ROVING POETRY PERFORMANCE

 

This Saturday March 11 I'll be part of the Indelible Stencil Roving Poetry Performance at Boorowa with local poet Margaret Berry and Yass poet Jane Baker. 

Join us at the Rotary/Dr Kelf Park, Brial Street, Boorowa at 11.30. We will take you on a short river walk to see the three poems installed as public art along there, read poetry to you, then ply you with light refreshments before reading more poetry and inviting others to perform during the open mike session.

This is a Southern Tablelands Arts (STA) and Hilltops Off the Beaten Track (HOBTRACK) art trail event. HOBTRACK is cracking out a whole range of art and cultural events from March 8-22. Full program here.

Margaret, Jane and myself are three of ten poets commissioned to write micro poems for Poetry: The Indelible Stencil a poetry as public art project I instigated a number years ago. It is a partnership between myself, STA and eight Local Governments. Over twenty poems cut into large steel plates have been installed across the STA region — from Queanbeyan right up to Picton. It is still unfolding. You can see the map, poems and authors on the STA website: https://www.southerntablelandsarts.com.au/the-indelible-stencil/

You can meet Margaret briefly online in the latest STA Stories from the Studio here: https://www.southerntablelandsarts.com.au/margaret-berry/ Jane talks about the Yass Valley Writers, a group she has been coordinating for many years: https://www.southerntablelandsarts.com.au/stories-from-the-studio-jane-baker-and-yass-writers-group/ I read from my latest book The Wear of my Face: https://www.southerntablelandsarts.com.au/lizz-murphy/ But come along on Saturday and meet us in person, hopefully along with many others.

FOXES & FUNGI

 

Here we are in the new financial year! Just thought I’d say that. Yesterday a fox (presumably) ran off with my two pet chooks. It wasn’t even night or dusk or daybreak. Somewhere between 8.30 am and 10 am when I let them out just for a while before the Canberra commute. I’m not so fond of foxes at the moment.

 

Here are some foxy coloured fungi. Might be Orange Peel Fungus. Or maybe not. Who’d have thought there were so many details to consider. I’ll inspect more closely tomorrow. And also — as Billy Collins would say (on his poetry broadcasts) — google it up.

 

 

 

 

MINIMUM 1.5 METRES OR 1 DIRT ROAD

[Minimum 1.5m or 1 dirt road]

Social-distance walking in Binalong recently — lucky to live in such a picturesque area where it also isn’t hard to avoid people. A combination of country space and everyone doing their best to keep one another safe. 

In the village centre the butcher’s open as normal and we can still get newspapers and staples from the wee shop but the Post Office currently closes at 1 pm and the pub is only open (takeaways) lunch time and tea time. The Old Produce Store in total lockdown has reeled in its gay buntings and model sheep, while the old General Store, between jobs so to speak, solemnly awaits a new future. We can still have takeaway food from said Hotel Binalong Wed-Sat with the new luxury of home delivery Saturday dinner times, takeaways from Café on Queen on weekends and The Binalong Community Club on Sunday evenings (also alcohol). The Royal Tara Motel has introduced takeaway Tuesday Chinese and Tuesday Curries. We are tiny but we are creative. There is the added bonus of saying a socially distanced hi if you arrive at a similar time to other locals treating themselves — that’s nearly as exciting as distance waving to one another in the bigger town supermarket.

Our small village is far from a bustling metropolis at any time but now it can be coronavirus eerily quiet. Driving through, say on a mid-week afternoon, reminds me of country towns in rural decline and how this is what Binalong could look like permanently if it didn’t have its active community. We worry about businesses (whether shops, farms or freight) surviving the pandemic, but Binalong will do everything possible to flourish. 

In another life I worked in regional arts development and would hear a lot about rural town decline. The most common refrain from the communities was: ‘How can we get our young people to stay?’ Let them go out into the world I say — think about how to bring them back. In Binalong we have fresh air, clear skies, birds, space, animals, sticks to collect in the paddock, family fun, community activities, art/artists — lifestyle. Young people are returning to start their families and we have the delight of that generation plus babies and toddlers everywhere. 

And even the COVID-19 cloud has a silver lining — it's called Zoom — I have never 'been to' so many poetry events in such a short space of time! Watch for news on a Brush with Poetry thanks to Coordinator Robyn Sykes. Thanks also Robyn for the photo and the walk.

WALK THE WILDLY — POETRY REPRINT

A strange walk

It’s strange going back to earlier poems even if it is after only a few years. You read them as if you weren’t the one who wrote them at all. Sometimes I completely forget that I had written a particular poem or batch or that I ever wrote in that style or on that theme.

Walk the Wildy was first published in 2009 by the original Picaro Press owned by poet Rob Riel in Newcastle NSW. It has just been reprinted by Stephen Matthew’s Ginninderra Press which took over the Picaro Press imprint, when Rob was unable to continue. The new edition has a classy white glossy cover with sharp black lettering. The new cover image is a quite monochromatic shot of Grogans Road which I have walked a thousand times over. I can spend a lot of time looking at these almost animated shadows.

A number of the poems are inspired by the place of Binalong — birdlife, drought, hard working people. The collection also takes me back to exhibitions I participated in, books and poems I have read, pondering over a paddock gate, civilians under threat at that time, memories of the place I originated from. I feel quite nostalgic.

The style of the 5 page fragmented title poem is inspired by Mary Oliver’s The Leaf and the Cloud a delicious book (all one poem) I found in Kathy Kituai’s guest room.

With thanks to Stephen, Rob and Kathy.

Here’s the back cover blurb:

Walk the Wildly with Lizz Murphy in this, her fifth collection of poetry, where winter is a lumbering lantern-jawed season, spring is a baking back, untimely frost a trollop. There are women of precise skirts, men with shipwrecked backs and locals who inspect the brash blue, foreheads strained like fence wire. Reflecting on absence and place, the sea is put aside for special occasions, the river kept for the everyday and language is slow from heat and unfinished endings. She also writes of water ancients, civilian targets and angels caught off guard. Lizz Murphy lives in the village of Binalong in rural NSW.

How to order:

Walk the Wildly (Picaro Press 2009, Picaro Press/Ginninderra 2017, pb, 35 pp, RRP $12). Order from Ginninderra Press here (check out the other Picaro Press titles too) or send me a note.

Settlement - a poem

A poem from a Binalong walk during the Rudd reign - I had the plight of asylum seekers on my mind. (Sorry the lines are too long for this space and run over...maybe I quite like that.) Let's see if there is a photo for it...my summer job was organizing my masses of digital photos - good, bad or indifferent! Lucky you.

SETTLEMENT

That settlement on the lowland the noise of them

chittering and squawking Those single-note whistles

sucked back unutterables everyone scattering One so much

less agitated sailing wings draped like arms around someone

else’s half-hearted shoulders legs trailing absentminded the feet

chewed stick ends The choughs flap and stretch nettled silk each

fan-fold a clearly outlined breath Two magpies flee to another

patch the first knows its song well the other repeats her last

phrase on a seven second delay like someone who can’t contain

thought or an unacquainted tongue And then the falcon flaunting

his high authority the rearing sun his silver edged wingspan

limbs extended his binding decision his bite to the spine

© Lizz Murphy

Walking under a wide-brimmed hat

Sounds/

Feet/the trip of

Birds/the whispering

Wings/how close