dresscoding (2008)

lining up outside Sugar Lounge under
conspicuous surveillance parasols rope
barriers please leave all attitudes at home
as if getting past brick of a bouncer wasn’t
enough gender selection no hoodies immediate
access for the ‘club babe’ persona you
refuse to cultivate remaining true to
your otherness /
_____________a studied ugliness no
sportswear of any description no
entry for all-male groups down the
rabbithole a privilege no guarantees
non-members turned away (with the
exception of cool clubwear) we’re on
the guest list can you pick the plus-one
self-proclaimed doorbitch smiles us in
(average spend on alcohol £32.70)
(more for males) first we’d better
define conspicuous consumption
designer shoes ok /
_______________lucky we know Jim
the promoter & Zane the DJ’s a 16yo
prodigy of course he’s not allowed to buy
himself a drink /
_____________these clubs like comic strips
thought balloons packed in tight many
frames to a page club drugs & drug clubs
Britain’s night-time economy (NTE) the
flawless cocktail at £35,000 a pop consists of
a large measure of Louis XII Cognac half a
bottle of Cristal champagne brown sugar
angostura bitters flakes of edible 24-carat gold leaf
& at the bottom of the crystal glass
an 11-carat white diamond ring












Note: This poem owes a debt to Phil Hadfield's article 'From Threat to Promise: Nightclub 'Security', Governance and Consumer Elites' in the British Journal of Criminology, and his presentation at the Club Health conference, Ibiza 2008.

Plotting _____ at the school reunion (2008)

I love you plot how you
gratify our need for
change when afraid
to act too schooled
kicking grit
across pavement this
bad wind splits
our bones we
don’t enjoy ourselves
gamblers & drunkards
our teachers were we
trade old jealousies
internally debate cause
of our sorrowed lot oh
class of ’94 we
have not made it we
have failed at difference

Berlin (2008)

The West controlled the U-Bahn. Underground train lines passed under the wall at certain points. Passenger trains from the West would pass through 'ghost stations' in the East, never stopping at these.

*

The communications tower spiking out of Alexanderplatz still casts the old omniscient spell at night, red eyelets flashing over the grey grid below. Socialist system a torn web still dangling from housing blocks, the eastern Ratthaus. In the former GDR, kids were herded into group potty sessions to sow the seeds of collectivism.

*

Chunks of city scattered amongst derelict blocks, may never be de-fragged. Temples falling into disuse. Underground clubs in abandoned vaults and warehouses; strobes spray lightning on sweat, shaved heads, concrete.

*

One dark dividing wall to split the brain of a city. Graffiti coats the surviving segments.

*

The opening of the wall was a bureaucratic slip – a rogue document inserted to sabotage the machinery. Paper jam. At the press conference, without pausing to consider the words or their meaning, the official read out the memo.



Published in Shadowtrain #23, October 2009.

With difficulty (2008)

Some Buddhist am I

drink
compulsively, & smoke

& I could write
the saddest poems of all
but you may never hear them
they are so quiet.

Let me be the poet asking,
‘how should each creature remember
to be happy?’

or ‘how will the fibres
of my book
flag a way out of suffering?’

Though writing lines like
‘what love there is to give
I have not given’ –

that is no way
to start,
or is it?

How to begin
again
again?

… there must be
much deletion

much deletion
before the sun goes.

Long hiatus...

It's been over 4 months since I posted anything here, which is the longest gap I've left between posts since early 2005.

Monica and I have been travelling around Europe for the last 3 months, but now we're back home in Melbourne.

I did write a few things while travelling, so I'll gradually post those up, along with news of upcoming events, etc.

It's good to be back...

only further

"This state of confusion is never made comprehensible by being given a plot,
in the same way a complicated plot is only further complicated by being simplified..."

- Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, 'Empathy'


Below: Lunar mapping images from the US Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Research Program, sourced from Generator.x.

