I. M. CORNELIS VLEESKENS

Poems & pieces gathered by Pete Spence including collaborations with Cornelis Vleeskens & reminiscences from Hendrik Kolenberg & Rob Kars.

Edited by Kris Hemensley, 2012/2013.


ooOoo


PETE SPENCE



Cornelis Vleeskens.


Curvature of the mind
Ornate beyond straight thought
Rallies over a Dutch mass like
Noctiluca  effervescing over an
Evening beverage that would spoil
Latte specialists or transient
Inertia plagued by
Solar encroachment

Verily the candescence
Leans like an oblique sheen
Emerging at pace without
Effort or so it
Seems as you take another
Keen lope into the marbled
Entropic margin
New each moment
Sails brightly aloft




ooOoo



Cornelis Vleeskens : list of publications

This list is not in order of publication its in the order i
picked each title up from the pile some chapbooks
have no publishing name noted in list as "no publishing
title" the rest are by EarthDance Cornelis'
publishing title after Fling there are some by DnD
done in Fitzroy around the early to mid 90's dates of
publication only where it is stated on the publication
and i have rarely described any book they take
up 3 main styles Poetry/Visual Poetry/Ink Brush works.
all books by Cornelis Vleeskens any collaborations will
be noted as "with". and finally this list is surely not complete
pete spence




The Departure Lounge. Post Neo Publications. Melbourne. 1987.
Set Pieces. Mighty Thin Books. Ocean Grove. 1998.
Foreshore. Mighty Thin Books. Ocean Grove. 1998.
50/50. Mighty Thin Books. Ocean Grove.1998.
Garween Heron Songs. Mighty Thin Books. O.G. 1998.
Summer House. Mighty Thin Books. O.G. 1999.
Homage. Mighty Thin Books. O.G. 1998.
Catch. Mighty Thin Books. O.G. 1998.
Salmon Wind. with pete spence. Mighty Thin BOOKS. O.G.  1999.
Big Jolt Funk. Mighty Thin Books. 1998.
Manifesto. Mighty Thin Books. 1999.
A HA. Red Fox Press. Ireland. 2011.
Divertimenti. EarthDance. 2010. Glen Innes.
Sand and Sun Waking. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Gedraag je als een aap in het landschap. with Paul Ritt. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Poissons Savages. with Tim Gaze. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
4 GE( )ICHTEN. No Publishing Title. c. late 1980's.
INKT. No Publishing Title. Cape Paterson.
Candied Eye. with pete spence. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Four Winds. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Naked Dreams. Dutch Poetry in Translation. Post Neo. St.Kilda. 1980's.
Fragments. Earthdance. Glen Innes.
"On the Street Where you Live"/"Rondom de Straten waer ick Liep". No Publishing Title.
De Noorder Wind. (In Dutch) No Publishing Title.
Point Blank. with pete spence. EarthDance.
No Holds Barred. Dutch Poetry. EarthDance. Glen Innes. 2009.
Suite 4 pete. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Field(Flide). EarthDance. 1999?
Ten Years After. CV 23 Nov. 98.
Four Short Fictions. Fling Poetry 1988.
Oblad. with Dirk de Bruyn. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
For a Song. No Publishing Title.
(2X4) Poems (Visual Poems). EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Earth my Faith. EarthDance. Melbourne. 1993.
1970-1980. Open Hand Press. Geelong.
(S)HIVER. 1999.
Papercut. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Stinging Nettles. EarthDance. Glen Innes. 2011.
Improper Sonnets. for Paul Burns. EarthDance. Glen Innes. 2011.
Tete a Tete. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Alpha-Cartography, South by South. with pete spence. Runnawayspoon Press. USA. 2001.
Portal. (Vis/Po). EarthDance. Cape Paterson 1998.
De Ontdekking van Niew Holland. No Publishing Title.
Beyond the Frame. EarthDance. Melbourne. 1993.
Het Gedrang van de Leegte/ The Overwhelming Emptiness. Fling. Melbourne. 1987.
Double Dutch. with Paul Ritt. Fling Poetry. (Edition of 25 copies.)
Night After Night. (Edition of 25.) 1991.
Talen Vervallen. Fling. Edition of 50. 1991.
Ochre Dancer. EarthDance. Cape Paterson. 1999.
Rembrandt's Windmill. EarthDance. Glen Innes. 2011.
"A". EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Please Add Too!!!. Various Collaborators. Open Hand Press. Geelong. 1999.
Echos. No Publishing Title. Cape Paterson.
Score. DnD Press. 2001.
Collapoems. EarthDance.
No Synchro in First. No Publishing Title.
MarketPlace. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Eftal. Artist Book. Edition of 25.
HeatWave. Cape Paterson.
The Sense we Have Left. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Sketches. with Jenni Mitchell. Fling. 1982.
The Final Chapter. Fling Poetry. Melbourne. 1988.
The Huntsman. Joker Press. Cape Paterson (?)
Iommer. Oerdans. (Earthdance)
Cubist Cigars. Cape Paterson.
Triple Bypass. with Tim Gaze & John Crouse. Annabasis/EarthDance. 2003.
Descending a Staircase. No Publishing Title.
Soiled Litigants. with Tim Gaze. DnD Press. 2002.
Musee. No Publishing Title.
Haiku (calligraphy) No Publishing Title.
Tien Gedichen/Ten Poems (Dutch/English) Fling. 1984/5.
PostDuiven. No Publishing Title.
Senses Ajar (Pamphlet) No Publishing Title.
JJA. EarthDance.
Red Dust. No Publishing Title.
Klad-Werk (corrections copy) No Publishing Title.
Spring Rains. EarthDance.
For Love. (Typographic Poem). EarthDance.
+ A.   No Publishing Title.
These Text(D)ualities. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Fancy Free Flight. with Tim Gaze. EarthDance.
Cape Haiku. EarthDance. Cape Paterson. 1997.
Snakes of Fire Rivers of Sand. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
SWASH. No Publishing Title.
Brush Poems. EarthDance.
Utterances. EarthDance. Glen Innes. 2011.
Reindeer Dreaming. EarthDance. 1994.
The EarthDance Summer Collaborations. with Greg Stephens/
      Pul Ritt/ Suzy Kepert/Dirk de Bruyn/ Sharon Hodgson/
      Patrick Alexander/ pete spence.  EarthDance. 1999.
Another Slim Volume. Fling. 1984.
Eagles Nest. with Sharon Hodgson. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
(Narration) for Henri M. & Chr. D.  EarthDance. Glen Innes.
Pause and Effect. with Sharon Hodgson. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
East-SouthEast.  Ars Publications.
Des Formes. No Publishing Title.
Triplets. with Tim Gaze & John Crouse. Telepathine Press. 2004.
Mon.07.08.00. with Tim Gaze. No Publishing Title.
L'Espirit. EarthDance.
10. A selection of Artist Books by Cornelis Vleeskens. Curated by pete spence.
Orange Blizzard. QLD. Community Press. 1981.
Orange Blizzard. (reprint) EarthDance. Glen Innes. 2005.
Air Conditioned Gypsy. (The Tokyo Notebooks). Fling Poetry. 1992.
Salted Herring. Fling Poetry. 1980.
HongKong Suicide. Gargoyle Poets 20. Makar Press. 1976.
CV. PressPress. 2009.
Tree Frog Dreaming. Fling Poetry. 1990.
Een Oogopslag. (handmade hand written) Edition of 1 (?).
Broken Lines. (Images by Paul Ritt) Fling Poetry. Edition of 50.
Through the Eye of the Scissors. J. Elberg. (Translation). Open Hand Press. Geelong. 1999.
Fine White Lines. with Tim Gaze & Michael Basinski. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
Unconscious at Cape Paterson. with Tim Gaze. Annabasis/Xtant. 2002.
On 2 Walkabout. EarthDance.
Learc. No Press Title.
I  E  A  O  U. EarthDance. Cape Paterson.
X<>Bar Gazing. Open Hand Press. Geelong. 1999.
Whoroo-Turn. Cape Paterson.
Olympiad. Cape Paterson. 2000. Edition of 1 (?) Signed.
Jia. (Loose Folder) Issue No. 3 of 5.
Unconscious at Cape Paterson. (2nd printing) Coromandel Valley Books.
T( )T. (Handmade) No.15 of 24. Signed. 1998.
Images. (Handmade) (penciled in in colour) No. 13 of 15. 1991. signed.
Meridies. with pete spence. Look!! Poetry!! Ocean Grove 1998.
Dutch- Australian Broadsheets No.4 Fling Poetry. 1989. Nos. 1/2/3
    in print ready form in pete spence's Archive.
The Wider Canvas. EarthDance. 1996.
Nothing Kept. Brunswick Hill Press. 1986.
The Day The River. UQP.
Sittings For a Family Portrait. Post Neo 1988
15 Various handmade with hand painted covers (1 offs)
Silent Music. A Suite for Theo Kuijpers. EarthDance.
      hand painted covers in Dutch & English. Glen Innes.
South Africa. for Rob Kars. hand painted front cover. Glen Innes.
The Exotic Other. The Portrayal of Aboriginal Culture on
      Australian Postage Stamps & related Philatelic products.
      EarthDance. Cape Paterson. 1999.
INKT. (Set of Artist proofs in covers for the chapbook INKT listed earlier.
Full Moon Over Lumpine Park. Fling Poets 2. 1982.
Sweet Penguin- Linked Verse by Catherine Mair & Patricia Prime
   ink brush work throughout the publication by Cornelis Vleeskens
   chapbook printed August 2000 unknown publisher.









oOo














HENDRIK KOLENBERG



Cornelis


The last time I saw him was October 2011. He was thinner than when I had seen him previously, two years earlier – he seemed somewhat fragile, but looked well enough to me. He made the long journey to Sydney with 2 bars of silver, payment for some of his tachist-calligraphic drawings and collages. He cashed them in with a dealer in the city and came away with about twelve hundred dollars. So Cornelis, a friend of mine Rob Kars and I spent that day, a Friday, in the city.

We walked to the AGNSW where we looked at Bram Bogart’s Day-break together, had a late takeaway lunch/early dinner at Circular Quay and watched Werner Herzog’s Cave of forgotten dreams in a cinema nearby. He noted that Rob and I fell asleep every so often, even though we were both otherwise absorbed by the film. Afterwards we walked from Circular Quay to Central, where Cornelis was staying in a hotel overnight. That evening George Street was like Mammon’s feast with nubile barely dressed young women dashing about. All three of us, well into our 60s, took note of that!

Cornelis had come to Sydney at my suggestion to meet Rob, my closest Dutch friend. Rob had come to stay for about 4 weeks. I had introduced them on the telephone three years before – Cornelis from my place in Sydney, Rob Kars from his in Weert in the southern province of Limburg, Netherlands. It worked a treat. They got on well by phone and soon after were sending one another hand-made cards by post. Meeting up was the next step. Rob had come halfway round the world via China, so it seemed fair to ask Cornelis to make the journey to Sydney. Glen Innes seems further than Holland to me, though Rob would have been up for it, especially after the journey he’d just made.

