Melbourne Poets Union Inc. (A0041513T) ABN: 65 785 933 937 PO Box 266 Flinders Lane Melbourne 8009 Circulation: 250 of the Melbourne Poets Union http://home.vicnet.net.au/~mpuinc/MPU/Home.html Feb/Mar 2013 Issue #338 MPU is proudly supported by MPU Inc. monthly meetings Wheeler Centre (unless otherwise stated) Further details for monthly events are listed below or phone Wendy on 9467 8249 $10 entry $9 concession $8 Members . museletter Contents: Gongs Words from Committee IPC Winning Poem IPC Winners List & Trust Fund Event Horizon Comps & Opportunities Feature Poet - Anne Carson IPC Judge’s Report Book Review - Tina Giannoukos Book Review - cont. IPC Awards Night - photo 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Thursday 28th February 7pm at Trades Hall 54 Victoria St, Carlton Poetry, Performance and Play with Judith Rodriquez & Felix Nobis MC: Randall Stephens Limited open section first in best dressed! To register please email [email protected]Thursday 28th March The Wheeler Centre MPU AGM 6.30 Everyone is welcome to attend but only financial members are eligible to vote. See inserts. Annual Comedy Night at 7.15pm This year’s judge is Marion Spires. Marion and John Carey (NSW) will do short readings. Open readers are eligible for $100 prize for best poem. You must register before the event by email to [email protected]Judith Felix
Transcript
Melbourne Poets Union Inc.
(A0041513T) ABN: 65 785 933 937 PO Box 266 Flinders Lane Melbourne 8009 Circulation: 250
Consultants: Sue Gillett - Chief Editor (Honorary) Ross Donlon - Country Representative Dr Marietta Elliott-Kleerkoper Kris Hemensley Dr Stuart Armstrong Garth Madsen
Volunteers: Ashley Capes, Rachel Flynn, Judy Keighran, Christina Spry, Michelle Leber, Tasna Tisevic, Bronwyn Lovell, Avril Bradley, Allison Fleming
Monthly committee meetings: Open to all members. Contact Di Cousens on <[email protected]> for meeting dates and general inquiries.
Submissions for issue #339 are due 4pm on 23rd March, 2013. Late submissions may be carried over to the next issue.
Copyright: All poems and other content are copyright of the respective author. Please contact the editor or author for permission to reproduce them.
Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed in POAM do not necessarily reflect those of the Committee, the Editor or the MPU members.
Welcome to new members:
Helen Patrice, Joan Cahill,
Jackson (previously Janet Jackson)
June Rowntree & Laura McPhee-Brown
Page 2 Feb/Mar #338
GONGS:
Marguerite Varday's book Watershed Years has been
published this year by Papyrus Publishing. The setting
is the Snowy Mountains Scheme of the 1950s to the
1970s, a time when people arrived in Australia from
many countries to work on engineering projects in the
area. Stories from several points of view reveal the
lives of a wide variety of characters.
www.papyrus.com.au
Nola Firth was runner up for the Castlemaine Poetry
Prize (judged by Ross Donlan) for her poem Margaret
Olley. It was a prose poem inspired by Kevin Brophy's
Gaudi Gaudi Gaudi that was published in poam.
Lorraine Mcguigan:
* 1st Prize Society of Women Writers (Vic) * Two poems Social Alternatives * One in Famous Reporter 43 * Poems in Poetrix 38 and 39 * One in Eureka Street Online * One in Studio Journal
Jennifer Chrystie's poem The Rajah Quilt has been
published in "The Best Australian Poems 2012 "(Black
Inc). Her second collection of poetry Weight of Snow is
due to be published early in 2013 by Ginninderra Press
Emilie Collyer had success in the Stilletto Awards for
Womens Crime writing. She took out both The Kill
City 2nd prize ($400) and The Clandestine Press
Award for Cross Genre ($300) for A Clean Job, a
futuristic story.
Marina Scott has had some poems published: nobody
knows in Studio, Home in Poetry Matters, Several
haiku in Paper Wasp and Famous Reporter, Song for
Remembrance , a poem , was sung on remembrance
day at Presbyterian church in Geelong.
Avril Bradley won 1st Prize in Poetica Christi's Comp.
' Exploring the Depths' for her poem Black Dog.
P & O Poetry - Paul Dunell
Paul Dunell has been quietly crafting his poetry in
Montmorency and honing his skills with the Birrarrung
Poets mentored by Jordie Albiston.
Paul is an active contributor to Poets@Watsonia, yes a
mate of Wendy Fleming, and shares a coffee and a
poem or two in Eltham with Fee Sievers. He regularly
reads on Radio Eastern 98.1 fm. Paul’s work is in
MPU’s anthology The Attitude of Cups and he has
published two chapbooks of poetry.