Night of the Living Dead (2008)

(after the 1968 George A Romero film)

Boarding up all windows and doors, using whatever we can find. Breaking up furniture. Lock ourselves inside the house. An excuse to break taboos. The sick little girl turns into a zombie, consumes her dead father’s flesh, then stabs her mother repeatedly with a cement trowel, killing her. The moral to the story: don’t make fun of the dead, especially in a cemetery. They have us outnumbered. Tom & Judy burn to death when a gasoline spillage causes their car to catch fire. Zombies feast on their barbecued flesh. Recall a fast food advertisement, the glowing family trying to out-excite each other across the table. If you’re waiting for the real enemy to show up, damn it, you’ll be waiting all night. If we lock ourselves in the cellar there’ll be no way out. What, you think it’s sexual? The deep, glossy black of blood in black & white films. Reflective liquid. You won’t find a better man than a black man. Trust you to mistake him for a zombie… Disaster in the middle of nowhere; a haunting lack of sirens. There’s always a token naked zombie whenever we see them marauding as a group. Not even thinly veiled. The radio & TV emergency announcements are so, so camp: “Thousands of office and factory workers are being urged to stay at their places of employment, not to make any attempt to get to their homes. ” Shoot on sight. A situation where ‘anything’ can be justified, or where justification is moot. We see a slap across the face on screen; it matters that it’s simulated? She’s hysterical & therefore of no use to us. You have to laugh: it’s a horror flick. The zombies massing to devour the woman, leaning in, stretching their hands through holes in the wall. We know a ghoulish hand when we see one – but how? The zombies are hideously slow, but strong enough to overturn a car. Thankfully they can be fended off with fire. Walking political allegories. The men have an argument about the best options for staying alive until help arrives. You call these survival instincts? An abject failure of the system.


A previous version of this poem was published in Otoliths 14, August 2009.

Night of the Living Dead on IMDb.

the masculine (2008)

poor sad masculinity. spend the whole day jerking off. would opt out if you could. what awaits discovery here? no black gold. what's a man without it? downing a slab of mid-strength. what’re a few uncried tears? while diving in ink. don’t bother looking down there. it's nothing, always nothing. who’s alpha? is this what you have left to offer? even your pen refuses to write. the bastard. what you will resort to. you shop around. in hell's name. for endgames. is speed chess the game for you? they queue for your time. ‘not for sale’ sticker attracts attention. you’d love to crack. somewhere bright & crowded. with family units. michael douglas in falling down. a good career move. tear their smiles off. c’mon you’re far too meek. take it out on an ornament. assault by proxy. hurl down a galaxy of glass.


As published in Otoliths 14, August 2009.

Otoliths 9 now up

Otoliths 9 is now fully operational.

Two of my poems are there, plus stuff from Adam Fieled, David-Baptiste Chirot, Michael Farrell, Douglas Barber, Sheila E. Murphy, Jeff Harrison, Raymond Farr, Eileen Tabios, Geof Huth & many others.

Go see for yourself... enjoy!

such a wish

"I suppose I had always hoped that, through an act of will and the effort of practice, I might be someone else, might alter my personality and even my appearance; that I might in fact create myself, but instead I found myself trapped in the very character which made such a thought possible and such a wish mine."

...

"Only fragments are accurate."

- from My Life by Lyn Hejinian.

3WBC

A recording of my readings on local radio station 3WBC is now available for download (as two mp3 files) from here.

To download the files, click on the orange 'DOWNLOAD FILE' buttons at the bottom of the page (you may have to scroll down to see them).

In the first part I read Drive-thru and Vipassana; in the second part I read stem and Self-portrait (with wires, city & no clothes).

Thanks again to host Barry Ponchard for having me on his show, and to Monica for doing such a great job with the recording!

radio... live transmission...

I'll be reading some poems on radio this Friday (25th of April), sometime between 12:30 and 1:30pm AEST. I'll be appearing on Barry Ponchard's weekly show on 3WBC, which features upbeat jazz and live readings by local writers.

