last night was at Clancy’s Fish Pub Fremantle and featured the poetic stylings of Kevin Gillam and Kaitlyn Plyley. It also marked the launch of the much anticipated art installation Thonglines curated by Renee Schipp, Anna Dunnill and Kiki Hunwick. The exhibition features Haiku poetry written by Christmas Island students on the thongs they have collected from the shores of the island. It's available to view every day in July. You can have a look at our curators other works on flickr.</p> <p>Anna: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ampersand_/</p> <p>Kiki: http://www.flickr.com/photos/60326457@N03/</p> <p>To meet the Fremantle Poetry Month poets in person come down to the official launch this Thursday at the Fremantle Arts Centre at 6:00pm. There will be poetry readings and live music from Tracy Ryan <em>The Argument</em>, Michael Heald <em>The Moving World</em>, Kevin Gillam and Andrew Lansdown <em>Fremantle Poets 2: Two Poets</em> plus Liana Joy Christensen, Amanda Joy, John Charles Ryan and Caitlin Maling. Warm up with a glass of wine and some free entertainment.</p> <p>Again welcome to Fremantle Poetry Month 2011 we hope to see you all rhyming and punning along with us throughout the month.</p> <p><em>Stephanie Sutcliffe, Fremantle Press Marketing Assistant</em></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Claire Miller, Media and Promotions Managerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05906635034409552028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-89027814916782262892011-07-01T08:26:00.001+08:002011-07-01T08:30:14.903+08:00Welcome to Fremantle Poetry Month<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDI2wKpE0O5e0RX9v-hl0rb1f_wFTgwh_6aj_rNzOtlC9yr39VoeMwYsRD4CeD-EOtZ4ITRjZlZdNxS3B4rdMIFo6JwWaYcxnznNSVhW0TUYtQASEAFul5GCfUMntBOCQC_y8NxETavjuL/s1600/IMG_2882_0284.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 128px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDI2wKpE0O5e0RX9v-hl0rb1f_wFTgwh_6aj_rNzOtlC9yr39VoeMwYsRD4CeD-EOtZ4ITRjZlZdNxS3B4rdMIFo6JwWaYcxnznNSVhW0TUYtQASEAFul5GCfUMntBOCQC_y8NxETavjuL/s200/IMG_2882_0284.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5624174438323100482" border="0" /></a><br />Welcome to Fremantle Press’s second Fremantle Poetry Month. This is the month when we are able to pause and access the world via a variety of unexpected colours and forms of expression – the month when we are surprised into discovering things we didn’t know we knew.<br /><br />Last year I was uplifted by the sense of community spirit surrounding each event.<br /><br />This year we particularly welcome the contribution of the local and refugee students of Christmas Island, who have been working with Renee Schipp to create Thonglines – a poetry and art installation of haiku on thongs. Thonglines will be launched at Clancy’s Fish Pub on Monday July 4, in conjunction with an evening of live performance from poets and songwriters.<br /><br />In Fremantle Poetry Month we are proud to launch Tracy Ryan’s <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/1251"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Argument</span></a>, which Dennis Haskell has described as ‘her best collection yet’.<br /><br />Michael Heald’s <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/1250"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Moving World</span></a> is the poet’s document of his connection with Vipassana meditation. Robert Gray has called it 'a daring and triumphant project'.<br /><br />In <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/1252"><span style="font-style: italic;">Two Poets</span></a>, the second in the Fremantle Poets series, established poets Andrew Lansdown and Kevin Gillam display a strong sense of place and a precise concern with craft. Theirs are poems to enjoy.<br /><br />I hope you will join us in celebrating this wonderful form.<br /><br />Georgia Richter, Poetry Publisher, Fremantle Press<div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Claire Miller, Media and Promotions Managerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05906635034409552028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-40994509090285981232011-06-30T14:56:00.001+08:002011-07-01T08:23:45.807+08:00Melissa Parke MP on Seamus Heaney and Roger McGoughMelissa Parke is the Federal Member for Fremantle. Melissa has campaigned on the need for education and health reform, and for integrity and accountability in Government. She has also made it clear that one of her ambitions is to see Fremantle recognised as a leader in urban sustainability, and in climate-change awareness and action.