Chickenpinata.com - Best Journal Name Ever?

Just like Harvey Swick (Clive Barker's young protagonist in the perennially unsurpassable The Thief of Always), I feel as though I have been devoured by the great grey beast February. Harvey's Northern Hemisphere beast used bland, chilly, wet days of boredom as its chief weapon; my antipodean beast's arsenal is stocked with a mixture of long, baking days of heat and humidity, and longer sheet-clinging nights.

Luckily, Chickenpinata.com came along this week to take my mind off the pain (am I taking the melodramatic metaphor too far? Possibly). My poem Easter Parade appears in the fifth issue of this excellent online journal based in Atlanta, Georgia and edited by JC Reilly and Hart E. Bee.

I thoroughly recommend clicking through Chickenpinata's poetry-filled pages. You're bound to find something tailor-made for you, just the right thing for warding off further attacks from that great grey beast February.

New Harvest

I received my contributor's copy of Harvest today. It's their fourth issue, and I'm truly impressed with its quality. They seem to outdo themselves with every issue! I got a real buzz out of seeing my poem The Challicum Bunyip paired with original artwork.

dotdotdash

My poem Host appears in the beautifully produced current issue of dotdotdash. I'm really impressed with these guys.

Be_jami_ Do_ds

Sometimes patience pays off, and other times it proves to be a painfully disappointing waste of time. Fortunately, I'll be writing about the former rather than the latter.

After submitting them in early June, I received word today that 3 of my poems are being published early next year in one of my favourite online journals, Mascara.

My name's finally starting to appear, or it will when the 4 or 5 publications I'm waiting to come out finally hit the shelves. I've got stuff in Etchings, Harvest and dotdotdash all coming out any day now, and the anthology I mentioned in a previous post and the 3 poems in Mascara in early 2010. Zonino!

Anthologised!

In the midst of all-out war with our real estate agent over a blocked drain today (it got pretty ugly, both literally and figuratively), I received some very exciting news "on the email", as the oldies say.

One of my longer poems has been accepted for inclusion in an exciting anthology being put together by a prominent Australian poetry publisher. I don't know how much I'm meant to say about it, but I'll be more specific as time goes by. The idea for the anthology is a really interesting one.

I'm really chuffed because it's not in an online journal, or a print journal, or a magazine; it's a real, live book. They're even sending out a contract!

Zonino!

Kipple Poem

A poem of mine called Sorting just went up over at Kipple. Inspired by my days as a laboratory technician (a very long time ago).

Pretty Good Year

As much as I complain about the painfully slow and sometimes disappointing nature of putting my poetry out there, I think it's helpful to step back and look at the bigger picture of how everything's going.

If I leave out the poem that appeared in a local magazine when I was in third class (if I absolutely must), I have eight published poems. All have been accepted by Australian publications over the past 12 months. One journal even took two!

Southerly, Cordite Poetry Review, AustralianReader, Etchings, Harvest, dotdotdash and Kipple are all pretty good publications, if I do say so myself!

To quote Tori Amos, who's provided the soundtrack to my life since age 12, "pretty good year"!

..-

I just received an email from the lovely people at dotdotdash. It's a funky new journal produced by a bunch of creative-types in Perth, and they've accepted one of my poems for their ugly-themed issue. Zonino!

The poem's called Host and deals with that timeless theme of hatching a hornet from your shin. Join me now, I'm sure you all know the words!

I'm in

Sitting at my computer for the last hour, psyching myself up to do some preparation for my return to work on Monday (while fiddling with iTunes, YouTube, Facebook and various other distractions), I felt the desperate urgency to post an update to one of my earlier posts. So, here it is.

I mentioned a while back that a magazine wanted to publish one of my poems if they could secure  two free pages. Well, I found out (weeks ago) that they've solved the problem and I'm a definite for their next issue. Zonino!

Now, I think there's something I need to check out over at ebay...

Five Stars for Moon

I've just come home from the cinema. I know this blog is reserved for matters poetic, but it's not stretching the description too far when I say that Duncan Jones's Moon is like poetry. What an amazing film.

Three Cheers for Poetry

I'm getting to the depressing end of my holidays (it happens every time, like clock-work) and I've decided to try and surround myself with poetry. 

I know I've got heaps to do before I go back to work (which I'll inevitably do the night before), but I'm not thinking about that. Instead, I've chosen to focus on the poetry collections arriving in the mail; the submissions I'm sending here, there and everywhere; and the reading I'm attending tonight. They should bottle poetry and sell it at the chemist.

