Category: Leaves of Glass

In late 2007 I received a grant from Arts Victoria to write a series of poems based on correspondence between Australian poet Bernard O’Dowd and Walt Whitman. The results were published as Leaves of Glass by Sydney-based publisher Puncher and Wattmann in 2013.

  • days roaring

    This poem was first published in my chapbook Final Friday (2010).

  • You did interest us …

  • Team America

    Most of us make America mean the world, or sometimes we put ‘Australia’ in its place. B. O’D.

  • the drones of prole patrol the moon that satellite of filth – their lanterns mark the greasy poles its dark side pepper (salt with futile cries & lunar dews & sad stories drones will tell of extra-terrestrial rents & arbitrage by mammon’s earthly (hags o’er those captains of industry whose gold we gleefully polish in…

  • i am not fazed by spurious notions of what is good or what is bad i just flip open that temporal wallet & spend (it’s like getting laid or tying one on & imagining X could well be my imaginary friend or else i simply steal someone else’s idea (it’s true i have no shame…

  • Oz

    A rewriting of Bernard O’Dowd’s poem ‘Australia’ (published in The Bulletin in 1900). ‘Oz’ was first published online in Jacket (2010) and anthologised in Thirty Australian Poets (UQP 2011).

  • Red Dawn

    ‘Dawnward’ B. O’Dowd (1906)

  • 1. Iz in ur bodeh xtrc, Teh rms ob dey iz luvs purr meh. Iz w00t an iz purr dey, Dey not want! meh purr till iz go wif dey, respawnd dey, An puur dey, an den WTF dey ful wif teh LOL ob teh sowl. Iz not want dawted dat fose iz kurupt feir…

  • Info Rider

    To bring it back to rock ‘n roll influences, when I was writing Neuromancer, I’m pretty sure I was listening to Springsteen’s Nebraska & thinking ‘OK, it’s not hotrods, it’s computers’. WILLIAM GIBSON horse & info rider blast straight towards boom in terrific slow motion just as faulkner described it smoke & thoughts plume into…

  • We had an important event at our place on the 13th ult. -our first little one. We are going to call him Eric Whitman. —Bernard O’Dowd, writing to Walt Whitman (1890)

  • B ceiling cat – b at eez wif meh – Iz r W00t Wiitmeh, libaral az lusteh Naychar; Not want till teh sun xclusd yu, do I xclusds yu; Not want till teh watars refewez rutsl can haz yu, an teh gowayz rutsl fur can haz yu, do meh Werdz Rutsl glstn an rutsl fur…

  • An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. LOLCats Bible, Genesis 1:6 1. O hai iz cebrayt meh, b in ur meh, An wut I as00m yu shal as00m, Fur iz atomm belons meh as srly belons yu. K. Iz loef an nvyt meh sowl, Iz leen an loef at meh eez…

  • I am an enigma to myself. B. O’D. noble wings I grow when I take meh self out of meh self but I find that too hot to handle for too long so I take meh self into meh self again & find there caverns of cold eclipsed fears & in there too some romans…

  • Secret Lib

    re: the australeum (a secret society cf. ww leaves of grass a love supreme in the court of love a library book of love a doodle bug a statute of love like some secret (liberation love democracy man love & all aboard! the love ship demos under the sign of libra it weighs at anchor…

  • the sun that he does well to shine & shines well … the moon that she illuminates the lover’s skin the stars that they remind us of all things past the sky that it does well to rain on our heads the planets that they give birth to angry gods the earth that it spins…