The last meeting for this Hobart trip was a lunch with 8 Tasmanian poets. Over a deep bowl of thick soup and hidden from the ugly CBD, in an elegant cafe that didn’t serve what seems to be everywhere here : fudge, ice-cream, giant croissants or lavender.
I notice Hobart has no pigeons or EQUAL sugar. It does have rich, bitter honey, horologists and many people who hum folk songs and have the healthiest, most ruddy cheeks.
We talked about Papercuts and a Gnat Society. There was much cheer as two of our table guests were awarded at the Tasmanian Book Prize awards: Kathryn Lomer for her young adult fiction What Now Tilda B? was recognised as best book by a Tasmanian author and Karen Knight’s poetry collection Postcards From The Asylum won best book from a Tasmanian publisher.
The lunch conversation was engaging and generous yet I was, I am – possessed by the grotesque and entertaining images from yesterday’s visit to MONA. Last night in the beauty of ironed hotel sheets, I dreamt of a balloon full of burgundy blood. Today, I cannot see the world through anything but the oval, diamond openings of plaster vaginas from The Great Wall of Vagina, by UK sculptor Jamie McCartney. This installation is an epic line of plaster casts of vagina moulds.
The bean-bags and the benches, which I sank into or, sat on at every opportunity were my third favourite objects.
The second, I’m still deciding upon . Maybe the reactions on faces as people smelt art. Possibly the presence of David.
My first favourite was:
Quiet on a plinth, without any gore, guts or gimmickry : the most precious Owl, ancient and alive in paint on a small bowl. I shall return again to MONA, to check on this creature and embark on some stone stepping on the black and exhilarating water that surrounded death.
Friday, the train took me all the way to Arthur Boyd’s house. Now, how I would love to still be there, still in the company of trees and river. My generous guide was Regina and on tip-toe I was opened to the sacred space of a friendly Bower Bird; his scatterings of blue perfectly patterned the moist earth that had a transitory feel to it. Orange butterflies as large as my hand fluttered through the afternoon and after meeting the team at Bundanon Trust, a group of us sipped tea, told jokes and shared bright mandarins in Arthur’s kitchen. I was visiting Bundanon Trust who, in partnership with Oolong House, are part of our ‘Clubs and Societies’ project, having created an original club, Club 2540.
Key figures in Club 2540 are poet Jonathan Hill and artist and poet Warwick Keen, and the residents at Oolong. Red Room Co is currently in the midst of raising funds for this particular Club 2540. Our aim is to trial this in June and July with the view to continue our relationship with Bundanon and Oolong House, long into the horizon.
The horizon, if I could see it through my blind slats and brick walls should be golden and glowing if we’re all Earth Hour citizens .. yet my neighbour has her light blubs firing into the night sky and they’re so bright, even without looking, I can see her lit shadow wandering naked about her house.
The rain calls for some atonal music and so I dig up some Elliott Carter (not his poem pieces but some quintets for piano and wind) and I eat the sweetest, so very juicy and amazingly yellow pineapple. This fruit was purchased from Fratellii Fresh one of the world’s most overpriced supermarkets slash restaurants in Potts-of-Money-Point – where the people there call the check-out chick a provedore and an outdoor table and chairs setting, an eatery.
Yet, the pineapple is delicious and as I bite off the pith the soprano sings wildly.
Of wildness – the Red Room space is a carnival of shredded paper as Ms Miriam Chatt prepares to install our installation in the Australia Council windows, tomorrow. The newest member of our team is a paper shredder that we had to heave up the stairs because the weak and mean delivery men claimed they couldn’t help us; what if they broke their backs or split their pants, and we sued them?
Other objects adorn the Red Room: large wooden letters, various sea like materials and dark lead pencils I am writing with, having abandoned pens for a while. Oh, and there’s a painting above my desk and some days, like Monday, it distracts me from writing. The shy but heated tones call up words like ‘flame’ and other burning velocities.