<br /><br />Here’s what Melissa had to say about her favourite poems:<br /><br />‘I find it a little difficult to tell you my favourite poem, poetry book or poet because, like music, poetry speaks to different aspects and moments of our lives. It rather depends on what is happening at any given time in your day or your life as to whether you will appreciate more a love poem or a poem about loss or about the night stars or a sunburst wheat field. But I will nevertheless nominate two poems that have particular meaning for me.<br /><br />Firstly, Seamus Heaney's poem ‘From the Republic of Conscience’,<br />which is a strong motivation in my role as federal representative for<br />Fremantle (view the poem at http://www.thewitness.org/archive/march2002/poem.html)<br /><br />As a committed vegetarian, I nominate Roger McGough's poem ‘There was<br />a knock on the door. It was the meat’ as a humorous and confronting poem that forces the reader's attention to the fact that the meat was recently a living creature.’<div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-87168587567138816972011-06-27T16:30:00.000+08:002011-06-27T16:30:00.568+08:00Poetry Peek: Kevin Gillam<div><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Our final poetry peek before Fremantle Poetry Month begins is ‘the unwritten blue’ from <i>F</i></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">remantle Poets 2: New Poets</span></i></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">.</span></span></div><div><div><div><div><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Click on the images below to enlarge.</span></span></span></div></div></div><div><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCuMfYqoJoTzyvfzPqsnmN5VBHl5EHwAGxtiN1S0lhg6VJum626bjffNEGjlVo1vTicYN6ShDIuzOYDAN5yEu9Jtj42taj4gvBs_gvbIZabiy0U83d9UbBul_TIPfgThUKGq8x9bIPN8A/s1600/Kevin+Gillam+POETRY+PEEK_Page_1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 293px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCuMfYqoJoTzyvfzPqsnmN5VBHl5EHwAGxtiN1S0lhg6VJum626bjffNEGjlVo1vTicYN6ShDIuzOYDAN5yEu9Jtj42taj4gvBs_gvbIZabiy0U83d9UbBul_TIPfgThUKGq8x9bIPN8A/s400/Kevin+Gillam+POETRY+PEEK_Page_1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5622777989809440706" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzRFjENqRv-PaOcZ4U3QeUzZPGto8qF-jihMosPhf-thyphenhyphenypZ2wqlmyBYfXYg_AD8sE_0A_hHhYeXxW2cfTs3ehysgKdKyTaSJR1opse7ZdJTt_fD4Rs6JpLlC4_3_GDsWu9T9UNBWPe1U/s1600/Kevin+Gillam+POETRY+PEEK_Page_2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzRFjENqRv-PaOcZ4U3QeUzZPGto8qF-jihMosPhf-thyphenhyphenypZ2wqlmyBYfXYg_AD8sE_0A_hHhYeXxW2cfTs3ehysgKdKyTaSJR1opse7ZdJTt_fD4Rs6JpLlC4_3_GDsWu9T9UNBWPe1U/s400/Kevin+Gillam+POETRY+PEEK_Page_2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5622778860858228914" style="cursor: pointer; width: 293px; height: 400px; " /></a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-65222825456492862562011-06-24T12:42:00.002+08:002011-06-27T15:50:24.758+08:00Friday afternoon with dotdotdash<div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:";">As part of our race toward Fremantle Poetry Month, each Friday afternoon we’re speaking to editors and poets around Australia about the poetry climate in their city. This week we asked </span><span style="font-family:";"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.dotdotdash.org">dotdotdash</a> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:";">magazine poetry editors Sj Finch, Rosalind McFarlane and Elizabeth Tan what they look for in poetry submissions. They also discussed the work of the talented John Charles Ryan, who will be performing at the launch of Fremantle Poetry Month.</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:";">In the upcoming seventh edition of <i>dotdotdash</i>, twenty-two of its one hundred pages will be dedicated to poetry. The majority of submissions to <i>dotdotdash</i> are poems, accounting for about sixty percent of the work we receive. Because we publish more poems than any other <i>dotdotdash </i>submission category, the acceptance rate for poetry is reasonably high at ten percent (the acceptance rate for short fiction, for comparison, is closer to five percent). While almost all the short stories and creative non-fiction pieces published in <i>dotdotdash</i> have undergone structural edits, only about twenty percent of accepted poems undergo this process – meaning that, for most of the poetry in <i>dotdotdash</i>, not a single word has changed from when the poem was first submitted to us. In spite of this, we are accustomed to thinking of poetry as one of the hardest categories to judge. Very often, due to space restrictions, we have to reject poems that might have required only a little bit of editing.