I traveled to Brisbane to visit schools and poets. One included, ‘Sheldon College’ who are running our education program, with poet, Bronwyn Lea. The school is close the home of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and far away from the construction heavy Queen Street Mall.

Back in the city, Nathan Shepherdson and I spent the afternoon in swivels, on the Hilton Hotel chairs where the room lights were lolly pop pink and zooming lifts so high, I felt ill : the ghosts of the Kings of Queensland were everywhere. We talked about turning our ‘Poetry Picture Show‘ project into a virtual learning resource and whether you should laugh or cry when someone asks a poet ‘so when are you going t to write a novel?’ ; as if poetry doesn’t count! Nathan and I got as violent as is possible whilst surrounded by whispering suits – as we talked about the conservatism taking over the Australian Literary Review : those destructive and arrogant articles lately that bemoan the state of poetry and damning anything that is language – isn’t poetry itself, language? Why does The Australian publish such wet?

I think the heat made the time in Brisbane so intense; the hugeness of poems being written, poetry being made wherever you tread and people asking me why I do what I do – as if I know! Half the time you just feel your way though and too much thought as to why has been returning to the blank state of pointlessness.

I arrived home without my keys and am waiting by the post box for their return.

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Soon we were in studio, talking while the mikes were being tested and told what to do, about boats, poem wave, how treasures are buried beneath not so often on top. Thursday’s live event is one, two, three sleeps away but

I hold my tongue from describing about the beauty of our N installation that I and my Friend, saw for the first time, yesterday afternoon in Camilla’s back yard; under moon light Camilla crouched, painted and wove materials around a wood husk that was the body of Lachlan’s poem. In the far end of her yard another poem body was drying off varnish and signs of Esther (blue plaits) hung from the nose tip. As I tip toed around metal pots, plant necks and paint daubs, Camilla’s friend carved and twisted wood that is to hold the Braille poems and suspended from for spidery legs were arms of Mike Ladd.

All these objects being nailed, scaled and sawn together to make a place for the audience to experience Nightwriting. A perfect Sunday treat, to be reminded by Camilla that a poem is made and re made with each read and in each position. I still am ruminating on, the frenzy of ideas that swell only when lights are of the shadow of a moon. In night, writing, walking, holding, allows eyes to see, you see the most beautiful things or most horrific things, depending on who is standing next to you, lit, light, alive to the person in the moon.

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Buying a plant and planting it you know you’re at some stage going to lose it – like the purchasing of goldfish, especially the jelly black bulb eyed type, death comes quickly to plants (and fish) sometimes a week, a season, certainly within the turning of two birthdays. Plant grief is short though, as if they want to die back into the earth, being buried and unnoticed the most satisfactory state for plants.
I knew my plant world (downstairs, behind poets and pan land) was unlikely to survive the Autumn, due to my uncaring nature. Today, one of acceptance – I admitted I’d let the plants hang about half dead for too long. So I tipped them leaf, stems and beds into the tip and ventured to the flower man for replacements.

The plant shop should be an oxygen heaven except the owner’s body odor forces the purchaser to hold breath and face the opposite direction to any advice or opinion the shop owner opens his mouth with. One turns a face away in order to do business.

Thankfully, today’s green adventure was more pleasant than last time as powerful April-soon May smells of potting mix and mint beat away the sweat of the shop owner’s armpits and whatever else drives a persons body to stink ugliness.

It is night and Synergy an hour away. Night, all branches of night are printed with visions of whoever is scared of the dark

Suddenly I open a photograph sent to my via email: it is of a tree ablaze with orange autumn leaves no night about it, I am sure if I stood before the gold glow at night the dark wouldn’t dream of turning down the colour power.

I am reminded by the photo, that a sound of a leaf cracking is warm without pain and that of an icicle cracking is painful warmth.

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Lachlan and I decided that either one of us was fibbing or each of us had, for half an hour been invisible to the other. Maybe we had forced ourselves to see the other as we wanted and so were unable to accept the person that was I or he, right before me. I did not expect Lachlan’s glasses to rest on his nose or for Lachlan to have delicate arms and fingers that were mighty machines he uses to write poetry, play the piano and sound the French Horn.

All day I couldn’t rid my mind of the image of a rabbit stewing in a terracotta circle or the concern that the Sydney Writers’ Festival have asked us to charge $10 as an entrance fee for our event on the 22nd May, which features Lachlan Brown, Tasmanian talents and torches.

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..