And it is March. Somewhere in the world it will be National Frozen Food Month. In my world, it is the month of birthdays. Many people I love are born this month : mother, brother, niece, sister-in-law and other treasured beings – some close to me here so I can swing them in my arms and sing them happy birthday. Others, are parted from me by distance and death and dreams. And the fact it is the present and I haven’t yet met them.
The Red Room Company is turning into rectangles and squares – screens upon screens upon screens. It’s been almost six months work on our newly costumed website , due to be launched in this lifetime, defined as next week.
Not with such obvious corners or boundaries as squares or rectangles, I’m thinking that today, if I was a shape, I’d be a rainbow; no real clear start or finish, just the impressions of. A rainbow, like this body, contains lines and variations of everything that is seen and thus reflected, in my arches and bows. (Alert: I’m sounding like Narcissus) But, to continue the thought – as with any rainbow, they are born from a lot of rain and return to rain. There’s a constant reaching out for other rainbows. Then magic! Only now and then one rainbow to meld with another like rainbow, of the same stem and earth and cosmic source.
Until the clouds smoke out the brightness or the wind restrains the family of pinks back into themselves.
The brown table in The Red Room is actually an old kitchen table that hosted breakfasts and lunches all through Elliott W’s childhood. The legs can be unscrewed for moving purposes. When the table is still it’s never properly balanced and I’m hoping that one day it doesn’t become bored with its standing on four legs and fall to two, crushing the legs of the people gathered at the table, with it.
So far, lucky and safe. Oh, OHS.
This week the Tasman Munro visited us. We gathered to work out the visual beginnings for the library-inspired animation and pop-up book that Tasman will be creating with us, as part of ‘Stacks’. Tasman’s hair pops-up much like his ideas and work; naturally, with an industrial spring about it, playful and strong. He reminded me of a curious, determined and mischievous kitten – much like Coco who is meowing outside my window for some dry biscuit love - that its owner, not me, should fetch.
Yesterday, the jovial and judicious Ian R gathered at our table, joined by Gareth J and Lindsay T. We talked about Unlocked project, where it’s been and were we want to take it. Ian presented me with a red and sparkly bag of small pears, $5 dollars worth and, if this early morning vibe of relaxation continues, I shall poach them in something sweet and try not to think about ‘Lovesong‘ which has a range of unforgettable but melodramatic and, at worse, cliched scenes featuring baking and poaching and bodies writing on the juice of tomatoes.
Darkness kept you up at night
then daylight wouldn’t let you sleep,
shining its sun in your eyes. Yet
weariness like this might lay down such paths
as lead to the discovery of a whole
new music.
[excerpt from ‘Tired and Emotional’ by, Andrew Johnson
I’d planned to ride home an hour ago but I’ve left by key in my car and am locked in The Red Room. I shall ignore the symbolism in this comment, this fact – that I am trapped in my own creation with only tea or some very old gin, to sustain me. I’ve thought about making a ladder of poems, to toss out my window and climb down a few metres, to the street. Instead, I’ll wait for those who dwell upstairs , to return home and let me out.
Christchurch with no Christ in it. The images. I’ve emailed friends in New Zealand and more than ever, New Zealand is a mysterious and terrifying landscape. To me, it has always seemed an alien space with geysers on road corners, grounds bursting with hot, hot springs, islands alive in caldera whilst all the time, waiting to hear the two plates clash and then, the earth erupts as do the backs of the eyes.
About to board Tiger airlines and am surrounded by men in sneakers, skater t-shirts, shorts and dark sunglasses pushed back on their heads. It is strangely quiet in the waiting area and almost everyone is looking into a gadget or a screen of some size. Melbourne has been an important visit, meeting up with poets who I’m hoping to work with for our upcoming projects and also seeking news funds or ways to fund our education program.
Plus the new pair of shorts. Plus the sardine salad. Plus my cousins. Plus the quietness of hiding from the mobile.
