CANBERRA TIMES POETRY - BESIDE MYSELF

Huge hoorahs for The Canberra Times still publishing Saturday poems. Newspapers are one of the few opportunities contemporary poetry has for a really big reach. Newspaper audiences are big. Like, really BIG.

We like to think every person who buys/reads a newspaper also reads the poem. I like to believe almost everyone indeed does read the poem. I base that on the number of people who have told me that they do. (Hey I get around. I speak to people.)

Plus the fact that even people who confess to not liking poetry, often tell me: ‘… but I always read those Saturday poems!’ And that they like them and even look forward to them. I have clasped this close to my heart over many years – so you may have heard me say this before.

So know that I am beside myself with excitement, when I tell you that Yours Truly is taking over as The Canberra Times Poetry Editor shortly. I’ve been sitting on this for months, while having coffee and delightful discussions about the role, the importance of the Saturday poem and poetry in general, with outgoing editor Melinda Smith.

Yes, it’s Melinda Smith you can thank for the superb poems published in the Panorama arts supplement for the last two years. (Almost – Melinda’s selections will appear up until early August or so.) Thanks go to Melinda, who by the way has just released a new book Good Bye, Cruel (Pitt Street Poetry) and thanks go to all poets who sent in their poems.

So here I am. It’s a privileged position to be in and it’s put a superb wind in my sails. I will read hundreds of new poems. Of course some will not be up to scratch, but most will be good, a lot will be terrific, some will be exceptional. Bring it on!

With only fifty-two Saturdays in a year, like any submission call the hardest thing will be declining good poems. Be assured each and every one will be handled with care though.

The full Canberra Times Editorial Policy for Poetry is available in the top menu. Please read. To give you a kick start, the essential nuts and bolts are: send up to three unpublished poems of up to 28 lines (not counting title and stanza breaks) to canberra[dot]times[dot]poetry[at]gmail[dot]com by May 31. (Poets published in The Canberra Times are asked to skip the next year.) 

Pass the word on far and wide.

Photo taken at the National Museum of Australia.

FourXFour POETRY RELEASE

Poetry Day Ireland was held on April 27. A special double issue of FourXFour was released as part of its celebrations. I am happily one of the eight invited contributors in Issue 20/21: Spring 2017. It's a beautiful range of voices. I just wanted to give you the updated link: http://www.poetryni.com/fourxfour.html And here's a local splash of purple while I'm at it.

FourXFour — NORTHERN IRISH POETS

Delighted not only to be an invited contributor to FourXFour one of Poetry NI’s online journals, but to be part of the special double issue to be released on Poetry Day Ireland, April 27. The other contributors are Nathan Armstrong, Julieann Campbell, Michael Conaghan, Aine MacAodha, Willetta Fleming, Gareth Osborne and Patrick Taggart. FourXFour is edited by Colin Dardis. 

You can read about Poetry NI here: http://www.poetryni.com/about.html You can read about its founder Colin Dardis, a dynamic poet and poetry activist based in Belfast, here:

http://www.colindardispoet.co.uk/ There is plenty about Poetry Day Ireland here: http://www.poetryireland.ie/whats-on/category/poetry-day 

NOT VERY QUIET POETRY

 

This is great news indeed. Canberra poets Moya Pacey and Sandra Renew have established a new online journal for women’s poetry called Not Very Quiet. The issues are thematic and based on a quotation selected by the editors or guest editors.

The journal and its first submission period will be launched Monday March 20, 7.00 pm - 8.00 pm at Smith’s Alternative, 76 Alinga St, Canberra City by Melinda Smith of 2014 Prime Minister Literary Prize (Poetry) fame.

I’ll be reading at the launch with other poets including Melinda, Jen Webb and Victoria McGrath. If you’re near Canberra join in the celebration.

There’s an open mike!

Meanwhile check out the background information, submission guidelines and first theme at https://not-very-quiet.com/

 

FIRST BOOKS ...

One battered author copy

I’m feeling quite nostalgic. I’ve emptied out the top drawer of one filing cabinet and gone through each folder before ‘archiving’ ie shove in a storage box. I’ve not only made space for some of the pile pictured in my last post but revisited my first book She’s a Train and She’s Dangerous: Women Alone in the 1990s (Literary Mouse Press 1994). What a long title — I always thought I wouldn’t do that.

Letters accompanying submissions range from short and business-like to chattier with positive feedback on the idea, to women sharing their lives. 

bedridden she writes about her life

sends me lavender and pine cones

They are typed — and even handwritten — including one from Elizabeth Jolley. There is correspondence with poets I’ve come to know quite well and my own updates showing the hard history of trying to get a first anthology published (not to mention during a recession). There is a small, beautiful catalogue of poems and images from the late artist and poet Margaret West — now retrieved and placed on my poetry shelves. 

