Poetry Submissions Open - Social Alternatives

I’m excited to announce that I am the incoming poetry editor of Social Alternatives journal.


Social Alternatives analyses, critiques, and reviews contemporary social issues and problems.

The journal seeks to generate insight, knowledge, and understanding of our contemporary circumstances in order to determine local, national, and global implications.

The journal is committed to the principles of social justice and to creating spaces of dialogue intended to stimulate social alternatives to current conditions.

Social Alternatives values the capacity of intellectual and artistic endeavour to prompt imaginative solutions and alternatives and publishes refereed articles, review essays, commentaries and book reviews as well as short stories, poems, images and cartoons.

The journal has grappled with matters of contemporary concern for three decades, publishing articles and themed issues on topics such as: peace and conflict, racism, Indigenous rights, social justice, human rights, inequality and the environment.

The list of Australian writers previously published by Social Alternatives virtually comprises a ´who´s who´ of the literati and influential on the Australian Left: for example, Ted Wheelwright, Oodgeroo Nunukal, Susan Ryan, Ian Lowe, Thomas Shapcott, Eva Cox, Dennis Altman, Frank Morehouse, Mary Owen, Bob Connell, Kevin Carmody, Humphrey McQueen, Sarah Dowse, H. C. (Nugget) Coombs, Judith Wright, Frank Stilwell, Bruce Dawe, Hugh Stretton, Marcia Langton, and Kevin Gilbert.

The deadline for poetry submissions for the forthcoming Social Media edition is May 30, 2012.

Submissions should be emailed to my attention as Microsoft Word attachment to maxine@socialalternatives.com.

last night i dreamt the queensland literary premier's award wz axed

last night i dreamt

the queensland premier/s awards for writing
were axed
funding cut
what a nightmare
jst like that

bt it wz what happened next
tht woke me sweat-up:

they axed the awards
& every wordsmith in the country
got together
& unwrote about it
no newspaper in the country stayed in print
tongue-tied newsreaders pushed on without autocue
& every english teacher in the country
made their class sit the full forty-seven minutes
quietly not reading
the football went uncommentated
there were wz no announcement / song lyric
or talkback on any airwave
anywhere in australia
the speechwriters quit
politicians everywhere were made out
to be the fools they mostly are
bookstores closed their doors
even amazon & co
shut down their aussie portal
the theatres were empty
actors taped their mouths
comedians bowed their heads
& sombrely sat down
the advertising industry
wz at a standstill
the cinemas were picketed
& for seven nights on every street corner
small mountains of books
became nothing
bt firewood

by the time i woke up
the queensland premier
sure wasn’t looking so good

An Open Poem to Australian Poetry, from Australian Slam Poetry

Show Us Where You're Publishing was first published on this blog here in 2009, and also featured in Miscellaneous Voices, Australian Blog Writing #1 (Miscellaneous Press, 2010). Now seems an opportune time to revisit it.


the thing is / i have been writing some
& if so inclined cd mic those thoughts
across / & blow your mind
i wrote a poem just last night
& not just anything
bt one-a those damn-i-just-gotta
read-this-to-somebody-it
just-might-be-genius pieces:
yoko ono wz always gonna be a problem
it’s called

see / i cn tell yd dig it
just from watching you
digest the title

i wd like to broadcast it
bt here’s the thing:

the centre’s been looking
for poets to tour again
where r you publishing
show us where you’re publishing
they're asking

packing bars / & radio waves
doesn't seem to mean a thing
they just want to see the paper
where r you publishing your poems

as if all that matters is print destination
& not that almost a hundred people
wd brave horizontal rain to get to
somewhere you’re doing your thing
on stage

i wanna give you a poem / bt
i’m broke & it’s that time of year
again / when every god forsaken writer
in this place / comes
shaking the tin & fillin those
applications / i wd like
to be able to give you
a poem / bt my children
are hungry
& once again those folk
are saying
without saying it:
that thing you do
nah / you serious
don’t even come knocking

the real problem with australian poetry

& then / you know what she says?

what the f*ck / seriously
this is what that crazy woman says
she says y’know the real problem
with australian poetry today is...