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:";">Perhaps this experience is not very different to other literary journals. When there are hundreds of poems to read, it can only be expected that poems that have gone through multiple edits and that are carefully tailored to the publication have a better chance over poems that are submitted with less attentiveness (or simultaneously submitted to another publication – but that’s a speech for another day). Perhaps the characteristics we like are also not too different from other publications – an interesting rhythm, an ending which extends the ideas expressed in the body of the poem, an appropriate form. Originality as opposed to relying solely on common themes. Specificity (a personal spin, even) as opposed to the general. Letting the readers draw their own emotional conclusions as opposed to spelling it out.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:";">In ‘Wheatbelt Pneuma’ – published in our sixth issue, <i>Jukebox </i>–<span> </span>John Charles Ryan describes with specific detail an everyday experience of landscape, and occasionally interweaves this with metaphor that is both apt and novel, comparing ‘short-lived sparks in recalcitrant soil’ to ‘a star-struck choir nodding to God’. The use of pronouns positions the speaker’s voice as a nameless multitude: ‘you are the land’s augury, like us’, which, along with the references to choirs and congregations, draws the reader to consider how the plants are a multitude of beings living as one, and how nature invites one to exist with it in silence. The interplay between the four-line and single-line stanzas allows the insertion of pronouns to flow naturally. The single lines provide a lilting rhythm that periodically halts the driving enjambment of some of the more fast-paced stanzas. This does not necessarily have to come back to meaning – often there are elements in a poem that simply exist and are beautiful – but the rhythm of Ryan’s stanza structure is reminiscent of looking outside the window of a moving car, and in the multitude of images sometimes concentrating on one single image, and holding and savouring it in the mind’s eye. The small structural elements in Ryan’s poem add up to create a convincing poetic argument about the observed struggle and coexistence of humans and plants in Western Australia. It is a smoothly executed poem that we are most proud to have published.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:";">If you are interested in <i>dotdotdash</i> or have any questions, please visit our website at<a href="http://www.dotdotdash.org/">www.dotdotdash.org</a>.</span></p><div><span style="font-family:";"><br /></span></div></span></i></div><div><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-AU;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><b>‘Wheatbelt Pneuma’ by John Charles Ryan in <i>dotdotdash</i></b></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-AU;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><b> (Issue 6: Jukebox, 2011). Design by Cassie Cox. Available: </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 13px; color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><u><a href="http://dotdotdash.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/John-Charles-Ryans-Wheatbelt-Pneuma.pdf">http://dotdotdash.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/John-Charles-Ryans-Wheatbelt-Pneuma.pdf</a></u></span><!--EndFragment--></div><!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmQf0jBzcZsq267QTj0pQPBS97Rb9DlRaEupIRd_33LDd2MsVIvh_ruKjCfkoOOGkweMq8YbFiBb3Vqa_-NjhmYdn2nYweBxL1CVM1b-Vqd1uD9_i6cqyWBJqdqXqgJvs-NoB1Q0LSVY/s1600/John-Charles-Ryans-Wheatbelt-Pneuma.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 302px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmQf0jBzcZsq267QTj0pQPBS97Rb9DlRaEupIRd_33LDd2MsVIvh_ruKjCfkoOOGkweMq8YbFiBb3Vqa_-NjhmYdn2nYweBxL1CVM1b-Vqd1uD9_i6cqyWBJqdqXqgJvs-NoB1Q0LSVY/s400/John-Charles-Ryans-Wheatbelt-Pneuma.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5622803222382921282" /></a><br /><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:";"><i><br /></i></span></p></span></i><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Claire Miller, Media and Promotions Managerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05906635034409552028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-16983780700786681502011-06-22T11:03:00.001+08:002011-06-22T11:05:17.302+08:00Lindsay Pow on Lucy Dougan<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" 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name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--><span style=";font-family:";" >Lindsay Pow is a local Fremantle artist who has a vibrant career including but not limited to powerful landscapes that flow towards abstraction Here’s what Lindsay had to say about his favourite poet:</span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >‘Being dyslexic, words are a complete mystery to me. Thus I find it astonishing that Lucy Dougan, on a daily basis, wrestles with words to construct beauty. