Fremantle Press

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Michael Heald

2011-07-28T10:50:00.002+08:00

Q: What are your main interests in The Moving World?

In this book I am primarily interested in the way that meditation can change one’s experience of self and world.

In my previous work I have been strongly drawn to experiences of impermanence, interconnectedness and the paradoxes and inadequacies of selfhood. An abiding interest has also been the apparent instability of human goodness. In this book, I have turned to face these issues directly, as it were, embracing a traditional technique, Vipassana, to which they are central.

Q: Author Tim Parks calls your poetry ‘an invitation to Vipassana’. Can you tell us about the role of Vipassana meditation in your life? How and when did you start practising?

I have always been interested in Eastern cultures. Over the years, I adopted many of their principles, and tried meditation from time to time, based on my reading. About ten years ago, I decided it was time to learn meditation properly. I looked around for a short course. When I came across Vipassana, in the tradition of U Ba Khin, I was puzzled to find that a beginner could only take a longer course of ten days. After reconciling myself to that, I booked in for a ten-day course in the hills outside Melbourne.

I went there with many preconceptions and illusions, not the least of which was that I would be able to pick and choose when I wanted to sit, rather than stick to the rigorous timetable, which involved rising at 4 a.m. and sitting for a total of ten hours per day. There was no coercion at the course, and one could take short breaks at will, but it was, nevertheless, a very challenging experience.

I had also supposed that I would be able to use whichever meditation technique I wanted. However, we were taught a very specific technique, that of paying attention to bodily sensations, and there was an emphasis on the importance of a sound and consistent technique. The need for the ten consecutive days of practice, without talking, in order to allow the mind to quieten down a little, and in order for concentration to be mustered to the point where the sensations could be held onto long enough to be observed, became very apparent. In fact, this experience of attaining, albeit to a very modest degree, a level of concentration which is not really available in ordinary life, which allows the perception of processes always present but beneath awareness, was terribly significant for me. It showed me, I suppose, that meditation is real, and that it is different from other ways of perceiving, other ways of knowing. Giving a sense of this reality and difference, I would say, is a major driver, now, of my artistic and also critical work.

I have completed quite a few courses since then, and meditation is part of my daily routine. I find that the technique has enormous benefits for daily life, in terms of getting beyond the knee-jerk reactions of the small self or ego. For me, too, it is a way of exploring facets of existence I have always been intensely concerned with.

I also feel that meditation has world-changing, as well as self-changing potential. I know that this can sound Romantic or triumphalist or utopian, and I don’t underestimate the intractability of social structures. However, such structures are composed of and operated by human minds. And in this era when our very survival as a species is threatened, as well as the survival of the other creatures and ecosystems which have supported us, I don’t think that it’s a time to shy away from large aspirations. So meditation, for me, is also a vital part of my social engagement: part of the aspiration to reduce suffering at large, not just my own!

It is probably also worth saying that I generally do not call myself Buddhist. This is partly because it is not necessary for a meditator to be such. Also, the word ‘Buddhist’ can refer to a great variety of things, many of which I would have no problem in identifying with, but also including, perhaps, beliefs or practices which do not sit well with meditative principles. However, it is often difficult to avoid using the word ‘Buddhist’, and on the whole I don’t think that is something to be overly worried about.

Q: The collection unfolds in a way that feels organic, almost inevitable. Did you write the poems in their published order or did the order evolve after you had finished writing?

I’m very pleased you find that the collection reads in that way. In fact, the poems are not presented in the order of composition (which would present a problem for me anyway, since I am always working on many poems at the same time). Yet I feel that the principles of sequencing and grouping I have used are to an extent organic. A broad framework is that of the journal: a speaker reporting on his experience as it proceeds, a record of the spiritual quest, so to speak. Within that, the second part, ‘the stunning serene dis- / integration of daylight’, presents the immediate experience of sitting in meditation. In the third part, ‘to point at what I’ve seen’, the speaker self-consciously employs analogies to illustrate how key philosophical issues manifest themselves in meditation. And in the fourth part, ‘actual light’, he addresses directly some of the terms commonly used to refer to meditative experience, seeking to explore their adequacy. In the fifth part, ‘movement that has never / opened its eyes’, the speaker turns his attention outward, considering the social and domestic worlds in the light of his meditative experience. The final part, ‘the moving world’, contains poems in which Vipassana itself is not an explicit component, although there are, of course, continuities of sensibility. The poems in this last part tend to proceed through contemplations of the mineral, vegetable and animal-human worlds.

So the sequence doesn’t proceed in a simply chronological way - the very first part, ‘that fabled direction / inward’, is a kind of preface to what is already known about the journey and the poems – but does perhaps trace a partly temporal process of first encountering experience, then reflecting upon it, and then applying it. Some of the poems also emerged in dialogue with that evolving structure.

Q: Some poems in the collection, like ‘Speaking’, deal with the inadequacy of language in mediating experience. How do you reconcile this inadequacy with the act of writing poetry?

Yes, this is a significant issue. I think this is partly why Robert Gray and Tim Parks refer to the poems’ ‘daring’ and ‘ambition’. I am very conscious that meditative experience raises problems for language, both in terms of how it can be articulated, and in terms of whether it should be.

Meditative experience is difficult for language to deal with because most language has a metaphoric base originating in sensory experience, and also utilises many conceptual dualisms. In meditation, the containments and logics of those two procedures tend not to apply. To give just one example, the physical and mental domains, during meditation, become more difficult to distinguish from each other.

It is important to be aware, however, that I say (in the prefatory poems ‘Speaking’ and ‘Listening’, for example) that I am not trying to recreate my meditative experience in the reader. I say that this is not possible. I am, rather, attempting to articulate my ownresponse to that experience. This renders the linguistic challenge more manageable, and is also the way in which I reconcile my act of writing with the principle, which I fully endorse, that meditative experience must be had at first hand.

That being said, I do inevitably need to evoke something of the quality of meditative experience in expressing a response to it, and so the linguistic dilemma is not entirely avoided. However, to my mind, the articulation of experience to some extent beyond conceptual classification has always been a major part of poetry’s endeavour. And so I feel that the challenge here is perhaps different in degree, but not in kind, from that which most poets face. I also believe that one of the most valuable aspects of poetic language is to serve as a reminder that our namings are always to some extent provisional and inadequate, rather than being a sure basis on which to understand and manipulate the world.

I would also say that, in terms of my approach to language, it may be conspicuous that these poems do not express what the critic Stephen Burt, to paraphrase him slightly, calls the pathos of lost epistemologies, by which is meant the mood of despair and disorientation often resulting from postmodern skepticisms about language’s, and indeed the mind’s, ability to know and understand the world. Even though my work is acutely conscious of the sources of such skepticism, and is in accord, in a way, with approaches to understanding which recognise the limits of language and of certain mental procedures, nevertheless in these poems about meditation, it is more a case of the wonder of epistemologies found than the pathos of those lost.

Q: In the book’s acknowledgements you mention poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Thomas Hardy. Can you tell us how their poetry has influenced your work?

Hopkins is a poet whose work often seems to deal with kinds of experience not dissimilar to those yielded by meditation. His line from ‘God’s Grandeur’, for example, ‘There lives the dearest freshness deep down things’, which I refer to in the ‘Vedana’ sequence, could hardly be bettered as an evocation of the profoundly tender and pristine contact with the world which meditation begins to enable. Yet also, of course, Hopkins seemed unable to integrate or stabilise his experiences. I find that the same thing is true of many other Western artists, and this phenomenon is one of my major interests.

