Delirium Crafternoon, Great Britain Hotel, 29th Nov

knitting with friends

Knit is a word you use
for the healing process:
a wound knits together
pain settles
skin grows back.

This quiet crafternoon
is the knitting over
of our wounded brains
beer-spent on saturnight.

Rally for Same-Sex Marriage Rights, State Library, 28th Nov

Lots of sweet kids
sittin on the lawn with
red balloons.
Wind and sun
chilled and cruisy.
I only count eight cops.

fourWtwenty New Writing Launch, Carlton Courthouse, 22 Nov

Rural Publication, City Launch

The audience density is:
60% Wagga Wagga
10% ex-Wagga Wagga
10% Wagga Wagga tourist
10% miscellaneous Albury
10% pure Melbourne


Booranga Writers' Centre

Trespassers Welcome - Private and Public Poetry, Fed Square, 20th Nov

Trespassers Welcome

It becomes clear
that trespassers are not
in fact
welcome
when an old guy
sits
to the side
of the stage
and starts asking questions
about poetry.


Experimental Poetry

After the gig
V and I stand in her bungalow
and listen to an old 45
of local poets.

They've been doing the same stuff
for 30 years.

We ask each other:
"Is it still experimental
if there was one experiment
then the same style
in stasis
'til a new generation of poets
grew up?"


on the Fed Square website

RMIT Media Showcase - Graduate Show, Storey Hall, 17th Nov

Though the bar tab has run out
the kids are still well dressed.
No cracked high heels
just crackling smiles.
These new graduates
must mean business.


RMIT Media Showcase 2009

MAPA Spectacular, Williamstown Town Hall, 15th Nov

men who hug strangers

If you want to know
whether he really is
a cream centred
pine scented
self-contented
teddy bear
get him to organise a kid's show.

When he's in a canyon-hall
roaring into a microphone
"whERE are your smILEs
chilDREN?
did you lEAve
your smILEs at hOME?"
you might have a better idea
of the kind of man
you're dealing with.


priorities

If you think
the parents enjoying the show
is more important
than the kids enjoying being in it
you probably don't understand
that the parents are only happy
when the kids are.

Roller Derby - Movember Proskate Awareness, Puckhandler's Sports Centre, 14th Nov

girl

Under crash helmet -
braids.
Under fishnet stockings -
bruises.


movember

Under her nose -
drawn on moustache.
Under his breath -
"Dyke convention."


learning to be competitive

At first cheering whenever the crowd does
then whenever a point is scored
I can't pinpoint the moment
when I start cheering for my team.


learning to be competitive II

All that adrenaline -
by 11 I'm tired, cranky, unkind.
Not used to being a sports fan.


Victorian Roller Derby League

Puckhandlers Sports Complex

Private and Public Poetry/ Trespassers Welcome, Fed Square, 11 Nov

All it takes
to feel like you're at the beach
is sun, deck chair, sandstone.
Poetry? Yes
there was that too.

Political Asylum, Brunswick Green, 8th November

In a room that's 52 degrees
jokes about climate change are more funny
and less funny.


Political Asylum blog

Paradise Anthology Reading, St Kilda Bowls Club, 7th Nov

Suddenly I'm harmonica groupie.
Chris Wilson's harp is hot.

Paradise Anthology

Drunken Poets, The Drunken Poet Hotel, 5th November

The rudest audiences
are the chatters.
Raising the volume of the room
they don't hear the insults
readers insert into their poems.

The readers heckle the audience
but the audience lacks the decency
to heckle back.


Pam's Poetry Pitch

Moon, Cinema Nova, 3rd November

Waft of Asimov
and his humanity dilemmas.
This could be a short story
literary sci-fi
it just happens that someone
has made it into a movie.


Moon

XYZ* Bookclub Launch, Fullers Bookshop (Hobart), 30th Oct

the questions one asks at launches when one has arrived late and missed the speeches

Who is this Robert Forster?
How does this book club thing work?
Where's the wine?
Weren't we supposed to pay to get in?

How do you know my sister?
What's the flyer you've been working on?
Is Hobart fringe festival all schmicko like Melbourne fringe festival?
Is it theatre-based like the Melbs one?
Can you blow that in the other direction, thanks?
So why do you think Hobart doesn't have an independent theatre scene?

What is the purpose of your programming-language experimental art poetry?
What makes it poetry rather than multimedia?
Is it about the process, or are you trying to makes something for an audience?
Is it a game you play with yourself, or a game you play with your audience?
So what's the purpose of your programming-language experimental art poetry?

What's your name again?
What does begat mean?

Doesn't everyone in Hobart know each other, anyway?
So what do you consider to be an excessive number of FB friends?
Are you going to join the book club?

Is that the last of the wine?
Did someone say "dumplings"?
Are they still serving booze?
How do we get there?

Fullers Bookshop (Hobart)

Poetry At The Dan, The Dan O'Connell, 24th Oct

A quiet arvo
for The Dan
but some of James Jackson's thoughts
will stay with me:
in 500 years Melbournites
will be nostalgic for 2007,
the year that a wallaby
made it into the city.


Poetry At The Dan