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >My favourite line is, ‘Time grazes, drops its guard.’ I guess I love it because there are moments when time does graze, and drops its guard. I’m in awe of Lucy being able to encapsulate that feeling into words. I guess I’d paint it, or try!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >Lucy is heroic, immensely likable, compassionate and intelligent. If these traits are what it takes to be a poet, then – bring on the poets!’<br /></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Claire Miller, Media and Promotions Managerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05906635034409552028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-17902590617782188672011-06-21T08:22:00.002+08:002011-06-21T08:23:08.826+08:00The Mayor of Fremantle on Mary Oliver<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg5Xaa8k-Y9dUdlyh35_JgZzatqL6itTFJkgLivyG2m-IlH-2TXkwI2NaqiI4_b_CUZ6Xw0e26kXm0L2lp0LPuph4JwxWVOSujToD5behZoMew_RYAGSMgnNTBvwWAZ5ZGdap3TvUlMG0Q/s1600/Brad+Pettitt+-+Mary+Oliver+Cover.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 133px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg5Xaa8k-Y9dUdlyh35_JgZzatqL6itTFJkgLivyG2m-IlH-2TXkwI2NaqiI4_b_CUZ6Xw0e26kXm0L2lp0LPuph4JwxWVOSujToD5behZoMew_RYAGSMgnNTBvwWAZ5ZGdap3TvUlMG0Q/s200/Brad+Pettitt+-+Mary+Oliver+Cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5620461977323706370" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:";" >Brad Pettitt is the City of Fremantle Mayor and Dean of Murdoch University’s School of Sustainability.</span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >Here’s what His Worship the Mayor had to say about his favourite poem:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >‘After some deliberation and procrastination I’ve chosen a Mary Oliver poem, ‘When Death Comes’. Her work reminds me of a deeper and often neglected current that runs through our lives. It reminds us not forget what is really important and not to be too distracted by the day by day, by the detail, by the busyness. Someone far more wonderful lies underneath if you pause and pay attention.’</span><span style=";font-family:";" > </span><span style=";font-family:";" ></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >A copy of the poem can be found by clicking the link below.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style=";font-family:";" >http://www.panhala.net/Archive/When_Death_Comes.html</span></u><span style=";font-family:";" ></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Claire Miller, Media and Promotions Managerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05906635034409552028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-83745642086389923742011-06-20T12:34:00.002+08:002011-06-20T12:37:44.675+08:00Poetry Peek: Andrew Lansdown<span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" >This week we take a look inside <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/seasonal/1252?keywords=two%20poets"><i style="">Fremantle Poets 2: Two Poets</i></a> at Andrew Lansdown’s self selected ‘The Colour of Life’</span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" >Click on the image below to enlarge</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOXjUYtQhTsIUvN9Ic_aY2fktgxKNNc7j2mtYId8UdVlYMFQJauyquh4Y8uL4B4pfxboyxaPzEXWlhmOlDe4G9HZzMKFDLd5QjAacfddWePoE8-VninDGoyWSUDQQbDiMfAfX7jjP-3n1B/s1600/Andrew+Lansdown+POETRY+PEEK.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 146px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOXjUYtQhTsIUvN9Ic_aY2fktgxKNNc7j2mtYId8UdVlYMFQJauyquh4Y8uL4B4pfxboyxaPzEXWlhmOlDe4G9HZzMKFDLd5QjAacfddWePoE8-VninDGoyWSUDQQbDiMfAfX7jjP-3n1B/s200/Andrew+Lansdown+POETRY+PEEK.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5620156161938667650" border="0" /></a></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Claire Miller, Media and Promotions Managerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05906635034409552028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-15266065753939660702011-06-17T10:30:00.002+08:002011-06-17T10:30:00.418+08:00Friday afternoon with Emma Rooksby on Regional East Coast Poetry<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg046Np2R4pkRsmojL2ajMKFZY8fKOtaJMGbdG4XnZMcTyCwUI1S-hEwUTBLEgbgSy9UJ7oxDW-XToCPOgry5eKuruSkFYsPsI7NFbuCKuSRqe1ICLR-8e-zIj-siutPtPeUQ4f_6NUVJ4/s1600/Emma+Rooksby%255B1%255D.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg046Np2R4pkRsmojL2ajMKFZY8fKOtaJMGbdG4XnZMcTyCwUI1S-hEwUTBLEgbgSy9UJ7oxDW-XToCPOgry5eKuruSkFYsPsI7NFbuCKuSRqe1ICLR-8e-zIj-siutPtPeUQ4f_6NUVJ4/s400/Emma+Rooksby%255B1%255D.