If you're in Melbourne, set your dial to 94.1FM. Otherwise you can stream the station live at http://www.3wbc.org.au.

For those who miss it, I'll endeavour to get a recording and make it available here.

rain (2008)

1.
no one takes his leaflets –
why? because it’s raining?

2.
this weather
is a lot of information

3.
tense as glass this morning
as he sits to meditate

4.
subtle sensations of vipassana:
isolated showers

5.
his hand will not destroy
even the smallest creatures

6.
someone jokes
that his hand lacks teeth

7.
his apartment
becomes moths

8.
this rain
is unintentional

9.
naked he stands,
a book in each hand

10.
smiling, shaping to accept
he enters the rain

Recent gigs

I've been 'coming out of the woodwork' recently, and heading out to a few gigs.

A few weeks back I went along to hear Elizabeth Campbell, Petra White and Claire Gaskin (and others) reading at Fed Square for International Women's Day. That was a treat - they're all excellent poets.

And a couple of weeks ago I went down to the Dan O'Connell on a Saturday afternoon for the first time in... like... years, to celebrate the birthday of Carmen Main, who was also one of the featured poets. By her own admission her poetry has come along in leaps and bounds in recent times, and she's definitely one to watch for the future. I really enjoyed her set, which mainly consisted of love poems that were lyrical but direct (very contemporary). I got in on the open mic, reading apology and I will not carry.

And just two nights ago I was at the Boroondara Soirée, which happens every two months in the Hawthorn Town Hall's art gallery space. Matt Hetherington is the regular MC, and guests on this particular night were musician Ned Collette and the one and only Emilie Zoey Baker, one of Melbourne's very best performance poets. I enjoyed their respective sets, and the open mic threw up a few surprises too. I read Vipassana.

So yeah... I'm planning to head to some more gigs over the coming weeks, so who knows, we may cross paths. Next stop the Spinning Room...

5K

This blog recently clocked up 5000 visitors.

Thanks for reading...!

As always I'll try to keep up my end of the bargain, but I'm struggling to find the time to post/write poems at the moment, what with work and teaching commitments. I might manage a couple more posts today, though.

- Stu

The Overland Magazine Judith Wright Poetry Prize

The winners of the inaugural Overland Magazine Judith Wright Poetry Prize for new and emerging poets were announced last night at Readings Carlton. Congrats to the winner, Georgina Bailey, and the runners-up, Roberta Lowing and Julie Chevalier.

My poem 'Art, Life and The Other Thing' (first of the Three Brett Whiteleys) was amongst those commended by the judge, John Leonard (outgoing Overland poetry editor, not to be confused with the other John Leonard, renowned anthologist and founder of John Leonard Press). Congrats also to the other commended poets.

Full details of the prize, winning and commended poems are now online at the Overland website.

Seven Concentrations (2008)

1. Entrance

This should be easy to enter, like a building. Not that all buildings are easy to enter, but the idea that they could (or should?) be. "The complexity of philosophy is not in its subject matter, but in our knotted understanding." Ha.


2. Retreat

Philosophy unties the knots in our thinking, not unlike a holiday which doesn’t include a single digital component. Our thinking became less mushy once we exited the city. For a moment our bodies felt lighter than notions. A tingling of safety. But ads gave chase, behaving as do subatomic particles, which the physicist can only know by inference. They surfaced even in the most private of spaces: the pimples of the tongue, the shield of the retina. There was no longer a question of where – therefore escape had no meaning. There were arguments already and we needed other channels of conversation to erupt.


3. Reading

No amount of reading will ever be ‘enough’. This does not require a diagram.


4. Coding

It wasn’t the effect I wanted; this made me especially happy. Inelegant code. Widely-circulated propaganda: shots of webs supposedly threaded by spiders in various states of intoxication. Two flat whites. Dark promise of an uncharted mineshaft. Or open-source; an open-cut mine.