With regard to Thomas Hardy, he is someone I read a great deal of when I was developing as a poet. His principle that one must take ‘a full look at the Worst’, a full account of the harshest realities in forming one’s artistic vision, which I refer to in my poem ‘The Full Look’, is analogous, for me, to the first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhist tradition, which is an acknowledgement of the existence of suffering, or unsatisfactoriness, in our lives. This is the starting point of the meditative quest. It is a much misunderstood principle, often interpreted as a pessimistic vision of life, when in fact it is both profoundly insightful as an analysis of the human psyche, and also profoundly optimistic, because it forms the basis for positive action towards addressing one’s own, and other people’s suffering. As a poet, then, I felt that Hardy could be trusted to have made this basic acknowledgement, and that his poems, therefore, offered genuine, hard-won insight and hope. I felt that his being labeled as a ‘gloomy’ poet was as fundamentally mistaken as Buddhism being labeled ‘pessimistic’.

Q: What do you hope this book will give its readers?

I am hoping to give readers a sense of the actuality, the physicality, of meditation, in contrast to the abstract, dualistic descriptions which tend to be used. And also to bring meditation clear of the often rather literal-minded religiosity, and sentimentalised spirituality of our times. Perhaps, rather than ‘kitchen-sink realism’, I could say I am attempting ‘meditation-cushion realism’, if ‘cushion’ wasn’t too closely associated with ‘armchair’! But anyone who has meditated properly knows that it’s anything but a passive, uninvolved leisure activity.

Often, also, the terms which are used to indicate meditative experience are negations: emptiness, detachment, non-self, and so on. These terms are highly inadequate, misleading, and of course off-putting. They are often the result of poor translation, associated with a lack of actual meditative practice. In this book I am hoping to breathe some life back into such references, and thereby change the linguistic image, if you like, of meditation.

I am also hoping to give readers a sense of the potentials which are made available by meditative practice, potentials for reassessing and re-energising one’s life. And to give a sense of how some perspectives and attitudes which are entrenched in our culture are not as solidly based or inevitable as they might appear. I’m referring to attitudes towards despair and consolation, towards suffering and death, towards the natural world, and towards the possibilities for change, for example.

And I am, of course, primarily trying to convey my own sense of wonder. In this respect, my aim is that of most poets: to express that which has struck me with extraordinary force.

Q: What are your current or future writing projects?

I do feel that the kinds of experience which are dealt with in The Moving World will continue to form a major part of my work. Indeed, I have already written pieces which can add to the ‘Vedana’ sequence, making use of different metaphoric possibilities. I have also recently finished more poems similar to those in the second part of the book, which try to render significant modulations of consciousness occurring in meditation. And I think that the process of relating this experience to events in the world at large is very much an ongoing process, which will produce more poems.

I am also very interested at present in exploring the nature of certain modes of being which are sometimes seen as opposed to the meditative endeavour. I’m referring, for example, to animistic and shamanistic modes, and even perhaps ‘artistic’ or imaginative modes, which are often associated with traditional indigenous cultures and with deep ecological orientations. These are often characterised as being based on an emotional or intuitive responsiveness and participatory openness to the world, as opposed to what is perceived as the renunciatory, cool, disciplined, ‘rational’, and even perhaps ‘unnatural’ procedures of meditation. I feel that this opposition is illusory, arising from dualisms around mind / body, spirit / matter, reason / emotion, which ultimately don’t hold. So I’m very interested to explore how these different modes are interconnected: to discover forms of synthesis which could also find poetic expression.

Performance poetry with Scott-Patrick Mitchell (edited extract from Performance Poetry as an Acoustical Ecology)

2011-07-27T11:04:00.002+08:00

Mention ‘performance poetry’ and people invariably roll their eyes. You see performance poetry has a bad rap, but this is because few give themselves over to performance in the truest manner. I am somebody who can proudly says that they are indeed a poet … and a performing one at that.

This has, in part, something to do with the fact that I am currently studying a PhD in performance poetry at the WA Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). I am the only person in the state studying performance poetry at this level as far as I am aware … and with just cause too: it is a poetic form that is so excitingly fresh.

My golden rule to poetry is Be The Experiment! You cannot achieve anything by merely thinking about it… unless the goal is to merely think. Learn to set yourself parameters. Stick to them. Make your own rules. Provide justification as to why they are your rules. Learn to be scientific about poetry. Approach it with rigour. Have fun, naturally, but don’t flit across forms mastering none: develop your own poetica. This way, you learn how to write by investing the head and the heart together. Be the experiment. Yield new thoughts.

When judging submissions for Fremantle Poets 3: Performance Poets a number of factors were looked at. Naturally a primary consideration was voice, the power it gave to the statement, the clarity it contained, its ability to create range plus the poets ability to affect and connect, especially through pre-recorded electronic means. And, as a performance poet, these are some things you should consider:

PROJECT: sit at the top of a flight of stairs. Recite your poem so it touches the bottom step. Keep reciting over and over. Modulate the volume until you can hear it touch a tipping point in the distance. Once it comes back to you and you can hear the resonance and echo of yourself speaking, while reading, and it’s clear and precise … that is when you are ready to perform. This is called projection.

(LET THE VOICE) CIRCUMFLECT: it is the lilt, the wave, the pitch and fall of the voice. Learn how to make it bend – not the poem, your instrument: your voice. Spend time by yourself making all the noises you possibly can. These noises should make you laugh. They should also weird you out a little too. And there’s no need to bring them to the stage … in fact, please don’t … but you have to know how your voice will bend – and eventually break – so that you can master its scope.

(NEVER!) EXPECT: if performance poetry were all about the parties and fast cars, we’d all be rock stars. But we ain’t. You should never expect applause when you perform, not after any poem, no matter how good you thought it was. Humility is your greatest weapon. Strive to be unique, not modern. Be humble, yet certain. Do it for the poem.

If all else fails, read poems to yourself in the dark of a winter night, or pre-dawn of a summer morn’. Allow yourself to fold up into the most ingenious shapes and hide there between the words as they jostle and awake.

Rose van Son wins online Tanka competition

2011-07-26T10:58:00.003+08:00

Judges’ Report

There were a number of strong entries for the 2011 Fremantle Press Online Tanka Competition. The judges, Wendy Jenkins and Andrew Lansdown, settled on a shortlist of three tanka and, after some to-and-fro, selected ‘Old Flame’ by Rose van Son as the winner:

Old Flame

all the candles lit

just a flicker now and then

the bowl tightly fits

what is left of you and me

murmurings behind closed doors

— Rose van Son

As Wendy commented in a recent post, ‘ “Old Flame” uses metaphor to evoke the passing of time and dying down of love’s first flame’. Both Wendy and Andrew felt that ‘Old Flame’ had a mysterious, open quality. It is an atmospheric poem, conveying both visual and emotional shiftings of light and shadow.

Rose van Son handles the tanka form skilfully, keeping the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure, with each line consisting of a balanced phrase, and achieving a shift of thought after the third line. Rose also handles the title well, making it an integral part of the tanka, and using it to focus the reader’s perceptions. (Note: Using a title with a tanka is an acceptable innovation—for although traditionally tanka do not have titles, they are often accompanied by ‘headnotes’, consisting of a phrase or a sentence explaining the poem’s setting, etc.)

Two other tanka entries deserve particular mention: ‘Treasure’ by Annamaria Weldon and an untitled tanka by Gary Colombo De Piazzi.

[Untitled]

portion of each breath

arrested within the throat

neither in nor out

words almost formed in the mind

struggle in the vocal chords

— Gary Colombo De Piazzi

Treasure

Cupped by sand, three eggs

lustrous as black-speckled pearls.