Chilli popcorn and chai in a polluted courtyard are two memories from my movie going in India.) where I was, a dozed days ago, being chaperoned by a cordial family. (‘cordial’, when Bengalis use it, means warm-hearted, trustworthy and kind). My Indian friends and I joined hands to view the sensationalist, controversial, jewel full, Jodhaa Akbar. Regardless of this Hindi film’s supposed historical inaccuracy, I blessed it 4 stars, because of lustful belly button wriggles and memorable elephant wrestling scene starring scrumptious jade eyed, musculus pectoralis major : Hrithik Roshan.

In India it was dry season.
Today, in Australia, it’s leaf and rain scatter season.

Tonight I dawdled to the movies with my boyfriend to watch Brick Lane. I devoured a double bulb kiwi fruit (externally lumpy and tumorous, with a heart of fluorescent lime internally) and overpriced water. The film began poorly, with embarrassingly clichéd scenes of pretty children running in carefree hysteria, fingers through blades of dew blessed grass and hair tangled in flower blossom spary. Yet, when story reached London’s markets and explored sewing as a way to speak, the film became a fair adaptation of Monica Ali’s penetrating novel.

Midway into the film there was a dinner scene – my eyes scanned the fictional spread for hints of Bengali potatoes or sweets, so much so, I missed the reciting of a Tagore poem.

….

The day bends to sleep with my religious instruction from supposedly, the first Western autobiogrophy – St Augustine’s, Confessions of a Sinner; (perfected in print via the Penguin Books ‘Great Ideas’ series). So, on the night that once upon a time Jesus rolled back stones and rose into angels feathers .. and on the night before I journey to Sydney’s Royal Easter Show, I find it interesting to poke about St Augustine and read him out of context, he tells me: ‘..I had no liking for the safe path, for it was without pitfalls€¦’ (book 111)

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Satellite of Love

by John Forbes

like unwound toys or the mind of a stone
verbs elude me. I’m willing to change tho’

— if you do too — into a spree or a better
more feeling computer. oh tent of dreams!

where is your tailored lightsail guiding us?
through what used to be the empyrean, but now

is just where satellites go, to stamp like
a giant foot, infotainment & game shows

into the brains beneath? death by stellar
allure or a lack of oxygen might follow,

unless this prayer can save me, the way
damaged glamour seeks out its opposite number

& we move together, draped in the planet’s
tingling aurora, thanks to our huge,
electric shoes.

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A recent biography,’Betjeman‘, by A.N Wilson is currently a U.K. favourite and, next week. I shall return to Rye to purchase it. Earlier this week when in Rye, I turned up a small path and was greeted by the house in which Thomas Hardy once lived. This literary surprise was followed by more stumbles on writers’ dwellings – around the corner, rooms that housed hands who wrote Heart of Darkness, Mapp & Lucia and, a train station away Dante Gabrielle Rosetti.

My grandmother has countless Betjeman poetry collections and biographies on him. Other collections I’ve noticed on Grandmother’s shelves are Milton, Dylan Thomas, Robert Browning and Edward Lear. There are also tattered and much adored compendiums of Fairy Tales (Red, Blue, Green). Margaret Thatcher appears about the shelves as does the works of Roald Dahl and Barbara Pym.

As for Australian poetry, so far no bookshop I’ve searched in has any, not even Clive James.

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Here are some photographs:

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With Elliott Wheeler monitoring our whispers and hollers from his studio desk beyond the glass, Romaine and I explored the ways or non ways time decides to exist as – or we decide time to exist as. Time, in Romaine’s view has never been a reality but it is instead a grand imaginary. Making poems makes time and the trees and the water ways take it away. We also yarned about mystery and mountains, Romaine being another Sydney poet (Pam Brown, I’m thinking of) who has ventured into the blue bark.

This was the first interview recorded for our ‘Sustainable Sydney’ pod-casts and time capsules. Part of which we will reveal in October 07 and the rest in 2030.

Just as Romaine was handing me her tangible time capsule component … there was a knock knock and Brook Emery arrived with his neat brown leather satchel …
Always two words, ie. high school
If you’re speaking generally as in
“this is a program for high schools” then it’s lower case;
If you’re referring to a particular school
as in “Penrith High School” then it’s upper

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How language exists and how we communicate in 2030 will be a central question for all the 8 poets participating in Red Room’s version of Sustainable Sydney. (One of the 8 poets is Jane Gibian, whose new collection of poetry ‘Ardent’ was launched with moving and teary readings yesterday in Sydney by Occasional poet, Adam Aitken and Giramondo Press)

Between now and October 2030 the 8 poets will have to work on their predictions, which will be recorded in studio and stored in an audio time capsule online. This capsule will be popped on line and in a public space, in October 2030. Whichever poets and Red Roomers are still here and living will have the chance to hear their original recordings broadcast around the city.

