Writing Resolution #2

Review More Poetry: In 2009, I encouraged (read: bullied)a relationship between the Overload Poetry Festival and Overland Literary Magazine. In exchange for free entry to festival events, a team of 7 reviewers covered Melbourne's only poetry festival, posting scene reports, vox pops, interviews and reviews on the Overland blog. Overland Overloaded was madness. Absolute madness. For three weeks, I barely slept with all the reviewing, uploading & editing. Still, the project was an overall success and initiated much discussion about poetry. You can read some of my favourite posts in the blog archives here, here and here. For many Melbourne poets Overland Overloaded was the first time their work had been reviewed. In 2010, in addition to hopefully running several similar projects (as time permits), I hope to post more poetry reviews on this blog - of both written spoken word poetry. I'm hoping I'll be able to make it a regular weekly thing, but we'll see...please drop me a comment with any suggestions for reviews (preferably of work by Australian poets, but other suggestions are also welcome).

Detroit Flight 253

examining flight 253
the experts said:
the most effective measure
is to profile selectively
this might not make us popular
bt sure as hell is truth:
there is a clear cut colour
gender & age group
most likely to strap
bombs to their shoes
it is all down to expertise

call in the experts
strip searchers of truth
bring back the experts
back rooms for black brothers
like mine / to suffocate in
call in the experts
the hooks in their rooms
hang hoods / the experts
the hoods on the hooks
in those rooms are red

expertise

brothers & sisters / once again
they are calling on experts
whose most expert measure of all is
that our fathers
end up dead

Writing Resolution #1

Boxing Day

boxing day comes quiet
a child was born in bethlehem
beneath a star
but a childhood died

wise men
brought frankincense & gold
for a babe who had not opened his eyes
didn/t gather that brown girl in their arms
& whisper hush my darling
it/s okay to cry
you are not alone tonight

a scared girl
carried a god/s fire in her belly
without a choice
watched a young man / she
raised as her own
murdered on a cross
& crowned with thorns

on boxing day
i think about mary


Happy Birthday to my brand new big four year old boy.

Christmas Magic

if santa claus wz the real deal
christmas magic wd be a
black mama’s kinda justice:
well i know you
kicked your bedroom wall in
this past september / bt honestly
your mama wz drunk again
dadda just sent down
third time since last
christmas / you
hadn’t had a decent meal in weeks
& i know cz i been watchin all year
how your blood sugar gets at these times
besides / i know beneath those fists is
a damn fine child tht just needs
some kinda break once in a while / so
what the hey / merry christmas kid
now perk up & gimme a smile

old black ms claus wd say
nuh uh / for you being good wz easy
you got everything you pointed at
opportunity besides / &
still didn’t make the most of it
being good for you wz mighty easy
& yet you still managed / most of the time
to totally shit me
technically good isn’t good enough for me
not when i am watchin you grow up
to be some kinda right-leaning
spoiled racist dick / seriously i am
not even sure i like you let alone
workin’ my lil’ black elves to the bone
to give you shit
turn the fuck around
go home
& try again next year

if santa claus wz the real deal
christmas magic wd be a
black mama’s kinda justice
& all the world wd try
that li'l' bit harder
to just be good

Art Attack

Proof

the first proof arrived

red / like

a heart splayed open

the note said
i don’t know

i thought maybe this

wz revolutionary

i thought damn
here is a man
who gets what the fuck
i am even doing

Harvest Magazine

Below is a short extract from Railton Road, an edited section of my novel Black Lazarus. Railton Road has just been published in the Summer 2009 issue of Harvest magazine. If you like what you're reading, please track down a copy of the magazine and treat yourself for Christmas. This is one beautiful new literary journal that really deserves to make it.

His first night at the rebel squat Sonny dreamt he was ancient Africa, stretched out wide and deep centre-globe, cradling a people. On his lower left shoulder in southern Togo, with their mahogany faces caked with thick white clay-paint, the Anlo-Ewe people stamped thanks to the sky God Mawu-Lisa. The blood of young goats sank warm and iron-filled into the sandy earth of villages of his decolletage.