Hooded plover’s nest,

set in samphire and limestone –

treasure trove at the tideline.

— Annamaria Weldon

Concerning Gary Colombo De Piazzi’s tanka, the judges’ comment in a previous post bear repeating: ‘This tanka is an excellent example of a traditional tanka following the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure. The break of thought and rhythm at the end of the third line is in keeping with the poem’s theme of the difficulty of articulation and utterance.’

Concerning Annamaria Weldon’s tanka, the judges were particularly impressed with its visual richness. The location of both the eggs (‘cupped by sand’) and the nest (‘set in samphire and limestone’) are depicted with clarity and intensity. Indeed, the tanka illustrates how a poet can create vivid imagery simply through precise description and careful diction.

Well, to all the entrants: thank you for your entries. To Rose van Son: congratulations and happy reading!

As winner of the competition, Rose will receive copies of three poetry books recently launched by Fremantle Press: The Moving World by Michael Heald; The Argument by Tracy Ryan; and Two Poets by Andrew Lansdown and Kevin Gillam.

Wendy Jenkins and Andrew Lansdown

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Andrew Lansdown and Kevin Gillam

2011-07-21T09:59:00.001+08:00

Can you tell us about the significance of the title of each of your collections, The Colour of Life and Songs Sul G?

AL: The title The Colour of Life has, to my mind, two implications, or applications. Generally, the colour of life is the range of moods and emotions arising from the range of situations and perceptions depicted in the poems in my collection. Specifically, the colour of life is the sense of aloneness and longing that surprises us, ambushes us, repeatedly throughout life. It is a form of grief – grief felt, often, without evident cause. It is not a denial of the loveliness and happiness of life, but an underlying sense that something is missing and/or amiss. Well, so much for attempts at definitions! In the end, the colour of life can only be truly expressed in poetry or prayer. I have attempted to capture and convey it in poems such as ‘Happiness’, ‘Human’, ‘Me’ and ‘The Colour of Life’.

KG: The term ‘sul G’ is an indication to a string player (violinist/violist/cellist) to play the melody exclusively on the G string. Technically, this is probably more difficult, but the tone produced is much richer and warmer. So Songs Sul G refers to a collection of verse with a degree of intensity.

Andrew, you often work in the Japanese forms of haiku and tanka. Why?

AL: I work in whatever poetic form will yield at the time of working. Often I do not know what form a poem will take when I begin writing it. The appropriate form becomes clear only as the poem progresses.

As evidenced in The Colour of Life, I work in rhyming couplets (eg, ‘Prayer Against Pain’), rhyming quatrains (eg, ‘Train to Wyong’), free verse (eg, ‘The Nemesia’ and ‘Boat’), unique syllabic structures (eg, ‘Menace’, with 8 couplets of 6- and 10-syllable lines, or ‘End of Day’, with 10 tercets of 7-, 5- and 7-syllable lines), sestina (eg, ‘Sestina on a Journey’), choka (eg, ‘Renewal’), and villanelle (eg, ‘Prayer’). However, the forms most represented inThe Colour of Life are haiku and tanka.

I have found over the years – and increasingly in recent years – that haiku and tanka often suit my poetic purposes. I love the compactness and balance of both these traditional Japanese forms. And I love the discipline of writing in objective forms that compel and enable me to distil setting/subject/theme/mood in just 17 or 31 syllables.

I have also found it rewarding to group haiku together under a common heading. Such groupings are called ‘gunsaku’. The haiku in a gunsaku have a common setting or subject or theme or mood, and yet they do not build on each other, like the stanzas of an English poem or the interdependent poems in a sequence. The haiku in a gunsaku are autonomous poems, poems in their own right: but gathered together they enrich each other and create an impression that is greater than they would/could achieve individually. (Tanka can also be gathered into gunsaku, although The Colour of Life does not contain any of these.)

Kevin, I have had the privilege on different occasions to hear you read or play or sing your poetry. As a musician, are words immediately aural to you as you write them?

KG: Yes. I like the feel/sound of words in the mouth and off the tongue. I have a slight obsession with counting syllables! I’m also constantly searching for opportunities to employ internal rhyme, which I believe to be more powerful and more subtle than end rhyme.

What is your writing space like? And how would you describe your writing habits?

KG: I don't have a dedicated writing area or room. I work in all spaces … car, lounge suite, kitchen table. My writing time is on walks or when doing water aerobics/walking. This is the head-space that I need in order to create.

AL: My writing habits are not as strict as I would like them to be. So many other things in life push in and push poetry out. I write mostly in my study, at my writing desk, in front of a large window that lets me see a birdbath, arrow bamboo, and an almond tree. Although I try to write every day, I do not always write poetry. Stories, novels and essays also have a claim on me.

Andrew, you have been publishing poetry for nearly four decades. What inspired you to write then? And what inspires you today?

AL: I was inspired to write at the age of sixteen when I heard a boy my own age read a poem he had written. I was astonished that someone like me could do such a thing and I desired to be able to do it, too.

Also, at the time, I was listening to traditional and contemporary folk music by artists such as James Taylor, Donovan Leach, Melanie Safka, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Steeleye Span. This type of music, of course, places great importance on the lyrics. I think this influenced me, too.

What inspires me to write poetry today is the sheer love of poetry. I love reading it. I love writing it. I find it to be the perfect literary form for the expression of grief and joy and every emotion in between.

Kevin, what writers inspire or influence your poetry?

KG: Elizabeth Jolley, as a practitioner and sharer of ideas/methodology, Dorothy Porter for her sheer economy/density of language and poetic technique, Seamus Heaney for his joy in diction, and Tim Winton for superb flow and extended metaphor.

Poet and critic Lisa Gorton notes that both of you ‘treat poetry as a work of intimacy, not performance.’ In the process of writing this book, have you learned anything from each other’s work?

AL: Kevin and I were not involved with each other when we wrote our poems and compiled our collections. It was, happily, Fremantle Press’s initiative to place our collections together under the Two Poets cover.

I am very pleased to share a book with Kevin. As readers will discover, Kevin and I write very different sorts of poetry. Yet I think our collections complement each other precisely because they are so different in style and sentiment.

As for learning from Kevin: I cannot point to anything specific. However, I am convinced that reading good poetry contributes to one’s understanding of poetry, which in turn contributes to one’s ability to write it. On that score, I presume Kevin’s poetry has influence me in subtle, if indefinable, ways.

I think Lisa Gorton is right to say that both Kevin and I ‘treat poetry as a work of intimacy, not performance.’ Implicit in her words are several truths about both of us as poets: we write with sincerity; we do not write to show off; and we write with craftsmanship and rigour.

KG: I really respect Andrew’s use of form, the discipline behind it. I also love the way he embraces the ‘now’, truly milking the moment of all its possibilities and truths.

What is the greatest challenge that poetry presents to you, and how do you overcome it?

KG: The next poem! I overcome it by not worrying about the rate at which it appears … some days it’s just a few words, other days large slabs will be completed. Each poem has its own time.

AL: My greatest challenge in writing poetry is overcoming the feeling, as I face a blank page, and as I begin to toy with images and ideas, that I can’t possibly write another poem. At the start I feel I can’t do it; and at the end I feel I can’t do it again. I overcome this by persevering with the poem at hand – and by remembering that I have had these feelings many times before and many times before they have proven wrong.

What writing projects are you currently working on?

KG: Working on a cello/spoken word performance piece for primary school aged children, tentatively titled ‘the story of C’.

