Category: Blogging

Day-to-day minutiae.

  • Lock up your bandannas, plectrums and notebooks, people – there’s a man on the streets who’s aiming to break your heart, like the way Wilco said they were trying, only this time succeeding. The man who introduced the world to Catholic Autistic Terrific, who is now in the middle of a post-Balderdash hangover to rival…

  • Just in case anyone was suffering under the impression that I’m something of a man’s man, here’s a little image I look at every time I visit the wonderful Page 4 website of Australasia’s most popular, talented and BULK ACE poet, alicia ‘sassy pants’ sometimes! Seeing her in action on the wheels of steel last…

  • After the non-appearance of rumoured Irish headline act Neil, Babble punters could be forgiven for suspecting that uber-host Sean M. Whelan’s response might be to rope in some amateur or half-baked talent to act as the feature performer at last night’s event. Those of little faith might consider working on that aspect of their personality…

  • Icebergs

    Icebergs calve, plop and bomb. Great sheets of arctic pain— metaphors, forever lost. The polar bears just stand there, in mid-air, then drop. White water dreams after Greenland, or was that Hell. Whatever. It’s a bit of a stretch but if they can tow one to Belfast then why not here? For some reason, Hitler…

  • like a murder-suicide yesterday’s tiffs became today’s shower of glacial regret hit on the head you’re sool ahn gaesuh left winded bruised & read-dead on our set-list stories of lost orders events tragedies that come in threes like the drinks the straws (deadly for dolphins the lipstick trace a circular argument nobody heard a thing…

  • Last year, as part of my Asialink residency in Seoul, I wrote an article for the Australian National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) on the subject of my experience of teaching a course on Australian culture at Sogang University. Here’s a quick excerpt: I have sung the national anthem (‘a capella?’ one incredulous fellow-traveller asked me)…

  • It’s funny what you remember and forget about yourself sometimes. For example, I just remembered that in 2002 I was involved in an online discussion forum as part of a project called text-e.org and which was organised by (amongst others) the French Bibliotheque Publique D’Information. Ten forums were held between October 2001 and March 2002…

  • It’s been a little while since I last had some poems online but as of today there’s two fresh ones at the PFS Post site, run by Philly poet Adam Fieled, entitled “Exes & Zeroes” and “Oh God!”. I’ve also got two poems in a neat little journal called Luzmag run by Lars Palm in…

  • I’m no groupie, despite what anybody says. My idol’s Han Solo. I have to admit, however, that deep down I have always been a secret Babble groupie. Ever since moving to Melbourne, I mean, before which I had never even heard of this loony Melbourne institution, originally a weekly spoken word night held in Fitzroy.…

  • For a long time I’ve admired the art of Gerhard Richter, whose photoreal ‘kerzen’ (candles: see below for an example) would be recognisable to any fan of Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation album. In the first part of last year, when I was writing full-time thanks to a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts,…

  • Way back in the late 1990s, when I was still living in Sydney and feeling extremely sorry for myself, I wrote an article for a Sydney design magazine which took Le Courbusier’s machines For living in as its inspiration. The magazine unfortunately rejected the article, which actually concerns coffins, or machines for dying in—but I…

  • i got frisked in fukuoka/ like a dog i just woofed and rolled over/ i had a date with a destination/ had to get to the bullet train station/ validated my japanese rail pass/ calculated how long it would last until/ I had to get off to get on to get off/ to ride a…

  • Audience of subway strangers. Stagger at them! Pelt them with praise! I’m Ko Un, and I’m drunker than a poem. This text, pirated, sallies forth upon the bristled breeze. Ko Un! Standing in your shadow magic. Spam, originating from the Republic of Soju, hits me fortnightly. Ko Un! Standing by the door, laughing at advertisements.…

  • For all the doubters who cast nasturtiums on my ability to grow a beard, new evidence has emerged in the form of archival photos and painful memories. Please, consider these first impressions of beard, taken whilst freezing my arse off in Sapporo, Japan. Given my albino skin colour, the presence of bed-hair in these shots…

  • I got Mao’s text around 20:00. I was sitting in a dingy bar watching boxers spar on the TV. I’ll be late, don’t wait for me. So I ordered some more wasabi peas & massaged my stiff knees. It’s always like this: it’s always Mao who’s late. Something about make-up, a facelift, a mausoleum somewhere.…