[d/dn]

*seething* since 2002

GDS #30: Flying ducks, Buddha & Europa

Posted on | August 25, 2010 | 2 Comments

It’s the sea­son for all things untold: fly­ing ducks in bal­loons, a machine that plays Bud­dha and Europe’s “Final Count­down”. What’s he going on about? Well may you ask. And here’s one answer: I’m going on about Going Down Swing­ing No.30 — the spe­cial 30th anniver­sary edition.

Fea­tur­ing drop-dead untold cover art­work by Kat­rina Rhodes, this spe­cial issue of Australia’s most inno­v­a­tive lit­er­ary print jour­nal has some pretty cool specs (as we say in the indus­try): 172pp Book + 2 Spo­ken Word CDs & Colour Graphic Novella. As I said: untold. But why take my word for it? Here’s the offi­cial word from GDS:

Founders Kevin Bro­phy and Myron Lysenko and past edi­tors Grant Cald­well and Adam Ford join edi­tors Lisa Green­away, Nathan Curnow and Ella Hol­combe in select­ing new works of short fic­tion, poetry, comic art, haiku and haiga for this com­mem­o­ra­tive edi­tion of Going Down Swing­ing. A bumper issue fea­tur­ing 172 pages of new works from writ­ers and artists in Aus­tralia and around the world.

The two accom­pa­ny­ing spo­ken word CDs include both new local works as well as inter­na­tional selec­tions from guest edi­tors Cristin O’Keefe Aptow­icz (USA), Ian Fer­rier (Canada), David Prater (Europe) and Ian Daley (UK), fea­tur­ing some of the very best spo­ken word and slam poetry artists work­ing today.

Through the sup­port of Arts Vic­to­ria, GDS has also com­mis­sioned for this issue a new short story by Paddy O’Reilly, a long­form poem by Eddie Pater­son, and a full-colour graphic novella by Michael Camilleri.

So what’s this all got to do with Europe’s “Final Count­down”? Well, as you may have noticed, I was roped in as spo­ken word edi­tor (Europe) for this issue, and I’m pleased to say tracks by four Europe-based artists have made it onto the inter­na­tional spo­ken word CD-component, namely: Tsead Bru­inja (who writes and per­forms in Frisian and Dutch), Anna Arov (who writes mostly in Eng­lish), Ajo (who per­forms in Span­ish) and Gu_rún Grændót­tir (who, con­trary to your expec­ta­tions, per­forms in French). I was asked to pro­vide an edi­to­r­ial for my selec­tions, and here’s what I came up with:

For me, ‘Europe’ always used to con­jure up the hair band of the same name. Then I started watch­ing Euro­vi­sion and real­ized it was worse than that: Europe was a cringe-worthy parade of pseudo-pop, watched by mil­lions from Ice­land to Alba­nia and Ibiza. Even more alarm­ing, the EU was just a throw­back to New Order, while Schen­gen Visas were a crim­i­nally under­rated noise-core out­fit from Gdansk.

Hav­ing lived in the Nether­lands for the last two and a half years, I remain none the wiser. This cor­ner of Europe is pop­u­lated by peo­ple who, when they dis­cover you’re Aus­tralian, make jokes about yoghurt (you know, even it devel­ops cul­ture after a while) and con­victs (always a favourite!), while main­tain­ing a deep rev­er­ence for Steve Irwin and who­ever decided to hire Guus Hiddinck.

The four tracks I’ve selected for this CD – in Eng­lish, French, Dutch and Span­ish (sorry, Esperanto lovers) – can­not truly rep­re­sent the vari­ety of spo­ken word that is being per­formed across the con­ti­nent, but they do hope­fully dis­pel the notion that Europe speaks with one voice. From “real­ity” and DNA to red apples and nylon stock­ings, these pieces speak to the cre­ative fusions made pos­si­ble by history.

No more final countdown.

But what about Bud­dha? you may be ask­ing. Frankly, I’m sur­prised you’re still here, but the truth of the mat­ter is that Cana­dian spo­ken word edi­tor and mango-lover Ian Fer­rier also chose a live record­ing of my track “That’s Bud­dha” for inclu­sion on the same CD. I’m really chuffed that Ian saw fit to include this track, which was recorded as part of le Fes­ti­val Voix d’Amériques in Mon­treal in 2009. The per­for­mance involved two Bud­dha Machines and me, and was recorded on Wednes­day 11 Feb­ru­ary, 2009 at the Casa del Popolo. If you’d like to hear what two Bud­dha Machines sound like, you’ll have to buy the CD. Or else, you can check this out.

I’m sad not to be able to make it to the offi­cial anniver­sary untold spin­ning machine with strobes GDS launch party at the Mel­bourne Writ­ers Fes­ti­val, but I just know it’s gonna be huge. If you’d like to put your money where your mouth is and sup­port fine Aus­tralian writ­ing and spo­ken word, mosey on over to the GDS shop, where you can pur­chase copies of GDS 30 online at a spe­cial dis­count rate.

And that’s Buddha.

