[from the blog 'We Are Who About To Die', July 19th 2010]:
Picture this: you have your poems accepted by The Paris Review. Such an acceptance can mark the start of a great career, lead to a book deal or to be anthologized, or perhaps solidify a reputation in the small world this correspondent and others call Poetryland.
[Laurie Duggan, from the blog 'Graveney Marsh', August 25th 2010]:
I have often played with the notion of authorship myself and as I’ve said elsewhere on this site one of my earliest influences was a poet who wasn’t a poet (or a person) at all: Ern Malley. My interaction with other poets has, to an extent (I hope), kept the faith.
[Andrew Duncan, from the blog 'Angel Exhaust', August 24th 2010]:
The posting on Spender elsewhere on this site discusses Spender’s complex and highly motivated rebuilding of his poetic record, with the 1985 Collected being an especially fragile and minimal version, which quite probably leaves out half of his published poetry. The possibility of ‘rigging the past to fit alliances and positions in the present’ is on the pitch somewhere, although I would emphasize that there are many other possibilities. Anyway, if you cut part of the written record the reasons why you do it are inherently not in the record, and any reasons you offer are subject to suspicions of being just as heavily edited as the texts themselves.
Note: Anjum Hasan and Brass Monkey Books will feature at Fullers Bookshop, Hobart on Saturday August 28th at 3.30 pm
Ralph
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[Angela Meyer, from the blog 'Literary Minded', August 24th 2010]:
Can you tell us a bit about why you’ve started your own publishing company? What gap is it addressing in the Australian market?
Brass Monkey Books came about largely because of my frustration that wonderful Indian books were not getting to Australian readers, and vice versa. Most of the Indian books we get here are through the UK or the US, so we are at their mercy as to what we have available here. Consequently, we don’t see a wide range of Indian titles here, and they are often about the same themes and often have similar covers – henna patterns, sepia tints, paisley borders.
The same applies to Australian books reaching Indian audiences. Apart from Tim Winton, Peter Carey and Thomas Keneally, very few Australian writers appear on Indian bookshop shelves.
I think it is time Australia and India started having direct cultural exchanges that fall outside Bollywood and cricket!
[AS Patric, from his blog 'a.s.patric.Ink', August 22nd 2010]:
Being involved with Verity La has been stunning. So many superb writers give fistfuls of heart at the asking. Listed below are the many offerings put together for Issue Two at Verity La.
What is so important about round numbers? Why do we need to celebrate milestones, eras or fixed points in time? And is it the basic function of art to mark that time — whether it be the creation of poetry, stories, comics, any form of art — are we searching for some order from the chaos or are we hoping to create more?
If you direct that last question towards the editors of a journal the answer may most likely be ‘to create order’. But if you go deeper, perhaps the true answer is ‘both’. Because in practice, journal editors open the doors and windows to artists all over the world, and invite the chaos in. The editor must create order, reach a number of pages or fill a round number of minutes, curating images and sounds into a coherent whole. Then a printer stamps it down, a reader or reviewer encapsulates it all in a thought or a sentence, and we find a little portion of human chaos has been cut and polished, filed under ‘art’ or ‘literature’ in the local library. Does this satisfy? Of course not. Because once it’s done, we go and do it all again. And we love it. It might be a fundamental function of the human mind to swing from chaos to order. Telling stories, making stories. There and back again.
Going Down Swinging No.30 — which we have affectionately dubbed ‘the clusterfuck issue’— began as all good stories do with an open invitation to chaos. We called for new work. This time, artists and writers accepted our challenge in a terrifying way — we received twice the usual number of submissions in almost half the usual time. Simultaneously, and at the same time, as Gonzo is known to say, we pulled on the strings of the past — which brought the whole, creative, dysfunctional, global family of GDS tumbling down on our heads. Some of the best of this gaggle of creative souls, Kevin Brophy, Myron Lysenko, Adam Ford and Grant Caldwell, stepped up to order the chaos of two thousand poems, stories, haiku and comics into a cohesive book. Meanwhile, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Ian Ferrier, Ian Daley and David Prater fired spoken word tracks across the seas, filling our ears with some of the sexiest voices we’ve heard in ages. And we’ve heard a lot of voices.