In June 2012 he was invited by P&O Cruises to present
poetry workshops on a three day lifestyle cruise. He
must have got something right as P&O have invited him
back to present workshops on a 14 night cruise to Fiji. It
leaves on St Valentine’s Day, we would imagine some
Blue Giraffe - Closing dates February and August annually. Selection is ongoing. Up to 5 poems not previously in print or electronic media and not under offer [email protected] or, with SSAE or email contact for reply, to Peter Macrow, 6/16 Osborne Street, Sandy Bay, TAS 7005
Azuria, Geelong's new, independent literary magazine is seeking submissions from Australian & overseas writers
of essays, poetry (especially in languages other than English & their translations) and short prose. For further
After 20 years of publishing the best of Australasian women's poetry, we are ceasing publication with Issue 40. As
this will be a special issue, we are selecting our best from Issues 1-38, but invite submissions of up to six poems
from women poets for the new poems section (as usual).
Please send with SASE to Poetrix, PO Box 532, Altona North VIC 3025. No email submissions please.
More info at http://www.sherrylclark.com/poetrix.htm
We will advise when Issue 40 is available for purchase. We hope there will be a launch, too!
Poetry Matters Fourth Annual Competition: Closing 22nd March 2013
For conditions and entry form contact Cheryl Howard: [email protected]\
Mary Journal - Closing 15th March 2013
This journal accepts poetry submissions up to 100 words and also submissions of essays, short story, comics, art
and photography. www.mary-journal.tumblr.com
Prospect #4: Closing 31st March, 2013
Guest Editor: Pete Hay. Maximum of 5 poems which have not been in print or electronic media and are not on
offer elsewhere. Email: [email protected] Subscriptions: $20 for 2 issues posted in Australia, cash or cheque
made out to Peter Macrow, 6/16 Osborne Street, Sandy Bay, TAS 7005.
ONCE UPON A SONNET! Closing 1st April To compete, send your finest sonnets to The Melbourne Shakespeare Society, 18 Churchill St, Mont Albert 3127.) * each one on a separate sheet of paper, * accompanied by a cover sheet containing the title or first line, with your name and address, plus phone number and/or email address. First prize $250; Second prize, $100. A chapbook containing the winning entries and the best of the rest will be published before the winter solstice.
Williamstown Literary Festival Writing Prizes 2013 - Closing 3rd April
For the Ada Cambridge Biographical Prose Prize 2013 and the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize 2013.The
competitions are open to any writers and poets who live, work or study in the western suburbs of Melbourne (see
eligible postcodes on entry form) The competitions are ideal for up-and-coming writers who are looking to gain
exposure for their writing, and to get their name out into the highly competitive industry.
Congratulations to Poets@Watsonia who received a grant to do a poetic map of Banyule. The project is called Impressions and the theme is place and space. Poets are invited to submit poems but you must live, work or study in Banyule. As part of the project we will be running readings and a workshop to compliment the printed map. The map will showcase some of the poems. For more info and an entry form email Fee at [email protected]
Impressions - workshop with alicia sometimes and Chris Wallace Crabbe - everyone is welcome to come to this but bookings are essential. Sunday 10th March 1-5pm at Watsonia Library Meeting Room—gold coin donation. For more info please email Fee [email protected]
and the sound of creatures in the grass from the heat of summer.
And then wait for the bird to choose to sing.
If the bird doesn’t sing
it is not a good sign.
It is a sign that the painting is flawed.
But if it sings it is a great sign
a sign that you can now sign the painting.
Gently prise only one of the bird’s feathers
and inscribe your name in a corner of the painting.
Anne M Carson has been published in the USA and widely in Australia. She won the 2011 Martha Richardson Poetry Prize and came equal first in the Stones winery poetry competition. Anne attended the MPU Poetry in Translation event at the Immigration Museum and had a wonderful time immersed in the music of other languages – how much they add to poetry! There was time for Anne and her partner, Jean-Marc, to read English and French versions of a poem they had jointly translated from the French by Jacques Pervert. It is such a beautiful poem and they were both amazed at how undated and relevant it is for today’s world – a message we still need to hear, despite being written just after the Second World War.
The poem is printed opposite.
In poam #339 we will be having 2 feature poems.
Page 9 Feb/Mar #338
MPU POETRY AWARDS 2012 JUDGE’S REPORT To write a poem is to enter a field freighted with imponderables. Or perhaps, to put it another way, it is to enter the
witness box.
Is the something that you have to say, something that ‘swears’ on itself, that cries out to be a poem? And if so, what form
will this poem take? What resistance to, or re-shaping, or re-invention of forms, will it pursue? Will the poem be
searching to say something which is, above all else, true, or will it be, rather, a poem whose underlying obsession is with
effects; or will it contend with both, or indeed, with none of these? Or again, is the poem in pursuit of themes whose
meaning and broader implications are important to you, or perhaps even irresistible, and which demand poetic treatment,
since they are concerned with energies and impulses that only a poem can best capture? And hence, are you driven to find
new worlds of words, to explore and enact new kinds of phrasing or rhythmic intonation, or even to inaugurate a wholly
personal language? In short, as every poet should, or rather must, ask of both the art and the craft: what, in the end, are my
poetics?