The next day Cornelis joined us for lunch at home on our back verandah, with my wife and a couple of other friends  – John Philippides and Willemina Villari, both artists. John is a masterly draughtsman, an Alexandrian Greek, who divides his time between his home/studio in the Blue Mountains and his home/studio in his birthplace, Alexandria. Willemina is a sculptor and painter/draughtswoman, born in Holland and married to an Italian. I think he felt at home.

Cornelis had a particular way of looking at you, or so it seemed to me – around rather than through or over his glasses and almost shyly, or was it slyly, with a hint of a smile – amusement, contentment perhaps, or was it his undoubted but idiosyncratic wisdom? That hint of a smile remained somewhat unnervingly in place, whether he was talking or not. He wasn’t given to babbling. It was as if he waited for the right moment to speak, or catch you out. He smoked, drank red wine, took part in conversation, made a number of drawings he gave to everyone and left before dark to catch the train to Central and early next morning, back to Glen Innes.

We again reverted to emailing. His were from Glen Innes public library, a good half hour walk from his small weatherboard house on the outskirts of town. His email address was cvphobia, which suited him perfectly. His letters or emails were distilled and ordered into poems, short and to the point.

Our first contact had also been by telephone, early in 2008. There were numerous telephone conversations before we met some months later in October at his house in Glen Innes. Our friendship grew out of his translations of Dutch poetry – Jan Elburg, Koos Schuur, Bert Schierbeek, Lucebert, Simon Vinkenoog, Karel Appel and others, all major figures in the renewal of Dutch culture post World War 2 – for the catalogue to an exhibition of post-war Dutch art at the AGNSW, Intensely Dutch. His translations seemed effortless, almost spontaneous and entirely convincing. I soon admired him for more than his translations. He was singular in person and poetry. Often his poetry is autobiographical. At times details about his life – words, phrases, entire poems – are in Dutch (his first language and mine) flowing freely into and around his use of English. I have collected whatever I can find of what he has written and he sent me whatever he could spare, including anything new. Before he left that Saturday evening last October, he typed all of Trivial pursuits into my computer, his parting gift, something I value even more now.

[26 May 2012]




-----------------------------------------



ROB KARS




The three of us, “young” men of precariously advanced age, are walking through East Sydney. It is our fate to be immigrant offspring to the end of our days. We are at peace with that. Better still, for years now, we have worn the label “Dutchy” as an honorary nickname. HK, who is an excellent painter, curator, and writer, walks ahead of us. He has to do that. Everywhere and always he is going at his own stiff unbeatable pace to work, even when on holiday. CV and I, RK, lag way behind him. CV, the handicapped beatnik, “excellent retired poet/dadaist from up north”, despite the fact that he left Holland at the tender age of ten, is smoking a dutch style selfrolled fag. He drags his feet a little. His shoes are too big, worn out. But he is a happy man these days. An old lady-friend has bought five of his collage works and paid him in silver bars (which she had unexpectedly inherited). And the first thing he will do once the silver has been cashed, is buy a new decent pair of boots. Me, reasonably capable, lyrical abstract painter from Weert, Netherlands, look at the ground. I like doing that in places I do not visit often. Actually, I do that everywhere, all the time. The most beautiful things, in fact, are mostly just lying around for the taking. Meanwhile CV and I are having a discussion. About zen. Of which we don’t know very much.

“All creatures are as they are, and find their mutual connection” (Zhuang Zi)

I linger to take a photograph of a traffic sign painted on the pavement. It is the internationally renowned man-with-a-hat holding the little pig-tailed girl by the hand. CV waits patiently. H is
higher up the road at the crossroads, also waiting. He looks a little guilty, one hand above his eyes, against the fierce sun. We notice a brightly coloured piece of paper lying on the ground, a magnificent street jewel. “Yes, that’s beautiful, says CV. And then, when I have picked it up and put it in my bag, “but not anymore now. Now we shall have to wait and see what comes of it...”.

Rob Kars 13/6/2012


------------------------



PETE SPENCE


Days and Nights in Glen Innes for Cornelis Vleeskens.


is Glen Innes Time really recyclable?
you wake up and its morning again
the same clouds nested at the compass points
a platter of blue overhead that sometimes lasts
even though you wake at any part of the morning
even after noon has trotted by apace with the wind
you wake nonetheless and don't look at the clock

should we have concern for clocks?
how are they fed? are they too wound up by our noise?
they're everywhere! no matter how many none will
ever make time! its never on hand when you want it
its unknown if it even heeds itself!

and if we saved them from the rust of laziness
in this damp mobile air would we save time
or waste time? there's no time to save i think
i think you should let it go


oOo



PETE SPENCE & CORNELIS VLEESKENS


Collaborations





oOo

  

Salmon Wind


monosyllabic
                     celibacy!
sounds Cyrillic!
            even at this hour!
                                      but!
your overspeak
is a plague!
yet nature is my period!
HAH!
as if the 80's
was like making
a herbal tea
among the plankton
and the RUSH!
or were we both
RUSHing somewhere else!
an else like pursed lips!
can you excuse me
if i throw a forest
a kiss!    even
from the distance
you proffer
given now
it is further
than it now
might be!



[from an issue of  Mighty Thin Books]



oOo






Everyone's Biro.

everyone's biro
has a point!
how else explain
this enormous
amount of exclamation
marking the decease
of "plain song"?

i've just
been isolated
by a plinth!

here a bit of coral
might interfere
but walking into
a bit of marble

sure bruises
interuptus!




oOo



For Guido.

i'd die willingly
for an avacado!
mango mango
ah! a guitarist
without a jube!
a tube minus a tub
a tub without water
and these strings
these strings
are untuned
sing sweetly low chariot
this ride this peace
is everlasting



oOo



If This.


if this is how
our treatment
is metered out
in the broad nuance
of a block of ice
under the weather
like a cloud
hailing a taxi
in a Bangkok breeze
then the Yangtze
Bridge Club begs
for Jenni to add
a line! where's
Jenni? what good year
was that? iced over
with coffee grounds
trimmed by
a caring gardener
and a wayward
shard on an English
crisis amid
the fair mud

flapping like a stiff...
o! just like Jenni (in brief!)

and bulging eyed eyeing
the distant horizontal clouds
eyeing full eyed
in a bloated distance
mister potato stuck
with pin pricks eyes
the colloidal musk



oOo




[notes :
On Sunday, May 27, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Kris : i found these 3 today from the Cape Paterson days
+

Guido is Guido Vermeulin a dude we both knew in Brussels
when i went into his flat the first thing i saw was
a flyer for a reading in Amsterdam by Cornelis!!]

---------------------

Kris Hemensley note :

A few years ago the artist Kevin Lincoln asked me if I knew of any Dutch speakers &/or poets he might be able to suggest to his curator/art historian friend, Hendrik Kolenberg, who was both generally interested but specifically hoping for assistance with translation. I offered the name of Cornelis Vleeskens; Kevin bought a couple of his collections to send to Hendrik. The rest is history : Cornelis worked on the translation of texts & poems by the COBRA poets & artists which are included in Hendrik Kolenberg's catalogue for that major exhibition. He self-published a chapbook with some of the translations; NO HOLDS BARRED (2009). 

-------------------------------------------


--Westgarth, Oz, March 24th, 2013.

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, #21, NEW YEAR 2011 ISSUE

PAUL HARPER

TWO POEMS

*

country life

every evening the same story in silence at the windmill

no more poultry
until the officials bow to the river
on a morning the colour of train tracks
near the stadium where we had that mix up with the tickets

laughter in those twin cavities in a kitchen wall
& a shared taste in literature resolve so much

a watering can reminds us of summer holidays
small ferns beside a fence
concrete cool in a place of scant sunlight
mystery & solitude fusing with the smell of green

thunder or fireworks
on a sunday we can scarcely tell
transcription of the protocol proceeds languidly

for each stroke the lustre of banana leaves & the bouyance of balloons released


oOo

heist


in response to an official notice
a blue hound may be reconfigured as a playful black cat

letter about a coral tree may be classified
unlikely to be assistance

& the eight eccentrics encouraged to no longer linger in the undergrowth at dusk
marvelling at fighter jets

the centre does
however
recognise the attraction of such machines

their velocity

their silhouettes
black against evenings sapphire

in her classic of the inner landscape
our village elder speaks harshly of our recently acquired painting

our latest cargo plane escapes comment


-------------------------------------------------------------------

BERNARD HEMENSLEY


TWO POEMS

*

10-XII-2010

CANDLE FLAMES
GUTTERING
AS IF FANNED
OR IN
GENTLE BREEZE
SHETLAND'S AIRES
IN THE ROOM
HARP PIPE & FIDDLE ETC.
AH!
IT'S THE BREATH
THAT STIRS


oOo

14.XI.2010

CRACKED WINDOWS
RELEASE STEAM &
CONDENSATION.
CAULIFLOWER PICKLES
IN MORNING CHILL.
INSTANT MISO
AND STOVE
FOR WARMTH
WHILE POT SIMMERS
FOR HOURS.
B'FAST RICE CREAM
HEALS.
NO SALTED PLUMS.
SCALLIONS TO GARNISH
LATER ON.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BERNIE O'REGAN [1938-1996]

POEM FOR KRIS HEMENSLEY

Every day you wait for the mail
some times it comes late
ten years late
or never

just "one man's opinion of moonlight"
Retta is silent
you are talking

we go to the galleries
we look for delight
in front of Melbourne university
we wonder if we are getting old


oOo


[Jude Telford sent me this poem ages ago, typewritten on water stained A-4 page; salvaged from Bernie's papers, aftermath of his sad demise.]


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


NICK POWELL

TWO POEMS

*

MAAILMA

You say you 'love the song of currawongs
when they strike up their orchestra'.
Everything is tendrils, special tendrils.

Song is growth; no we are not spared
sentimental formulas
of minimalist photosynth-pop
and acorn percussion. What pomp,

twirling a pencil in the humble world,
or twirling the self, effortlessly.
Perfume on the pencil. Whose?

The future and the frond fan outward.

Maailma: World
Maa (dirt), ilma (air).
Marry me, broadly speaking.

oOo


KUMILY TO COCHIN


In the bus from the highland to the sea
garlands of bougainvillia and marigold
offered to Our Lady of the Highway
glow and swing through fields of tea.

as tired eyes yield to sleep of dream
of gentle scenes more puzzling than art,
so our bodies relax and are vivified
by faith in the invisible and unforeseen.

Looking back, many details are lost,
fine layers of experience shaded,
so that a scene in a life is reduced
to bas-relief: a road, foliage, a bus.

Smoke and mist in the ancient valleys,
your smile on seeing the wide white smile
of the Kerelan girl in the turquoise dress,
or the nun travelling alone. I find my keys

to the many sections of that hasppiness
overlap like clouds, everything touching.

oOo

[from the pamphlet, The True Maps;
horsedrawnpress@yahoo.com.au]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ROB SCHACKNE

THREE POEMS

*

TOWARDS AN AESTHETICS OF BEING HERE
for Will Knox


First, the tunnel metaphor will smile on you too
If the desperate sides be avoided, estrangement
From all that we were never invited to understand;
A sometimes unstately progress through not by
The myriad reasons we have for not being here.

