My Poetry: Existentialism

(I am reading about Existentialism for my art therapy course. It is interesting yet kind of sounds paradoxical)

 

Existentialism

I have absolute freedom

To make the choices

That define my life.

Wait a minute,

You mean I’m responsible

For everything,

What if I make the wrong choice?

How will I fit everything

Into the small amount

Of time I have here on earth?

If there is no heaven or hell

Then what is the point

To anything I do now?

What do you mean

There is nothing after death?

I’m anxious anxious anxious

Feeling that old existential

Anxiety and wondering

If I will be paralysed by possibility

Or enlivened by

The short time I have

Available to me.

 

My Poetry: Springtime

Springtime

You have been so hot

It feels like summer

Weather for swimming

For going to the beach

Not for studying

Not for being stuck

In the makeshift sauna

Of my little hot flat

I want to go outside

But I have so much to do

Things pour out of my ears

Forgotten things

Important things

Things hanging around

On the sidelines of consciousness

I wish it was the end

The year would be gone

No more things to do

Just Christmas and food

And eating and Summer.

My Poetry: Bed

Bed

My bed draws me in

In the early morning

When I should be up

My bed sings to me

Its lullabies lull me

To sleep a little longer

Amongst its soft sheets

I wonder how many more

Things I could get done

If my bed wasn’t so crafty

Didn’t catch me so

In its downy doona

My bed draws me in

It must be time to sleep.

Award Winning Australian Writing Launch

Award Winning Australian Writing 2011

I have a poem in the Melbourne Books anthology, Award Winning Australian Writing 2011, which was just launched last night. It’s quite a weighty tome, with writing including poetry, short stories and excerpts from novels which have all won some kind of prize. My poem won the Picaro Poetry Prize and was in the resulting original prize anthology, called The Green Fuse. My poem was called ‘Wanted: Poet’. I would recount it here, but I think that would be contravening some kind of copyright law, so I won’t. You’ll just have to find the book. Which you can do at the Melbourne Books website if you like.

Velour Poetry Magazine Launch

So, it’s almost launch time (a few weeks to go) and I’m hell of stressed, but really hoping that everything comes together and it goes smoothly. It’s the launch of my poetry magazine called Velour. It has a bunch of poets in it, poetry ranging from the surreal to the sublime the the humourous. There will be poetry and music at the launch celebration, and it should be a lot of fun. If you’re in Melbourne, and you want to come, here’s the facebook event.

Tonight I’m off to check out a band called The Lounge Detectives, who will be playing at the launch of Velour. Their music is groovy, moody film noire-ish jazz. Should be good!

From Velveteen to Velour… a chat with Gemma White (via Another Lost Shark)

Graham Nunn kindly interviewed me about Velour Magazine (the publication I edit) for an article on his blog!

Velour is a new magazine that will soon be hitting the streets, so editor, Gemma White and I decided to have a chat about the importance of small press publications and what you can expect from Velour. Enjoy… Velour was previously known as Velveteen Zine. Does the name change signify a new aesthetic for the publication? Yes. Velveteen Zine has grown up and matured into Velour. The initial zine was a bit of a trial one-off project, funded by Vib … Read More

via Another Lost Shark

Picaro Poetry Prize

I had almost totally forgotten about this, but in 2010 I was one of the winners of the Picaro Poetry Prize, run by the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival. As a result my poem ‘Wanted: Poet’ was published in their anthology called The Green Fuse. One day I hope to attend the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival, it really looks fantastic! For the moment there is the Emerging Writer’s Festival to go to in Melbourne, which will no doubt be as amazing as it was last time I went which I think was in 2008.

Another poem published!

My poem ‘Ardent Lovemaking’ was accepted into Visible Ink 22, the 2010 issue. I am very happy about this! I read the poem at the launch, and it was a lot of fun.

Other poetry things that have happened

I got a bit lazy with posting, so this is a catch-up post of poetry things that happened in 2009. Firstly, as a result of my Australian Poetry Centre cafe poet residency at Zappa’s Cafe, I had a little poem published in Blue Dog and another poem published on Graham Nunn’s Another Lost Shark blog.

I have also collaborated with some RMIT film students with them creating film responses to one of my poems entitled ‘The Mariner’s Lover’. Here I am commenting haphazardly on the inspiration behind the poem, and here are the resulting films. As a part of the RMIT ‘Prod!’ film project, an opportunity opened up for me to also collaborate with a songwriter, which was very interesting and exciting. You can hear the resultant song on the Prod website here.

During the 9th Annual Overload Poetry Festival, a poetry video project called MASH was created, which was a mash-up of poems from all different Melbourne poets. I was lucky enough to be included in this project, alongside some of Melbourne’s finest and most enduring poets. This video can be seen here.

Getting Published

Since my last post, I have been fortunate in that I have been published twice – once in Voiceworks and once in Page Seventeen. I got to read my poetry at the launches for these publications, which was pretty cool. I have decided there are different kinds of poems. There are the diary poems, which aren’t really for an audience, then there are the public poems, that are written for other people to enjoy. Hopefully I can write some more of the latter sometime soon.