Sonny dreamt he was Africa, and the Songhay people were conjuring spirit Hauka which danced light-footed across the black earth ridges of his startled nipple, trapped inside the bucking bodies of taken tribes people. Village messengers, djembes slung across backs, gently drummed their cryings up and down his ribcage, rocking him back to sleep. Sonny dreamt he was ancient Africa, and his history had no beginning. He dreamt he was forever, remembering more than centuries.

The rebel hub at 121 Railton Road was inhabited by fiery likeminded black youth from all over England. The occupants of Railton Road were bell-jeaned, dome-afroed, Dr. Martened and muscle-T’ed: as bad and black as they could possibly muster themselves to be, with yearning amber eyes filled with each other and runaway tongues drooling with the chant of equality. A hive of activity, the squat’s many bedrooms were wall to walled with mattresses and tatty multi-coloured blankets. The shop in the property’s lower half was busy twenty four seven with placard making tables and the day and night thunder and the thud of an aging printing press. The cauldron-like pot in the informal cooking pit of the property’s small garden was always brimming with enough for everyone. So much so that almost half a thousand random brown folk with little aspiration toward black empowerment dropped by the place as if it were a soup kitchen, trading an hour’s work manning the printing press or distributing pamphlets for shelter on a particularly bitter night or a steaming hot meal.

As a result of ongoing police harassment and eviction attempts, the hand-painted sign permanently tacked to the front of the property read: LEGAL WARNING: THIS PROPERTY HAS BEEN OCCUPIED BY SQUATTERS. WE INTEND TO STAY HERE. IF YOU TRY TO EVICT US, WE WILL PROSECUTE. YOU MUST DEAL WITH US THROUGH THE COURTS. Time and again the Railton Road Panthers were arrested for squatting in the property but despite double deadlocks, police barricading and barred windows, they inevitably scaled, fought or burrowed their way back in after their release...

Callback

I got a Spinning room call-back! Wait, most of you probably have no idea what that means. The Spinning Room is one of the best Spoken Word venues here in Melbourne. Every Tuesday from about 8pm, fifty or so people cram into the burgundy upholstered Spinning Room – the small back room at the top of ET’s Bar in Prahran. Hosts Anthony O’Sullivan and Jon Garrett do an amazing job of chatting us through the feature reading and open mic sections as some of the most amazing spoken wordsters in Australia give us their best.I featured at the Spinning Room back in October (you can read back on it in this post here), and it was an absolutely amazing night. Anyway, for the last Spinning Room of each year, Jon and Anthony pick their favourites from the last twelve months.

And this year I’m it, alongside fellow poet and Memphis Slam King Benjamin Theolonius Sanders (aka IQ). That’s right, Tuesday night will be an all Black Spinning Room. Brothers and sisters, the face of Australian poetry is changing. Come see us spin the room in separate sets (myself with all new poetry) and if we can get our shit together there may even be some collaborative lyricism going on. You might also get a pre-launch glimpse of my new book Gil Scott Heron is on Parole, which will be out in February: she’s red as artery blood with a black power salute on the cover. You will fall for her instantly.

Tuesday December 15
8pm - 11pm

The Spinning Room
ET's Bar, 211 High Street Prahran

We All Know What Happens Next: a poem extract

An extract from a longer (hopefully book-length) poem I'm working on titled We All Know What Happens Next. This section of the poem is, directly, a response to Adam Bradley's book The Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop and indirectly an examination of elitism in poetry.


exile the academy from the hood
unanalyse hip hop
before hip hop is killed
exile the academy from the hood
warn harvard from harlem
& at knifepoint if needed

adam bradley said from out the ghetto
wz comin a new poetics that the mainstream
(& don’t we know what kinda folk he meant by mainstream)
had never even noticed / let alone understood
well howdy do / it wz there all this time
i mean whaddaya know / it seems that
generations of street corner brown folk
weren’t the shoe shiners everyone assumed
& all this time just had all the adam bradleys fooled
in reality rap was more poetry than poetry itself
apparently

some of us already knew

Found Poem

originally a mushroom paper bag

The Poem Bag
Contains Vitamin B12
stand and sing them raw, rare,
medium or well done

So pick up a bag full today

These bags are available at same price per kilo
as the poems

In The Company of Angels

Last night, after reading at the launch of Peril, I realised just how much I enjoy the company of writers. Not all writers, of course, that would be like claiming to love the company of all women, and though I’d love it to be true, clearly there would be fundamental reasons why it couldn’t be (Condaleeza Rice and Sarah Palin, for example).