Then, unwelcome, untie that hurt from our own hurt;
There is no minor skirmish that is worth the battle
That lost the war. Anyhow, we’re survivors, not soldiers.
Leave all battles internecine and your self unscathed
As you choose your way carefully through the night.

Then, untouched by insult, chicanery, and deceit
We will at last emerge to daylight on the other side
And looking back…but no, we will never look back
At the unhappiness we did not cause, nor the pain
We did not stop to answer. We were not saints.

(2008)

oOo


IN THE YEAR 2666
for Roberto Bolano

After three wrong turns, a tractor and a flat
You're at The House Of Vanished Writers
After all, that was always your destination
You park your unreviewed car and go right in
Sitting and waiting, smoking and watching
Joe, the Indian, who never could get started
Sophia, who once was beautiful, great shorts
No power to stay long enough on the page
Fred, whose fiction fried like a skillet, killed it
And you, who are merely visiting, get a key
A towel and the schedule of daily readings
Who are these happy people you are thinking
Why do they look at me like that? One part pen
One part the next event, one part is wind
Where did all the vanished writers go?
When did they write their perfect poems
Who said they'd had enough and could leave?
Your room has a limited view of the forest
It is possible the birds will sing there again
Second seating meal is vegetable soup with bread
Dessert is an autumn ice cream you don't remember
Afterwards the word games and the music upset you.

(2010)

oOo


EXILES

It took seven years to build the box
From discarded paper and dreams
As deep as it is wide, at times you forget
Exactly how you decided its dimensions
No candy store, no Chinese restaurants
Many a stained-glass window at the top
Everything is blue when the sun pours in
Deli, record store, a massage parlour
Open all night, oddly buzzing, no customers
There's a very good small library
Of books you always meant to study
Furniture copied from another tidy book
A fireplace that heats but doesn't burn
A few students were allowed in once
They dusted off their prints and fled
On the inside an ornate exit with a sign
That reads Don't Leave Till You're Ready
Next to it a fire axe, a cheap suit on a hook
Today that box is almost empty
Outside is a sunset and birds.


( 2010)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

PETE SPENCE


A GO BY, for Jack Collom


ute with 2 dogs
out back goes by

blue ute
with roll bars

2 birds go by
sans ute!

car does u turn

white car
white car
white car

flaming red flash!

turquoise station wagon
through the trees

the trees aren't moved!

floods in central N.S.W.
roads closed ac/dc!

how many ways
can you close a road?

Jack Collom goes by
looking for the elusive
red car!


oOo

PETE SPENCE/CORNELIS VLEESKENS

from The Glen Innes Collaborations

*

LADY DAY OR A MASS IN MORRIS MAJOR


no!
i don't
think i've met
Agnes Day!

but i know
her mum!
Doris.

didn't she
have a sister
Gloria?

G-l-o-r-i-a

no!
that's a burger
playing Tesla!

Kyrie & Kyrie!

is you lisping?

no!

ahhh! amen
to that!


oOo


THE JACK


figs can fly!

flush!

that's straight!

i have five
sad forests!

i'll raise you
ten matchsticks

must be a pyro hand?

C U

that's a soft bet

chips of down!

fold!


oOo


CORNELIS VLEESKENS

4 Poems

*

LETTER TO VINCENT
for Billy Jones

tiger tiger
old stone house
creeping vines
stony rises

floaters belch

keep those sheep
off the road Velsen!!

Livingstone stumbles
into the Stanley camp
grass orchids
open to the sky

as we cross
Mary Smokes Creek
a blue iris goes by

oOo


THE 98 FLOOD

blue heron out of his depth
egret pale and wan
weeks now and no let up

road closed

moorhen clings to her nest
as it bobs and eddies
(as in whirlpool)
ochre waters rage

road closed (bis)

high and dry
on the verandah
a cheese platter
dolmades avocado
a Chemin des Papes

red cedar floats by

dead cow dead cow
bloated sheep

oOo


JACK'S POEM

the kitchen midden
shows the remains
of a great feast

blood drips
from the seabird's beak
red cargo goes by

the ancestors smile

oOo


QUIET IN MY HAT


line dangling from my big toe
misty mooring dry red

blue whale goes by

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PETER (FREDDY) TIERNAN

Launch speech for Lee Fuhler's We Pale Inhabitants (Earthdance, 13 Jones St., Brunswick, Vic. 3056),
at Collected Works Bookshop, December 15th, 2010.

One of my many distinctions in the literary world is to be the first to publish a poem of Lee Fuhler's. That was in about 1993 when I was bringing out a folded double sided A3 of poems called Poetry on Paper. There were fewer readings then but with bigger attendances and I always thought they doubled as drinking clubs. Less so these days. Much has changed, many people alive then are now dead. Or not so dead but remembered and incorporated into our work, sometimes without our knowledge or permission.

I think Lee was off the sauce by then -- there was something about the intent with which he read -- so I approached him and, I think this is the technical term, solicited a poem from him.

I've brought it today to give back to him -- kind of like the completion of a circle but in a bigger
circle. Before the poems in this book, or most of them, Lee didn't write for some years. So you can get better, but it doesn't get any easier.

You wonder what happens to poets when they go home -- if they get to their desks -- how they drive their minds -- if they can reach into their hearts -- what they can face -- what they can't -- nights alone -- reading poems out of a book -- or dreaming at an empty window -- it's so slow and the notes are so far apart.

The first line of the first poem Lee gave me was : "your heart it is a thief". The final line of one of the poems in this book is "we're only poor tenants and here for a while". I did like that first line but these days he writes fuller, with more depth like the stones are watching. With these poems you can read a line and see how strong everything is, what things are invested with -- you can see everything in the light of a huge apricot -- the man who's wrestled with his blues can split the wind

-- everything is burning -- we're losing it all
what can we do but sing.


[at Collected Works Bookshop, December 15th, 2010. Other poets supporting Lee Fuhler, reading from his new collection, were Ian McBryde, Lyn Boughton, & Lish Skec (who also read for Kerry Scuffins who couldnt attend).]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CYRIL WONG


Excerpts from Satori Blues

*

What fails to be reined in

pushes out, freezes, breaks off—crashes.

No telling who might place a chunk

in their mouth. (Who wouldn’t pay to watch them

taste it?) Some protrusions merge with air, but

not before melting a little, flowing everywhere

within the self, hardening in places it never

meant to make a home.


oOo

Fields of emptiness between the wild arc

of electrons and every atom—a vacuum not

nothing after all, but the purest form

of something like compulsion that fixes

us into being, stopping the self from

coming, no, flying everywhere apart.


oOo


What we talk about when we talk about loss

are the catastrophes: walls collapsing

and the terrible flood. What we forget is what

we fail to detect: the line opening like an eye

from one end of a dam to another;

a startled look and the averted vision

at a wrong word at yet another wrong time.

Loss is an ever-growing thing. The same

is true of how we win.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Typed-up the 2nd & 3rd January, 2011. NOT the Boy's Own Edition of Poems & Pieces, simply how the pieces fell together at this time! --so saith yr holidaying ed!]

oOo

CONTRIBUTORS :

PAUL HARPER, a friend of Collected Works Bookshop, has poems recently in Roomers magazine (Melbourne).

BERNARD HEMENSLEY, previously published here; has revived his Stingy Artist small press (85, Goldcroft Road, Weymouth, Dorset, DT4 OEA, UK) after many years hibernation. Hot off the press are a bunch of ephemera including a Franco Beltrametti fold-out. Welcome back bro!

BERNIE O'REGAN, fourteen years since the photographer/super 8 filmmaker/poet died in Melbourne. See index for Archive of Miscellaneous Critical Writings #11 (7/4/07) re- K.H.'s Introduction to the Archive of Enigma screening of B O'R's films (June 15,'98); also Archive, #10 (24/6/07) re- K.H.'s Words for Bernie : Eulogy... (15/11/96)

NICK POWELL is living in Brisbane after some years overseas, mainly Finland. In 2007 his chapbook Of Fallen Myth was published by the Poets Union (Sydney). The poems here are from The True Maps (Horse Drawn Press,'10), mostly written in Finland.

ROB SCHACKNE born in New York, came to Australia in 1971. We made his acquaintance via the Bookshop in the 90s. In China for a decade, currently Shanghai, where he's published a couple of collections; Snake Wine ('06), Where Sound Goes When It's Done ('10). His self-portrait reveals, "He listens to The Grateful Dead. He claims that he can read Shakespeare in the original. Some days he thinks there is nothing easy about the Tao." His blog is The Tao That Can Be Named, www.borisknack.blogspot.com

PETE SPENCE & CORNELIS VLEESKENS have appeared in Poems & Pieces before (see the index). They're both active in the Mail Art internationale. Their most recent publications are (P.S.) Sonnets (Footura press, Germany) & (C.V.) Divertimenti (Earthdance, Glen Innes).

PETER (FREDDY) TIERNAN is one of the Melbourne scene's true gentlemen. Co-edited with Rex Buckingham, From the Rochester Castle anthology (1988), and his own Poetry on Paper (1989-93). Included in Raffaella Torresan's Literary Creatures anthology (Hybrid Press, 2009).

CYRIL WONG lives in Singapore where he edits Soft Blow poetry journal. One of a group of Singaporean poets who've made substantial connections with Australia over the past 10 years. Has published 8 poetry collections & 1 book of tales. Co-authored with Terry Jaensch, Excess Baggage & Claim (Transit Lounge, Melbourne, '07). Satori Blues, from which the poems here are taken, is published by Soft Blow (2011). Website, http://www.cyrilwong.org

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, # 20, December, 2010

MAR BUCKNELL


4 POEMS


*

lichen on headstones

even the marking

of death

makes life possible

necessary



*


the sky can kill you

laugh back



*


irony is lost

on the iron



*


o

brave new word



*

[reprinted from MINIKINS, 2010 (PO Box 1497, East Victoria Park, WA 6981)]


-------------------------------------------------------------------------


GLENN COOPER


4 POEMS


Remembering Jerry Hall in Brian Ferry’s Let’s Stick Together Video Clip
(after Paulus Silentiarius)


I was eight years old in 1976.
I had never seen lips
so plump and red,
eyes so inviting,
hair so
lustrous. The way
she moved, cat-like
and purring, sashaying
across the stage …
If she had plucked
just one strand
of that golden hair
and tied my wrists
with it, even at such
a tender age,
I’d have pleaded
with her
never to release me.


oOo


Second-Hand


In the second hand record store I sift
through row after row of dusty LPs,
pausing from time to time to consider
a name scrawled lazily in blue ink,
a coffee cup stain, a trace of ancient
lipstick smeared across a dog-eared
copy of Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits.
It is in these places we discover the
true history of the world, of ourselves,
the way things were and in some fashion
will always be, though the discs
of plastic have now turned to metal,
and the people with whom we shared
these songs are vanished or
changed, our emotional landscape
often untended, like scratched vinyl, hissy
and unlistenable, as we ride the eternal
turntable on its circular orbit
into the dust of all our tomorrows.


oOo


Ashtray


The house grown quiet and still,
a single butt of a cigarette now rests
in the smooth rut of a glass ashtray
filled with dozens of other such butts,
this one still smoldering, sending
its tiny but significant plumes
into the atmosphere already heavy
with loss and departure, like a wispy
trail of vapor behind a jet aircraft
high overhead, its occupants weary
with thoughts of arrival and destination.


oOo


After The Power Has Gone Out
(for Ronald Baatz)


Huddled under
the avalanche of covers
he reads by flashlight
in a storm of ice and wind,
the electricity gone
the same way
as his dear old Dad –
still with us somehow
but no longer visible
as photons or
however it is light
appears to us as
we go about our sad
and inexorable ways,
our days habitual
like the seasons,
the earth turning slowly
in its starry grave.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MICHAEL FITZGERALD-CLARKE


A Quadraphonic Whisper


Inside the inside, the world flutters, and eyes close.
Each search is an appeal to mindfulness.