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616429656449161410" /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times;">My author blurb says that I divide my time between Canberra and Wollongong. That word ‘between’ is in some ways the most important part of the description. I spend ten to twelve hours a week - two of my seven evenings - travelling between my home bases, looking out trains or bus windows, often writing about what I see, sometimes just staring into the dark. Rather fewer of my evenings are spent at poetry events in either town, yet there is so much happening, I would need all seven nights plus some to keep up with everything that’s going on. Here are just a few of the recent highlights.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;">In Canberra, Geoff Page continues to coordinate the consistently top-class poetry reading series, Poetry at the Gods, including an annual Dead Poets Dinner. To date, 2011 has featured readings from John Foulcher, Ian McBryde, Luke Davies, Lionel Fogarty, Jordie Albiston, Alan Gould, Mark Tredinnick and Bronwyn Lea. It is always a pleasure to attend one of these evenings, not only for the poetry, but also for the chance to talk with all the writers and poetry-lovers who attend the events. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;">Poetry happens in many Canberra cafes. Bohemian The Front in Lyneham hosts the monthly Traverse Poetry Slam, coordinated by poet in residence Julian Fleetwood, as well as other occasional events. Smith’s Alternative Bookshop has also made itself home to a good part of the Canberra poetry scene. Smith’s regularly hosts poetry readings, launches and other events, and stocks a huge range of local, national and international poetry. Issue 11 of <i>Block</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;">, a Canberra-focused creative writing and arts journal, was launched at Smith’s back in March.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;">Many people help make poetry happen in Wollongong. For a town of 200,000-odd people, it’s full of creative buzz and interest. The South Coast Writers Centre hosts regular ‘Rocket Readings’, and down the road at Nowra are the ‘River Readings’. You can catch poets such as Kei Miller, Linda Godfrey and Lizz Murphy, and there’s also an open mic at both events. Wollongong’s Ron Pretty has recently started a poetry reading group that focuses on analysing and exploring other writers’ poems. Ron’s seventh book of poetry, <i>Postcards from the Centre</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;">, was published in 2010. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;">The University of Wollongong supports many creative endeavours, including in poetry. The Faculty of Creative Arts recently hosted the launch of a volume in the Poets and Perspective series, featuring poems by Kate Llewellyn together with three critical essays by David Gilbey, Susan Sheridan and Anne Collett. As the introduction by Paul Sharrad notes, the book should go some way toward remedying the lack of critical attention to Llewellyn’s poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-family:Times;">I’m just off to catch the coach to Canberra, where this month’s Poetry at the Gods reading features Kevin Kart and Sarah Day. With so much going on in east-coast poetry, it’s worth the ride!</span><span style="font-family:Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment--><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-12255234854971500252011-06-15T10:30:00.006+08:002011-06-17T09:41:29.242+08:00Meg McKinlay on the poetry of Jordie Albiston<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMLzJkxCHTrRloGUKMiJNNRGKNjCXfWrSXMuHPU8qqWyyjHA2bhUR_hbnUTN8ugpak0eYbdZuNjry32pddUf9QWSUjXsXiEWyYdDuCrcAgnp_xZexumY6IXUIiGubiuvZQ_rQlKhIz4WQ/s1600/Jordie+Albiston+Cover+image+%2528MM%2529.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 264px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMLzJkxCHTrRloGUKMiJNNRGKNjCXfWrSXMuHPU8qqWyyjHA2bhUR_hbnUTN8ugpak0eYbdZuNjry32pddUf9QWSUjXsXiEWyYdDuCrcAgnp_xZexumY6IXUIiGubiuvZQ_rQlKhIz4WQ/s400/Jordie+Albiston+Cover+image+%2528MM%2529.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618310623295259618" /></a><br /><br /><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times;">Meg McKinlay is a children’s writer and poet. Meg’s talents are far reaching and she writes everything from picture books to novels for young adults. Her latest book is </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times;"><i>Surface Tension</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times;">, a compelling mystery that is receiving rave reviews. She now resides in Fremantle and says she is inspired by her childhood memories and her children.