Weekly Photo Challenge: Summer

The Surfers’ Code – Manly Beach, Sydney

(The poem below is a re-post)

Suburban Summer

electric light show

rumbling closer,

scented star jasmine

mingling fragrance of rain,

thrum of cicadas

blending languid laughter,

glasses at the hills hoist

toasting vintage summer

—x—

See the Daily Post for more entries to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Summer

The Sydney Writers’ Festival – Take That! And That!

Yesterday, the boss gave me the morning off to go to a poetry workshop at the Sydney Writers’ Festival (she’s good like that ).

It’s the first time I’ve attended a poetry class and, well, it was quite an experience. Run by a well-known Australian poet who’s received several poetry awards, both national and international, it had its good and bad moments.

The prep notes for the workshop suggested that we bring along a poem to share. I chose something brief because I hate reading my poems out loud – some poems are meant to be performed: others are not. And no poems are meant to be performed by me.

So the bad moment came when, against my better judgement, I read Ghosts of Christmas Past aloud, and it continued downhill from there: WKAP remarked, “You have a good poetic sensibility, but…” and then proceeded to kill not only all my darlings but the entire point of the poem with his feedback:

• “antiquated word - don’t use it” (but I chose it specifically for its Biblical flavour)
• “too many syllables in ‘ing’ verbs – needs something shorter”  (but the ‘ing’ verb is meant to evoke the perpetuity of  suffering)
  
• “I think you should get rid of ‘fickle’. The sentence is too long – it needs some backburning, haha.” (you’re a riot)
• “clichéd” (ouch)
• “overused” (ooof)
• “If Katy Perry’s done it, don’t do it.” (Ooooh, now that’s a low blow – who are you? Joan Rivers from ‘Poetry Police’?!)
• “Why did you use ‘ashen’? Isn’t that every tree’s fate” (Oh, don’t be stupid!)

And so on…

hmmmpf

I guess he didn’t care for it much.

Of course, the bottom line is that if you don’t want honest feedback from experts, you shouldn’t subject yourself to their scrutiny. But taste in poetry is like taste in food, music, wine and lovers – subjective. And after he was done with his on-the-fly edits to mould my poem into something he thought might work better, it no longer worked for me.

I did, nevertheless, thoroughly enjoy most of the workshop and gained some very valuable insights into poetic structure and form and, particularly, the effective use of line breaks. WKAP is unquestionably a masterful poet and rather good at articulating what a poem is and isn’t, but by the end I felt a little like this:

However, the TKO effect didn’t last for long (us bees are made of stronger stuff ), and the prospect of dinner and a movie (Wish You Were Here) with a good friend, as well as attending  some neuroscience talks at the festival in the coming days lightened my mood somewhat.

Oh, and I’m attending another poetry workshop on Saturday – perhaps I should add a double-shot of Bundy to my early morning coffee.

Don Ritchie – R.I.P.

Don Ritchie, The Angel of The Gap, has passed away

Repost

Angel of The Gap

He looks out at the sparkling sea

and drinks his morning cup of tea

But there’s a shadow to his left,

the darkness of a soul distressed

He knows now he must move with haste

to stop a life from going to waste

“This time, this one, perhaps,” he thinks,

“maybe, I ‘ll pull back from the brink”

The Angel of  The Gap, at dawn,

heads out once more across his lawn

to offer balm, a light to see

a way out from their misery,

to coax them not to end it all

and save them from that fatal fall

http://www.smh.com.au/action/externalEmbeddedPlayer?id=d-1yoat

“Never be afraid to speak to those who you feel are in need.

Always remember the power of the simple smile, a helping hand, a listening ear and a kind word.”

Don Ritchie, OAM

The Beauty of Insomnia

Image via www.sxc.hu

ball-moon bobbing in an ink sea-sky
spangled Milky Way swirling silently by
dreams on a poplar-shimmer breeze
stirring sleeping swallows under the eaves
wide-eyed frogmouths, owls, nightjars
blinking back at a billion stars

***

Chewing on this

Image via www.sxc.hu

I read this wonderful post of Kate Shrewsday’s
before going to sleep last night and it got me thinking (they always do)
of

Six impossible things before breakfast

A world without the power of money,
a sun-powered world

Journeys across a borderless globe,
Inter-universe journeys

Born old, growing young,
Spinal cords
growing in a window box

——-xx——-

Impossible possibilities? What are your thoughts?