Browning and Patmore walk arm in arm from the earth.
All the flowering plants speak purely, gracefully.

Our genes carry our imagination along the long diagonals.
The unreal duties lovers assume for a while develop, then fade.

It is in the smaller things – governments, wars, religions –
we get lost. Let the promise of a single fleeting breaker

dying in the shallows be reason enough.

*

“An instant of pure love is more precious to God and the soul, and more profitable to the Church than all other good works together, though it may seem as if nothing were done.”
-- St. John of the Cross

Her soul is engaged to the highest cloud, and when
she moves, its aimlessness becomes otherworldly.

How do we salute the inspired upper reaches?
Surely, as the sun drops from the afternoon,

nothing is more precious than our umbilical thread
to voice, to words that pass through walls

and give images of those walls, for, little by little,
shapes of life compose, troubling a soil

in the throes of divorcing bedrock for the sky.

*

“No great art, no really effective ethical teaching can come from any but such as know immeasurably more than they will attempt to communicate.”
-- Coventry Patmore

I know an instant, then I am gone.
I learn from the coldness of fires.

I am an animal, and I am the flame of the sun.
I take the air, and fashion it.

I use opium, and marijuana, and prepare for sailing.
I peel the arms and legs from my body.

I own knives and sexual desires.
I beg for the status of language.

Ask me, and I will courteously reduce these things.

*

The lovers are gentle. Goodbye, friend,
the plane is on the tarmac. Watch the seas below,

and believe. Believe in the driftwood and shells,
believe in change, growth, the poor courageous holiness

we all somehow sense through computer and TV screens.
In the hall are all the shoes ever worn.

The accompanying souls say what they said before:
be aware, tolerate, give each special situation a value.

Why are we so occluded we starve our insight?


------------------------------------------------------------------------


CAROL JENKINS


POST


Galileo says people are like paper;
would I dispense with 'are' or 'like'?

Last life I was a silver fish
this time I took to ink,

and when the post floats in
with a letter, an elegant sketch -

simple paper, complex idea, Oh I
praise reading's merit, to deliver

an afterlife, a parallel, a re-incarnation
a vicarious sense of being someone &

somewhere else, in here and now
while holding nothing but cellulose

perhaps a gram of ink, a slip of graphite,
a lined page, headed 'Dear Carol'.



----------------------------------------------------------------------


CORNELIS VLEESKENS


4 POEMS


PARASOL

I soar on paper wings

it was never
about your sister!!

I shuffle my feet
on the doorstep
of the Julian Ashton
School of Art

it is 1968

your lines are smooth


oOo


ANOTHER DAY


tomorrow
is the feast of All Saints

today
it's a Lavazza torino
and a walk
up the deserted main street

I'm visiting
the 18th century
with Schmitt
Fodor Meder and Wilms

fried chicken
choy sum on rice

during a break in the music
Sri Lanka demolish Australia

marinated feta
kalamata olives
sundried tomatoes

a fine
Boorolong Road
2006 Shiraz


oOo



HONGKONG INTERLUDE


linen wash
never smelled so sweet:
hung on bamboo poles
high above
this polluted Kowloon street

congee in the alley
for a hearty breakfast

Ezra loved the intricacy
of the Chinese character
almost as much as Michaux
but I still
can't make out the signs

avoid the snakes
on Fuk Wa
and settle for roast duck

Kwan Yin
the Goddess of Mercy
smiles from her niche

I leave Bronwyn
to her family on the island:
it'd never come to anything anyhow

out on the harbour
a junk passes
red and orange painted prow


oOo


COMPOSITIE: ROOD/WIT/BLAUW


Dopper and Vermeulen
resume their stoush

a bit like Mondriaan
employing a Toorop
to block the draught
from a broken window

the public
is momentarily bemused
then walks on

Kronos ticks time
the rain (as always) the rain
lightning on the ridge
a black Opel cruises by

always shop at Ivens
for your photographic needs

Piet Hein sets out
to capture the Silver Fleet:
the cupboard is bare
and energy costs are on the rise

tap
taptap tap


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTRIBUTORS :

MAR BUCKNELL; Perth spoken-word poet. His inter-media performance includes The History of Glass (in 2008) featuring his poems, Alan Boyd's soundscapes & Stuart Reid's live drawing. This was the sequel to Unawares, performed in 2000 at the Artrage festival. Minikins & other chapbooks available from the author at P O Box, 1497; East Victoria Park, W A,, 6981. Contact : marbucknell@gmail.com
GLEN COOPER, MICHAEL FITZGERALD-CLARKE, CAROL JENKINS & CORNELIS VLEESKENS have all appeared in Poems & Pieces previously. These are all recent writings.
Long may their poetry prosper!


oOo

DIVERTIMENTI : VLEESKENS, BELTRAMETTI, CALDWELL, LEBER, SPENCE

Why wouldnt I admit it? Bored, irritated, enervated by the whole biz --what John Forbes, amplifying the Sydney/Melbourne, 1970s, 'new poetry' discussion about the mainstream, called "talented earache"! Then again, as one good poem doesnt make a summer so one bad poem doesnt herald winter. Yet it speaks volumes of one's expectation for poetry that bad writing (and I hasten to qualify : in one's own opinion, thus disposition as well as the particular education undertaken in service of the art) can cause more misery than an inadequate menu or perpetually late train.
The more important complaint is not being able to see the poems for the poetics (or less --for the method of their construction). In my head I sound-off like that 70s discussion & rail against the sound of squeaky clean construction & its inevitable decorum, regardless that some of my own (particularly '90s) production is pronged on the same indictment!
And then, out of the blue, the universe deals a delightful hand --Grant Caldwell's glass clouds, Michelle Leber's The Weeping Grass, Pete Spence's Sonnets, Cornelis Vleeskens' divertimenti. Or do I simply wake up on the correct side of the bed? (Surely I dont have to explain that!)

A first impression of clarity of thought & expression, as I skimmed Caldwell's new collection, had me imagining a poetry of wisdom. And the image (or proposition) was still in my mind as I read Leber's poems, that they were knowing & wise. For example, regarding the latter, the gleaming blade of the line which introduces her poem, The Boonwurrung Coast, located at Cape Paterson (coincidentally where Cornelis Vleeskens hung out for many years) --"We let all things take form in the morning light."-- is capable of cutting through anything, including the taxonomy & imagery of sea-birds & flora let alone hints of initiation into shamanistic mysteries. And the triple repetition of the pregnant phrase "In the best part of May" (in the poem of that name), is similarly almost independent of the narrative (however brilliantly inhabited by the anthropomorphised persona telling its creation tale).
In Leber, the gainliness of that combination of scientific & perceptional language evokes authority. Local Barometer, for example : "Port Philip Bay is quicksilver in a glass. / Grey beryllium dust and copper sun-shards rise above waves. / A wind-whip of a baton conducts in tricky 7/8 time. / Ordinarily, a sea-gust's libretto is sung from a silver gull, / and now a gannets' gale-force chorus carves sandstone. / Within this capsule - held up by vertical cliffs / - an interior spring prevents a cloud's collapse. / The weight of water once floating in Torricelli's tube, / now scummed on a pollution-meniscus. / As a desert licks a city's hem-line, / fever rises in pacific oceans, shifts moisture to the equator; / flash-flooding in the north, yet our backyard is cinder / - tomorrow, horizon's axe will swing at noon."
No doubt these are crafted poems --they had to have been carved & chivvied to make their particular density, and a long way from what I'm going to say about Cornelis Vleeskens... But I'm being led to contradictory propositions : firstly, that what she has to say calls the tune; secondly, that her keen observation imposes veracity regardless of subject-matter. One thing for sure : no ho-hum in Michelle Leber's Weeping Grass (Australian Poetry Centre, 2010)...

As I've flagged, something of the same's entailed in Grant Caldwell's glass clouds (Five Islands Press, 2010). The tone of 'something being said' emanates from sufficient poems to impress authority. Not the old literary gravitas (no matter 'made new') but the conjunction of writing and spoken-word's well oiled tongue. From the outset let's insist Caldwell isnt casual however relaxed --the relaxation with syntax, that is, which is the crux of modern English-language poetry, --allowing then its objectors to be eccentric rather than reactionary (except for the vanguard camp, censorial to the last). Plain-speaking, however, is only one of the founding twins; the other never ditched the richer dictionary. Thus the double spring & thrust of 20thCentury & on's poetry. Caldwell's stepping-off from that rung doesnt yet qualify as construction --it's still utterance, more or less (the how it is, the what happened). And maybe it is 'irony' which distinguishes him from numerous other common speakers, and most of them unheralded --as Vleeskens is, for example --not that he's bitching : equanimity rhymes in divertimenti with wine & good music, and what more would one want?
Further to 'wise' : as though ancient Chinese hermit or mendicant poet...! Maybe it was the haiku-like poems in the centre of glass clouds (though that's 'Japanese') as well as his serious meditations on perception (necessarily equating phenomenal experience & language representation --"the window of the past is complete / but you are blind, or a blind") --which compelled the impression. Not to say subsequent reading disabused it --more, that the amount of distress also gathered there revoked the semblance of resolution. In Melbourne, though, as any capital of the Western world, where else does wisdom lie than in the tension of normal attachment & its desired opposite? Caldwell's erstwhile persona of the wry humorist (open his last book, Dreaming of Robert de Niro (FIP, '03), at random for any example) is perhaps succeeded here by the poet following doubt's philosophical trail to a halfway house of serenity (if one accepts as influence two of these poems' dedicatees, Derrida & Claire Gaskin).
Caldwell's tour de force is the hypnotic across the sea, which begins "the sea comes / across itself / here it comes / across itself / see it coming / it comes and comes / across itself / it keeps coming / it never stops", continuing in like fashion for a further 35 lines. It is a reiteration of the fact of sea --of 'the sea' as an event --which succeeds in summoning sea's ceaseless movement whilst rendering each wave's singularity, and the poet's observation of it a definitive exhileration!