Category: Audio, Blogging, Publishing News
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My contribution to Overland’s ‘200 poem’ project

Posted on | August 13, 2010 | 1 Comment

Aus­tralian lit­er­a­ture and pol­i­tics mag­a­zine Over­land is on the verge of cel­e­brat­ing its 200th issue. A spe­cial fea­ture of said issue will be a 200 line poem com­posed of lines writ­ten by twenty Aus­tralian poets.

I’m lucky enough to count myself amongst that select group, thanks to an invi­ta­tion from ‘poem-master’ Derek Motion to send ten lines.

Fol­low­ing the exam­ple set by Adam Ford, who posted his ten lines as well as an expla­na­tion of the process lead­ing to their con­struc­tion, here’s my ten lines in their ragged pre-mix state.

‘On sec­ond thought, I decided to act like a hive­mind,
a super-conscious eye patrolling wild perime­ters, my
role akin to that of those who first rejected me, namely
: exclude some, & keep the oth­ers look­ing busy. But
then (and this is the strange part) I began to dis­play &
/or exhibit signs of a new dis­pen­sa­tion: i.e., exclu­sion
now being the new black; or white. Speak­ing of post–
/modern con­di­tions, like a pompous twit I recall that
when I raged against the latrine, nobody both­ered to
clean up after­wards. This, I leave to you — & to fate.’

Unlike Adam, I’m in no real posi­tion to expound upon how these lines were writ­ten except to say that in Derek’s orig­i­nal invi­ta­tion he gave the prompt: ‘on a role: then / now / when’ and I responded by includ­ing ele­ments from this prompt in my lines.

One thing I can say for sure, hav­ing seen the remixed 200-liner in raw form, is that it’s going to be a doozy. Can’t wait to see the whole thing in print.

Category: Blogging, Publishing News

New poem in Ekleksographia!

Posted on | August 5, 2010 | No Comments

I’ve got a new, never-seen-before poem in Pam Brown’s Music-themed spe­cial issue of US-based web jour­nal Eklek­so­graphia. Well, when I say new I mean I wrote it a year ago in Seoul. This is the first time anyone’s ever seen it, includ­ing me. The poem’s called (On the Tomb of) Yun Hye–yong and it’s based on a rather dubi­ous story I read in a Korean news­pa­per about “one of the for­mer lovers of Kim Jong-Il”. There’s some great poetry (and mul­ti­me­dia) in the issue, it’s well worth check­ing out in its entirety. I like the phi­los­o­phy behind Eklek­so­graphia too: “Eklek­so­graphia is an exer­cise in asym­met­ri­cal pub­lish­ing, and is a shoe (or even two!) thrown at the spotlit shrug and yawn”. Get thee to the con­tents page immediately!

Category: Blogging, Publishing News

Cordite 33 is now online!

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 1 Comment

Now that the major effort is over and the social media sites have been updated it’s time to note, for the ben­e­fit of the Dreamnation’s sin­gle reader, the release of Cordite 33: Cre­ative Com­mons.

Our guest poetry edi­tor for the issue is Ali­son Crog­gon, and she’s done a great job select­ing a bustling swag of new poems. In addi­tion, our fea­tures edi­tor Matthew Hall has assem­bled a stel­lar col­lec­tion of essays, inter­views and fea­ture arti­cles; and our spo­ken word edi­tor Emi­lie Zoey Baker has done the same, select­ing six slick audio tracks for your aural plea­sure. In fur­ther addi­tion there’s the usual assort­ment of reviews, images, news items and so on and so on. Check it out. Last but not least, we’re now invit­ing remixes of the issue — get all the DJ details here.

I’m really proud of this issue, not least because I’ve been work­ing over­time on a re-design of the site and while it ain’t per­fect, it’s a lot bet­ter than our clunky old Word­Press default theme mod. That being said, I’d like to pay trib­ute to afore-mentioned clunky old default theme mod, in the knowl­edge that from today onwards the only record of its pass­ing will be found within the NLA’s Pan­dora Archives, and here:

We will never see the likes of it again.

*Sniff*

Category: Blogging, Cordite

Daveylands Les 4

Posted on | July 19, 2010 | No Comments

het ver­lengstuk
de sluiproute –>
helaas ben ik niet bereik­baar …
als je je bood­schap & telfoon­num­mer
ik mes­sage:
bericht
bereik
spreek in na de piep!
uitstappen

hoi! ik bel je over je
email — ik heb je
email gelezen, dat lijkt
me wel, een gooie idee
op zater­da­gavond
uit to stap­pen
bel me terug als je wil.
voor Ik wil graag meer
weten over tijd en
plaats en zo doei

we gaan dit week­end
na mijn our­ders
zou
zal ik je zo snel
(als) mogelijk
terugbellen …

ik wil het liefst een
apparte­ment in de
bin­nen­stad [die is] dicht­bij
hore­cas en uitgaansgelegenheden

ik wil het liefst een won­ing
met een tuin op het zuiden [maar moet het ook …] /
ook met een bad in het tuin [… hebben]

ik wil het liefst een won­ing
dicht­bij een treinstation

het liefst = bij
voorkeur

het moet dicht­bij winkels zijn

voorzienin­gen -
scholen, winke­len etc

revisie: modale verben

Category: Daveylands, Poems
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