Last night BC and myself attended the launch of ‘Australian Poetry’ at the stunning Wheeler Centre. I felt a little like I was attending a funeral as the room was grey and the new logo for the organisation is a little like a death wreath. Then, I felt a lot like I was attending a christening or a wedding as Chris Wallace-Crabbe described the merger between two entities of Poets Union and The Australian Poetry Centre. Chris stood at the microphone as though at a pulpit and made grand and scary pronouncements about the new organisation extending its tentacles into other states and territories, spreading their work. One of Australian Poetry’s plans is placing a poem on the pillow of all the heads who hit the Sebel, during the 2011 Sydney Writers’ Festival. Poetry on pillows? That, to be honest in blog honesty, sounds a little too much like a bad interpretation of A Red Room Co project, but without the critical and intellectual dimensions.
I am, however, really looking forward to using their new website which will be excellent for many poets and poetry groups as a way to add up their local events and promote their activities, publications and performances. The site will also be a great way for the public to see what’s on in their landscape, so long as they don’t get scared away by Ben Lee as being the cultural ambassador for poetry in this country which is an interesting marketing technique to find new audiences for indie pop.
On one of Tony’s first outings as our Education guru, he managed to rescue a very hot and almost unconscious little old lady who had fallen into a heap, on William Street in Kings Cross. Moments later he was back in the Red Room, trying, like me, not to melt into the computer screen. The adventures of Papercuts continue – this Friday we fly a poet, Craig Billingham, from the Blue Mountains towards the Flinders Ranges where he will run Papercuts with a school in Golden Grove, South Australia. What else? Well, acquittals posted and new grants starting to be written as 2011 opens like an enchanted forest to us. Hurry up new website due by the end of February, the Eskimos promised. It’s windy but it isn’t cyclonic so I’m sitting quietly on the lounge now with Chris Edwards’ People of Earth on my lap. Just before bedtime, hoping the dancing voices and confusing but alluring characters will abduct my brain and replace it with word flickers and peculiar, particular insights only Chris’ work is capable of offering. So long as by 10 tomorrow morning my neck is back to what is my normal.
It’s taken time to move back into the blogiary. A friend suggested I write a journal into which I may spill things not suited to public view. This writing combined with my own poetry has meant less conversations with you. At present, it’s a struggle to write here for there’s too much I’d like to say. So, to avoid poetry rambles, rants or self indulgence – I’m laying digitally low. The attached image is an example of how, when entering The Red Room, you ascend into depth.
Tumble turns really are challenging when your mind keeps thinking of people and places above the surface. To turn, twist and kick off in a seamless shape one must enter a meditative state that is almost dreamy. This morning, however, my mind was far too active and I swallowed more than a skull of water during my swimming. Then, bike riding to Cafe Ella for my weekly coffee with my father, I kept noticing all these toes gripping the balcony rails that link the terraces of Abercrombie Street; folk sunning their digits whilst the Sunday morning gathered speed.
Today, my tempo or speed is a crawl. I work through a lot of Red Room correspondences and dip in and out of books on Trees, whilst looking at the ever loyal tree outside the window. It’s so good not to have seen any shopping bags today, or SALE signs or babies in prams – these being all things, not me, but, always getting in my way.
The last meeting for this Hobart trip was a lunch with 8 Tasmanian poets. Over a deep bowl of thick soup and hidden from the ugly CBD, in an elegant cafe that didn’t serve what seems to be everywhere here : fudge, ice-cream, giant croissants or lavender.
The lunch conversation was engaging and generous yet I was, I am – possessed by the grotesque and entertaining images from yesterday’s visit to MONA. Last night in the beauty of ironed hotel sheets, I dreamt of a balloon full of burgundy blood. Today, I cannot see the world through anything but the oval, diamond openings of plaster vaginas from The Great Wall of Vagina, by UK sculptor Jamie McCartney. This installation is an epic line of plaster casts of vagina moulds.
