Issue 1, edited by Stephen McLaughlin and Jim Carpenter purports to be a 3,785 page anthology of new poetry, published in PDF format under the for godot imprint. The front cover of the anthology lists, in miniature print, the names of all contributors. These names have also been posted on Ron Silliman’s blog, so I won’t bother reposting the whole list here. Suffice to say, even a cursory inspection of the list immediately begins to raise eyebrows, for several reasons.
Tag / Abendland
Interview on Metaroar!
In a nice piece of synchronicity, UK poetry website Metaroar has posted an article (no longer online: PDF retrieved from the Wayback Machine) by Angela Meyer in which Jill Jones (who testimonialised my book), Paul Hardacre (who is publishing my book) and myself (who, ehm, wrote my book) are interviewed on the subject of our poetic practices and other burning issues including nationalism, the usefulness of poetry and so on.
From the apt imagery of a moment in time, to dark undercurrents, to an overload of mystical beauty, these three Australian poets are enjoyable and intense to read. Australia’s physical distance from the rest of the Western world can make its artists informed reflectors. It is a mish-mash of cultures, of opinions, of denials. It is still young. Mostly, modern Australian poetry recognises its roots but rejects becoming entwined with them. It wanders, delves, is frightened and influenced by a global environment.
Coincidence, or …? It’s a strange kind of article, where our responses to common questions are interspersed with examples of our work (in my case, mostly poems from Abendland). I guess what interests me the most is the differences and commonalities in our responses, although Paul does put us to shame with the breadth and detail of his answers. As it turns out, he’s a big softie:
It’s taken me close to ten years to become comfortable with the fact that my poems are, for the most part, paeans to love.
I may post some more thoughts on this soon.
Cover Page Redux
Abendland reviewed online
My chapbook Abendland (pictured left) has been reviewed by Philly poet Adam Fieled on his excellent blog.
Check out the review here.
As far as I can tell, this is the first time my work has ever been reviewed, anywhere. I only have a couple of copies of the book left, but I hope to make an announcement soon as to a possible re-release, along the lines of Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted.
For those who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, Pavement’s debut full length album circulated unofficially as a cassette tape in the early 1990s, with the consequence that it was well known “underground” before being released, erm, “overground”.
So, if you’d like to possess a copy of the original chapbook, and would like to be able to tell your grandkids that you got in there first, before the Abendland project went mainstream, contact me via email. Like, today.
In other spellbinding news, sure to get Stung seething, I’ve finally bitten the bullet and re-registered the www.daveydreamnation.com domain, which is now up and running, albeit sans content.
Regular (oh come, all ye faithful) readers will recall the jitch-up that occurred about three years ago, when I first registered the domain, and then a year later forgot to renew the registration, with the result that the site was taken over by a cyber-porn-squatter.
Luckily for me, the squatter lost interest and didn’t renew the registration him or herself. So, here we are again.
I’ll be slowly migrating this blog, plus a few other ones, to the new domain over the next few weeks.
Abendland chapbook launched in Frankston!
I’m not usually one to go for publicity, prferring instead to slave anonymously over my poetry, honing my arcane craft in the desloate silence of my eyrie, but when I got a call from uber-poet and drop-dead spunk alicia sometimes asking if I’d like to come and talk to her writing students at Chisholm TAFE today, I spied a self-promotional opportunity. All of yesterday was spent formatting documents, photocopying images and wrestling with staplers and yes, it was a tricky thing but I did manage to put together ten copies of my chapbook Abendland, my first since The Happy Farang way back in 2000. The chabook contains poems I wrote during a two month holiday in Europe and the US last year. You can read all of the poems online here, but I should mention that these are early drafts of the poems, some of which have changed radically since being written. Plus, I mean, a chapbook is a pretty cool thing to have with you when you’re on the tram, or hanging with your poetry peeps. alicia’s students seemed to have the same idea, almost completely clearing me out of stock! If you’d like to purchase a copy for the princely sum of $5, email me and we can arrange something. Otherwise, I’m open to swaps, even if all you’ve got is a dubbed cassette version of Rattle and Hum. It takes all sorts.