At this stage megaphones on every corner may exist, or perhaps there will be no street corners or public meeting spaces because everyone is saving themselves within the walls of their individuals worlds?

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It was my last minute Occasional decision to film Claire Potter writing her poem on the night, (photographs on their way) in the light of the dummies, in real-poet-time. Over her shoulder Andrew followed Claire’s fingertips as Bird became Bird-Card became Bird-Card For Lingis became a U-Tube Bird-Card For Lingis Flight

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I’ll report on Pam’s mineslec after Sunday, not wanting to reveal her substance or her style before she does. However I should note I’d not met Pam before today (not including momentary glances over shoulders at poetry readings) and her physical self is a fascinating reflection of her poetry writin; her cafe language is witty, quicky, precise and gleeful; the stories she shares with me concern deaths in suburbia, daughters, filmmaking, radio; between sips and quips Pam reflects on a life lived so far and provides advice to me on how to escape being strangled by reading too much of other peoples’ poetry.

Pam’s tone in the page and in the cafe is of paint on a silk screen or colour on film. Her spoken voice is like her written – a lullaby-lyrical rhythm and volume particular to Pam’s voice welcomes the reader, lures them in and as her poem narratives, maps, journeys or reflections move from the everyday to the back of the imagination there’s never a sense you’re being left out or behind, but rather encouraged to sit next to her and continue moving along, into her world/s.
—

A few days later and the flats have been painted, props hired, windows swept and invitations circulated. It took the heart of Saturday to paint the set and if you ever need a man to turn ply wood into a costume shop, walls into doors, air into earth then I’d be suggesting beanie wearing Andy, the prop and set maestro Rita invited to assist with the set building.

More thanks to …

The generous Maritime man who has lent Red Room an entire Pier to store the dummies in. Last time I checked they were sound asleep and safe and tomorrow I’ll bring them croissants and Berocca to get them up and at their best for five days of performing without eating or moving:

Tomorrow we raise up the walls, walk in the bodies, hang the poems and stand before the Occasional installation wearing smiles and perhaps a badge.

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I considered wearing a navy blue jacket which half resembles the early Australian postman’s uniform, of navy blue sleeveless coat with a short shoulder cape attached at collar. But the fog suggests rain and my jacket isn’t built with waterproof heavy duty material nor does it have the postman’s required five button holes down the center front of the coat with one button remaining “Post Master Generals Department”. I wasn’t totally dissuaded – my jacket could be tailored to the postman’s jacket by pinning a few Occasional Poetry badges on my front

But, what I truly desire to wear is a red felt hat, that worn by fashionable postwomen of the 1980s. This hat with its soft curved sides is like a slippery dip, an apricot or a bottom smooth to fantasy perfection.

Digging into my top drawers I can’t find anything felt, not even matted wool button. Out of all the wool variations felt is the most poetic, material shorn from the back of a sheep that transforms to felt when it is subjected to moisture, heat, and pressure. And from the pressure the felt fiber produces scales, which open up and snatch one another, interweaving scales into scales so they are tangled up for life. The scales then cool and compress and lock together forever. This is felt.

In addition to being called ‘felt’, itself a highly sensitive, erotic, imaginative words, felt shares characteristics with those of top quality human beings: - it doesn’t raval or fray, Does not ravel or fray, it is as hard as it is soft, its essential structure remains unchanged regardless of what is is re-modelled into, it absorbs other materials with a resilient ease and can be touched and felt countless times without ever being permanently deformed. It protects you against the cold, turns the world volume down a few notches and presses itself tightly and smoothly against you, making its presence felt by the feel of you.

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Perhaps Vendler and Ashbery’s idea of clothes-as-poetry is more to do with influence, “from Saint Paul to Shakespeare to Carlyle”. The poet thumbs through the rack of tradition, taking out this, trying on that – sometimes casting it onto the floor after a time, sometimes picking it back up again and rediscovering. I think the definition of poetic clothing is a bit of both, even as Vendler changes metaphors to describe the fickleness of poetic style: “Ashbery rinses the palate of style, cleansing from it, with his brisk narratives, the sickly after-taste of imitative verse.” In Ashbery’s ‘The Gallant Needful’, style is indeed something that can be thrown off, that can rot and become tired, outmoded. Echoing John Forbes’ ‘Ode / Goodbye Memory’, Ashbery creates a dreadful vision – of his own era of poetic fashion as merely a figment of memory: “Farewell nightmares, / simulacra”.