Any one of half a dozen poems in the MPU International Poetry Competition 2012, could have taken out this year’s prize.
As judge, it is my task, among other things, to direct the jury (so to speak)— in this case, the public— in reaching a
verdict, not only in respect of the best poems, but also in taking into consideration the wider issue of what it is that any
poetry attempts, and on what grounds and by which criteria we might more accurately and justly arrive at our responses
to, and assessment of, individual poems.
The best poems in this year’s MPU International Poetry Competition, it seems to me, addressed, or in some way, met
these questions and gave evidence (from the witness box, to pursue the earlier analogy) of being the work of somebody
who has thought about and felt their way towards a personal poetics, one of considerable conviction and impressiveness.
In the Commended category six poems stood out from the ruck of hundreds by virtue of their having certain qualities of
language or feeling, or both, which give promise of, or confirm a richer vein. These were, in order of precedence,
“Widow’s Kiss”, “My heart the three leaf clover”, “The Claddagh fishwives”, “Depression Photograph (Walker Evans
1937)”, “Recalculating” and “Obliquity of the Ecliptic”. Each of these poems had about them something that raised one’s
expectations, or which gave pleasure by their command of genre or otherwise by a level of expressiveness or delicacy of
feeling above the ordinary.
In the Highly Commended category such qualities were found in greater measure and augmented by a more powerful
range of language and emotion. Any one of the three poems in this category could have been chosen as a final place-
getter. These poems were, in order of precedence, “Ideas of Shore”, “Letter From Indoors” and “ Forgiveness”. They
were productions of considerable substance, showing poise and control of their material, intelligence and maturity in the
handling of themes and, in the case of “Forgiveness”, a wonderful honesty and individuality of voice. This poem (of
eighteen restrained stanzas moving through a very spare and attenuated syntax) no less than “Widow’s Kiss” in the earlier
category (a mere brief seventeen lines) may remind us that a well-wrought poem need not necessarily be longer or larger
than its competitors, in order to merit distinction.
The task of choosing the three best poems was one that called for a photo. It is invariably an invidious choice, since in the
case of the three poems in question there were broad differences in subject matter as well as in style and treatment. All
three prize-winning poems demonstrated a command of tone, or a range of diction and a resourceful use of language
which were admirable. Over and above these qualities they also displayed rich imaginative energies, a fine understanding
of the ways in which emphasis and modulation in the rhythmic quantities of a poem, not only within sections or lines, but
even within discrete phrases, can set off verbal and emotional charges of great power.
The three poems in question are: third place-getter “Death in Rome”, a poem in which satire is superbly handled, second
place-getter “Henri Matisse, Spring Studio, Nice”, the poem which from my first reading of it held its line as being both
highly accomplished and a model of its ekphrastic genre) and first place-getter “Men”, a piece of work of such
compression, command of tone and idiosyncratic but compelling language, as put its nose in front in the last stride.
The Martin Downey Urban-Realist Prize I have awarded to “Death With Disclaimer (too much television)”, a poem of
mordant wit and great charm.
Dr. Homer Rieth
Page 10 Feb/Mar #338
House Red by Di Cousens
Design and layout by Julie Cattlin ISBN: 978-0-646-57491-2
Reviewed by Tina Giannoukos
House Red is Di Cousens’ second collection of poetry. Cousens reveals herself in
House Red to be both universal in concern and singular in focus. The teleological
drive of many of these poems can make them appear too determinate in meaning.
However, the dialectical navigation of their terrain makes them more conjectural
than they appear to be. The interplay of the personal and the universal is evident in
such poems as “Driving in Bangkok”, “Stopping Traffic” and “Summer”. In “Stopping
Traffic”, the poet toots her horn at the unemployed man, but the “I” transforms into
a “we” before returning to the controlling consciousness of the “I” in the final line
that narrows the poem’s ecumenical reach without dissolving it:
And we all stopped
and then drove round him
and he kept walking
in the middle of the road
against the oncoming traffic
looking for oblivion. (2)
The ecumenical consciousness in House Red manifests itself especially in Cousens’ more overtly political poems. The
political in House Red is less ideological and more ethical. This ethical consciousness appears in poems like “Lost Wisdom”,
“Advice to Politicians”, “Under the Grass” and “Burying Gaddaffi”. In “Advice to Politicians”, the concluding couplet stands
as the poet’s statement on the deterioration of political life:
Don’t act like a junkie truckie.