Over six hundred poems and stories later and a village post office in a bit of a flap ...  

I’m reminded that it was Sarah Rossetti who suggested the fabulous Ruth Clark and her Literary Mouse Press in Perth — I was wondering how we first connected. I’m also pleased to tell you that this first book sold out in six months. Women stopped me to say how they loved the book and were sharing it around. One was in a reading group queue — doesn’t help with sales but I loved the spirit of it. There were loads of reviews.

There is the memory of other wonderful writers who offered different kinds of support and advice including Sherryl Clark, Nina Kavunenko, Susan Lever, Robyn Lincoln, Chris Mansell, Janene Pellarin, Sarah St Vincent Welch. So much has happened since.

I can’t wait to ‘archive’ the next drawer.

 

MY ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

My Room of One’s Own was once my daughter’s bedroom – we’re not too nostalgic – our children moved out and we moved in. This mess is over twenty years of freelance work and creative writing. There is almost as much again outside the frame. The pile in the middle is where I abandoned the sort/recycle/trash I was in the middle of a few years ago because I got wildly busy again. The cobwebs on the witches’ hats are real. Okay. Time to have another go. And I really must paint that ugly grey filing cabinet.

GOING DOWN - HOSPITAL POEM

GOING DOWN

Going down he jokes

You’re doing a good job as lift attendant

Cushy job standing here all day drinking takeaway coffee

Talking to people about Trump

Everyone is shaken up

I don’t have anything to add

[Posted on Project 366 on November 10, 2016]

RUSH - HOSPITAL POEM

RUSH

They are concreting near a new building on the hospital campus a beaming worker stands his two feet in enormous gumboots freshly poured cement up to his calves like a small boy hock deep in mud I want the story I want a photo Like everyone else here I am in a rush

[A hospital poem posted on Project 366 on December 3, 2016]

PREAMBLES - HOSPITAL POEM

PREAMBLES

This couple lean and worn in who never leave their home town have travelled wait not so patiently for the next stage They’d just be having breakfast around now and another three hours to go Some flick magazines young men poke at the net send texts one up very late stretches yawns lolls low on one elbow he might as well lie down Others stare ahead for a long time you wonder what each is facing A daughter attempts cheeriness her mother one foot in a velvety slipper one in dressings as white as eighty-five year old hair She slumps now in her wheelchair The vascular team arrives a leggy registrar poses giraffe-like is excited to be in the theatre gets to watch over shoulders might get to hitch a stitch or two

Another poem from Project 366 - to keep my hospital poems in one place It was posted on December 3, 2016

[Okay it's posting on this occasion as a long column - I don't mind it] 

ON THE GUILTY PURSUIT - POETRY & ART

Media: Oil pastel, collage, found text on paper. © Lizz Murphy

ON THE GUILTY PURSUIT

Back at the wharf,
on the guilty pursuit
I sallied forth
With the sun dipping low

Each time, the story deepens,
"Older thinkers had been wiser
Myth was no mere
stoush

Mystically I offer
years of human history
suspect of sins.
handle it.

In my life, I have had opportunities
"I am very grateful for that."

                         Several steps more


--
This is not an ending, this is a beginning. Thank you Kit Kelen and all the Project 365+1 contributors. It's been wonderful - even the days that had me cursin. Happy new year. 
--

Above is the last of my posts in Project 366. Some of the poets and artists are continuing on into 2017 such is their passion for daily making and posting, so the blog is still live and vibrant. I need to take stock. I know I gained so much from participating in the project not the least of which was being in that creative and supportive space with other poets for the whole year. Indebted to instigator/coordinator Christopher/Kit Kelen. 

See some previous posts for more about how I survived. There are also three pieces at the project's metablog: click here for In for the long haul; here for Bungee jumping: A response to Kit Kelen’s upside down meditation on daily practice; here for Get over yerself (my response to questions posed by Kit).

A number of the other participants have also posted about their experience and it's interesting reading indeed. Kit Kelen's Rather a long rant about it all is a terrific discourse which includes the background to Project 366, contemporary Australian poetry and publishing, the 'star system,' funding, community, Kit's own creative process and more ... Pour a glass of wine and settle in.

SHEBIRD POETRY REVIEW

“Murphy’s preoccupation with the marginalised voices of women and girls is astutely conveyed in this volume, which translates the pain and violence experienced by women into brief yet profound verses.”