Oh, and congrats to JC!

Waiter, there's a poet at the table.

I had dinner with a big bunch of people last night. We were all talking about our various creative modes of expression (some were actors, some comedians, some graphic artists) and the topic of poetry came up. They asked me questions that led me to believe that most non-poets see poetry as a quaint and largely outdated little curiosity.

I had to explain the concept of literary journals and the fact that there's a very competitive process involved in having your work published. They were all quite surprised and I felt a little bit like a mason giving up his secrets!

It's a shame that the poem has become such a niche literary form. Although most of the people involved in the discussion were Arts graduates and had studied poetry during their degree, none of them had read a poem since.

I know this was just one small sampling of society, but it was still an eye-opener.

Two Books

My poem Two Books appeared today at AustralianReader.com. There's also plenty of other cool stuff to explore.

Hmmm

My favourite lines of the week come from the very poetic song Fish Heads, by Barnes and Barnes.

I took a fish head out

to see a movie,

didn't have to pay

to get it in.

Fish heads, fish heads,
roly poly fish heads.
Fish heads, fish heads,
eat them up,
yum.

I think there's something in that for all of us.

My childhood in a slip case!

I know I'm an adult, but wow! It's only $50 from a book club at work...........probably gonna buy it.

The Long and Short of it

Just received word from a literary magazine that they'd like to publish one of my poems! Zonino, but they warn that this is dependant upon their finding a double page. Apparently, the poetry editor needs to negotiate an extra page because the amount of space given over to verse is pretty much set in stone. Here's hoping!

Which opens the issue of poem length. The above situation is, to me at least, quite an ironic one. Almost none of my many poems (the poem in question being the one exception) makes it over the page break. I don't know whether it's a real thing or not, but I sometimes feel as if the turning of a page kills the moment in a poem. At the risk of over-generalising, I prefer the succinct punch of a single-pager.

I was reading the excellent poetry of Ciaran Berry this morning on the bus and, I'm ashamed to admit, found myself scanning ahead to count the number of pages taken up by each poem. If they were more than two pages long, I skipped them and told myself I'd come back later. I know that's ridiculous and pretty irrational, but it's how I roll.

I'm guessing this issue is a purely personal one, since there's so much good poetry out there that's quite long. There are obviously people who favour the longer form.

Any thoughts?

Dustin' Off, Man! (Trying too hard?)

As Johanna Featherstone mentioned in her blog today, there's going to be a glut of dust-storm poems coming out of Australian poets over the next few days. Many a photography suite, too (from photographers, that is).

For what it's worth, here's my photo (taken at 7am in my undies). Reminds me of that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where the kid gets abducted. Spooky.

A Visitor

This little guy just didn't want to leave my t-shirt. I had to strategically coerce him off.

It's ridiculous, but I used to be TERRIFIED of these! A stint in the Entomology section of the Department of Agriculture back in my lab technician days made me realise how irrational that was. We had to catch thousands of them each night with a flood light and empty the traps the next day by hand. Gross, but a good form of therapy. As one of my good friends says, there's a poem in that!

Reabsorption

I'm rediscovering Philip Hodgins. It's not that I've undiscovered him, I've always claimed him as my favourite poet, but I'm learning to read some of his work with different eyes.

Certain poems of Hodgins's elicit a physical response from me; it might be tears, a lump in the throat or a laugh. I find myself savouring each individual poem by looking up from the page and letting it soak in. Some of his final lines almost kick you in the guts.

The image that still gets me just as powerfully as when I first read it comes at the end of Dead Calf. Maybe it's my own upbringing on a farm with cows around, but I can't go past this poem. It's gruesome, but so perfect:

Its mother started eating the afterbirth.
She must have been damaged inside.
As I walked away
Something spilled out like applause.

Favourite Lines of the Week

Bearing in mind that I haven't opened Ms. Porter's final offering yet, my favourite lines of this week (let's pretend I've been doing this weekly forever) comes from David Brooks's poem, Mosquitoes, from The Balcony.

He starts by pointing out that the mosquitoes that bug him at three in the morning don't really have a place in his large suite of love poems,


unless it be
that through all this darkness
we fuel them
as you fuel me.


Brilliant, no?

The Final Porter

A copy of The Bee Hut, Dorothy Porter's final collection of poetry, is sitting on my desk. My housemate bought it for me, and I have another copy coming in the mail (a mix-up, she didn't know I'd already ordered a copy). I'm saving the reading for a quiet moment when I can devote myself to it entirely.

