A truly impressive and stimulating poem that I’ve read recently is ‘Evental’ by Ali Alizadeh.

Ali Alizadeh says in the frontispiece that this poem is an attempt at versifying the tenets of the work of Alain Badiou and draws on a number of his key texts - Being and Event, Conditions, Ethics, and Metapolitics.

Using his customary couplets, Ali condenses to an intelligent prĂ©cis a history of revolutionary France, canvasses troubled war times in Iran, tries mathematical formula that might contain the vocation of poetry and so on. The long poem ‘Evental’ is followed by a personal coda - another poem, ‘Evening Star’.

Published as a Vagabond Press Rare Object chapbook, this is another of their extensive list of affordable poetry publications. Visit Vagabond Press here. (The site is currently being rebuilt but you can email direct to salesATvagabondpressDOTnet.)

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Justine Poon from Something Else on Eastside Radio (89.7FM) sent me some of the questions that there wasn't time to talk about in the conversation in August. She has posted it as a follow up on the blog here.

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In 1984, Colin McCahon went missing for 24 hours in Sydney. Found the next morning, kilometres from where he started, he had no memory of who he was or where he had been. In Dark Night: Walking with McCahon, Martin Edmond traces McCahon’s possible footsteps, past pubs and monuments, art galleries and churches, barracks and parks: to accompany him some way into the darkness of his end. Edmond’s record of the journey is a brilliant exploration of a city and its denizens; of the nature of art and the foundations of faith; and of the shadowy crossroads where they intersect.



               Read about Colin McCahon here.



               And for Martin Edmond, click here.

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