I was so thrilled to be reviewed recently in Cordite Poetry Review. Not only was Stephanie Downing complementary but she seems to have articulated my own writing goals. I’m particularly pleased that she thinks the bird motif is effective.

I’m very appreciative. You can find the full review here, a little more about the book in a post below and information on all my micropoetry collections at PressPress.

A6 40pp ISBN 978-0-9873057-5-6

(cover photograph: Chris Mansell)

RRP $9.90 free p&p

HIGHLIGHT POEMS

One of things I hoped to do during Project 365 plus 1 was make erasure poems. I’ve made one or two here and there but I was attracted to the idea of doing a bunch of them. Maybe a take on news of the day, every day, for a while. It was almost the end of November before I got to it, and I’ve only made eleven. I didn’t think they’d be a breeze but they proved harder to ‘find’ than I expected. I call most of them ‘highlight poems.’ These were made on-screen beginning with highlighting in yellow what I wanted to keep and then highlighting in black (very effective) the text I wanted to erase. I love the black, yellow and white especially once I spaced the lines. They remind me of Charmion Von Wiegand or Piet Mondrian’s 'Composition' paintings.

Here’s the latest.

POEM: IN THE HEALTH CENTRE CAR PARK

This is my post # 310 on Project 365 + 1 -  a poem that fits with my earlier hospital poems. We're on the home run - only 56 poems or other works to go before the project ends on January 1. More guest poets and artists have arrived for November.

IN THE HEALTH CENTRE UNDERGROUND CARPARK

He props against the car

waits patiently expectantly

She lugs his fold-up wheelchair

out of the car

Not enough disability parks

her space is cramped

He sits in the wheelchair

She attempts to adjust a footrest

bends from the hip

to save her back

hair not quite sweeping the ground

cheeks flushing

Caring is like that some days

tangled

arse up

not caring

HAULING OUT THE POEMS

It’s late October and the core Project 365 + 1 group has been at it for almost 10 months. 299 days to be exact … and at this point I suddenly realize I must have missed a couple!

I have reached a stage where I don’t think I can haul another word out of me. There’s a mild sense of panic setting in. It’s as if everything now hinges on this project – all the writing I may ever do has to happen in the two months before it finishes. I’d better produce some good poems then! It never is rational this writing stuff.

I hope to get writing again in November. In the meantime see below for a peek at the series of art & text images I am making. Visit Project 365 + 1 for the full series so far (search for 'Head'). They are oil pastel and found text on A6 notepaper. 

Better still treat yourself to poetry and images by the other contributors including international poets, poetry in translation and an exciting new art & text collaboration by Bekim & Merima (Sweden) who joined in this month.

can't articulate in words."

paint runs in the rain,"

in a cardigan."

in an audacious dream of

SHEBIRD - NEW POETRY TITLE

New release from PressPress RRP $9.90. 

 

My latest collection of micropoems has arrived from PressPress. Wonderful. So pleased with the look of it. Thank you to publisher and poet Chris Mansell.

Backcover blurb:

Shebird is the woman or girl who wears the shroud of widows, guards the new grave, tastes gun, is paid two dollars a day or not paid at all. She is the child factory worker, the blackbird changing shadows, or the poet pondering black dogs and ravens or becoming the fox with mist on her breath.

   This is Lizz Murphy’s eighth poetry title and her third PressPress collection of micropoetry. She has also published five anthologies and is widely published inter/nationally.

          **
The manuscript was developed with the support of an artsACT grant for which I am hugely grateful. It's taken a while to get from that final draft MS to the published book and it has gone through a few changes along the way. I'm also pleased to say that meanwhile a good many of the 40 poems have been published in Australia and internationally.

           **

Order from me or from PressPress as convenient

A6 40pp ISBN 978-0-9873057-5-6

$9.90 including postage
Cover photo by publisher and poet Chris Mansell

WRITING & HAPPY ACCIDENTS

Just had a chat with the ACT Writers Centre via their Taking Five column - Capital Letters blog about writing and writing workshops including the imminent Land•Sea•Air series (see the plug top right).

It begins with my writing career - a happy accident ...

Ends with the most common tips I give out at workshops - the need for the old standbys never goes away: have a dedicated writing space (of some sort), have a routine (of some sort), carry a notebook, take yourself seriously even if others don’t, be selective about who you seek feedback from, dream, set goals, just write.

DRINK FECKIN RESPONSIBLY

Well no I don't think the Lilt series of poems and pieces I'm writing for Project 365 + 1 will cut it for the fragment genre manuscript mentioned below. But never mind. It's what is working for the moment and I'll come back to the other. Here's a fun piece just posted which brings back great memories. In Belfast they dance, laugh, party and tell it like it is.

