Blog
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(x) Marc Bolan
Iconography of the glam-rock gods was scabble-mad. Economies of satin, velvet, eyeliner increased in the High St, shop assistants copied corkscrew hair. His Apollo mission for pop music, moon-shot aborted after three years. Bowie’s Japanese elegance, elf fey adaptations kept changeling popular & tyrannosaurus rex melody unevolved. Have (you) read the “Warlock of Love” (1969)?…
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(ix) Ned Kelly
Nolan got it right, his mind/armour split. His “My God it’s full of stars” visor twinkled. Historical mischief, stringy barks’ cat o nine tails skin, bad sunburn peel, bright red police redder. MAD MAX counterweight our Ned the bush warrior, pre-bitumen, disc brakes ignorant letter writer, 44 kilos of cultural burden. What if Bryant wore…
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(viii) Bruce Lee
Numero uno modern poet used his body; so pre Acker, pre body piercer, pre body builder, pre video artist. Rumour flexes on tape covers; Enter the Dragon of sprung history. Swivel on the balls of your feet; block, punch & counter punch, the underground will always champion the underground. Keep your secrets Eastern, your thoughts…
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(vii) Sharon Phillips
Neo-Ophelia slunk into collective memories’ dry catchment. Diverted by blue (anti) signs, Ipswich Road rusts shut boom gates to national service Hades. The sharp- shooter’s trajectory veers in his mind’s eye, plastic endures, shell casings slap recollection on the shoulder. Brass manikins inherit our space after we’re gone for sixteen months. How much memory do…
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(v) Welsh Fusiliers
Earth’s bed cover stripped away near Flanders. The industry of grandchildren broke the father memory, a burial mound for absenteeism. Poetry wrote them up. Fusiliers corroded with bracelet dog tags beyond time; nobodies’ killed them. A gas mask face, phosgene signatures imprinted in wine-mud. Timed detonators that didn’t go off. (You) watch this…
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(vi) Bin Laden’s son
Wrote first poem at age ten, popular in literary circles convened in dawn sand. Debated new epic (poeme), the super cobras’ Gatling gun criticism shredded his father’s minor oeuvre. Argued with depleted plutonium self. Hijacked poet laureate of the free world & crashed a new syntax into the world’s tallest language. Did (you)…
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Liam Ferney: ‘Content’ Hunter Publications
Are we ever content? Are we ever content to leave things alone? Are we just content to put up with things the way they are? These questions could pluck out the very mystery of Liam Ferney’s fourth poetry collection Content, which follows on from his other successful volumes, Popular Mechanics (2004), Career (2011), and the…
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Liam Ferney: ‘Boom’ Grand Parade Poets
First a rant. Where do we place a poet such as Liam Ferney within the Australian poetry canon? To use a cricketing allusion of which Liam is fond of in Boom, he is the Steve Waugh of the younger generation of Australian poets. He is a patient scrapper, a fighter who has proved himself in…
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Vanessa Page: ‘Confessional Box’ Walleah Press
Thank you Sarah. There are perhaps two pathways to becoming a contemporary poet, though probably there are more nefarious methods which I won’t go into here. One way is to start writing poetry in high school, perhaps unleashed by your favourite English teacher who lets you write a free verse poem instead of that essay,…
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Liam Ferney: ‘Career’ Rare Object Series Vagabond Press
I first met Liam in 1994. It was the second year of the Brisbane Writers’ Fringe Festival which was hanging off the mainstream literary event Warana Writers Week in the Botanical Gardens and we had organised auditions for poets to perform in that event. Liam came to us one day to tryout for the festival…
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Sam Wagan Watson: ‘The Curse Words’ Rare Object Series Vagabond Press
I’ve perhaps known Sam a little bit longer than Liam, but not by much. At least we always got Sam’s age right…. I think? The 1990s in West End, Brisbane, Queensland will be remembered for its launch of the literary careers of many outstanding, young, Australian poets. Sam was foremost among this new generation of…
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(v) Welsh Fusiliers
Earth’s bed cover stripped away near Flanders. The industry of grandchildren broke the father memory, a burial mound for absenteeism. Poetry wrote them up. Fusiliers corroded with bracelet dog tags beyond time; nobodies’ killed them. A gas mask face, phosgene signatures imprinted in wine-mud. Timed detonators that didn’t go off. (You) watch this…
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(iv) Agamemnon
A cuckold at Troy, a dead seer, and a bath that ran cold at exactly the right temperature.
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(iii) Alexander the Great
He pissed himself before races and came last in everything. A revisionist portrait of Alexander the Great.
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(ii) Adolf Hitler
He stabbed a boy with a pencil to prove he wasn’t a ghost. A spare, unsettling portrait.