Reading Cornelis Vleeskens' divertimenti on random days (Earthdance, 2010), has me thinking of Franco Beltrametti, as occasionally I do : almost met, courtesy of Tim Longville & John Riley, who'd advised that Franco, our fellow Grosseteste Review contributor, would be visiting London in '71 --or was it shortly before the Hemensleys returned to Melbourne in '72? --but that was cancelled. Any meeting in the flesh was forever thwarted by his sudden death in 1995. He remains an exotic correspondent, then, from the golden age of hand & typewritten letters, always missed now as though a friend.
And Vleeskens' book instantly recalls Sperlonga Manhattan Express, an international anthology edited by Beltrametti (Scorribanda Productions, San Vitale, Switzerland, 1980), because of the A-4 / 210-297mm page size & the visual content --Franco's pics from all hands & lands (e.g, P. Gigli's photo of the Berrigans, poems by Koller, Raworth, Gysin, Whalen postcard/cartoon, J Blaine, G D'Agostino, et al); Cornelis' own montage, drawings, calligraphy, typography --the same mail-art internationale, Fluxus, neo-Dada style more readily recognized from Pete Spence's affiliations & practice --particularly relevant here because of the latter's regular appearance in the divertimenti.
Vleeskens & Beltrametti are both Europeans who've crucially intersected with the anti-formal (looser, casual) English-language poetry (are they 'casualties' then!), especially the post WW2 Americans, progeny of Pound & Williams, New York, San Francisco, the West Coast, at a time when Europe was reaffirming its own liberatory tradition (Dada, Surrealism & on) &, similarly, opening to new worlds. And because they're not British or North American or Australian, except by adoption, their European origins & references are never out of mind.
Not an exact match, by any means --but somewhere along the line they've both decided to riff on life & not on literature, though there is a literature of just that sort of thing, and a life that contains literature, music, painting, etc. But theirs is another reminder of the efficacy of the un-made, journal-esque writing, --as clear & direct as we reconstruct the Ancient Chinese & Japanese to be, and whose transparency doesnt necessarily prefer the naive to the esoteric or the well-known to the uncommon (take the music Vleeskens listens to daily &, therefore, records in his communiques --or his philately habit or the breadth of his correspondence, all noted).
Beltrametti's poem The Key might be credo for Vleeskens too :

What was well started shall be finished. / What was not, should be thrown away.
Lew Welch, Hermit Poems.

1 ) the place & the season : winter
2 ) somebody (myself) right here : real & unreal
3 ) what is he doing & what's going on in his head
4 ) how & why is he saying it
5 ) to somebody else (you) elsewhere
something happens?
the circle (real & unreal)
isnt closed

[27/1/72]

--published in Face to Face (Grosseteste Review Books, 1973), the blurbs for which by Gary Snyder, Cid Corman, Claude Pelieu, Adriano Spatola, Giulia Niccolai & Guillaume Chpaltine are fair snap of his American/European compass.
Context & correspondence, as in O'Hara, Berrigan, Phil Whalen of course, are vital here in distinguishing such notes & exclamations from the bagatelle they might otherwise be --and Jeremy Prynne's terrific comment on O'Hara jumps to mind, that unlike New York's "art gallery nympholepts", he "always has that pail of serpents in view" --: the poet's obligation, as felt, to be right here, to tell how & what it is without literary diversion, the further extent of which is selling-out, blunting if not losing the existential point. (Echoing Olson's Human Universe suit for the poem as 'one of Nature's things', Ray Di Palma hazards, "a poem is one of the almost successful / forces of nature", --in the 3rd of one of Language Poetry's more beautiful sequences, Territory (from Numbers & Tempers, Selected Early Poems, 1966-86; Sun & Moon, '93), which begins, "the desperado / and his abacus / in utopia" --the perfect cartoon for what I'm getting at?! --but that project was performed within /refined writing, albeit a stepping-up of the casual, and isnt the minstrelsy of the memorandum with which I'm ever besotted!)

Divertimenti : to amuse himself & his friends --to divert & be diverted... Diverted from what? Old cliche : the bind of daily life. But hardly, since it's all this poetry's made of. His note : "These divertimenti originally appeared as individual leaflets and were written for the poet's own amusement and that of the handful of friends who were lucky enough to receive the odd one in the mail or at a poetry reading during the last two years of his life on the Victorian coast... he now lives a totally different existence on the NSW Northern Tablelands."
How would you know? His latest Earthdance chapbook, Sandals in camel (drawings & poems), is surreal as narrative & peppered with elsewhere's place names & distinctions (New York, Parisian, Berlin, Belgian, Catalan, Japanese, Thai, Italian etc), persuading one of his long assumed cosmopolitan ambit. Interesting inference though --'texts' of the life as lived versus 'poems' (importantly, formed in the cross-wires of Dutch & English).
An earlier collection, Ochre Dancer (Earthdance, '99), has the same atmosphere & tone of divertimenti or better said, the divertimenti are cut from his familiar cloth differing only in the attitude of making or framing.

That's the discussion then, in the blur of any such distinction these days... Bits of life (titles & notes of musical recordings, books, lists of food & drink bought & consumed, incoming mail) intersect with thoughts, observations, conversation.
Recalling Kath Walker (Oodgeroo of Noonucull)'s admonition not to appear like a preacher or a politician, Cornelis muses, "Sometimes I wanted to PREACH // But now I just want to share / some of the ordinary things / in the days of a retired poet..."
Diversions from the notion of retirement? Retirement from poetic ambition (craft & career)? I'd identify with that myself. Breaking the cast but keeping one's hand in, and surprising oneself when something more poem than antidote happens along. The list/letter/journal poetry of our time makes it harder to distinguish source from artefact, but found or made they provide as many pleasures as there are days.

"Ah! a new month!
So I turn the calendar to March
A Corneille arial landscape
looking like a cross between
Mondriaan's sketch of a jetty
jutting into North Sea waves
and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri

The calendar was published
for Corneille's 70th birthday
11 years ago but I still
flip over each month
to show that not all days are the same"

Divertimenti is a book which can be taken up anywhere. It invites flicking because of the open-endedness of its narrative.

"Find an image
of the sun's atmosphere
in The Nature of the Universe
by Fred Hoyle (1950)
so reach for Catherine de Zegher
Untitled Passages by Henri Michaux
hardback catalogue
of the exhibition at
The Drawing Center, New York, 2000

& put on an old vinyl recording
of Peter Sculthorpe's Sun Music #1
for Orchestra (1965)

The sun sets at 5-58

Broodje haring
broodje kaas
en 'n zure bon

Enjoy a glass or two of red
& the clear sound of Marion Verbruggen
playing airs from van Eyck's
Der Fluyten Lust-Hof "


So many dates & times of day, month, year, but the book is always written in present tense, and a sense of the present, in which historical time is subsumed, pervades. All times in diverimenti are concurrent; even the different places defer to the here of Vleeskens' whereabouts.
Despite it being a kind of 'in-lieu of writing' (an 'in-lieu-of-writing writing'?), possessing the light touch of genial conversation & a journal's talking-to-oneself, it also teases one as a discourse on time & place, & of poem as its own place where, paradoxically, its own mercuriality might be traced.

Unsurprisingly, much of this has been the preoccupation of divertimenti's fellow classical & modern music afficianado Pete Spence --typically recalled by Vleeskens at one point, "I think up these lines / while walking home / after putting Katherine / on the 6.37 a.m. bus for Melbourne / but have to wait to write them / till the telephone wakes Pete at 10.35 // My pen & paper are on the desk / in the guestroom where he snores on"...
Spence's Sonnets (a co-production of Karl-Friedrich Hacker's Footura Black Edition, Germany & New South Press, Kyneton, Australia; limited edition of 50, 2009) have been with me throughout these reflections. Sonnet 9 is a good example:

" walking Planck's constant in a red shift?
great day! upwind the day winds down
squares of light are thrown about
should i feel ok now that yesterday
is the subject of these poems? better
to be quick about it like a shadow
taking shade from today's sun! when
will i have room where there's room
where i can roam variously & hang
my tantrums & other guests?
the pushbike's 15 minutes in the frame!
its the end of the terror of Perrier fever!
a mullet sidles through the air
& i'm stunned by its flight! "

Riffing off life or literature? Seems to me it's a perfect blend of voice & reference, where perfection refers to an individual's inimitable register, in this case Spence's naturalization of reference, the opposite of ornamentation, of literary embellishment. It's all become as particular as experience, and 'all' are the prime sources he's so kind to append : Ted Berrigan, Laurie Duggan, Peter Schjeldahl, plus Forbes, Satie, Beckett, Shakespeare... All adds up to "Spence"!

Looking now for the perfect conclusion I find this from near to the 'end' of divertimenti :

" That photo of Peter-Jan Wagemans
makes him look like
a well-fed Vinkenoog from the sixties
In his liner notes
he comes across
as didactic & conceited

I pull on my walking-boots
& listen to Het Landschap (1990)
played by Tomoko Mukaiyama on piano
It is not the landscape I see around me
It is not any dutch landscape I recall

He states it is the landscape
of his music - but he is wrong

It is the landscape of my writing"

Boom-boom!

------------------------------------------------------------------
[16-8-10 / 18-9-10]
Kris Hemensley

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, #16, February, 2010

SERAPH BE


LOVE, LAUGHTER AND LIGHT


I dream of Jeanie..Major Nelson in black and white.
I dream of Jeanie naked in her timeless bottle..
washed up in Barbara Eden's backyard.
I dream of Larry Hagman..old and tormented by
nightmares of J.R.'s assassination.
Jeanie immortal for the ages..
bewitched with Bewitched..jealous of Samantha Stevens
and her life as wife and mother, two radiant women
subservient to a fifties mirage..galactic time-travel,
stellar avenues of infinite delight, pale to a life
in the burbs with the love of a good man.
Poor Jeanie..the bubble-head of blink and wink..
Tony hedging bets, lame to the core..obsessed with
flight paths, blind to the bottle rocket orbiting
his living room.
I dream of Jeanie..of Aladdin and Ali Baba..the buried
treasure of childhood midday movies..of pirates and
exotic shores. I dream of Tony and Rodger secretly gay..
using Rodger's place for hapless rendezvous..poor Jeanie
without a clue.
All the world's a stage of faceless celluloid wishing,
boxed lives of sixties re run tv.
I dream a heaven of Jeanies..a sanctuary of Samanthas..
a generation of Tonys..a swag of Darrens..peace to all..
blissful delight to children..wistful Arabian nights.
I dream of Jeanie and Samantha walking hand in hand..
dream from within..imploding in showers of love,
laughter and light..

(1998)

----------------------------------------------------------------------


GLENN COOPER


RIMBAUD'S VALISE

I am afraid to open Rimbaud's valise for fear of what it might contain. It lies there silent as a stone, a museum-piece from another world, tempting us. Heart thumping, I run one pink fingertip along the metal fastener with all the nervous intensity of a teenage boy struggling to unclasp his girlfriend's bra on the back seat of a car. The valise does not respond, does not groan in anticipation. I examine more closely the fastener, observe the rust that has long ago begun its relentless encroachment. Some of it has rubbed off on my finger - the same process, I imagine, that liberated Rimbaud first from his leg and then from his life. I wipe it off on my shirt. I want to open the valise; my hands rest on the sides as though on the shoulders of a dear friend whose eyes are full of the vast melancholy of departure. Already the rust has penetrated my shirt, burning a hole over my heart that roughly approximates the shape of Africa. I realize there is no need to open Rimbaud's valise.


oOo

HEAT

Didn't someone once say that if you don't want to drown you must become like the ocean? There's no use talking about the heat in the desert - it becomes you, you it. Resistance is futile, even for Rimbaud, alchemist and seer. But what did he expect to find when he came out here? A new life? A new identity? Certainly a new climate. Heat. Then, after eleven years in the cauldron, he is back at the farm in Roche, leg gone, spirit mutilated. It is only the heat of north Africa that can cure him, he believes. Heat: the same thing that brought him to this sorry state shall be the thing that heals him. It is a strategy that only Rimbaud could entertain. On his boyhood bed he lies, loyal sister Isabelle tending his every whim, the cancer spreads through the wreck of his body like ink poured slowly onto a clean sheet of paper. Maybe he regales her with stories of strange people in strange lands. Maybe he plucks sadly a melancholy melody on an Absyssinian harp, his childhood dreams of adventure, of a pure and astonishing new world, obliterated! - his drunken boat sunken, gathering barnacles like tumours in some cold, dark sea.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CAROL JENKINS


BURN THE FLOOR
(Burn before Eating or Burn't Offerings)

Written for the occasion of Julie & Moray McDonald's Burns Night
23 January 2010



Coming up the road

If a Moray, met a motor
coming up the road -
if a Moray raced a lorrie
and a few red lights -
would a copper book a Moray
or would he vanish straight from Sight?