AL: I am working on another collection of poetry, provisionally titled Gestures of Love. It will consist of poems written solely in the traditional Japanese forms of choka, tanka, haiku and gunsaku (haiku or tanka groupings).

Last Chance to Enter Tanka Comp.

2011-07-20T16:13:00.002+08:00

This Friday 22 July is the closing date for our online Tanka Competition. Entries will be judged by well-known poet Andrew Lansdown (a master practitioner of the form), and Fremantle Press poetry editor Wendy Jenkins.

Recent entries show many of the possibilities of the form. ‘Treasure’ by Annamaria Weldon is intensely visual, a frozen moment, while ‘Old Flame’ by Rose van Son uses metaphor to evoke the passing of time and dying down of love’s first flame.

Treasure

Cupped by sand, three eggs

lustrous as black-speckled pearls.

Hooded plovers nest,

set in samphire and limestone-

treasure trove at the tideline

- Annamaria Weldon

Old Flame

all the candles lit

just a flicker now and then

the bowl tightly fits

what is left of you and me

murmurings behind closed doors

- Rose van Son

Wendy Jenkins

Friday afternoon with Barbara Temperton Poetry Editorial Advisor of Westerly

2011-07-15T10:45:00.003+08:00

I love the ability of poets to both observe and express the human condition, the transformative process that occurs when a poet has been out in the world, watching, listening, recording, taking the time to allow poems to bubble up to the surface, dwelling in ideas and images, catching the thoughts that are thinking themselves.

Westerly’s aim is ‘to generate interest in the literature and culture of Australia, particularly Western Australia, and its neighbouring regions in South-East Asia and the Indian Ocean’. Information about Westerly, including the contents of past issues, is available at http://www.westerlycentre.uwa.edu.au/magazine, as are the submission guidelines.

Westerly is published twice a year, but it is worth noting that from time to time an issue will be dedicated to a particular topic, which may exclude more general submissions. For example, of the last five issues two were on special topics (Aboriginal writing and Western Australian writing). The next issue (56:2) will focus on South-East Asian writing and is to be guest edited by Shalmalee Palaker (UWA) who will be soliciting contributions. I am reading poetry submissions now for the first issue in 2012.

The assessment process involves packages of poems being sent to me via the Westerlyoffice. I’m looking for the best poems and my interests are wide-ranging. I seek well-crafted pieces, contemporary in their focus. There are no restrictions on the form a poem takes or its content. I read everything at least once, if not more, and will go through the stack of the selections I shortlist again before returning them to administration for processing. Once submissions have closed for an issue, all the shortlisted poems are returned to me for my final selection. Whether or not the poems I select are published is dependent on several factors: mainly the length of poems (we don’t have a set requirement for line length, which allows us to be quite flexible in this regard), and the amount of space available, taking into account short fiction, articles, reviews, etc...

The acceptance rate for poetry submissions to Westerly is approximately 5%. For example, around 230 poets submitted approximately 690 poems for consideration for Issue 56:1. There were 35 poems on my final shortlist. Of these, the editors – Delys Bird and Tony Hughes-d’Aeth – selected 28 poems for publication in the journal. (This figure doesn’t include the solicited works in the Dennis Haskell tribute).

In regard to submitting poems to Westerly: First have a look at several issues of the journal; then visit the website, read the guidelines for submission and comply with them. Submit no more than three previously unpublished poems. (We once received a submission of over 40 pages containing an equivalent amount of poems. I only read the first three.) Submit your very best work. I can’t emphasise enough the importance of ensuring that the work has been through a process of development/workshopping, and has had some kind of editorial/informed input. An interesting metaphor or a clever rhyme is not enough, the whole poem has to work so make every line count. Please wait for a response before you submit more poems. Sometimes a poet may submit a number of really strong pieces and have them all shortlisted. However, in order to publish as many poets as possible in the limited space available, I have to make very hard decisions and only one or maybe two of an individual’s poems may make it through to the final selection.

- Barbara Temperton

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Tracy Ryan

2011-07-14T12:14:00.002+08:00

Tell us about the genesis of The Argument I was reading the letters of Heloise and Abelard, who were real-life lovers in the 12th century and horribly separated, eventually becoming a nun and a monk. He urges her to

renounce their former love, a very physical affair; she argues for hanging on to every detail! The argument between them seemed very much a tussle between an earthy zest for life and a resigned, spiritual death-wish. I wrote a sequence of poems about them, and then started to see other areas in which similar themes cropped up, and the book took off by itself.

Referring to the book’s title, Dennis Haskell has said that your “‘argument’ is argument in the older sense of the word, a discussion of the self with the larger whole …”. What does the collection’s title mean to you? For me, it’s primarily the argument with death, or the argument between the life-urge and the death-wish that you find in the natural world as well as in cultural expression. We know where we are headed; we don’t like to believe it most of the time, and I think the “arguments” we put up against it are energetic and impressive. Eros and thanatos: not as separate as we might think. So there are poems of profusion, abundance, life and love, alongside poems of decay, night, phobia, renunciation. And linking them, motifs of fire (which can belong to both) and ice (likewise)…

You have been publishing award-winning poetry for nearly two decades. In what ways has your poetry changed over time? I started writing mostly very sparse lyrics of short lines. Now that’s less often the case: I like a more expansive line. Probably many of the themes are similar, but perhaps looked at differently as I’ve aged. Mostly I don’t look back over long-past work, so it would be for readers to say!

You are also the author of three novels. What is the process for you in deciding whether to render content into verse or prose? The idea tends to come ready-made as one or the other. I don’t generally write narrative poetry, so if I get a narrative-shaped idea, it will become a novel. Probably with short stories there would be more overlap (a short story can have the image-like concision of a poem) but I almost never write short stories. Either I have a long, narrative-shaped idea, or a poem-idea.

Do you write your poetry with a particular type of reader in mind? No, although I suppose I assume they already like to read poetry, or are willing to approach it on its own terms, rather than expecting it to be expository and prose-like. Having said that, I don’t think my poems are particularly inaccessible or difficult.

JRR Tolkien famously wrote in 1955 that ‘cellar door’ is generally thought of as ‘beautiful’, or euphonic. What is a word or phrase that you consider beautiful and why? Beauty (with words as with anything else) is a subjective thing, and I don’t believe words or phrases can be isolated like that.

It’s like the way some people believe certain languages “sound beautiful” and others “sound ugly”. To me, that’s a myth, and reflects more about the person’s subjective associations with the language and culture, than about anything factual.

You can create relative euphony in a poetic line, but it will not be perceived that way by everybody. Also, words are pronounced in many different ways by speakers of the same language. (“Cellar door” will sound different in Scotland, Australia and Singapore…).

But I do enjoy clever puns, tongue-twisters and verbal wit, even if that’s not “beauty”.

What projects – writing or otherwise – are you currently working on? There are always poems going on. I’ve also finished writing a psychological suspense novel, and am planning out another novel. Also I’m constantly engaged with translating poetry (from French and from German); I love that process.

Tanka update

2011-07-14T09:58:00.000+08:00

This tanka by Gary Colombo De Piazzi is an excellent example of a traditional tanka following the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure. The break of thought and rhythm at the end of the third line is in keeping with the poem’s theme of the difficulty of articulation and utterance.

portion of each breath
arrested within the throat
neither in nor out
words almost formed in the mind
struggle in the vocal chords

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

Andrew Lansdown and Wendy Jenkins

Fremantle Poetry Month Second Update

2011-07-11T14:24:00.002+08:00

As T.S. Eliot said ‘Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.’ Find out which kind of poet you are by entering our cantankerous tanka competition. Updates from judges Wendy Jenkins and Andrew Lansdown will be posted each Tuesday until Friday 22 July when the competition will be closed. This is an amazing opportunity to receive professional feedback on your work.