LILT x.

DRINK FECKIN RESPONSIBLY!

for Aroona and Mags

They get straight to the point

Drink feckin responsibly

Take a feckin taxi

The taxi we took on our night out

was a karaoke taxi

He was sittin outside the club

waitin for his hens’ party to return

One of the girls chatted him up

took him off duty to take us

to our next venue

We’re all in the back

with microphones in our hands

tryin to sing

sayin is this switched on

can they hear us outside?

We are wettin ourselves

We arrive at the next club

all arguin to pay

fumblin with coins for the fare

The driver says

give us 50p each and fuck off!

We tumble on to the footpath

laughin’ our heads off

© Lizz Murphy

 

Photo: Aroona Murphy

LILTING MY WAY THROUGH POETRY

Lilt is the beginning of a series of poems/pieces/pieces of poems about Ireland drawing on a visual journal from my last visit. There have only been two visits. The first in autumn - of course it rained the whole time except when it unexpectedly snowed. The second was in summer and I re-experienced twilight and The Twelfth.

The 12th of July is the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne celebrated by Loyalists. It's a significant event with emotional and political pulls for both Protestants and Catholics. If you visit Belfast early July you'll find it strung with red, white and blue buntings and Union Jacks. There are also preparations for Bonfire Night (July 11) and traffic constantly held up by rehearsing marching bands. The Catholics clear out if they can. I have family and friends on both sides of 'the divide.' (Born a Protestant; married a Catholic; blah blah.)

It's five years since I visited and took these photos. It's time I tried to write a few pieces - besides I'm under pressure to produce for 365 + 1! I'm not sure if it will fit into my fragment manuscript slowly in progress - it might - it's another small experiment - I'll let you know. You can follow if at all inclined at project365plus.blogspot.com.au

[Sorry - Blogger is doing crazy things with the formatting in #i]

LILT

i.

The lilt of the ‘New Belfast’ tilts me 

motorways cutting through terraced terracotta  

  

battle anniversaries cutting through evening 

CUTTING EDGE

A small selection of the drawings and collages I've been doing recently as part of a poetry project exploring the fragment genre. There is a whole bunch of them posted on Project 365 + 1. Not too much cutlery - and not a cut edge to be seen.

SKIN IN AND BONE OUT - BLAKE POETRY PRIZE UPDATE

A quick hi and Blake Poetry Prize update

I'm jumping back into this earlier post (May 2017) to give you an update on the Blake Poetry Prize. I was of the impression it had folded but, good news, it has moved to the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in partnership with the Liverpool City Library as of this year. The Blake Poetry Prize closes June 2. The much longer running Blake Prize (for art) moved to Casula Powerhouse in 2016. Both are held biennially.

👄👄👄

At my first art class the teacher encouraged us to buy a book of anatomy and to draw and re-draw the human body - from skin in and bone out - spending the week between classes sketching people as skeletons. I had two active children and had no trouble filling books with their small skeletons at play. 

Fast sketching in the street and from the car was more practise in catching the fleeting. In those days I could also remember a face or a character and sketch it well later.  I learnt to make image, to explore colour and to observe. All great tools for writing.

I love the smell of paint (started as a child sniffing freshly painted doors) and to swing a brush and have missed these. From time to time I’ll break out and mess with oil pastels or do a bit of scribbling with pencil or stick & ink. 

A friend gave me a very small book once with plain cream pages and I found myself tearing out text and images and adding my own images and words. Fragments. This (now well thumbed) book eventually became a prose poem called Prayer: Quick & Dirty and was Highly Commended in the 2013 Blake (sorry - I've mentioned this before - and before!). A few pages from the book – or as it turned out an early draft of the poem – are below. The captions are related fragments from the poem.

This is the catalyst for a manuscript I've been slowly shaping up and hope to find time to focus on (see previous posts). The poem can be found at the Blake Prize website. Oh no it can't. Seems the website may be no longer. Hmmm.

Listen   quick and dirty    eight orange stars   

a vest like a/raffle ticket

His raven eye fitly set   wounds  Your takeaway face ...

... him and his raspberry insult   cobbles/burled by the currents   smooth grey pigeons

... peel back the pages you/will see her porcelain skin is broken china

... crushed to coal  a black slide  their slippers a queue of teeth

... lays her eggs in mud bottles  distinguishes the character of/her young   like some small miracle

Yesterday's journey an/arc of stiletto red under the monotone of stricken evening

the old Singer up on its brawny legs humming   Its running stitch/its rapid tacking  chronicles this place

... the desert freckled hide ...