Till the tyres gang flat

Oh his love is like a red, red bike
that's newly bought in June
Oh his loves are really two red, one white
that sweetly spin in tune

How fare thy wheels, my only loves
how fare thy brakes and gears
Oh I will love thee still fair bike
Until some time mid next year


Right gude-willie -- waught
Or the haughty overdraft

Should olden debts be forgot
In any agency, or bought or sold
or traded on, or left unsecure to go to pot?

Oh here's a block, it's Bessemer
the mortgagee cant sleep
a loan's a cup of kindness
with crack that always leaks.


A Lousy sonnet

All impudence, the louse may sleep
in Melbourne nights on dames hats
in Toorak street, but if they raced
our lad would place a bet, perhaps, upon it


Scotch Eggs

Let other nations raise daft chickens
that peck at corns, we start from scratch
our good scotch egg is boiled
and meated shortly after it is hatched.

So drink to Scotch eggs
that fill the wame, clad in crumbs
humble ovals, first friend of the whisky keg.


To Old McDonald's Clocks


The McDonald's terr-
Orr souse
Clicks and ticks
And teams with clocks
Some second hand
Most, alarming, a set of pendulous
Feckless old timers
Waiting for a Burn-ish rhymer.


To Our Julie's Haggis

Our Julie's rushed it
From the shop
Chopped its tiny feet off
Squeezed its neck
Full out of breath
And filled its heart
To treat us.

As handsome is the Haggis picker
So Handsome is the pudding
Go eat your fill of this good paunch
Just don't ask what's in it.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


ROBERT LLOYD


Three poems

*


ONE THING I ASK FOR

One thing I ask for, one thing I hope -

To live in your house, all the days of my life -

To behold your loveliness

every morning in the light.


Hear my voice, when I speak -

Be gracious and answer me. I wait only for you.

Without faith it's unthinkable -

without hope I wont see your face.


With joy in my heart. Whom should I fear?

My singing is all for you - my playing is gifted too -

I'm speaking in your voice.

Your presence is with me now.


[based on Psalm 27]


oOo

DAFFODIL DREAM


It's dusk in Paris, and the flower sellers in the old market
Are packing up for the day.

As they hose down the walkways,
The wet smell of daffodils, carnations and roses
Fills the air.

What luck!
They are giving away bunches of daffodils
To passers by.
I gratefully receive mine,
And wonder how long these vendors
Have been giving away flowers at this hour!

[8/11/04]


oOo

I GAVE MY RABBI


I gave my Rabbi a Leonard Cohen CD

which he plays in his car.


He called me while driving to thank me

and give me a blessing.


oOo

PSALM

Hear my prayer
listen to my song
I am in despair
from days of grief.

Gone are the times
of satisfaction in the ways
of darkness.
My hope is for an opening!

My voice rises up
like a candle flame
searching for your support.
Be with me now,
Be with me in my
time of need!

[2003]


-----------------------------------------------------------------------


PETE SPENCE


Sonnet: Flat Evening Surface

long into a flat evening surface
the depths are in focus a supermarket
trolley under some bushes
glints in streaks of moonlight
through breaks in storm clouds
the air alive as a strong breeze
comes around corners straightens up
like water under a bridge
a rumble in shadow after the flash
the muggy aftermath as the breeze rests
hot & cold you mix them to have a good shower
the moon comes out as the sky clears
the storm recedes indifferent
over the rust of the future

[2/1/2010]


oOo


The Rocks

i snip then find
light traveling in
but the whirl doesn't spend
a moment away
from its shadow

from its shadow
an echo performs
like the lid of a thought
and thousands of homeless sheep
march on the capitol

the capitol is just
a pile of rocks
collected randomly
without haste
from a great distance

distance is full of errors
mostly the wrong ones
well snip the light
has gone from its shadow
filtering the air

the air stiffens
is cut into strips
and wound around the capital
with or without delay
or so you observe

to observe: BREAK GLASS
but avoid the sheep
nesting in the trees
there is no emergency
in a pile of rocks



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CORNELIS VLEESKENS


Three Poems

.

the wisdom and dignity
of lives lived on the street
and under thatch
tends to be practical
delicate and unperfumed

*

exiled from the sandcastle
some people discover
they risk a big fine
for a crisp freshness
and the ethos of giving
tomorrow's parties

rather than receiving
the final salute
in boyish classroom classics

*

we all say the same thing
about the tailoring

the architect of a new
crossing of the chasm
is effectively moistured

and it's all systems go
as fashion gets fast and furious


oOo

DARWIN

a tropical sweat
white ants communication

the books moulder


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CORRESPONDENCE

Karl Gallagher
[8-2-2010]

Yr site's last posting [see Being Here Retrieved, re- Alan Murphy & Shmuel Gorr] is terrific.
Funny thing about the passage of time and paths crossing - briefly - in 1963 Felix Werder came to 'A' Division in Pentridge Prison to conduct a weekly music class. After a few weeks we never saw him again - someone else continued with the class.
Adrian [Rawlins] of course I knew well - met him early '66.
[Francis] Brabazon I met in '75 at Avatar's Abode in Queensland - I had a few brief conversations with him. But I already knew a lot about him - and the early days (30s, 40s) through close frequent contact with an old pal of Francis's - Ozwald Hall (and also Stan Adams). Francis and Ozzie (a painter) had close contact with Heidi and the Reeds et al.
Adrian told me that - its on record - somewhere - that Sydney Nolan said that Brabazon, of any others, had the greatest influence on his painting.

cheers Karl


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTRIBUTORS

SERAPH B (aka Brendan Carey)'s poem is from the self-published A Joyful Noise (Melbourne, '98). The pseudo blurbs for that collection can stand in for his biog here : "Brendan Carey puts the beat back into beatitude!" -- "A celebration of mystic everness and cosmic beingness...From jazz to somewhere else..." His references from that time continue to the present : Sun Ra, Bob Kaufman, Mingus, Coltrane, Kerouac... His contact is,
jca82879@bigpond.net.au

ROBERT LLOYD is the composer, singer-songwriter now back in Melbourne after many years in Sydney & on the road. Writing songs, poems & a novel. Rock & acoustic background; toured with his band around the world. Has written for the Ohio Ballet & the Australian Dance Theatre amongst others. His discs include Robert Lloyd (keyboards, piano, percussion), 2001, & Songs of Robert Lloyd (guitar, vocals), 2007.

GLEN COOPER, CAROL JENKINS, PETE SPENCE & CORNELLIS VLEESKINS have all appeared in previous issues.

oOo

--that's it then!
18/2/2010--

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, #15, November, 2009

"ALL YOU'VE GOT TO DO IS TUNE IN TO THE MUSIC..."

________________________________________


JOHN BENNETT


LOOKING BACK

I heard
back from
Leonard Cohen.
He wants me
to join
his tour.

Unlike the
other members of
the troupe
who wear
snappy little hats,
I'm to wear
a dunce cap.

There'll be a
gold leash
around my neck &
when Leonard
yanks it
I blurt out
a Shard.

No talk of
my playing
harmonica,
but if things
work out well
there's an
off chance
of our
cutting a
record together:
Leonard & John,
Looking Back
Thru the
Ages.

My friends
tell me
this is
the chance of
a lifetime,
but I'm a
little uneasy
about the
dunce cap &
leash.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------

GLENN COOPER


BLOWING IN THE WIND


If you join the dots on
that famous polka-dot shirt,
they form a picture
of a man as lost
in the wind as all
the answers
he once
coveted.


This thought came to me just now
as I sat in the sun and watched
the wind suddenly fill
the sleeves of my old, flannel shirt,
pegged on the line, making
a man of me at last.


ooo


DYLANHAIKU


Hotel room -

guitar on the bed

woman on the floor.


*


No direction home -

then, now

and forever.



---------------------------------------------------------------------


ANDREW FRANKS


WEEP


SINCE THERE ARE no more poets
and the MUSICIANS HAVE FLED the stage
packing pens in oak trunks/TEA CHESTS
BURYING THEIR INSTRUMENTS in the snow
since all the artists have GIN BLOSSOMING

UP TO OUR NECKS in SHIT & blood
Since beauty and DESIRE STOLE OUR last can
Dle and left us in the da
rk since the gaunt got garr

otted and fled SINCE ALL TYPOGR
aphical THINGS GO AGAINST ME since all the
sun BEACHED BLEACHED WHO
RES DECIDEd to hang thems

Elves, since HIS PULSE SLOWED DO
WN and my rage filled to OVERF
lowing, since venus AND ALL HER MAT
Es stopped DRINKING IN OUR BAR the O
NLY THINg left is to
WEEP.


ooo

As I rounded the corner

I saw him
in a white Alfa Romeo
red leather seats
on Broadwick Street
gold ring, gold watch,
white shirt, blue with white polka dot tie
dark blue mohair suit
quality shades, Gerry Mulligan crew cut
black Italian loafers
In the background
John Coltrane was easing
into the midday sun

I saw the past and my future
blurring into one


ooo


On Seeing Slim Gaillard in London three days before he died


He strode through Golden Square
shrouded in a huge woolen coat, scarf, beret, beard and a scowl.
I walked by him and as I did so
He turned his weary old head and looked me in the eye.
"Oroonie"
and then he was gone.

Over and Vout!


------
[these poems from SCRATCHED IN THE STARS, SPRAWLED IN THE SAND
(pub. Soul Bay Press (Sussex,UK, '09); see www.soulbaypress.com]

------------------------------------------------------------------------


PETE SPENCE


An Orchestra's Day Off!


string section

the thoughtless strings resonate
down an endless hallway
looking for a score!

horn section

the horns eat abalone alone
in a brightly lit restaurant!

the percussion section

are rapping on an avenue of doors
where no one is pretending
to be at home!

if the wind section

comes in from that quarter
for 3 days it'll rain!

conductor

when struck by lightning
the orchestra members
showed no spark of enthusiasm
for the gesture
being well acquainted
with the piece at hand!

the parts

are blowing in the wind!


ooo


Birthday


1.

its your birthday
but you won't hear
Siegfried Idyll live
from the bathroom!!

what will
the dogs
and parrots do
now that
Wagner's out??

though vegetarianism
is not so passe
non-violence
as an industry
is total drama!!

here's hoping
for an opera
with acne!
maybe we
can count
all the spots
before Lunch!!

