Tag: friends (page 3 of 7)
Well, it’s been a while between drinks for me as far as gigs are concerned but all that’s about to change with the incredibly bulk ace news that I’ll be featuring – alongside deep-fried sock dumpling expert Alicia Sometimes – at a forthcoming edition of Brunswick’s finest poetry reading, Passionate Tongues!
Or as I like to call it, Pashing Tongues.
Okay, calm down.
Join Alicia and myself on Monday 21 January at 8:30pm at the Brunswick Hotel, Sydney Rd Brunswick (corner of Weston Street) for a cross-sectional evening of spanking word rants, chiselled good-looks and clenched jaws. There will be moving tributes to llamas. There will be ALF pyjamas. There will be poems about Pizza. Alicia and myself may even read something you know. Untold!
The order for the night, as with all Pashing Tongues events, will go a little something like this: 3 or 4 open stage readers (that’s you, kids); 1st feature set (bags not me); 2nd feature set (aka yours dewly); torlet break; features again (that’s right – twice the Sometimes, triple the Clint Bo Dean!); short break/raffle; and finally the remainder of the open stage, which will hopefully finish around 11:00-11:30.
And remember, it’s bulk ace, never retail.
Freelance, never contract.
Slow-cooked, never half-cocked socks.
It’s funny how sometimes you can feel closer to somebody you’ve never met than to people you see every day. This is the way I feel about poets with whom I have communicated via the Net and email, as well as through submission inivtations and so on. One of the poets whom I feel would be a good friend if we lived in the same city is Philadelphia-based Adam Fieled, whose prose has been feaured in Cordite and who recently invited me to submit work to a print offshoot of US webzine Mipoesias. I’m pleased to say that after sending Adam some poems, he duly got back to me to let me know he’s chosen two – ‘The Day Britney Died’ and ‘More Sun Than Clouds Sprinkles Early’ – for publication in OCHO #11, out now through Lulu.com. This is the second Lulu-printed book I’ve been in and it’s just arrived in the mail! I look forward to reading it! In the meantime, my head is spinning at the idea of Adam reading out The Day Britney Died at a reading somewhere in the USA. The fact that he also correctly identifies the poem as a Frank O’Hara pastiche/tribute/ripoff (though it wasn’t that hard, I guess), also fills me with joy. I wish I was reading poetry in the USA at the end of summer, instead of teaching poetry in Hawthorn at the end of winter. Having these poems published, however, has made me think a little more about two things. Firstly, why don’t more of us poets cover each others’ work (by which I mean use readings as chances to introduce the works of other poets by reading them aloud)? And secondly, what policy should I have with regards poems on this blog that go on to be published – should I remove them from the blog if they get accepted elsewhere on the web, and replace them with a link? Should I also change the Cordite submissions policy to specifically include (or else not include) poems already published via blogs? Too many questions, too little time.
Maybe I’ve had too many coffees, maybe I’m cracked out on Codral, or maybe I’m just in a hurry but the good news is that the program for the 2007 National Young Writers Festival is now online, and it’s bulk ace.
It’s been a few years since I went to Newie, so it’s good to see that thery’ve got some untold and grouse guests this year, including Andy Jackson, George Dunford, Anna Funder, Henry Reynolds (wow!), Lisa Dempster, Charles Firth and, last but not least, Ryan BINGO Paine! I’m really looking forward to it.
Oh and I’m in it. I’ll be doing a reading and appearing on a panel on Friday arvo (the 28th), and then chairing a panel on online publishing on Sunday afternoon. Which gives me plenty of time in the intervening hours to maniacally update my crackbook.
Mega props to Kelly-lee and Nic and everyone else for putting this together. I can’t wait to sit back and sip some alcoholic ginger beer and then check out some of the events in the five day festival, being held as part of the massively untold TINA (This Is Not Art) gargantuan.
Whelp!
Here’s a picture of me and the gang – during rehearsals for Cats. Enjoy.