The Peril launch rocked. My reading went okay (though for the first time in about two years, I actually stumbled over a poem. Mental note: just because you’re performing every few weeks, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t rehearse every poem before the reading).

The amazing performances by LOCA (anti-racist spoken word/burlesque performance troupe Ladies of Colour Agency Australia), including a White Face skit, was inspiring not just because of their conviction, subject matter and strong performances, but because I’m currently working on a poetry-dance collaboration (about African American/French dance-hall legend Josephine Baker) with writer Lian Low and dancer Raina Peterson (with whom I'll be reading as Cafe` Sospreso tonight - see below). Raina’s amazing performance of a white-face skit to the song Delilah gets more amazing every time I see it, but was particularly relevant due to the whole Hey Hey It’s Saturday blackface saga here in Australia.

Hearing author Tom Cho (Look Who’s Morphing, 2009) give his presentation was also an amazing reminder of just how much potential there is for literature to de-marginalise and deconstruct the status quo. After chatting with Simonne Michelle Wells and Angela Meyer, both of whom I met originally at Overland’s Progressive Writing Masterclass earlier this year, where I also met Melbourne writer Alec Patric, who’s also become somewhat of a writer-in-arms.

At the end of the launch, Simonne and I headed down to Melbourne Central for coffee (okay, and a devilishly rich slice of chocolate cake drenched in liquid dark chocolate, but that’s not relevant is it?) and to talk life and shop. Writing –the actual practice of it—is such a solitary affair—and I love that through the medium of performance, and through conduits like this blog, and simple after-launch chats such as yesterday evenings, I have the opportunity to engage with my peers. It keeps me sane. It encourages me back on stage. It sharpens my mind. It reminds me that there are other people mad enough to be in this caper because they fell madly in love with words, and truly believe they matter.

So, this post is dedicated to all you blog readers who are also writers (I think, perhaps that’s all of you!) and to all the other writers who I engage, collaborate and argue with. You hoist the sail, I’ll hold the ship steady and together, let’s row this baby onwards.*

*Don't get me wrong, there is a handful of writers who shit me to tears, but this is a warm fuzzy post okay: leave it be and just don't go there.

On Becoming a Writer

Cordite: Plantation Rumours

My poem, Plantation Rumours (from my forthcoming book 'Gil Scott Heron is on Parole') is published in audio in the just-pressed-go issue of the online poetry publication Cordite Poetry Review.

an ole man cuts cane
an ole man cuts cane under hot jamaican sun
back bent double
body doubled down to the ground
& all among the sugar cane
the workers whisper
see im dere
mi hear im used te be
an edukayted man
back bent double
body doubled down to the ground

five hundred lift them scythe in unison
& the sugar cane rumour mill
logs into overdrive
with it’s back bent
back bent double
body doubled down to the ground

a large woman
middle aged
with a horse fly drinking at the brow
say mi hear im read fe law
inna ingland
professorship in oxford 1989
and then she shave the sugar stalk
with a quick flick
of an aching wrist
she chop it up
& she stack it on the pile
before she back bend
back bend double
body doubled down to the ground

a young man
face smooth and clean
like him only just weaned from his mama’s teat
say mi granfadda knew de man
inna kingston school
before im grew too big
fe im docta marten boots
im laas seen
headin fe union jack atta run
but yere im is
ole man body doubled down
in de dung

but the ole man cuts cane
the ole man cuts cane under hot jamaican sun
he’s been all over
ain’t no country else he gwan run
five hundred lift them scythe in unison
& the sugar cane rumour mill
logs into overdrive
with it’s back bent
back bent double
body doubled down to the ground