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">Here’s what Meg had to say about her (current) favourite poet Jordie Albiston: ‘It’s always an impossible task, the choosing of favourites, but I'm going to go with the poem that has moved me the most in recent times – Melbourne poet Jordie Albiston's ‘The Fall’, from the collection of the same name. The poem is a response to an image of Evelyn McHale, who jumped to her death from the Empire State Building in 1947 and was photographed in arresting serenity on a crumpled car roof. Structurally, the poem is an extended linked pantoum and the repetitive elements of that form are used to stunning effect. I heard Jordie read it at the Sprung Writers Festival in Albany last year and found myself sitting perfectly still, weeping. It's an incredible piece of work.’<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">Here is a link to the photo that inspired the poem (for copyright reasons we can't post it but it is an amazing image): http://www.flickr.com/photos/strange_fruit/138441386/lightbox/</span></p> <!--EndFragment--><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-45910156920832849862011-06-14T10:30:00.001+08:002011-06-14T10:30:01.056+08:00Ron Davidson on the poetry of Mark Reid<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtmaA5Uvo6m2PmmtaXQ2NeppWQsU5-g_2YztsOCIa8vkFK_7sczsaWqYLoJDN49DL0OCGM6a-dBFuxoylFHY8JywBziYHS0JS0VteVOPPguCG9r7Aque6TGcG8TZLIobcGAEEveGLPGMk/s1600/RonDavidson.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 140px; height: 104px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtmaA5Uvo6m2PmmtaXQ2NeppWQsU5-g_2YztsOCIa8vkFK_7sczsaWqYLoJDN49DL0OCGM6a-dBFuxoylFHY8JywBziYHS0JS0VteVOPPguCG9r7Aque6TGcG8TZLIobcGAEEveGLPGMk/s400/RonDavidson.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615693886231978178" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:15.0pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/288/Ron+Davidson">Ron Davidson</a> was born into a Perth newspaper family and served his time as a journalist. Ron lectured in Psychology for twenty years and published academic papers before rediscovering the family knack of storytelling. Three books appeared, rich in the lives and times of their varied subjects. Meanwhile Ron was having a love affair with Fremantle during his thirty years in a heritage house there. He accumulated stories and characters and places, and the result, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/1077">Fremantle Impressions</a></span></i></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, has been hailed as a new way of writing about cities.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:15.0pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Here’s what Ron had to say about his favourite poetry: ‘It is not every day that a mug who failed first-year English three times at the University of Western Australia is asked to name a favourite poetry book; and why. Here I am and <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/261/Mark+Reid">Mark Reid</a>’s book </span><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/931">Parochial</a></span></i></b></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> is my favourite. Mark is a Fremantle poet with the common touch. He writes accessible poems about riding his bike to work, growing a perfect tomato, Hampton Road horrors of a sheep truck, oral sex in beach sand. But he writes best as a mop man in the geriatric ward at Fremantle Hospital. This is where my favourite poem ‘Johnno’ happens. Johnno is a stroke victim who swears incessantly</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. Fuckin this & fuckin that</span></i></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">: but he doesn’t want to swear. It is very sad and very funny.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <span style="font-family:Times;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/706">A Difficult Faith</a></span></i></b></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> is Mark’s later and more difficult book. ‘Goddess: Fremantle Love Song’ describes </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">the faces in waiting</span></i></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> you see in port queues, at bus stops and around supermarkets. For what is the Goddess waiting? Perhaps the attention of reader as porn star? Eventually, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">She is limp & exhausted. / I am aroused</span></i></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">.’</span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-34342828777928044712011-06-13T10:30:00.000+08:002011-06-13T10:30:00.544+08:00Poetry Peek: Michael Heald<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">This week’s poetic enticement is ‘Presence’ selected by <a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/authors/311/Michael+Heald">Michael Heald</a> himself from his forthcoming collection <i><a href="http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/1250">The Moving World</a></i></span><span style="font-family:Times;">.