5. Mythology
Overheard: "... your money where your myth is." The study of contemporary mythology. Where science ends, where we begin... to feel... unspoken? We can only hope.


6. Art

Too many artists (moths) at this 'soirée'. Their code is elegant. Pretty in black, sloganesque. To be one of them, one of theirs. Shaping to be unexpectable.


7. Meditation

We take smoke-roads out of town, until we rise from morning meditation. A doubt: were we meditating this time, or waiting? To think is to stray. Slipped and cut. The mind is overcharged, wades in all the gone and unwritten. But to return to the point… return after return is the practice. Returning to the one point is the practice.


Notes:  "The complexity of philosophy is not in its subject matter, but in our knotted understanding" and "Philosophy unties the knots in our thinking": Ludwig Wittgenstein, as quoted in Anthony Kenny, Wittgenstein, Allen Lane, 1973.

An earlier version of this piece was published in otoliths 12.

map of the fields

"I can remember one occasion when I lived out in the countryside in a rented cottage and there was a big old piece of paper in a cupboard. It was a large-scale surveyor's map of the fields nearby. I needed a big piece of paper to write on and I wrote this very long piece which I then, over some time, chopped down, chopped down, chopped down until it was very short."
- Kelvin Corcoran (in conversation with Peterjon Skelt), Prospect into Breath

Zero Summer (2008)

Sapless days. We should be wasting time,
talked-about. Shamed into games
of silences as we grow older,
our mouths shaping zeroes. But come,

this is an age of prose! So, a
grandiloquent party at the summer palace.
We accept its maze: corridors at random,
sunrooms of caprice. Morning

decanted through, heat hard
at the windows. Come wrap
the throat of a vase with the blue boa.

Viola music. In the fernery you say
what a pity it is that beauty lifts
so early. Blood beats
on our underchin and palms.

three unfinished pieces (2008)

1. moving targets

what goes here
where everything emphasised

sun barely fitting through

(how to de-advertise?)

______if buying surprise
__________________((this shortlived)
how to not be irritated?

is it we’re more ourselves
___________________-'outside',
in writing? _________(these super-questions…)

we keep interrupted
keep cold

sometimes we let the world/room fall away,
_________________________disappoint

the ‘better’ word is patient & waits
__________________________(despite this)
we jump state


2. unopened

_____________________we’re old nouns
but softcopies also
_____-our heads slip in the wet

(this the sleep between the shell of the seed)

we cross a ravine by way of a fallen pine trunk,

still panicked by multiple senses of ‘lie’
_______-& ‘yes’

___________a chance to re-read
______________ourselves

__so far
______we know only a few basic words
____________of this other language
_____________________________we are making.


3. filmic glow

we bend the light, pack it down

that constant act,
_____________consumables,
technology’s very joke

when the day melts,
__________________-tired of ideas,
___________-spills easy complaint

we love & hate poets as they love & hate
________________-(truth arrives late
______________________________little-known)

these works we forever talk of writing, but never
_____________________________-deliver

‘truly major motion picture’,
__________-how we feel after that

_______________________film nursing / injuring

________________this has been... needing
________________to happen
____________to us

too much coherence

"[John Ashbery] seems to fear too much coherence as being a form of dishonesty or falseness ... [because] an orderly syntax sometimes forces the poet to lie, to say easy things that he had not intended." - Stephen Stepanchev describing John Ashbery in Modern American Poetry Since 1945 (sourced from Samizdat Blog).

collaborative shoutout / some pet projects

Collaboration is a topic which has been, well, bugging me a lot lately: I keep waking with the thought, ‘we poets need to collaborate more, dammit!’ Not just with other poets, but with creators from other fields, from far and wide. There’s no doubt that recent technological advances have opened many doors for artistic collaboration, but I still feel the potential is largely untapped. I’ve been involved in collaborative blogs in the past, but I have three other pet projects in this vein:

1. Harnessing the potential of wikis for online collaboration between poets, as well as other writers/creators.

2. Thieving an approach/technique from electronic music, namely remixing (where any number of other writers are given license to remix an original piece, with the results being published side by side... or not). I've tried this out once with a friend, and thought it worked well. The crux of this one is feeling comfortable about someone else 'messing' with your work, and maybe transforming it into something very different from what you'd originally intended.