GOING DOWN SWINGING NO.30 is now available in all good bookstores, and from www.goingdownswinging.org.au
THE MELBOURNE LAUNCH AND 30TH BIRTHDAY PARTY:
THURSDAY NIGHT SWING CLUB
Thursday 2nd September, 8pm–10.30pm
The Toff In Town
Tickets: $25 (No.30 included in ticket price) Book online at http://tickets.mwf.com.au/session2.asp?sn=Thursday+Night+Swing+Club&s=138
Hosted by Brian Nankervis (Rockwiz) Launched by Richard Watts (RRR)
Starring: Maxine Beneba Clarke, Ezra Bix, Emily XYZ and Myers Bartlett (USA), Paul Mitchell and Eleanor Jackson. Plus DJ Johnny Topper, Silent Disco Projections, and the hot swingin’ sounds of FLAP!
FIRST PRIZE: $10,000
CLOSING DATE: 10 DECEMBER
‘What a wonderful thing is the essay! All honour to Australian Book Review
and the Cultural Fund of Copyright Agency Limited for celebrating it with
the Calibre Prize.’ Robert Dessaix
Australian Book Review (ABR) and the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) seek
entries for the fifth Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay, the nation’s
premier award for an original essay and one of the world’s most lucrative
essay competitions.
The Calibre Prize is intended to generate brilliant new essays and to foster
new insights into culture, society and the human condition. We welcome
essays from leading authors and commentators, but also from emerging
writers. All non-fiction subjects are eligible: from life writing to
literary studies, history to politics, biography to philosophy, natural
history to popular science, travel writing to environmental studies.
PREVIOUS WINNERS
Elisabeth Holdsworth (2007)
Rachel Robertson, Mark Tredinnick (2008)
Kevin Brophy, Jane Goodall (2009)
Lorna Hallahan, David Hansen (2010)
HOW TO ENTER
The guidelines and entry form are available on the ABR website: www.australianbookreview.com.au/calibre-prize
Poetry Reading – Sunday August 22nd.
The Castlemaine Poetry Readings are privileged to feature two of Australia’s finest poets, Bronwyn Lea (Qld) and Chloe Wilson (Vic.)
Both have lately featured at the Australian Poetry Centre’s Festival in South Australia also broadcast on Radio National’s Poetica.
Flying from Queensland especially for the reading at the Guildford hotel reading on Sunday August 22nd, Bronwyn Lea is a multi award winning poet and a reader who has featured at numerous festivals and been awarded a writer in residency in Rome. Chloe Wilson, a rising star of Australian poetry, is one of the feature poets in the 2010, A.P.C. New Poets’ program, lately launched with acclaim at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne .
Bronwyn Lea is the author of Flight Animals (UQP 2001) which won the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize and the Anne Elder Award. Her most recent collection is The Other Way Out (Giramondo 2008), which won the 2010 John Bray Poetry Prize and was shortlisted in the Queensland and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. She teaches Poetics and Contemporary Literature at the University of Queensland.
Chloe Wilson is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. Her first collection of poems, The Mermaid Problem, was published by the Australian Poetry Centre in 2010. Her poetry has appeared in The Age, Blue Dog, Wet Ink, Voiceworks and is forthcoming in Going Down Swinging. In 2009 she won the Poetry and Youth categories of the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards and the Page Seventeen poetry prize. She is a former poetry editor for Voiceworks.
This is a rare chance to see and hear two premier poets in the stunning goldfields atmopshere of the Guildford Hotel which also boasts a vibrant Open Section in competition for the coveted Castlemaine Cup – 3 minutes maximum miketime. A sestina from Castlemaine or 15 minutes on the Daylesford Road for Earthlings.
Gold coin donation only and raffles for books by the feature poets and a book voucher from Soldier and Scholar, Castlemaine. Supported by Zac and the Guildford Hotel.