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times;">Click on the poem below to enlarge it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVv0yZT42l9tIW0HJ5LNMQSaaMTfh8gjcOMzcBYvlRrQScwPrLFtJ42h-gIFfopeEH20sis5FATXCoCvP1ah162_QTko6_XFNcq_uL6Uv-OsR2_hzzWS37MQaoz_w4vRMpbxCJRbr3PSQ/s1600/PoemPeek_THEMOVINGWORLD_MichaelHeald.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVv0yZT42l9tIW0HJ5LNMQSaaMTfh8gjcOMzcBYvlRrQScwPrLFtJ42h-gIFfopeEH20sis5FATXCoCvP1ah162_QTko6_XFNcq_uL6Uv-OsR2_hzzWS37MQaoz_w4vRMpbxCJRbr3PSQ/s400/PoemPeek_THEMOVINGWORLD_MichaelHeald.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615692695749762722" style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 273px; " /></a></span></span></p> <!--EndFragment--><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-26081988797817857482011-06-08T10:30:00.000+08:002011-06-08T10:30:00.546+08:00Peter Nolin (Fremantle Chamber of Commerce) on Walt<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5E2C0UBydoaylhuDoVDU9pQEuX-0CowzF984nCDI9lAdmjkV18NFDelSTfxs4HuaRLWsMVaOc4x852CjxSlGFhMMQQ0BQHY9Trxc9vd94dodjJzn751ppGCtxuQPMYmjOLiMuRO7M7F4/s1600/Peter+Nolin+Cover.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 282px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5E2C0UBydoaylhuDoVDU9pQEuX-0CowzF984nCDI9lAdmjkV18NFDelSTfxs4HuaRLWsMVaOc4x852CjxSlGFhMMQQ0BQHY9Trxc9vd94dodjJzn751ppGCtxuQPMYmjOLiMuRO7M7F4/s400/Peter+Nolin+Cover.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615660027592441458" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">Peter Nolin is the Chief Executive Officer at the Fremantle Chamber of Commerce. He was also the head brewer at the Sail & Anchor for seven years.</span><span style="font-family:Times;"> Peter has nominated ‘One Hour to Madness and Joy’ by Walt Whitman from <i>Children of Adam</i></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><u> </u><i>from Leaves of Grass </i></span><span style="font-family:Times;">as his favourite poem: ‘<span style="color:black;">I read this poem to my wife and all the witnesses at our wedding, and it guides me still.’</span></span></p> <!--EndFragment--><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Fremantle Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11808110186339232610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295999161545553508.post-89430003946398635112011-06-07T10:30:00.000+08:002011-06-07T10:30:00.250+08:00Tom Wilson (Kulcha/RTRfm) on poetry of the Caribbean<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvBX0s0PWO3mI3_XWoaFSsz4rFG3EGf_kWt1cl6DaFe_diTz_WpsaAUr7py_WzW8Q3Y3nAKK7JX3e9QoeBozMsfeN6jaFHHzLc5Bt0A76qrV3Ruk4X_WDcWDlgTgSjnwPEW-gK8BOmaV_5/s1600/TomWilson.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 198px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvBX0s0PWO3mI3_XWoaFSsz4rFG3EGf_kWt1cl6DaFe_diTz_WpsaAUr7py_WzW8Q3Y3nAKK7JX3e9QoeBozMsfeN6jaFHHzLc5Bt0A76qrV3Ruk4X_WDcWDlgTgSjnwPEW-gK8BOmaV_5/s200/TomWilson.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5612403801258429602" border="0" /></a><br /><span style=";font-family:";">Hey Poetry People! This week’s featured Fremantle person is Tom Wilson of Kulcha.</span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";">Tom Wilson is the Venue Manager of Western Australia’s main world music venue: Kulcha. He has a PhD in English literature and hosts an environmental radio show on RTRfm. Literature and music are both large parts of his life: “Through literature and poetic English language I am intimate with a tongue that gives shape to the world with limpidity and freshness. I am galvanised by stylish music.”</span></p> <span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;">Here’s what Tom had to say about his favourite poetry:</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;">“I’ve always loved the oral poetry of the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott. I’ve developed a knowledge of Jamaican oral heritage ranging from the whimsical Louise Bennett, AKA Miss Lou, to the biblical Mutabaruka, whose deep dub poetry can often be heard powering out of the sound system in my sitting room. Derek Walcott is one of the greatest poets of that region. Do yourself a favour and check out his recordings of his own poetry. Poetry should have music in it, and I relish the patois and traces of history in his big, narrative poems. You can listen to some Jamaican riddims from the seventies and again sense the continuity in that whole oral tradition.”</span><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">www.fremantlepress.com.au</div>Claire Miller, Media and Promotions Managerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05906635034409552028noreply@blogger.com0