This week’s Friday afternoon with the editor will be with critically acclaimed and Fremantle Press author and Westerly poetry editor, Barbara Temperton. She will discuss her tips on writing poetry and what she looks for in selecting submissions for Westerly. Ask Barbara a question and we will post the answers to the best on Friday. Our favourite question will win a copy of Fremantle Poets 2: Two Poets. Again general questions only: we cannot accept any submissions.

On the wintry evening of July 7 we launched our poetry 2011 titles: The Argument, The Moving World and Fremantle Poets 2: Two Poets. There was an impressive turn out at the Fremantle Arts Centre from poetry appreciators and writers alike. The evening ran smoothly, launched by His Worship the Mayor Brad Pettitt and the audience was treated to some brief but excellent performances by Liana Joy Christensen, Caitlin Maling, Amanda Joy, John Charles Ryan, Michael Heald, Tracy Ryan, Andrew Lansdown and Kevin Gillam. Some of the presenters were selected to be a part of Fremantle Poets 3: Performance Poets. Find out who here. I’d also like to say a special thank you to Anna Dunnill and Kiki Hunwick, the co-curators of Thonglines, for creating and running the Thonglines slideshow that played throughout the night. The art exhibition is on display in Clancy’s throughout July.

Stephanie Sutcliffe, Marketing Assistant

One of the thongs on Christmas Island before it was used in the Thonglines exhibition.

Some poetry submission tips from Wendy Jenkins and Georgia Richter

2011-07-08T14:24:00.002+08:00

Are you considering submitting poetry to Fremantle Press?

A good place to begin is by visiting our submissions guidelines page on the Fremantle Press website:

http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/resources/submitting

Here we call for poetry submissions to be accompanied by a covering letter including a brief description of the work and an author bio with publication history and awards. If performance is an important element of the work, the letter should also list recent performances and readings.

Manuscripts should be a minimum of 60 pages of poems (one poem to a page). Spacing is best at 1.5 with a font size of around 10–12 pt, and with generous margins: go for whatever is comfortable to the eye.

Fremantle Press publishes two or three volumes of poetry a year. Every other year, we will publish a themed composite volume which will be our main vehicle for introducing new poets – 2010 for example was New Poets; 2012 will be Performance Poets. Calls for submissions to these volumes are broadcast widely through writing networks.

The remaining spaces on the list are hotly contested. There are always more poets than places. We must consider how best to support established poets while providing space for new voices coming through.

Successful manuscripts will be arresting in their language use, and the submitted volume will generally have a sense of unity or cohesion. Successful new or emerging poets who submit their work have often already taken the MS through an editorial process with a trusted mentor or editor or with writing peers. To this end, we encourage poets to be involved in a poetry community as much as possible: read and listen to the work of other poets, and, where possible, work with others (individuals, community writing groups) who themselves have experience of reading, writing and editing poetry. Gain as much publishing experience as possible via submissions to journals, or making your own zines or posting individual poems online. There are many ways to find an audience for poetry.

Wendy Jenkins, Manuscript Assessor & Poetry Editor,

Georgia Richter, Poetry Publisher

Talking about Tanka

2011-07-06T13:00:00.002+08:00

The tanka is a poetic form with a long and rich history. It originated in Japan in the sixth or seventh century and quickly became that nation’s dominant poetic from. The first national poetry anthology, Man’yoshu, compiled in the eighth century, contains 4,500 poems, of which 4,200 are tanka. The 21 imperial anthologies compiled between 905 and 1439 contain over 33,600 tanka.

The Japanese word “tanka” means “short poem” or “short song”. True to its name, a tanka is a short poem consisting of five lines and 31 syllables. The lines are measured by syllables and form a pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables respectively.

Arrangement of lines by syllables is a key feature of the tanka and this feature can be reproduced as effectively in the English language as in the Japanese. The 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure guides the phrasing of the poem and lends balance to not only the individual lines but also the poem itself.

Poets writing tanka in English today often abandon the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure—and often create impressive poems in the process! It remains a moot point, however, as to why such poems should be called tanka as opposed to free verse.

In my own practice of writing tanka, I have viewed the 5-7-5-7-7 form as the ideal to beaimed for; but I have accepted that this ideal cannot always be attained. After all, the ultimate purpose of writing a tanka is to produce a poem. If the traditional structure gets in the way of the poem on a given occasion, then it should be abandoned or altered for the sake of the poem.

Within the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure there is considerable flexibility of arrangement. Many of the Japanese tanka collected in the tenth century imperial anthology titledKokishu, for example, have a tripartite arrangement, with breaks (in rhythm and/or thought) after the second and fourth lines. Other tanka in the collection tend to be bipartite, with a break or shift occurring after the third line.

I have often employed this latter technique in my tanka. Here’s an example from my bookCounterpoise (Angus & Robertson, 1980):

Cricket

An amber cricket

makes her way mechanically

across the concrete.

Eggs must be laid and there is

so much dying to be done.

As can be seen, this tanka falls neatly into two parts. The first part (lines 1-3) is primarily objective and descriptive, while the second part (lines 4-5) is largely subjective and evocative.

Here’s another example of a tanka arranged so that a shift occurs after the third line. (This tanka is part of my collection, The Colour of Life, in the book Two Poets, which is scheduled for publication by Fremantle Press in July.)

Signal

As I lift the mug,

light reflects from its glazing

in the black window—

faint and intermittent like

a lighthouse signal, far off.

While the incorporation of a pause or shift after the third line is an effective way to write tanka, it is certainly not the only way. Some fine tanka have no specific shifts in thought or pauses in rhythm but rather present a single unfolding statement. Consider this example (also from Fremantle Press’s soon-to-be launched Two Poets):

Lilies

Lady, the lilies

we admired in the paddock,

the arum lilies

so whitely lovely, have died

from the farmer’s herbicide.

This tanka is essentially a single observation arising from the accumulation, line by line, of specific details (although it is true to say that the concluding couplet rhyme gives the impression of a shift from the first three to the last two lines).

Finally, consider an example of a tanka (also from Two Poets) that is somewhat irregular in its outworking. It is essentially a unified statement/image, and yet it contains a shift of sorts, and that shift falls in an unconventional place:

Bird and Bull

The dotterel,

stalking, sniping—so little

by the muzzle

and muddy hoof of the bull

drinking at the dam’s puddle.

“Bird and Bull”, like “Signal”, works by drawing a comparison, which is a typical tanka technique. Yet while “Signal” draws a comparison to bring out a similarity, “Bird and Bull” draws a comparison to bring out a contrast.

It is worth noting that the first and fourth tanka above deal with nature, while the second and third deal with human nature. This is one of the beauties of the tanka form: it is suitable for any subject and can capture any mood. Stylistically, it can be imagistic or lyrical or elegiac. Its versatility is limited only by a given poet’s imagination and skill.

It is also worth noting that these four tanka employ simple and precise language (as is best suited for tanka generally), and yet they are laced with literary devices. “Cricket” uses alliteration; “Signal” uses simile; “Lilies” uses apostrophe, repetition and rhyme; and “Bird and Bull” uses slant (or half) rhyme and alliteration. The tanka poet may use literary devices and figures of speech like any other poet. It is a mistake to think, as some do, that tanka must be devoid of literary devices. The tanka is a type of poetry, which in turn is a type ofliterature, and it should be treated as such.

