Overload Poetry Festival 2009

This year's Overload looks like the best yet.

Have a peruse of the program, and I'm sure if you're into poetry you'll find something (or if you're like me, many things) you have to go to.

I'm particularly looking forward to seeing Ania Walwicz perform again, and the Poetry in Motion event, which will include screenings of local and international video poetry, plus the documentary Melbourne City Poems featuring Luis Gonzalez Serrano, Elizabeth Campbell, Philip Salom, and the late Dorothy Porter.

But that's just scratching the surface...

I'll be involved in the Tripping the Light Ekphrastic event on Tuesday 8 September. This will be the final in a series of gigs based around the theme of ekphrasis. This one focuses on 'poem as response', and features Kristin Henry, Ahmed Hashim, Maurice McNamara, Anna Fern and Fee Sievers, with Brett Ditchfield as MC. I've put my hand up to perform stuff based around remixing.

So for the first time I'll be performing original and remixed pieces which came out of collaborations with Dana Guthrie Martin and Nathan Moore.

Can't wait...!

all forms of complexity

"... one of my working assumptions here - what poetry has taught me, if you like - is that the reason human beings often seem to like poetic language is because they are attracted to all forms of complexity. For many readers of poetry it is precisely its opaqueness - its resistance to easily communicable 'meanings' - that is the source of its pleasurable and memorable attraction."
- Philip Mead, from the introduction to Networked Language.

minimal (2009)

scramble 3am sunday the club
at our most intelligent
hyperchoiced feel enhancer
micro-level the sequenced
lighting sweeping floor in
petalshapes kid behind the
decks from paris no don’t
bow he’s cool laying glitch
on glitch you love this
thudder hihats snipping you are
this unique visitor back soon
re-embodied score one for ads
without products planetary
maps rolled out for the
breakdown wait the warm
silence teaser spinback then
like 18-wheeler leaden kickdrum
cuts the surface re-entry timed to

Spinning Room 14/7/09

Made my first visit to The Spinning Room last week. Tuesdays are not normally a night I'm able to head to gigs, but I made an exception to see Maxine Clarke perform. Actually this was the third time I'd seen her (first at the Unusual Work #7 launch, then at the opening night of the Emerging Writers' Festival). She didn't disappoint, with a set of poem-songs and hip-hop stylings that covered all bases: witty, edgy, sexy... It was good to chat to her afterwards, plus I picked up a copy of her chapbook original skin.

Open section was cool too. I got in on the act, reading a couple of newies: 'cafe date' and 'snow/shy'.

The size and atmosphere of the room seems perfect for poetry & performance. The fact there's no need for a mic creates an intimate vibe. Jon and Anth do a great job of running the show too, keeping everyone entertained and on their toes.

Well it took me long enough to finally make it down (I'd been meaning to for... like... years) but I'll be back!

new blog title

The title of my blog had been bugging me for a while. I'd stuck with the same title for almost 5 years.

So now I've changed it. I'm not sure I've 'settled' on the new title yet. Both 'outtakes' and 'outer' were titles I'd thought of in different contexts, and I've decided to combine the two.

What do you think?

Update 11/7/09: False alarm! I've changed it back again...

driving hours (2009)

reading dust
signatures

communication
of the road

we blur
trees

’92 mixtape,
landscape
mix

too-loud talkback vowels
when we tire
of music

engine drone
hazes stale
exchange

we stop
to wake

truckstop litter
overflow

reminded by
the occasional
bird

*

driving out
of night

everything vibrates,
the stars

even through
the petrol
stop

no stills

motel mattress
tremors

remember
how to sleep?

air-con
insomnia

highway
still straining
south

flashing down
to the border

who is ever still? (2009)

crashed for couple
of months couldn’t
wear your purple shoes

daylight was as
a trap cold
shoulder offered

‘no one repeat
no one is watching’
‘pull plug’ ‘jack out’

did not travel
beyond forehead / for-
wardmost tip of nose

inhabited tight turn-
ing circle front
indicators inoperable

while languishing
pronounless even
quit talking in

metaphors a la
rudd much to the
nation’s relief (?)

once it becomes
clearer they don’t
dismiss you as

natural disaster
breathing improves
they even line you

up for things you
never thought you’d
do how nice though

at the restaurant
there’s nothing
you can eat &

so why bother
with principle why
risk the alien move

better to watch
others fail choke
on life so lifelike

many untouched
by history a real-
ity too far for

hopelessly punctual
lay-philosophical
skim ‘lit-i-ture’

like milk while
trees turn off
into winter have

a seed tattooed
on your hand
to remind you

to be mindful
not a backdrop
slow to update

in no state
to improvise
or soft return

disappearer of
dodgy dissolves
lobbing spoilers

toppling that glass-
half-full persona
of the worst kind

now too known
there checkout boy’s
recognition smile

compelled to shop
elsewhere we are
living in each other

you’re undetonated
huh? nothing
stays forbidden?

‘no one repeat
no one is watching’
unless they must the

board set for chess its
once-contested centre
harbours lit candle &

we are very
influenced
so edited out

where’s the healthy
snack we can
unite around?

camberwell (2009)

trained it to camberwell same journey looped over years & years until landscape no longer unzips / late model hunter-gatherer’s tatty green bags lugging foodstuffs from supermarket a muchness of foot traffic kerb-trade all this is just hairdressing / trees bow to the powerlines as they should to avert skyshow this auspicious horizon evening city advertises itself blue white red

*

arrive safely home spoilers evaded in time to catch leftover epiphanies the new set top box’s signal sometimes shy of colour / ensconced in a comfort suburb pushing boundaries like bending spoons on late-night special / m.j.’s death gets uri geller back into primetime like broadcasts are mere real estate don’t forget it camberwell boy such sagacity can seed a career

snow/shy (2009)

she wants to get off xanax / gets
prescribed valium / to soften the tiles

black snow / work-shy

she asks something like ‘how many days
longer / must this night go on?’

mattness / queasy ride

‘don’t worry something / will come’ (i
actually said / such crap?)

black snow / work-shy

our phone pact / to stay interested
both left waiting / to deserve


Note: 'for how many days longer must this night go on' = Walter Billeter