i mean / like she knows anything
about poetry / bt no bull / right
this is what she says
the problem with australian poetry today
is tht it is mostly read by
middle-aged-white-heterosexual
armchair lefty men

that is seriously what she said

& she didn’t even stop there
she said the problem with
australian poetry mostly being read
by middle-aged-white-heterosexual
armchair lefty men
is tht they only want to read poetry written
by middle-aged-white-heterosexual
lefty men / who are occasionally
adventurous enough
to leave their bloody chair

i know
what the f*ck?
she wz pretty drunk / bt still
i mean / no wonder
they don’t publish
people like her

spell it out again

the real parties are over on the brown side

(west of the city, part II)


not exclusively
bt still / when school lets out
the white people / mostly
head to yarraville / where
working class hz been “reclaimed”
by friends of the earth
& collectives / so named
certifiably organic fruit & veg
fair-trade coffee shops / with
home-made vegan banana bread
when it is a white ghetto
it hz been gentrified / when
it’s a brown ghetto / it is
disadvantaged
*sigh*

bt the real parties
good food / & folks
who dance undrunk
happen over / on the brown side
i say / bring yarraville over here to us
& we will show them
who their neighbours are
& what the real ghetto-gentry does
turn the music up
& hoist me to the goddamn fence
cut the quiet monday night / i
am gonna boom-box our other-side friends
jungle-beat those sub-woofers
to the maribyrnong sky / sisters
we are gonna decolonise
the airways / over
geelong road / tonight

cz history speaks
of berlin & palestine
bt in this country
suburban highways
cn be race dividing lines:
vicious voting clusters
for anti-immigration lies

to some where you live
is not where you are
bt who you are / it
is sad / i know / bt true
& one suburb over
an extra hundred thou
cn ensure the neighbour’s hue

bt we run fast
& there is no escaping that
there is no escaping that
there is no escaping / that
no matter what suburb
in no matter what city
west of the city
always gets a bad rap

west of the city

no matter what city

west of the city
always gets a bad rap

they say the streets are littered with
rubbish / brown bodies
headscarfs / no-good
good for nothing playing hooky teens
from what the hell kind of public high school
out there cd even teach them
the seven days of the week

beat-sneakers
strung from power lines
shopkeepers / who refuse
to speak english
making it ironic even calling it / the west
is / abu dhabi dumpling
sweet pork bun / made from
fat stray cats / white trash bogan
out-of-their minders on crack
cz white people who choose
to live west / they
have got to be absolutely whacked
blue eyes is like
finding a syringe
in a bayside cafe` pancake stack

what is up with that?

no matter what city
west of the city
always gets a bad rap

Poemography

Writers who 'Write Everything'

As a prose writer and poetry, I know I do people well. I am always watching, without even thinking: in cafe’s, school playgrounds, at bus stops, over cash registers. My character may be twenty-five and living in a Black Panther squat in 1960’s London, but I know exactly the way his hips swing when he crosses the road – how low his pants are slung and what he had for breakfast this morning. I know what his mother thought the first time she saw him, and how he’d catch a football if it happened to come careening toward him.

Outdoor landscapes I’m okay with. Interiors I have to work at, but I'm getting better. I don’t particularly give a fuck whether the rug on which he spilt the red wine when he confessed the crime to his wife was red, or orange, or mottled brown, but I’m starting to realise that sometimes specific details do actually matter that much. If the rug was red, then wine won’t show, and maybe the bloodstain is actually hidden underfoot, right there while he is talking.
I’m a kick-arse public reader, a fierce poet, a good, but all too often lazy prose-writer, a great conversational journalist, a rubbish investigative journalist, a half-decent interviewer, a crappy academic essayist and a confident and exact auto-biographer. Increasingly though, I know my limits as a writer. That doesn’t mean I don’t push myself, it just means I know the areas, and circumstances where I need to put in a little, or a lot more research, or focus or effort. And I know which kinds of writing I have no talent, passion or interest for.

I like Maya Angelou’s non-fiction waaay better than her poetry. I like Nikki Giovanni’s poetry waaay better than her non-fiction. Roald Dahl’s adult stories don’t do much for me, but many of his kids stories are still, on re-re-reading them, a delight.

I am wary, and often scathing, of writers who claim they can ‘write everything’. Mostly, they can't. The fact is, there are very few writers who write every genre well enough to warrant publication (and I certainly am not one of them).

Why are we afraid to specialise, as writers? Name a track and field star as good at the 200 metres as they are at marathon?

Is it out of ego, delusion, or economic necessity that writers increasingly try to dabble in everything?

Are we are all J.K. Rowling, quietly panicking over that promise of a first adult novel?

Just because you can write everything, doesn't mean you should, or that it will actually be any good.

Poetry Cover Art

The latest issue of Cordite Poetry Review, featuring my concrete poetry cover illustration, Freethemetry is now online. You can check it out here.