Tick tick tickComing up in May...

Poetic impermanence at work :

The Australian editor of Poetry International Web, poet and founding editor of Vagabond Press, Michael Brennan has just updated the Australian component of the site, including expanded entries with poems and critical work on Gig Ryan, JS Harry, Jane Gibian and my own poetry


                                                Hi Michael

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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY OTOLITHS
one year old today


                                                Otoliths #5 cover

The editor, MARK YOUNG, says :

It's also May Day, so arise & join in a chorus of ‘The Internationale’ with Paul Siegell, Andrew Topel, Jordan Stempleman, Ernesto Priego, Paolo Manalo, Eileen Tabios, Jeff Harrison, Katrinka Moore, Corey Mesler, Raymond Farr, Steve Rodgers, Robert Lee Brewer, Mark Cunningham, Martin Edmond, Steve Timm, James Sanders, Audacia Dangereyes, Thomas Fink, Spencer Selby, Maria Zajkowski, Richard Lopez, Marcia Arrieta, Tom Hibbard, Matina Stamatakis, Louise Landes Levi, Márton Koppány, Anny Ballardini, Jill Jones, Craig Santos Perez, mIEKAL aND, Dax Bayard-Murray, Ed Schenk, MTC Cronin, Alana Madison, Alexander Jorgensen, Andrew Taylor, Carol Novack (& Stan Crocker), Stephanie Green, Maurice Oliver, Caleb Puckett, David-Baptiste Chirot, Derek Motion, James Maughn, Michael Rothenberg, Tom Beckett, Nick Piombino & Richard Kostelanetz as they "change henceforth the old tradition".


                                                Mark Young, 2003

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Blackheath Philosophy Forum
on again this coming Saturday. May 5th.

Literature as Experimental Philosophy:
George Eliot on Truth and Realism
A talk by Moira Gatens
Professor of Philosophy, University of Sydney











In our era an idea is abroad that fiction has little to do with truth, and that novelists are a species of liar. George Eliot, one of our greatest 19th Century English novelists, considered her work in fiction to be both realist and truth-seeking. In one letter she referred to her writings as a set of experiments in life. Through an examination of some of her novels, this talk will endeavour to explain what Eliot meant by ‘realism’ and what is involved in her commitment to truth. Moira Gatens will argue that Eliot’s worldview still has much to contribute to moral philosophy today.

Blackheath Public School Hall
corner Great Western Highway and Leichhardt Street,
Blackheath

4.00pm Saturday May 5th
$5.00 entry

coffee and cake available

pub talk after the talk

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                                 Siena, 2002. Foto by Olivo Barbieri


: : PAPER SCISSORS ROCK : :
: : WHAT MAKES THE ART WORLD TICK : :

: : CRITIC, DEALER, ARTIST, CURATOR, COLLECTOR : :
How they co-operate or don't, how they put pressure on each other, or take turns to own the art. A forum on the different social actors and professionals in the contemporary art world, and their interdependence. The power of a work of art, the influence of critical evaluation, the role of the art market, the rhetoric of sales.

Petra Arends : Wayne Tunnicliffe : Ted Colless :
Peter Hill : John Young : Amanda Rowell :
Moderated by George Alexander : curator, writer, coordinator
Contemporary Programs, Art Gallery of NSW.



A component of An Incomplete World
Warhol, Lichtenstein, Kiki Smith, Hirst
Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Richter
Sydney 19.5 - 29.7
Art Gallery of NSW

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Katoomba during history peace

Laurie Duggan sends this pic from his archive in Faversham Cyberport, UK - he says it's probably ancient copyright NSW education dept.

(See Adam Aitken's poem below)

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Katoomba poem

                               Katoomba, (view from Leura), Autumn 2007

Sydney poet Adam Aitken has written a poem set in Katoomba, a tourist town in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. He says - It is an allegory about the "history wars" debate, in which one side is the voice of white settler descendants who deny their complicity in the colonisation of the country and their part in the decline of Indigenous power. This suggests to me an image of the Garden gnome (the white settler) standing next to a stereotype "Native". Together they claim a false mateship and solidarity which the migrant/cosmopolitan stranger will never have. (The strange tourist only wants a view, some fresh air and peace and quiet, not politics.) A poem about (not)belonging (once again!)

Katoomba

While jogging
on a freezing winter's morning
history never feels
cleaner or more
freehold


than a 1950s
catalogue of multiplying accents
at Echo Point's landscape exclusive -
having settled here
for the "cure "
for walks, bush, art and open fire,
in short
for a sense of belonging.


After a couple of months of thinking
you are tolerance incarnated
you pass
a loin-clothed Aborigine
standing with a spear
on one leg
next to a white garden gnome
sharing smokes and taking in the view


as if they owned the place


and they'd seen you coming
and stared,
and knew all about you
a thousand years
before,
as if they owned the place
one thousand years
before.




                                            Adam Aitken, Glebe, Summer 2006

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Dear viewers

Just a note for the five regular visitors and the two or so strays :
'The deletions' is best viewed using Safari and Mozilla Firefox browsers.
And if you'd like to see larger versions of the photos just click on them.

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Scribblings poems

For the Time Being: The Bootstrap Book of Poetic Journals
edited by Tyler Doherty and Tom Morgan
has just been published by Bootstrap Productions



It's a collection of the kind of poetry that records, or, at least, begins from the quotidian of place, often written in the first person and usually taking off into poetic enquiry in a consciously temporal mode. Poetry that the editors describe as 'Journal Poetry' :

It includes work from:

Bob Arnold ↔ Ken Bolton ↔ Daniel Bouchard ↔ Pam Brown
Thomas A. Clark ↔ Jack Collom ↔ William Corbett ↔ Tyler Doherty ↔Laurie Duggan ↔ Marcella Durand ↔ Ryan Gallagher ↔Jonathan Greene ↔ Joanne Kyger ↔ Louise Landis Levi ↔ Joseph Massey ↔ Rachel McKeen ↔ Tom Morgan ↔ Hoa Nguyen ↔ Shin Yu Pai ↔ Mark Pawlak ↔ Michelle Naka Pierce ↔Stephen Ratcliffe ↔ Michael Rothenberg ↔ Andrew Schelling ↔ Joel Sloman ↔ Dale Smith ↔ Stacy Szymasek ↔ Aaron Tieger ↔ Joseph Torra

For more information and to buy a copy at US $18
contact Derek Fenner and Ryan Gallagher at bootstrapproductions@gmail.com
Bootstrap Productions

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