3: Videopoetry, in the tradition of the mind-flexing music clips you see on Rage at 2am, being a collaboration between poet(s), scriptwriter(s), filmmaker(s), musician(s), kitchen sink(s), and maybe someone with one of those ‘managerial’ brains to make the whole thing come together.

Also, for a long time I've been wanting to collaborate with a visual artist / painter / photogapher, writing poems based on their work, and/or having them producing artwork based on my poems... which isn't to say that other poets couldn't also be involved. There's plenty of potential to play games with this kind of arrangement, where maybe you collaborate on a work bit by bit, reacting to different stages of drafting/creation, with the ability to lead the collaboration in a new direction, or follow the lead of your collaborative partner on a particular idea or effect...

Anyone interested to take part in one or more of these ideas? If so, post a comment, or email me (my email's available in my Blogger profile).

chapel st (2008)

lemon, water, sun, saliva

day spins into hubcap

drowsed / stun-gun sun

so coloured up, the crave district

"... you fkn loser ..."

overdress & fuzz with desire

rear denim of 2 thin boys-in-love

street smokes, spits

what a postcard

someone's nonna sucks from KFC cup

fume of Marlboro

Natasha is a party

rushed heels

cross against lights phone clammed to ear

our waiter = pretentious wanker

the pointing tongue

coffee versus boredom

An earlier version of this poem was published in bambikino 9, November 2008.

A train, outbound (2007)

It takes minutes to leave the city. But to leave the city, mentally…

There are always nervous questions prior to departure. You must peel these off.

See this industrial district? It has fled nature.

Likewise I sometimes believe writing is an avoidance; you opt for a conversation with yourself. Living very far apart.

The houses have satellite dishes as standard; ears to the wind. Powerline towers, like posts of an enormous fence. These are and are not life-conductors.

Fields in which to expand, cease? As if cities were centres of forgetting. Gazing out the window, I swim the wild grass.


Published in Shadowtrain #23, October 2009.
 
Below: 'Powersource' by Patrice Lynne Young

Otoliths #9

Received word from Mark Young the other day that 2 of my poems (post-rock and ny dream) will show up in issue 9 of Otoliths, which happens to be one of my favourite e-zines.

Issue 8 recently went live. Definitely check it if you're into experimental &/or visual poetry.

stock (2008)

tabs on what others are
doing perhaps leaving
you sipping the wake of
their excellence so
time to rethink the tint
of your calling card &
all manoeuvres as
pedestrian evasive
action stalling tactics
you were always a
next time boy your
room off-limits to
the living its abject
stuffiness sock stenches
those unwanted wanted
things your hibernation
hoard & feigning
upheavals to buy more
time to yourself the
retreat into trivia to
dull & dilute this
friendlessness perfected


As published in Thirteen Myna Birds, September 2009.

how to tell people what they'll never know (2008)

madness collects behind your ears
you might do some writing
or not
you think you could be Hitchcock on Hitchcock
after all we have no qualms speaking for them
(the revered dead)
the arced arrows suggest they could swap places
as post-death it becomes a question of editing
epitomising naturalness of artifice
but this hurts you
fights the grain
of your practice of living
i.e. thicker absorption
i.e. there really is an apple after all
& also driving on wrong side of road
where possible, where impossible

recurring poem #2

H.D. : Oread

Whirl up, sea -
Whirl your pointed pines,
Splash your great pines
On our rocks;
Hurl your green over us,
Cover us with your pools of fir.
















H.D. (1886-1961)

Poetry Sz

Received some great news last week: one of my poems, Down slow (song of samsara), will be featured in the March edition (#25) of Jill Chan's e-zine Poetry Sz: demystifying mental illness.