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Manhattan Plaza or McDonald’s
Poems or Garden Gnomes
Risk or Reduction
literary TV or ABC

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As rains rage in Sydney, there are bush fires in Tasmania.

Driving I was nervous the sharp silver spike on the bonnet or my silver hoop earrings would invite down the lightning so, to un worry I tuned the pocket radio 2 2CH easy listening. Suave baritones missed New York but New York didn’t miss them and there was no more worrying.

Ready for show my plastic polka dot umbrella, purchased for $3.00 popped open and protected from car-apartment-car-home.

Now, safely indoors it seems the drive has cleansed my head. This sleepless sort of rain that is tonight’s type mixes up moods so the melancholic becomes pleasantly soft and, with the right music in the background, a style of writing assumes itself.

I trust the rain more than anything.

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Last week was a waiting week: at the email for graphics in horrendously large sizes and deleting the army of Spam. There was an increase in sightings of tired eyed adults sneakering into shops looking increasingly disturbed about buying Christmas gifts for their children who will grow up and out of them by New Years.

Then – in the middle of a morning, whilst jingling a tea bag in boiling water and leaning back into the leather chair I spoke with the program manager of the Ian Potter Foundation

[hold yourbreath. The next sentence spells good news]

The Ian Potter Foundation have injected funds into Red Room towards the implementation of our education program, planned for ’07. All the hours of dedicated trimming wish lists to one page submission, night after day after day is worth it when our company succeeds in being funded.

Some of my fellow professionals and friends will respond in words that are a variation on the theme of: Red Room is always getting grants and you are grant queen.

These infantile comments are untrue, annoying and ill informed. Red Room has a ratio of of 1:5 in terms of grant successes. Each grant takes a month to write and a few more months preceding the writing to light bulb alive a surprising idea that noone else can do or would do. We rarely get the entire amount we request and are therefore forced to create projects on revised budgets, that, once the poets are paid we are left with miscellaneous cash, enough to purchase a pre packaged cheddar cheese and salad sandwich, minus the Branston pickle.

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The editor on this current film project is Tamie Meem.

With luscious blueberry black lashes unfolding over her eyes and leagues of deep blue eye that draw you in she and I played around with the title sequence for the film late into Monday night. It wasn’t until Tuesday when I presented the sequenceto The Boss that I saw the titles didn’t work.

Tamie and I had chopped and joined ourselves into a delirium of cliches, in the enclosed space of the editing frame and our two brains we’d misjudged the work. This week the titles will need to be remade, in a workhouse on the outskirts of Byron Bay, our title designer carves out letters, shapes and style that we can re work into a new sequence

Then, next Tuesday I’ll return to edit in a small room in an apartment block where, on last visit, an eighty plus woman waited outside an anonymous door for a gentleman to return home. This lost old lady has been waiting every afternoon for the last few years, for her gentleman to return.

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Readers of this blog familiar with The Wordshed and The Poetry Picture Show, will know we didn’t grade the images in these projects. Therefore some shots and thus some moods are conveyed incorrectly. But, with the current moving image project Red Room is working on (with The University of Western Sydney) we have the opportunity to visually treat the image.

Treat in two ways (i) To subject to a process, action, or change, especially to a chemical or physical process or application and (ii) To give (someone or oneself) something pleasurable.

Treating the visual poem performance (by Jennifer Maiden) means treating the textual poem.

The word ‘teal’ recurs in the interview dialogue as do ducks in the interview background. The colour teal gets its name from the wings of the common teal, a member of the duck family. With this information or visual clue we could enter today’s ‘grade’ and request the entire film be graded in duck teal. This treatment would enforce a new meaning on Jennifer’s poem, make her rhythm quack rather than crack open. Mock the imagery rather than bring humour to the story.
Although a poem can be multi-interpreted and multi-channelled it can be read in less i.e. incorrectly. A visual change or grade (to teal) would mean I (or the filmmaker) was deleting the poet, their intention and context in which the poem was written. To colour the poet teal would morph her from woman to duck.

Excessive inteference with the poem indicates the reader, or in this case filmmaker or director, is a slave to their own ego rather than to the poem they should be working with. I think a poem can be mistranslated and be interesting but, mistranslation can become a misplacement of roles – if you don’t listen to the poem at all you might aswell have written the poem yourself and the poet or poem that first inspired you has been killed in your process of your colour grading.

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