2.

apart from Hasse's
La Serva Scaltra
the whole year
can be spielfrei!!
who needs
a ringside seat
in Beyrouth?
i'd rather
be a trainspotter
in Birdland
(is that "peace
from delusion")
than a member
of the Cameroon
Wagner Society
taking a nap
in the garden
at Wahnfried!!


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

CORRESPONDENCE

WARREN BURT / KRIS HEMENSLEY


Warren Burt

Wed, Oct 7, 2009

Hi Kris!

Continuing our discussion of months ago, when I was in the shop, you asked about why people (these days) would use non-personal processes (for lack of a better term, and I'm sure there are lots of them) to make work. I found this quote from Herbert Brun the other day. Brun (1918-2000) was a composer, writer, computer pioneer, and political activist. Born in Germany, and riding out WWII in Palestine, he taught from 1963 at the University of Illinois, and a list of his students is a who's who of composers, writer, cyberneticians, and activists. In fact, for the past few years, students of his have been the controlling faction on the Urbana, Illinois, city council, making that city a model of Green politics in the USA. He was one for the bottom-up approach in pretty much all things, and whereas I was saying that one might use "non-personal processes" (how to encapsulate a world of extremely different ideas and techniques in a sound byte???) as a medium of discovery, Brun expresses it much more politically:

"It is one thing to search for events that will produce the sound one wants, and quite another to discover the sound of the events one wants. In the first case the wanted sound renders desirable the necessary events; in the second the wanted events are the standard for the desirability of the resulting sound. These are not only two different approaches to the composition of music, but also two different political attitudes."

Substitute words for sound, poetry for music, or whatever medium one is dealing with, and the quote may be more or less applicable.....

Brun, by the way, was one of the idols of Mr. Mann - whenever Chris was in the US, he would make a beeline for Urbana to have a cup of tea and "good old Berlin Jews arguing" with Herbert.

I liked seeing your early 70s poem-portraits on the CW web-thing the other day, by the way. It occurs to me that whatever styles we work in, even when we know each other, the work itself remains often inaccessible. Which reminds me - I promised myself that October would be the month I got my website and source of materials up and running, and here we are 7 days into it, and I haven't even started yet!

Hope you're well, and cheers,

Warren


ooOOoo



Kris Hemensley


Thu, Oct 8, 2009

Dear Warren, Thank you for yours... Yes, it was a good little
discussion that day at the Shop, an impromptu seminar! And Alan [Pose]
recalling La Trobe University days & mutual tutors, colleagues,
friends in your music department... We were talking abt computer
generated language programmes, and the criticism I'd heard of John
Tranter : not that he was employing a particular programme but that he
then edited or corrected the results. My acquaintances must be closet
dadaists! I have problems with both the computer generation and the
criticism made of Tranter's correction!
Interesting what you say about Herbert Brun; firstly, because of the
tantalising adjacency of poetry & music regarding composition &
especially where any degree of abstraction is involved (& perhaps it
is always involved!); secondly, for the distinction Brun finds
between the 'wanted sound' & 'wanted events'... I'm reminded of the
Wallace Stevens I've been (mis)quoting for donkeys years; his response
to the "but what does it mean?" question : Mean? says Stevens : It
means nothing but the heavens full of colours & the constellations of
sound (or vice-versa --and that vice-versa is a funny one too! --what
status any proposition that can be so immediately reversible?)!
Creeley's quip "form is never more than an extension of content",
though liberating was always problematic. Could the Brun's proposition
be understood as politically desired & approved content guaranteeing a
work irrespective of its language --which to me is often recipe for
sentimentality or as George Oppen said about political intent,
therapy; And not what the poetry might be on about!
Best wishes, Kris


ooOOoo


Warren Burt

Hi Kris!

Forgive me for treating you like a telephone book, but do you have an email for Walter Billeter? Sorry to do that, but you're the first person who comes to mind who might. I want to tell him about the radio show about Paul Celan that just came on Radio National. He might be interested.

A very good insight about Brun's statement! I think the reply would be that if one brings about desired political conditions, and then proceeds to write sentimental theraputic work in the same old way (think of Stalin Odes as the most extreme example), then the "desired political conditions" haven't gone far enough, or one hasn't really changed oneself enough. But I think what he was talking about there was more the use of processes to generate material and then the observing of the results of those processes. That is, to make a musical analogy - if one writes a program to generate a melody, and then listens to that melody with the same criteria one would judge a, say, Bach melody by, then the criticism would be that one is not listening to the melody with an open-minded enough set of ears, so that one can discover the inner-structure of the machine produced melody, and find out what the program one wrote was really doing, on the deepest level.

This doesn't mean that one creates processes uncritically, or listens to/observes the results of the process uncritically. The famous example (at least I tell everyone about it) is the tell-all interview that John Cage gave to Stephen Montague in the late 1970s, where Cage discusses his "random" composing methods, with especial reference to his orchestra and chorus piece "Apartment House 1776." Cage recounts that the piece went through seven complete rewrites before he "got it right." Each time before that, the process was producing results that even by Cage's Buddhistic "listen to everything for it's own interest" standards, were just dead boring. It was only on the 7th attempt, that the de-composition / re-composition process (he was using American colonial tunes and hymns by the 18th century maverick composer William Billings) he was trying to make finally produced results that made Billings work come to (a contemporary) life in a way that pleased him. You've probably never written an orchestra piece, but you've written books, so you have some idea of the amount of work involved in seven complete rewrites of a major work. Astounding! This was also a period in Cage's work where he was re-examining the idea of harmony, which he'd given up on after 2 years of Arnold Schoenberg's harmony bootcamp in the 1930s (apparently Cage was brilliant at the counterpoint exercises, but they meant nothing to him emotionally - he said he had absolutely no "feeling for harmony.") At this period Cage was talking a lot with James Tenney, who was re-evaluating harmony in terms of the microtonal practices of the ancient Greeks (we were all doing that in the 70s - me too! someday someone will have to write a paper about the Ptolemaic-Archytan revival in Western classical music of the 1970s!), and the eventual results of that thinking were, among other things, Cage's last series of works from the 1980s & early 1990s "the number pieces," where his choices of pitches to randomly order in time are just exquisitely sensitive.
So back to Brun - he was concerned with an attitude to politics that wasn't just one party or another, but one which changed the individual (very much like Ghandi - "democracy is not so much about self-rule and self-transformation" or something like that). And knowing him, I know he was absolutely opposed to mind control or processes of change imposed from the top-down (or peer pressure processes imposed from both sides!).
Anyway, this could go on, but I've got to finish up a review for a Brazilian webmag, and continue celebrating my 60th birthday, young pup that I am!

Cheers,

Warren

-------------------------------------------------------------------

CORRESPONDENCE

'DEVA' DAVE ELLISON

November, 2009

Kris, I feel privileged to read Tim Sheppard's marvellous writing [see TIM SHEPPARD, blog 8/11/09]. A writer can do no more with the dark and light of words on a page, and on the screen of creation. Here is the form and the content. Everything is here. Tim's writing spans the dreaming universe. Time and space fade inside the moment of poetic clarity. In such moments, the reader can sense their true self, within and without. The true self is boundless.


--------------------------------------------------------------

TIM SHEPPARD


INTERVAL

Light penetrating
the early morning stillness
seeking its own within each new
form of life,
each giving to the other
a strength and purpose vital
to its own being -
admired for its own sake - - - - - while
colour and tone acting with incredible
playfulness
play havoc on the grass
each shaded by its own perfection of loveliness.


----------------------------------------------------------------

KENNETH TRIMBLE


BIRDLAND

There is a tree
I know, that talks to me at dusk

Yellow light falling
falling

I walk past you
and hear the ringing
of church bells.

Oh but I was mistaken
It's a symphony
playing Birdland.


ooo

WHITE MOON

White moon sits

on a black canvas night

Come home.


ooo


RED MOUNTAIN

Under the barren red mountain
I had come for Shiva's night.

A festival of fire
to the un-manifested
becoming manifested
as the sun dissolves into
You.

Ten thousand strong
with the moon
in their eyes
and fire in their hearts.
we waited for the Brahmin Priests
to light the ghee.

An ancient cry of O shiva, O shiva
as a wild woman came
with snake apparitions in here eyes
ablaze with the madness of love
to Arunachala.


ooo

THE HERMIT

Silent waters
yellow moon,
mountain mist,
and deer on the run.
Prayer mat and beer
which will I have first?

Drifting silence and wet afternoons
I think I'll read Kerouac,
perhaps St. Augustine
the black.

Lonely sun
tired days,
friends come around.


-----------------------------
[these poems are published in Clouds on Hanover Street, published by Littlefox Press, 159 Brunswick St., Fitzroy, Vic. 3056; www.littlefoxpublishing.com]


-----------------------------------------------------------

MAX RYAN

Allen Ginsberg, the real story

I slept all afternoon and when I awoke it was morning; I didn’t know where I was — I had no name for India. — Allen Ginsberg, Indian Journals

Where to begin? Firstly, dear reader, in my story Allen Ginsberg is but one of many players but I did meet him (sort of) and even exchanged words with the Great Man. It was 1980 in Vienna and winter was starting to dig in its bitter heels in more ways than one. The reason I was there, and still the only one that now or then makes any sense, was the enchanting Eva. We’d met at a Buddhist retreat in the south of England, had a sweet love in the summer sun time together and then she’d gone back to Wien to finish her medical studies. When I’d rung from London she’d told me it wasn’t a good time to come, she was studying for her finals etc but still I went.

Day one: I’m in Wien, staying with E (in her spare bedroom) and we’re at her folks’ place for lunch. After the meal, E’s dad who’s a doctor and, it turns out, an ex-Nazi, gets out his scrapbook of the War. There’s a comic-book type picture of Russian soldiers being blown up by Panzer tanks. (There’s also a black and white photo of him as a cavalry officer posing next to his horse in the snow, which is somehow touching). I say something about how killing all those Russians wasn’t very good to which he retorts: 
You Australians, you know nossing!
Well, in this case, he was probably right. We end up in her brother’s room where he proceeds to assail us with, to my ears, some fairly disturbing music. He also whips out a joint from which Eva takes a toke and I, in true biblical style, inhale (right in) too. By now the music has grown more disturbing and I say something like, could we have some Donovan or something and he just laughs, sneers is more the word. Was E sneering too? I can’t remember but already I know this boy from Newcastle is way out of his depth. Please remember, dear reader, that until my time in the meditation centre in England, I’d been almost five years in India, meditating, living for lengthy periods in the Himalayas with a few fellow seekers amidst goats and sheep. We end up at a party across town where I feel like I’m in a scene from a Hermann Hesse novel. There’s a band playing some fairly smarmy jazz and I’m sitting on a blanket on the floor. I’m wearing, in classic nerd, a tweed jacket someone in England’s given me, corduroy (beige) trousers and a scarf of many colours about ten feet long that I found in an op-shop in Cambridge. Suddenly I hear the cry Achtung Achtung! but already my scarf, which seems to be following me around the room, has knocked over someone’s glass of wine. By then E, I can see, is starting to wonder where she could have found me.