I strongly recommend checking out the previous issues. There's high-quality work all the way back through the archives, and the theme of the e-zine gives it a tight focus, while allowing for as many different voices and poetic approaches as there are manifestations of mental illness.

For Edwin (2008)

"If we continue in our mindful observation there will no longer be a duality between observer and observed."
- Thich Nhat Hanh


We have always been as weightless as this.

Our modest collection of questions.

Holes full of nets; nets full of holes.

No waiting: all things are present.

Eye observes itself.


As published in The Cartier Street Review, February 2009.

recurring poem #1

... first of a series of poems by (very significant) others, selected for properties of recurrence / return.


Robert Creeley: The Skeleton

The element in which they live,
the shell going outward until
it never can end, formless,
seen on a clear night as stars,
the term of life given them
to come back to, down to,
and then to be in
themselves only, only skin.












Robert Creeley (1926-2005)

easy poem (2007)

i like what is happening________________-(a wet painting)

this body______________-_-_________breathing others

oversleeping________________a haze and smile to things


faces gift_____________-______seductions glow restless

and i cried today_________--_-_______________easily

i go where words are________-_______--(no shortage felt)

Paradise Anthology launch

The Paradise Anthology has been created as a ‘paradise’ for emerging Australian writers and artists. It is published in association with the Victorian Writers Centre and supported by the City of Port Phillip and Salon Productions Australia. My poem Saturday, Brunswick St is featured in the anthology.

The launch of the anthology is taking place on Tuesday the 5th of Feb from 6:30pm at the St Kilda Public Library, 150 Carlisle St, St Kilda. Entry is free.

A word from the event hosts: "Guests for the anthology launch include Rosemary Cameron (Director of the Melbourne Writers Festival), Rebecca Barnard, Brian Nankervis from Rockwiz, Greg Arnold from Things of Stone and Wood, Erica Grundell from Naked Raven and Michael Crane will be performing with Trish Anderson and a choir and twenty poets reading short poems. The new mayor of St Kilda might be there too."

Hope to see you there...

an accident

"If in the following pages there is some successful verse or other, may the reader forgive me the audacity of having written it before him. We are all one; our inconsequential minds are much alike, and circumstances so influence us that it is something of an accident that you are the reader and I the writer - the unsure, ardent writer - of my verses."

- Jorge Luis Borges, from the preface to the 1923 edition of Fervor de Buenos Aires.

ny dream (with bits of Berrigan) (2008)

It's 57am in Ted Berrigan.
Never been to New York but
how hard can it be? OK.
Came to me 'first thing' - words
woke me. I needed a gun
in the dream & knew why.
Now I've no idea but
gladly. I do need peach /
tree / mountain surgery...
"What am I saying?

Only this." City's a cut-up.
Pass the scissors. Stray. It's
raining bots & eggs, but
this isn't that poem so
it was really snowing &
raining car stereos
pushing out hiphop grinding
woofers gorgeous blaq-
skinned it's 2008pm in New
York it's 5am in my bedhead
street surgeons pulling fast ones
that one's got a knife! thank yr
stainproof suit time your
coffee so you're peaking
for the meeting 2:15pm.


Note: "What am I saying? / Only this." - Ted Berrigan, 'Words for Love'. "it was really snowing & raining" - Frank O'Hara, 'POEM (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)'.

As published in Otoliths 9 (May 2008).

refuse (2008)

(after Silliman... sort of)