Weekly Photo Challenge: Journey

I’ve used a couple of these snaps on other posts
and the poem is a repost from earlier on this blog
but they all epitomize this week’s theme for me

Travelling Dog

Travelling Dogs

On the 600km journey -

she looks at flowers and clouds,
he computes mileage per litre,
she ponders the secrets of cows,
he remarks that it might storm later…

She sees the wire-pig mailbox,
he spies a snake on the road,
he surveys flood-plain paddocks,
she wonders if cows talk in code…

He thinks perhaps ‘Box of Frogs’,
she’d prefer peace for a while,
both laugh at the travelling dogs,
their windblown ears and their smiles

Travelling Dog

Travelling Dog

The Song Remains the Same

Image via www.sxc.hu

We were cigar-smoking sylphs,
we were angst-ridden waifs,
not quite role-model material
We were The Clash and The Cure,
Lena-Lovich demure,
but never Nirvana funereal

We were Flashdance and Fame,
we were Grease, Purple Rain,
not Dolly-sweet 9 to 5vers
We were Wham, All That Jazz,
Chorus Line razzmatazz,
Saturday Night Fever survivors

We were pathological humour,
the kohl-girls of rumour,
but never drug-addled chic
We were Dark Side of the Moon
and Kate Bush la lune,
living The Dreaming mystique

We were polka-dot punkers,
Spandau Ballerinas,
not tattooed suicide-grunge,
Twisted Sister crazies,
You were Thelma, I, Louise

But,
in the end,
only you
took that plunge

Lexical Blues

Image via www.sxc.hu

Words

mastered long ago

now

inexplicable

—-

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/03/an-opening-against-alzheimers/

RIP

To mark this

anniversary,

this man-made construct

Why?

To remind ourselves

of your light lost,

that we miss you?

Ten years on,

no reminder necessary

Weekly Photo Challenge: Through

the
shadow and light
of life

through
another’s eyes

makes us see anew
and
the heart and mind
inspires

—-

A tour through light and shadow

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Art
from
the Art Gallery of NSW,  Sydney
and
the Metropolitan Museum of Art,  NYC

Act of God

Image via www.sxc.hu

Across this hopscotch land

strange days stretch out to sea,

where ancient forests stood,

now ails a lone pine tree,

spared from an Act of God,

not so children as they flee -

they are turned to ghosts

by what god, pray tell me?

Electricity

Image via www.sxc.hu

It’s what we are:
shocked to life
at maximum voltage,
rewired by experience
in negative anxiety
and positive joy,
a slow-leaking energy,
static in defeat

In short,
we complete the circuit
and are gone -
subatomic particles
in an ancient storm

Platitude Pyre

Image via www.sxc.hu

I try to keep warm
in the memory of you

But within embered years
a cold truth lies
beneath aphoristic ashes -
“Time heals all wounds”,
“This too shall pass” -

Over my dead body, perhaps.

The Bird

Image via www.sxc.hu

The bird
doesn’t mind

the indifference
of passing feet,
tossed flint-eyed scraps,
nest of a broadsheet

The bird
doesn’t mind
cold-hearted weather,
garbage-can dining,
piss-soaked shelter,
one-eyed sleep in the underpass,
the ubiquitous predator

The bird
doesn’t mind
existence
on the streets

He’s just a bird

Weekly Photo Challenge: Between

Between

is the breath between

Meld

Image via www.sxc.hu

Sultry African nights,

we’d drink Dutch,
play Chinese,
smoke American,
talk Japanese,
(the odd bit of French thrown in)

Brightly hungover days,
we’d work,
with throwback English stoicism

Weekly Photo Challenge: Self-Portrait

They say

we know
who we are
in adulthood -

sister,
not brother,
wife,
not mother  -

a prosaic mosaic,
fragments of a self

but don’t ask me
to complete the picture -

time has lost
more than a few pieces

The Cupboard Under the Stairs

A place for everything,
for everything, a place,
but under the stairs,
it’s a mind-trash space -

memories secreted in dark, spidered nooks,
neurons rutted like well-thumbed books,
moody film-noir dendritic ends,
space-junk synapses, axonic strands,
dust-choked engrams, dreams, nightmares -

time to springclean under the stairs.

Wild Conspiracies

I wrote this in September for Gabrielle Bryden’s National Poetry Week Challenge.

For more animal-flavoured poetry check out Gabrielle Bryden’s Penguin Week series.

***

Image via www.sxc.hu

I ask scribbly gum moths:
Why this graffiti on trees?
“Mind your own business,
they’re just doodles, if you please”

I ask a plodding snail:
Why the squiggles on the path?
“There ain’t nothing in it -
I just do it for a laugh”

I ask the sly hyena:
Why the tunnels ‘neath the trail?
“Well! Installation art’s
not only for the snail!”

I ask the bower bird:
Why that hoard of shining bling?
“Oh, poppet, it’s no mystery
objets d’art are my thing”

I ask the primping zebra:
What’s with the barcode?
“Poor darling, don’t you know?
Stripes are back in vogue”

But, you know, I don’t believe them -
It’s a vast conspiracy
It’s clear that they are sending
secret messages to me…

***

Weekly Photo Challenge: Family

DNA silk

Stars in blood

In galaxies’ web

We’re spun with love

***

* I took these portraits of my beloved nieces a few years ago and post them here with their permission *

***