Not long after I decide to withdraw the forces for the evening. Some of E’s friends can let me off (without her) at her place. Auf wiedersehen, I say clambering out of their car and I wave as I walk to her place and pull the heavy wooden door (Vienna’s apartments are like medieval forts) behind me. But it isn’t her place and through the fog I realise I’m locked in. Oh well go up the stairs and ask some kindly burgher to please just press the ‘open’ button. Only no one wants to know me. Nein Nein is all I get when I gently knock on each door and burble: ‘scuse me kind sir…really sorry and all but I’m locked in… from Australia you see just arrived in your fair city. Finally I press a button. Almost immediately, it seems, the ground-floor door bursts open and four young guys in navy blue uniform rush in carrying machine guns. I’m strangely unperturbed as I walk down the stairs to greet them.
Sorry man, wrong door didn’t mean to disturb anyone, just arrived, you know, errr…
They can see I’m harmless, let me out and I’m back just behind E who treats my lapse as another sign of my total imbecility.

So this is the background to my stay although by now I’m starting to get out and about including to a chanting group where I get to play harmonium and sing bhajans and a classical Indian music performance by the Dagar Brothers (one of the many versions), held in some rich guy’s chateau just out of town. He’s got a world-famous collection of erotic art in a huge private gallery which looks bizarre after hearing such sublime music. But Allen Ginsberg is coming to town, turns out he’s a follower of the Tibetan Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa. E knows some people in town who are also disciples and they’re involved in organising Ginsberg’s reading at the university.

I can’t remember there being too many at the reading (50, 60?), pretty well a standard crowd for a poetry event anywhere. Peter Orlovsky, I remember, did a lively enactment of a poem about fucking a woman outside on the grass and a marvellous one about recycling human shit to make vegetables and flowers grow (music to my ears after weeks in a very intense Wien). I can’t remember much about Ginsberg’s offering except that many of his poems were performed on a portable harmonium and accompanied by a young guy, Steven Taylor, on guitar. (I’d studied Indian music in India and learnt to play simple ragas on harmonium and when a friend sent me Ginsberg’s First Blues Rags, Ballads And Harmonium Songs, I’d started playing chords and doing some of the pieces such as Father Death Blues.) The highlight was when Ginsberg closed the evening with Blake’s The Nurse’s Song, turning the last line ‘And all the hills echoed’ (with emphasis on the final syllable) into a powerful mantra. The small lecture room almost shook as everyone joined in. It’s still one of the most powerful performances of poetry I’ve seen.

We all end up in some basement cafe downtown, a gathering of local poets and Trungpa devotees. I remember talking to Orlovsky about India and his telling me how he’d love to go back one day. Everyone is gathered round a long table. I’m sitting across from the great man but end up talking to Steven Taylor about music and Bob Dylan whom he sometimes hangs out with back home. Ginsberg is in a dark suit and tie (part of Trungpa’s teaching about the necessity of living in the world) and he’s polishing off a steak and a few beers (also, I’m told, part of the practice of engagement with worldly life) and ends up picking his teeth and holding court to a retinue of local poets, even drawing up lists of essential reading of Central European poets for them. Ginsberg doesn’t seem overly interested in me. I seem to remember saying something slightly inane earlier about how he could come back to E’s and we could play some records or something, to which he says something like it sounding like a lot of hippy shit etc, so I’ve pretty well decided to cease any further dialogue. (Why didn’t I mention I played some of his songs, had read (several times) Indian Journals, was a big fan etc? Maybe I’d fallen into the role of playing the buffoon from the bush and couldn’t stop.) A young Viennese poet whom I’d met before is telling me how I should visit Venice in winter when all the tourists are gone and there’s fog over the water and the walls are covered in moss. He also says something I’ve never forgotten and which at the time perfectly describes my sense of the city I’m marooned in: Ze valls are tsickar (thicker) here in Wien.

Dear reader (are you still there?), the one scene that stays with me now is Ginsberg having what looks like a very taut conversation with a young local poet who’s all in black and is festooned with gold chains (what you now might call bling). Suddenly Bling stands up, steps back a few paces and calls out to Ginsberg: What? You mean you don’t like me or somezing? Ginsberg, still seated and picking his teeth, looks at the guy for what seems like a minute or so then slowly answers: No, not really…pride…too much pride. Soon it’s time to go. Ginsberg wants to visit the large Breughel collection at the City Gallery in the morning and we’re invited.

Outside Bling walks along with E and me or should I say, with E, and me coming along. He’s telling her of his accomplishments and how he writes poems for all occasions and makes a good living at it. Fortunately he leaves us after a few blocks. Then it’s just E and me walking along in the almost deserted streets. We walk for miles not saying much but it’s a ritual I’ve come to enjoy with her. I decide not to join the Breughel tour in the morning. An idea starts to build in my head: I’ll get back to my friends in Rome, find a cheap ticket to Sri Lanka and take the ferry across to southern India then travel through to Varanasi. There’s a blind singer I heard singing at a house-concert down an alleyway there. I’ll find where he is and study classical vocals with him. As Eve and I cross a footbridge, I can see the Danube under the streetlight. There’s ice on its banks and it’s moving swift and strong through the night.

(2009)


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CORNELIS VLEESKENS

KAREL APPEL
translated by Cornelis Vleeskens


THE HUNGER WINTER

I wish I were a bird
and flew with them above the fields
where no farmers sowed
and no horses ploughed
and the people sighed in the camps
while the birds flew free

I wish I were a bird
and not the rabbit I waylaid
to ease my hunger

when the people put on their uniforms
they were no longer people
they no longer had faces
but the birds flew free
the crow and the blackbird
(but not the rabbit)
I wish I were a bird


-------
[included in NO HOLDS BARRED : Dutch Poetry in the Post War Years, published for the exhibition & catalogue, intensely dutch (Art Gallery of NSW; 5 June -23 August,2009)]


ooOOoo


FOUR POEMS

*

Now that New York
WHIRLS
finger-wagging
and tut-tutting
through a 60s-style romance
spurred by an impetuous remark
about the Parisian prettiness
of hardworking security guards
and a misfit's adventure

Who could
coax a 60 year old fountain
to SUCH
prime cuts?


*****

A cut above the visuals
the painted ladies
CHASE
their own
unconventional
fish and chip shop farce
through neutral territory

And while
well-placed brushstrokes help
barefoot thespians
ANGLE fragrance-free
forget grosting
for no other reason
than a climatic one


*****

Euphoria's bimbo talk
makes the media
saddle up her mother
for skewed angles
and HEAD SPINNING
high heels

Le puriste
attracts
new long lasting
physicality

And musical and literary figures
POST cartoon-style topless babes
in Swiss organic cheese


*****

It may look
SPIRITED
but a far-flung
tiger packing a punch
in l'espace lumierre
GOES GLOBAL

And you encouraged him
with style and humour
coming on vertically
insensitive to
the horror
and anguish
suffered
in this squatter's rest

As the economy lifts off
your RIDER has gone home
and a new language is
brewing in the auction rooms


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ANDREW BURKE

SHOPPING CENTRE GENIUS
"the nothingness of human matters" --de Man quoting Rousseau


How many suburban shopping centres
have I walked, only to see you
in the eyes of the man
who wanders rootless by himself,
torn summer t-shirt and hooded
winter jacket. He isn't you

yet I see you in his faulty step
forward, hear you in his every phrase,
a patois of too many pills
and sleepless nights. Bored,

security guards name him
The Professor, then offer him
the door, bowing, mock courteous
in their security.

They let you out yet locked you in,
didn't they. Now your day begins
in a chemical blur through
shrubbery in manicured gardens where
once you debated the de Man question.


ooo


ON CHAPMAN HILL


Let's walk to get the city out
of our bones. I'll show you red gums,
xanthorrhoea with spears, flame-tailed
black cockatoos - no strangers here
unless you hear the protea's accent
on the evening breeze.

See, kangaroos' paws break
the tractor tread marks, while
off that story corner a body rusts,
wings and bonnets, flat trays
and drive shafts, welded
wildly by the elements.

Tonight, you'll hear boobooks
stretch silence horizon to horizon
in the bright moonlight. It sends
Pancho into a barking frenzy,
shouting down the ghost in the trees -
attack his best line of defence.

Sure as day follows night, there's
growth in decay. This land, once
Noongar, is now plotted and pieced. By
the water tank, old Buddha stands silent,
eyes hooded among raindrops sparkling
on gum leaves in sudden sunlight.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Edited & typed 21 October/20 something, November, '09, come heatwave, deluge, & thunderstorm!--


CONTRIBUTORS NOTES
JOHN BENNETT, San Francisco poet & musician, Beat & underground affiliated, his poems once compared to Kenneth Patchen. Recent books include Firestorm (Pudding House Press), & Cobras & Butterflies. JB is on Facebook where this poem (he calls them shards)first appeared.
GLENN COOPER, long-time correspondent of Collected Works Bookshop, lives in country NSW, & has recently published Tryin' To Get To Heaven : Poems about, to & inspired by Bob Dylan (Blind Dog Press, USA, '08).
ANDREW FRANKS, born in Sussex, commutes between the UK and Sydney. Scratched in the stars, sprawled on the sand (Soul Bay, '09) is his first collection of poems.
PETE SPENCE, poet (forty years since his debut in Makar,Queensland) & international mail-art high roller (since the '80s). See previous issues (#14, #10)
DAVE ELLISON, poet, Melbourne muso & holy-roller. See previous issues, (#10)
The late TIM SHEPPARD (1955-2009), see selection of poems on previous blog post for 8-11-09
MAX RYAN, poet & musician, lives in Byron Bay/NSW. Rainswayed Night (pub. Dangerously Poetic, Byron Bay, '05) won the Anne Elder Award (Vic) for best 1st collection.
CORNELIS VLEESKENS, born in Holland, '48, lived in Australia since '58. Edited poetry mag, Fling, with artist Jenni Mitchell way back when; Earthdance is his little press (PO Box, 465, Glen Innes, NSW, 2370). Books include The Day the River (UQP,'84), Nothing Kept (Brunswick Hill,'86), The Wider Canvas : A retrospective (Earthdance, '96). Poet, artist, translator from the Dutch.
KENNETH TRIMBLE, much travelled in Europe & Asia, including to Bede Griffiths' ashram in Shantivanam, India. Lives out of town. His first book, Clouds on Hanover Street, pub. Littlefox Press, Melbourne, '09 (contains illuminating biographical note).
WARREN BURT, born in Baltimore, '49, in Australia since 1975; lived in Melbourne until 2004, thereafter Wollongong, backwards & forwards to Europe & the USA. Prolific composer, performer, writer et al; numerous publications, recordings, concerts, events, films etc. His website (www.warrenburt.com/), "gives some idea of what I've been up to".
ANDREW BURKE, a veteran of the 60s Australian New Poetry's Perth chapter, where he edited Thrust with Ken Hudson. His books include Let's Face the Music & Dance ('75), On the Tip of My Tongue ('83), Pushing at Silence ('96), Whispering Gallery (2001), & most recently, Beyond City Limits (Edith Cowan University, '09).

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--all done, 28 November, 2009!--
K.H.