Well, these are some ideas and examples to stimulate you to write your own tanka. Get on and give it a go! I look forward, with my co-judge, Wendy Jenkins, to reading your entries.

— Andrew Lansdown

Send us a copy of your best tanka to win a professional judge’s report by expert poetry editor Wendy Jenkins and poet Andrew Lansdown plus a complete set of Fremantle Poetry Month titles worth RRP$74.85.

Tanka submission guidelines

Submissions for the competition will open from 1 July until Friday 22 July. The winner will be announced on the Fremantle Press website, facebook page and blog on Tuesday 26 July. The winner will be notified by email.

The winner of the competition will receive a professional judges’ report from the Fremantle Press poetry editor Wendy Jenkins and poet Andrew Lansdown as well as all 2011 Fremantle Press poetry titles worth RRP $74.95.

Entries will only be accepted via email to admin@fremantlepress.com.au within these dates. Only one entry per person will be accepted.

By entering this competition you agree:

Judges decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into

Entering this competition does not guarantee publication

All work must be your own

The winning entry and report by judges Andrew Lansdown and Wendy Jenkins will appear on the Fremantle Press website, blog and Facebook page.

Weekly update

2011-07-05T13:00:00.001+08:00

‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears’ to borrow from one of the great poets, Mr Shakespeare. Fremantle Poetry Month is upon us and each week, there will be a rundown of the events that have just gone and the ones approaching.

The month began with our first event on Friday, which was a poetry workshop for secondary students at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre. And what an amazing day it was with over 120 students from seven different schools split across two sessions. The morning session run by Kevin Gillam, co-author of Two Poets, focused on the use of the five senses to create unique poetry and creative ways to approach the often agonising task that is beginning. He played his cello to inspire the students and encouraged them to use the music to set the mood of the poems which the students wrote in the workshop. The afternoon session was run by Michael Heald, author of The Moving World whose approach was to get the students to question what poetry is and how it is different from other forms. Taking the students from the intangible idea to the concrete act of writing and reading and then back to the philosophical of questioning and meaning in their writing. Overall it was an interesting and engaging day run by two poets that we are proud to be publishing as a part of Fremantle Poetry Month 2011.

Voicebox’s open mike evening last night was at Clancy’s Fish Pub Fremantle and featured the poetic stylings of Kevin Gillam and Kaitlyn Plyley. It also marked the launch of the much anticipated art installation Thonglines curated by Renee Schipp, Anna Dunnill and Kiki Hunwick. The exhibition features Haiku poetry written by Christmas Island students on the thongs they have collected from the shores of the island. It's available to view every day in July. You can have a look at our curators other works on flickr.

Anna: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ampersand_/

Kiki: http://www.flickr.com/photos/60326457@N03/

To meet the Fremantle Poetry Month poets in person come down to the official launch this Thursday at the Fremantle Arts Centre at 6:00pm. There will be poetry readings and live music from Tracy Ryan The Argument, Michael Heald The Moving World, Kevin Gillam and Andrew Lansdown Fremantle Poets 2: Two Poets plus Liana Joy Christensen, Amanda Joy, John Charles Ryan and Caitlin Maling. Warm up with a glass of wine and some free entertainment.

Again welcome to Fremantle Poetry Month 2011 we hope to see you all rhyming and punning along with us throughout the month.

Stephanie Sutcliffe, Fremantle Press Marketing Assistant

Welcome to Fremantle Poetry Month

2011-07-01T08:26:00.001+08:00

Welcome to Fremantle Press’s second Fremantle Poetry Month. This is the month when we are able to pause and access the world via a variety of unexpected colours and forms of expression – the month when we are surprised into discovering things we didn’t know we knew.

Last year I was uplifted by the sense of community spirit surrounding each event.

This year we particularly welcome the contribution of the local and refugee students of Christmas Island, who have been working with Renee Schipp to create Thonglines – a poetry and art installation of haiku on thongs. Thonglines will be launched at Clancy’s Fish Pub on Monday July 4, in conjunction with an evening of live performance from poets and songwriters.

In Fremantle Poetry Month we are proud to launch Tracy Ryan’s The Argument, which Dennis Haskell has described as ‘her best collection yet’.

Michael Heald’s The Moving World is the poet’s document of his connection with Vipassana meditation. Robert Gray has called it 'a daring and triumphant project'.

In Two Poets, the second in the Fremantle Poets series, established poets Andrew Lansdown and Kevin Gillam display a strong sense of place and a precise concern with craft. Theirs are poems to enjoy.

I hope you will join us in celebrating this wonderful form.

Georgia Richter, Poetry Publisher, Fremantle Press

Melissa Parke MP on Seamus Heaney and Roger McGough

2011-06-30T14:56:00.001+08:00

Melissa Parke is the Federal Member for Fremantle. Melissa has campaigned on the need for education and health reform, and for integrity and accountability in Government. She has also made it clear that one of her ambitions is to see Fremantle recognised as a leader in urban sustainability, and in climate-change awareness and action.

Here’s what Melissa had to say about her favourite poems:

‘I find it a little difficult to tell you my favourite poem, poetry book or poet because, like music, poetry speaks to different aspects and moments of our lives. It rather depends on what is happening at any given time in your day or your life as to whether you will appreciate more a love poem or a poem about loss or about the night stars or a sunburst wheat field. But I will nevertheless nominate two poems that have particular meaning for me.

Firstly, Seamus Heaney's poem ‘From the Republic of Conscience’,
which is a strong motivation in my role as federal representative for
Fremantle (view the poem at http://www.thewitness.org/archive/march2002/poem.html)

As a committed vegetarian, I nominate Roger McGough's poem ‘There was
a knock on the door. It was the meat’ as a humorous and confronting poem that forces the reader's attention to the fact that the meat was recently a living creature.’

Poetry Peek: Kevin Gillam

2011-06-27T16:30:00.000+08:00

Our final poetry peek before Fremantle Poetry Month begins is ‘the unwritten blue’ from Fremantle Poets 2: New Poets.

Click on the images below to enlarge.