A day under repair. Remember my foot dead as a book. Was trying to type but the window was ghosted. Coming down with something: perhaps a poem. My turn to cook? Half-life: blurs of transaction between us. Go through phases, moods, like some old moon. Naming will not keep pace. Downloading Derrida. I just looked as it ticked over. All have a tic about time. Distraction blizzards. Dwelling in the centre of your hand. You’ve lost me. Cherry-fingers blemish the page. A guilt that grows back. Comedown. Log out and log back in again. Need to work back late, keep watch till dawn. As the market clouds. Subtler words leave exit wounds. Remove nothing from the scene of the theft. All this slowdying. Emissions. Heavy myself with. Punjabi pop music strays from another apartment, as if dappling me with colour. I wasn’t quite full. Was deleting old songs. The crouched hand of love (from a song of Creeley’s). New window. Drawn to stories of failures. Driver error. Lab rats in lab coats? They were subtitles for a different film altogether. Photograph these powers of persuasion. But does he look happy to you? Shooting animations in Timezone. Heroic dopamine flow. The doctor suggests closing both eyes. Hyperrealism of high definition. Have fun with it. Happy snaps, sad snaps. Exit the bed as if this were the only exit. Bivouac: noun; a military encampment made with tents or improvised shelters, without protection from enemy fire. We have overslept. Just one more snooze before we assemble. Living faceless, mouth grows pretty dry. Keep meat away. Touch of the air, air of the touch. Refused endings. Everything’s not you in one sense, but in another: come home. Swim your body for the first time. Untie these roads and lift them from you.

3. my father passing (2008)

never soon,
not yet

he may clutch
at our clutching –

I should not foresee
it yet, but

clenched words, their
echo of approach,

open tears,
eyes breaking

with the weight,
slowing of

his beautiful
weight.

2. my father arising (2008)

in freshened
time attending
to himself,

gifting himself
attentiveness,
switching

off the channels
that pulse at him,
unneeded tentacles.

the segment
hard in him

dropped
like a catch –

his smile as
he dissolves.

Dorothy Porter

In August 2006 I was awarded a mentorship through the Australian Society of Authors (ASA), which entitled me to a year's instruction with a mentor of my choice.

I'd taken a creative writing / poetry class Dorothy Porter gave while she was writer in residence at Melbourne Uni in 1998, and her advice and views on poetry had a strong impact on me. So it was a great honour that she was able to make herself available as my mentor during 2007.

We had meetings throughout the year at the Royal Hotel in Clifton Hill. Hers was a Sauvignon Blanc, mine a mineral water(!). We'd chat about what we were writing and how we were writing it; what we'd been reading, watching, listening to. We exchanged books, CDs, DVDs and talked at length about their arcane properties and effects. I was given further insight into the scenes, cliques, politics and history of Australian poetry. By way of barter I offered what I could in terms of insight into the current state of rock & roll (I compiled several mix CDs as evidence, each a labour of love), electronic media and online poetry...

Dorothy's sage advice came thick and fast throughout the year, but in particular, there were two acts of generous and wise counsel from Dorothy that will continue to reverberate...

First of these was Dorothy's passing on of the vision of her own mentor, the late Bruce Beaver. Some of his poems had been familiar to me beforehand, but Dorothy was able to offer a much more fully realised picture of his life and life's work. Not only did Beaver provide Australia's own enduring answer to the Confessional Poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, et al), he is also one of 'our' great visionaries. For the uninitiated, Dorothy's brief biography of Beaver and selection of his poems over at Poetry International Web will provide some proof for these claims.

The second piece of especially wise counsel was Dorothy's insistence that I re-read Euripides' The Bacchae. This was to be partly considered as research for my book-in-progress, How to be hungry, with its themes of drug use, (dis)connection, alternate ways of seeing/experiencing the world, and how the status quo demands to be threatened by Bacchic/Dionysian rites. All of these themes are mirrored (and magnified) in The Bacchae. A very good call on Dorothy's part.

Thank you, Dorothy, for everything. And thankyou to the ASA for offering and organising this brilliant opportunity.

- Stu

videopoem #2

Three Lions - Roderick Coover (video) and Nick Montfort (text).

"Filmed in Puerto Rico, this one minute loop is a work developed under the Oulipo tradition of creating under constraints. The one minute loop is read by Brett Keyser. Gallery premiere Esther Klein Gallery 2007; festival premiere, Philadelphia Film Festival 2007. This is the first in the CURRENCY Series."