Category: Poetry

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

17 Syllables Long

Like everyone else on the Hell Municipal Council road paving crew, my good intentions to work on my current homework project has been subverted by a bunch of other stuff. The most useful of the bunch though was joining ReadWritePoem, an online gathering place for poets.

Amongst the many discussion groups, I rediscovered one whose topic is the American Sentence. The term was coined by Allen Ginsburg and it takes it’s queue from the haiku and the Buddhist Heart Sutra. If I’m not mistaken, the Melbourne poet Myron Lysenko coined the term Rooku with similar intent. (Myron, if you are reading, please correct me if I’m wrong!)

Either way, I’ve joined the American Sentences been inspired by the group founder who tries to write at least one a day (I’ll be attempting the same here and maybe on my Twitter account as well).

On Joining American Sentences group:

The Antipodean wonders if his presence here subverts the form.

Yes, I know. Still, it’s a start.

Reading: “The Last Night Of The Earth Poems” – Charles Bukowski
Listening: “Podgrams (Series 1)” – Stephen Fry

We Real Cool

Dear readers, apologies for taking so long to update, I’ve been flat out between work (1 x 16-hour day < fun) and other engagements.

Speakers Corner, part of the Emerging Writer’s Festival was an amazing amount of fun. I described it to one person as “Big Day Out for poetry”. Five stages, screaming poetry over the noise of passing trams on one stage, doing the next set sounding like Tom Waits, getting to see a bunch of my favorite local poets perform one after the other, it was a big big pile of fun. Hats off to the curators (amongst whom, Sean M. Whelan and Zöe Barron’s names are listed) and thanks to them for inviting me and making it such an awesome gig.

I really wish I had made it to the other gigs but I seem to be surrounded and buried in busy right now. Partially work and family doing it’s thing, other projects and my own writing get squished in there wherever I can fit it too.

In the mean time, here’s something I’ve actually been working on. It’s a response to an Ian McBryde poem called “Reports From The Palace“. McBryde fans out there will be aware he has several poems by that name, this is in response to the one in his book “Equatorial“.

Reports From The Plaza
(after Ian McBryde’s Reports From The Palace)

We are what remains after
attrition has come and gone.

Standing at the palace gates
fuelled by inertia, leaderless.

Behind us a trail of ash and cinders,
our last known command, ‘only forward’

It is not known how long this will last.
Faces in the palace windows

bearing the same look in their eyes
as we see in each other’s.

Waiting patiently,
with one last breath.

A wolf waiting to blow down a house.

Reading: This fortnight’s London Review Of Books
Listening: Billy Bragg podcast ep. 14

Tim Hamilton vs. The Year Of Poetry

Sorry it’s taken me so long to post, dear reader. Many things are on the proverbial boil here and I hope to be a touch more active online. In short, here’s things that have happened in the absence of posting.

  1. Work continues apace in organising the Overload Poetry Festival, the line up is looking rather exciting with a sprinkling of interstate and international guests coming to perform. I’m currently hard at work updating the website and hope to have it up and running soon.
  2. I clocked in a new record for submitting poetry to a journal. Discovery of submission deadline to angst, selection, more angst, worrying about what to send, final angst and tidying of submission to clicking send in under an hour.
  3. On Sunday I attended the first of six workshops in The Year of Poetry, run by Peter Bakowski. As a result, I will be attempting to write one poem per week! Hopefully I’ll have them up here..for better or worse.

Reading: “A Handful of Dust” – Evelyn Waugh
Listening: “Weapon” – Matthew Good Band

Thirteen Hours Into Summer

Went to Passionate Tongues last night and had a marvellous old time catching up with people and enjoying the work of the features Ian McBryde and Amelia Walker. The open stage was also a good opportunity to hear the work of poets I know from around the scene, but had yet to hear properly. Ben “I.Q.” Saunders and Jo Mundy spring to mind here.

This was written last week and is currently in the mid-polish state.

Thirteen Hours Into Summer
 
Melbourne. We are
thirteen hours into summer
and I have not seen the sun.
Have you lost it? Did you look?
 
The clouds rolling overhead are
too busy, too majestic to help find
what you are looking for.
Did you ask them? Did they respond?
 
We are running out of time.
We have only ninety days, eleven hours
but you seem unconcerned.
Aren’t you worried? Do you care?
 
Unemployed shadows are
jammed into cracks and corners.
Wait nervously for their cue
how long their wait? when can they breathe out?
 
Put your name on the sun, Melbourne,
when you find it. This time put it down
in the first place you would look,
not the last.
 

Reading: “Penguin Modern Poets 17: Gascoyne, Graham, Raine”
Listening: “Don’t Send Me Onions” – Miles Hunt

Bats, by D. H. Lawrence

I was recently on holiday in Katoomba where I found an anthology of poems called “The Poet’s Voice”. Printed in the 30s and edited by John Garrett and W. H. Auden, it contained, amongst others, the following poem by D. H. Lawrence.

While I rather liked the poem, especially the description of bats as “Swallows with spools of dark thread”, I felt I couldn’t let the opportunity pass to speak up in defence of an animal that I’m rather fond of, having become accustomed to their presence in the parks around Melbourne.

So, here is D. H. Lawrence’s poem, which will be followed in short order by my response.

Bat
 
At evening, sitting on this terrace,
When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara
Departs, and the world is taken by surprise …
 
When the tired flower of Florence is in gloom beneath the glowing
Brown hills surrounding …
 
When under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio
A green light enters against stream, flush from the west,
Against the current of obscure Arno …
 
Look up, and you see things flying
Between the day and the night;
Swallows with spools of dark thread sewing the shadows together.
 
A circle swoop, and a quick parabola under the bridge arches
Where light pushes through;
A sudden turning upon itself of a thing in the air.
A dip to the water.
 
And you think:
“The swallows are flying so late!”
 
Swallows?
 
Dark air-life looping
Yet missing the pure loop …
A twitch, a twitter, an elastic shudder in flight
And serrated wings against the sky,
Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at the light,
And falling back.
 
Never swallows!
Bats!
The swallows are gone.
 
At a wavering instant the swallows gave way to bats
By the Ponte Vecchio …
Changing guard.
 
Bats, and an uneasy creeping in one’s scalp
As the bats swoop overhead!
Flying madly.
 
Pipistrello!
Black piper on an infinitesimal pipe.
Little lumps that fly in air and have voices indefinite, wildly vindictive;
 
Wings like bits of umbrella.
 
Bats!
 
Creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag, to sleep;
And disgustingly upside down.
 
Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags
And grinning in their sleep.
Bats!
 
Not for me!

Reading: “Cultural Amnesia” – Clive James
Listening: “Ocean Of You” – The Blackeyed Susans