There’s enough road kill already in Canberra. (7)
The political as ethical concern proclaims itself in “Talking to the Chinese Terracotta Warrior”. The poem sets up a
dialogue between the speaker and the General. Unlike other poems, the speaker is somewhat removed from the poet
herself. Their exchange becomes an exploration of reflection, regret and pride. The boundaries between proper and
improper action are blurred. The General speaks in the unwavering certainties of eternity. This renders the poem chilling:
Our legacy stands.
We are not looking for change.
We vowed to serve the Emperor unto eternity
and we will honour that vow. (10)
The confessional in House Red makes the poems seem personal rather than ecumenical. The emphatic note on which
some poems end, such as “Driving in Bangkok” or “Airport Queue”, makes them seem more closed off to experience than
they are. Cousens’ unadorned language underscores this narrowing effect. The risk is that in transmitting Cousens’ view of
the world they interrogate neither the ground of her perception nor the capacity of language to be at the call of the poet
for such a philosophical project. The poem “Airport Queue”, for example, closes off potentially other significations with its
interrogative but emphatic “did we notice her” as the woman in purple “stared at everyone behind her in the queue” (8).
Rather than merge her consciousness with that of the woman, Cousens pours the ecumenical into the crowd. In turning
her attention towards “a tired husband and a subdued child” (8), Cousens also undermines the teleological drive of the
poem and its concomitant judgmental tone. The poem becomes a nuanced observation on humanity:
— and yes we noticed her
and I pulled down my hat. (8)
The sharpness of observation displayed in “Airport Queue” also manifests in poems like “Cellular Life”, “The Price of
Wine” and “Hard Drugs, Strong Religion and Love”. It dissipates into the melancholic in the personal and affecting
“Afternoon Tea in the Drawing Room” whose last verse reinscribes sentiment as the shock intrusion of death into an
intimate moment:
Image of book cover to come
Page 11
Feb/Mar #338
Review of House Red by Tina Giannoukos cont.
And I first noticed mother’s chest bone
sticking forward
— a secondary cancer —
while sitting, drinking tea. (23)
The dialectical in House Red plays out in poems like “Bremen West Germany 1966” which delves into childhood, dislocation
and connection. Cousens’ reflective participation in life, as evinced in House Red, is evident in this poem that is as much
about disengagement as it is about engagement:
To stay where there are still the signs of bombs, of war,
with the people who were on the wrong side.
But I still have a moulded mug which shows the Goose Girl herding geese
and a green leather purse of old coins
my nanny gave me to pay for a husband. (25)
Poems like “We Are Born into This” or “Times of Not Being Real” reveal Cousens’ universalism as a manifestation of
communal experience of life and death. In “We Are Born into This”, the poet concludes:
And we die like this —
leaving everything behind except for
the faint tune of an old melody lingering in the air. (26)
In all, there are twenty-four poems in House Red. This is deceptive. Poems like “Urban”, “Gardens’, “Birds” and “Skies” are
poems whose lines consist of haikus. Each series deals with a particular theme. In all of them, the ephemeral preoccupies
Cousens. In “Urban”, for example, there is the following haiku:
a hundred thousand journeys
no footprints
mark the freeway (18)
What to make of the accompanying photos in House Red? Some of the poems themselves are quite visual, even as they turn
reflective. Take a poem like “Under the Grass” , for example, with its strong imagery:
Under the sand of Armarna
in Egypt
there remain
the lines of roads
foundations of buildings
a lost temple to the sun god. (7)
In their visual appeal, Cousens’ photos enrich the book. To treat the photos as separate entities is one way to go. Another is
to see them as illustrations. The photographs do interact with the poems. They lend the chapbook playfulness. They also add
a visual dimension to the more abstract poems like “The Universe” or reinforce the grounded imagery of poems like “Lost
Wisdom”. They set up a counter-dialogue in poems like “Talking to the Chinese Terracotta Warrior”. They also show a
more experimental aspect to the work. The risk is that the photographs float above the text. They do demonstrate that
Cousens works transgressively. She crosses boundaries between discrete art forms in the same way that she crosses
boundaries between the personal and the universal. House Red is more liminal than appears.
Throughout Cousens expresses a personal worldview. The temptation is to equate the “I” of these poems with the poet
herself. If this is so, it is not an “I” that stands apart from the world but moves towards a more universal consciousness.
Cousens also offers an insight into her view of contemporary urban living. In the movement between the personal and the
universal, image and text, Cousens demonstrates the universal as much as the personal terms of her interrogation.
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Feb/Mar #338
“We love the things we love for what they are.”
Robert Frost
From the left: Judge, Dr Homer Rieth, Garth Madsen, Barbara Kamler, Dr Kevin Brophy, Will Fox,
John Jenkins, Marion Spires, Taina Smith (NSW) and Ross Gillett. Photo courtesy of Di Cousens.