Friday afternoon with dotdotdash

2011-06-24T12:42:00.002+08:00

As part of our race toward Fremantle Poetry Month, each Friday afternoon we’re speaking to editors and poets around Australia about the poetry climate in their city. This week we asked dotdotdash magazine poetry editors Sj Finch, Rosalind McFarlane and Elizabeth Tan what they look for in poetry submissions. They also discussed the work of the talented John Charles Ryan, who will be performing at the launch of Fremantle Poetry Month.
In the upcoming seventh edition of dotdotdash, twenty-two of its one hundred pages will be dedicated to poetry. The majority of submissions to dotdotdash are poems, accounting for about sixty percent of the work we receive. Because we publish more poems than any other dotdotdash submission category, the acceptance rate for poetry is reasonably high at ten percent (the acceptance rate for short fiction, for comparison, is closer to five percent). While almost all the short stories and creative non-fiction pieces published in dotdotdash have undergone structural edits, only about twenty percent of accepted poems undergo this process – meaning that, for most of the poetry in dotdotdash, not a single word has changed from when the poem was first submitted to us. In spite of this, we are accustomed to thinking of poetry as one of the hardest categories to judge. Very often, due to space restrictions, we have to reject poems that might have required only a little bit of editing.
Perhaps this experience is not very different to other literary journals. When there are hundreds of poems to read, it can only be expected that poems that have gone through multiple edits and that are carefully tailored to the publication have a better chance over poems that are submitted with less attentiveness (or simultaneously submitted to another publication – but that’s a speech for another day). Perhaps the characteristics we like are also not too different from other publications – an interesting rhythm, an ending which extends the ideas expressed in the body of the poem, an appropriate form. Originality as opposed to relying solely on common themes. Specificity (a personal spin, even) as opposed to the general. Letting the readers draw their own emotional conclusions as opposed to spelling it out.
In ‘Wheatbelt Pneuma’ – published in our sixth issue, Jukebox – John Charles Ryan describes with specific detail an everyday experience of landscape, and occasionally interweaves this with metaphor that is both apt and novel, comparing ‘short-lived sparks in recalcitrant soil’ to ‘a star-struck choir nodding to God’. The use of pronouns positions the speaker’s voice as a nameless multitude: ‘you are the land’s augury, like us’, which, along with the references to choirs and congregations, draws the reader to consider how the plants are a multitude of beings living as one, and how nature invites one to exist with it in silence. The interplay between the four-line and single-line stanzas allows the insertion of pronouns to flow naturally. The single lines provide a lilting rhythm that periodically halts the driving enjambment of some of the more fast-paced stanzas. This does not necessarily have to come back to meaning – often there are elements in a poem that simply exist and are beautiful – but the rhythm of Ryan’s stanza structure is reminiscent of looking outside the window of a moving car, and in the multitude of images sometimes concentrating on one single image, and holding and savouring it in the mind’s eye. The small structural elements in Ryan’s poem add up to create a convincing poetic argument about the observed struggle and coexistence of humans and plants in Western Australia. It is a smoothly executed poem that we are most proud to have published.
If you are interested in dotdotdash or have any questions, please visit our website atwww.dotdotdash.org.

‘Wheatbelt Pneuma’ by John Charles Ryan in dotdotdash (Issue 6: Jukebox, 2011). Design by Cassie Cox. Available: http://dotdotdash.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/John-Charles-Ryans-Wheatbelt-Pneuma.pdf

Lindsay Pow on Lucy Dougan

2011-06-22T11:03:00.001+08:00

Lindsay Pow is a local Fremantle artist who has a vibrant career including but not limited to powerful landscapes that flow towards abstraction Here’s what Lindsay had to say about his favourite poet:

‘Being dyslexic, words are a complete mystery to me. Thus I find it astonishing that Lucy Dougan, on a daily basis, wrestles with words to construct beauty.

My favourite line is, ‘Time grazes, drops its guard.’ I guess I love it because there are moments when time does graze, and drops its guard. I’m in awe of Lucy being able to encapsulate that feeling into words. I guess I’d paint it, or try!

Lucy is heroic, immensely likable, compassionate and intelligent. If these traits are what it takes to be a poet, then – bring on the poets!’

The Mayor of Fremantle on Mary Oliver

2011-06-21T08:22:00.002+08:00

Brad Pettitt is the City of Fremantle Mayor and Dean of Murdoch University’s School of Sustainability.

Here’s what His Worship the Mayor had to say about his favourite poem:

‘After some deliberation and procrastination I’ve chosen a Mary Oliver poem, ‘When Death Comes’. Her work reminds me of a deeper and often neglected current that runs through our lives. It reminds us not forget what is really important and not to be too distracted by the day by day, by the detail, by the busyness. Someone far more wonderful lies underneath if you pause and pay attention.’

A copy of the poem can be found by clicking the link below.

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/When_Death_Comes.html

Poetry Peek: Andrew Lansdown

2011-06-20T12:34:00.002+08:00

This week we take a look inside Fremantle Poets 2: Two Poets at Andrew Lansdown’s self selected ‘The Colour of Life’

Click on the image below to enlarge

Friday afternoon with Emma Rooksby on Regional East Coast Poetry

2011-06-17T10:30:00.002+08:00

My author blurb says that I divide my time between Canberra and Wollongong. That word ‘between’ is in some ways the most important part of the description. I spend ten to twelve hours a week - two of my seven evenings - travelling between my home bases, looking out trains or bus windows, often writing about what I see, sometimes just staring into the dark. Rather fewer of my evenings are spent at poetry events in either town, yet there is so much happening, I would need all seven nights plus some to keep up with everything that’s going on. Here are just a few of the recent highlights.

In Canberra, Geoff Page continues to coordinate the consistently top-class poetry reading series, Poetry at the Gods, including an annual Dead Poets Dinner. To date, 2011 has featured readings from John Foulcher, Ian McBryde, Luke Davies, Lionel Fogarty, Jordie Albiston, Alan Gould, Mark Tredinnick and Bronwyn Lea. It is always a pleasure to attend one of these evenings, not only for the poetry, but also for the chance to talk with all the writers and poetry-lovers who attend the events.

Poetry happens in many Canberra cafes. Bohemian The Front in Lyneham hosts the monthly Traverse Poetry Slam, coordinated by poet in residence Julian Fleetwood, as well as other occasional events. Smith’s Alternative Bookshop has also made itself home to a good part of the Canberra poetry scene. Smith’s regularly hosts poetry readings, launches and other events, and stocks a huge range of local, national and international poetry. Issue 11 of Block, a Canberra-focused creative writing and arts journal, was launched at Smith’s back in March.

Many people help make poetry happen in Wollongong. For a town of 200,000-odd people, it’s full of creative buzz and interest. The South Coast Writers Centre hosts regular ‘Rocket Readings’, and down the road at Nowra are the ‘River Readings’. You can catch poets such as Kei Miller, Linda Godfrey and Lizz Murphy, and there’s also an open mic at both events. Wollongong’s Ron Pretty has recently started a poetry reading group that focuses on analysing and exploring other writers’ poems. Ron’s seventh book of poetry, Postcards from the Centre, was published in 2010.

The University of Wollongong supports many creative endeavours, including in poetry. The Faculty of Creative Arts recently hosted the launch of a volume in the Poets and Perspective series, featuring poems by Kate Llewellyn together with three critical essays by David Gilbey, Susan Sheridan and Anne Collett. As the introduction by Paul Sharrad notes, the book should go some way toward remedying the lack of critical attention to Llewellyn’s poetry.

I’m just off to catch the coach to Canberra, where this month’s Poetry at the Gods reading features Kevin Kart and Sarah Day. With so much going on in east-coast poetry, it’s worth the ride!

Meg McKinlay on the poetry of Jordie Albiston

2011-06-15T10:30:00.006+08:00

Meg McKinlay is a children’s writer and poet. Meg’s talents are far reaching and she writes everything from picture books to novels for young adults. Her latest book is Surface Tension, a compelling mystery that is receiving rave reviews. She now resides in Fremantle and says she is inspired by her childhood memories and her children.

Here’s what Meg had to say about her (current) favourite poet Jordie Albiston: ‘It’s always an impossible task, the choosing of favourites, but I'm going to go with the poem that has moved me the most in recent times – Melbourne poet Jordie Albiston's ‘The Fall’, from the collection of the same name. The poem is a response to an image of Evelyn McHale, who jumped to her death from the Empire State Building in 1947 and was photographed in arresting serenity on a crumpled car roof. Structurally, the poem is an extended linked pantoum and the repetitive elements of that form are used to stunning effect. I heard Jordie read it at the Sprung Writers Festival in Albany last year and found myself sitting perfectly still, weeping. It's an incredible piece of work.’