So sad, but such beautiful poetry. Dorothy took a lot of talent with her.

Sorry, did you just say my name?

Just got home from a reading at Sappho Books in Glebe. Rhyll McMaster was the feature poet, and she shared some great pieces during the first part of the night. Then they opened the mic for anybody who'd put their name down on the reading list. Rhyll was the judge.

There were about nine or ten poets who got up to read, including a couple whose names were quite familiar, and I read my poem about the shrike (a very wicked little bird). After some great poems, Rhyll announced her winners, and I came first! I was so chuffed (another bird reference) and I even won a little prize. Great fun, and such a surprise! I'm liking this reading thing.

Etchings

I received some great poetry-related news today. Two of my poems have been accepted for inclusion in the upcoming issue of Etchings, a journal from Ilura Press. The journal always looks great and is starting to make quite a name for itself. The current issue even has an exclusive piece by Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee.

Keep your eyes out!

Good Fun!

I went along to The Big Read in Ashfield tonight. It was an evening of poetry readings organised for National Poetry Week. I can report with confidence that it was really good fun!

I was nervous, but once I got up behind the lecturn I was fine. Each poet had five minutes to read, so I read four pieces. They went down quite well. There were a few poets there whose work I was extremely impressed by. I liked the way we all sort of gravitated toward one another at the conclusion. I suppose it was a coalescence!

I met a couple of poets who signed copies of their books for me and asked for my email address. It was a great night, and I think I've caught the bug! There's another reading next week in Glebe. I think I'll go. Zonino!

Ooh, Almost forgot!

I also found out yesterday that I've had a poem accepted by the lovely people at AustralianReader.com. Zonino again!

Further Reading

A local fellow poet let me know about a night of reading to be held at a library in my area this Thursday. It's part of National Poetry Week. I rang and registered and the woman told me that readers can have up to 5 minutes. Sounds really relaxed and fun. Now I need to pick a few poems. Zonino!

Spacial Anomaly

I'm a big nerd for anything space related, especially NASA stuff, so a poem about an Apollo mission is not too 'out there' for me, but one about the paranormal is. Anybody who knows me is well aware that I don't go in for, or believe in, much of that stuff, so the content of a recent poem came as somewhat of a surprise, even to me.

I'd read here and there that one of the Apollo 14 astronauts had (and still has) a deep interest in ESP. I found an interview with the man himself that confirmed what I'd heard. The idea of psychic communication doesn't really sit comfortably within the hardcore scientific framework that constitutes the US space program, but the concept fascinated me. I love poetry's power to process ideas like this. Go poetry!

So, there are some guts in there, after all!

Well, I did it. I read a poem in front of an audience! I've read in front of my poetry group heaps of times, but this was the first time I stood at a microphone and recited aloud.

After the guest poet (Carol Jenkin, whose work I love) spoke, they opened the podium to anybody who'd registered their desire to read. It turned out that there were only four people who did, but it was still excellent. The venue was the very special Brett Whiteley Studio, and the backdrop of his epic canvases and some amazing sculpture really set a fantastic mood. People said some very lovely things about my poem.

I even met a few people. I'll definitely jump at the chance to read again.

Daring Myself

I'm going to a reading today. I'm quite excited about it, because the guest is Carol Jenkins, whose recent book I reviewed for Cordite. I've never met her, so I'm looking forward to the opportunity to hear her read in person.

And, there's an open mic. Those two words terrify me (I'm referring to open and mic, not and and there's, or there's and an, just to be clear). I've decided to post this entry as a sort of dare to myself. It's easier to chicken out when nobody knows that you were planning on doing something.

I'll post again about whether or not I had the intestinal fortitude to read.

Ciao!

Things that make ya' go hmm

So, here's a question for anybody with an opinion on the matter. I know it's been discussed before, but I'm still not sure.

Should poets post their unpublished work on their blog?

Lots of what I read suggests that it's not advisable, but other sources seem to say it's fine. I have entered a few contests and sent submissions to journals where the guidelines stipulate that the material must be new, and never have appeared anywhere else before, including websites and blogs. But then, I was reading a really useful book today that highlighted the excellent resource that is the blog for promoting new poetry. The author advocates the use of your blog as a sounding board, allowing comments to serve as a sort of focus group.

It is certainly a quandary. I'd really like to start putting up some of my work, but I'm nervous about jeopardising the chance to have them accepted by journals and magazines.

Hmmm.