Category: Poetry

This post contains poetry, either mine or someone else’s

Eulogy For The Heart

This is a new poem I read for the first time at my recent feature at La Mama Poetica.

The fifth poem (though not necessarily part 5) of my Eulogies for Dead Technology series.

The plan was simple. Give a spark of life by
an electric muscle twitch. To the body
and from the body, a fistful of blood for
so long as the rhythm can be kept.
 
Sometimes the beat does not go on and we
try to replicate what is broken. Yet while
we imagine this simple device to be made
of gold or glass or stone;
 
While we wear them on our sleeves and steal
others, we make new ones from plastic and
titanium and place them like a cuckoo’s egg
in the nest of our ribcage.
 
Sometimes it’s only the egg that breaks, and
this strange heart is accepted into
the fold but too often, it is treated like
an uninvited guest.
 
The new beat is one that
the body can’t dance to,
it longs for the simple plan
that failed and was abandoned.

Soundcloud recordings

I recently uploaded recordings of some of my poetry as it was recorded on 3PBS a little while ago. Check out tshamilton @ soundcloud. As a little tech experiment I might make individual posts just to see if I can post them online here too. I also plan to record some poetry as part of the Poetry Foundations stream on Soundcloud too.

Bookstore

Hello once again. The writing is actually going better right now than it was same time last year. Work is flat out and things are afoot personally that keep me busy (the joy of wearing more than one hat).

I’ve found a collection of poetic prompts that I’m slowly working my way through, in the absence of original ideas, I’m into week 2 at the moment (writing when time allows doesn’t allow me to write one poem a day). But my usual annual challenger of getting out 12 poems a year looks like it will be knocked over rather soon. Anyhow, this was from Day 4 of the prompts. Write a ‘containment’ poem. I started with being in a bookstore and went from there.

Here is the place I lost myself
and the reference section
that atlased me back home
 
Here is the poetry section with
its small and empty shelf telling me
the books aren’t going to write themselves.
 
Here is the where I fell to pieces
and the architecture guide
that blueprinted me again
 
Here is the sci-fi shelves who say
this is the future if you please
If not, who are you to the future anyway?
 
Here are the books written about music
and all the songs about writing.

Reading: “The Michael Palin Diaries: The Python Years”
Listening: “Ramona Was A Waitress” – Paul Dempsey

Tim Hamilton @ The Spinning Room

It would appear I have been most slack in letting people know I’ll be appearing at the most marvellous Spinning Room!

What: The Spinning Room feat. Tim Hamilton
When: 8:00pm, 30th March
Where: ET Hotel, High St., Prahran
Why: Because the poetry is good! Because I’ll be featuring! Because poetry in Melbourne needs and loves your support!

A Martian Observes A Photographer

Hello and welcome to the first post of the new decade, I hope you had a lovely end-of-year festival and that you Melbournian readers didn’t suffer too horribly in the recent heat.

Thanks to Peter Bakowski and the marvellous poetry course her ran last year, my new year resolution last year to write at least one poem a month ended up somewhere close to 20! Thanks Peter!

So here is the first for this year, a Martian poem.

This species unique for
their Bowie coloured eyes
one for dark, one for light.
Shiny black carapace,
fragility increasing
as they mature and grow.
 
The human holds her charge
with reverence, stroking
and grooming its arcane
circular plumages.
 
It’s back pressed to her face
They observe, in ritual,
some distant mock-prey.
It clicks in excitement
with an explosion from
it’s bright eye, it’s dark eye
fluttering in response.
 
Satisfied, the human
shows the marsupial
nature of this creature;
returning it to a
black spongy pouch
around her neck before
they continue to stalk
more eye-catching quarry.

Reading: “The collected poetry of Czeslaw Milosz”
Listening: “Legions (War)” – Zoë Keating

Success!!

I’m pleased to announce that Concise Delight have selected three of my poems for publication in their inaugural issue!

Specifically two haiku and a recent rework of one of the first poems I wrote.

Check out the Concise Delight website. Looking forward to ordering a copy or three!

I’m in the same journal as Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz. Happy? Pleased? Thrilled? Am I what?