Here is a link to the photo that inspired the poem (for copyright reasons we can't post it but it is an amazing image): http://www.flickr.com/photos/strange_fruit/138441386/lightbox/

Ron Davidson on the poetry of Mark Reid

2011-06-14T10:30:00.001+08:00

Ron Davidson was born into a Perth newspaper family and served his time as a journalist. Ron lectured in Psychology for twenty years and published academic papers before rediscovering the family knack of storytelling. Three books appeared, rich in the lives and times of their varied subjects. Meanwhile Ron was having a love affair with Fremantle during his thirty years in a heritage house there. He accumulated stories and characters and places, and the result, Fremantle Impressions, has been hailed as a new way of writing about cities.

Here’s what Ron had to say about his favourite poetry: ‘It is not every day that a mug who failed first-year English three times at the University of Western Australia is asked to name a favourite poetry book; and why. Here I am and Mark Reid’s book Parochial is my favourite. Mark is a Fremantle poet with the common touch. He writes accessible poems about riding his bike to work, growing a perfect tomato, Hampton Road horrors of a sheep truck, oral sex in beach sand. But he writes best as a mop man in the geriatric ward at Fremantle Hospital. This is where my favourite poem ‘Johnno’ happens. Johnno is a stroke victim who swears incessantly. Fuckin this & fuckin that: but he doesn’t want to swear. It is very sad and very funny.

A Difficult Faith is Mark’s later and more difficult book. ‘Goddess: Fremantle Love Song’ describes the faces in waiting you see in port queues, at bus stops and around supermarkets. For what is the Goddess waiting? Perhaps the attention of reader as porn star? Eventually, She is limp & exhausted. / I am aroused.’

Poetry Peek: Michael Heald

2011-06-13T10:30:00.000+08:00

This week’s poetic enticement is ‘Presence’ selected by Michael Heald himself from his forthcoming collection The Moving World.

Click on the poem below to enlarge it.

Peter Nolin (Fremantle Chamber of Commerce) on Walt

2011-06-08T10:30:00.000+08:00

Peter Nolin is the Chief Executive Officer at the Fremantle Chamber of Commerce. He was also the head brewer at the Sail & Anchor for seven years. Peter has nominated ‘One Hour to Madness and Joy’ by Walt Whitman from Children of Adam from Leaves of Grass as his favourite poem: ‘I read this poem to my wife and all the witnesses at our wedding, and it guides me still.’

Tom Wilson (Kulcha/RTRfm) on poetry of the Caribbean

2011-06-07T10:30:00.000+08:00

Hey Poetry People! This week’s featured Fremantle person is Tom Wilson of Kulcha.

Tom Wilson is the Venue Manager of Western Australia’s main world music venue: Kulcha. He has a PhD in English literature and hosts an environmental radio show on RTRfm. Literature and music are both large parts of his life: “Through literature and poetic English language I am intimate with a tongue that gives shape to the world with limpidity and freshness. I am galvanised by stylish music.”

Here’s what Tom had to say about his favourite poetry:
“I’ve always loved the oral poetry of the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott. I’ve developed a knowledge of Jamaican oral heritage ranging from the whimsical Louise Bennett, AKA Miss Lou, to the biblical Mutabaruka, whose deep dub poetry can often be heard powering out of the sound system in my sitting room. Derek Walcott is one of the greatest poets of that region. Do yourself a favour and check out his recordings of his own poetry. Poetry should have music in it, and I relish the patois and traces of history in his big, narrative poems. You can listen to some Jamaican riddims from the seventies and again sense the continuity in that whole oral tradition.”

Poetry Peek: Tracy Ryan

2011-06-06T10:30:00.002+08:00

To get in the spirit of Poetry Month, each week we will give you a taste of the poetry titles to be published by Fremantle Press this July. This week it is the title poem from Tracy Ryan’s collection The Argument.

Click on the poem below to enlarge it.

Steve Grant (Fremantle Herald) on Dante’s ‘Inferno’

2011-06-03T10:30:00.001+08:00

Steve Grant is chief of staff at the Fremantle Herald. He nominated Dante’s ‘Inferno’ as his favourite poem, saying:

“I wanted to know what it’d be like when I got there. Actually, years ago I wrote a poetic letter to a friend parodying ‘Inferno’ in which the streets of Fremantle became Hell’s circles and its prominent citizens the doomed characters. It wasted way too much of my time in Gino’s, but it was great fun and I came to love the poem’s rich texture and brutal bitchiness – perfect training for a journalist.”

Adele Carles on ‘Desiderata’

2011-06-01T14:30:00.000+08:00

As Fremantle Poetry Month approaches, we asked some Fremantle people about their favourite poetry, poems and poets.

Adele Carles MLA is the State Member for Fremantle; she has a history of community activism in Fremantle that goes back many years. She has campaigned to save our beaches and to stop lead contamination. She is a passionate advocate for the Fremantle community on social justice issues, and is outspoken on Western Australian issues.

Here’s what she had to say about her favourite poem:

“An old favourite for me is ‘Desiderata’ by Max Ehrmann. It makes me think of my mother, because she had a copy of it hanging up in her bedroom when I was a child and I remember reading it many times. I particularly like the following verse:

You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

Fremantle Poetry Month

2011-06-01T10:00:00.004+08:00

As the weather begins to cool down, Fremantle Press is heating things up by—as Johnny Tillotson would say—putting poetry in motion. In anticipation of July, which is Fremantle Poetry Month, we will be celebrating all things poetry. There will be giveaways, updates on the poetry climate, poetry peeks, and insights into the poetry that some of the people around Fremantle like.

We hope to hear from you in the lead-up to Poetry Month. In the meantime, here's how to get involved!

Stephanie Sutcliffe
Marketing Assistant

July is Fremantle Poetry Month

2011-05-31T13:50:00.004+08:00

Fremantle Poetry Month kicks off for the second year running with a host of free events taking place across the city throughout July.

Fremantle Press Poetry Publisher Georgia Richter said 2011 was set to be even bigger with three new events, one new venue and four new sponsors.

“This year’s Fremantle Poetry Month will include more opportunities for the general public to be involved in person and online,” said Richter.

Thanks to new partnerships and collaborations, the month includes a ZiNeIORS workshop, browsing library and a mini-bookstore with Australian Poetry, an open mike session with Voicebox and a haiku-inspired art exhibition by creative writing students on Christmas Island.

“And for those living outside Perth, the month will include a weekly online session linking writers and readers with editors and poets from Fremantle Press, dotdotdash and Westerly,” said Richter.

Mayor of Fremantle, Brad Pettitt, will officially launch Fremantle Poetry Month as well as new books The Argument by Tracy Ryan, The Moving World by Michael Heald and Fremantle Poets 2: Two Poets by Andrew Lansdown and Kevin Gillam on 7 July 2011.

Richter said she was looking forward to showcasing the work of these talented Fremantle Press poets alongside performances by Amanda Joy, Liana Joy Christensen, Caitlin Maling and John Charles Ryan.

“It is wonderful to feel the community of poetry writers and readers coming together again for the second Fremantle Poetry Month launch,” said Richter.

Fremantle Poetry Month runs throughout July 2011. All events are free. For more information go to http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/ or find us on Facebook from 1 June at www.facebook.com/FremantlePress

Media Contact: Claire Miller, cmiller@fremantlepress.com.au or 08 9430 6331.

Fremantle Press seeks performance poets

2011-05-30T11:35:00.003+08:00

Fremantle Press invites poets to submit a collection of their work for publication in Fremantle Poets 3: Performance Poets.

Up to ten outstanding performance poets will be chosen for the survey on the basis of their manuscripts and a recorded performance piece.

Fremantle Press poetry publisher Georgia Richter said she hoped the survey would garner the same enthusiastic responses she received for Fremantle Poets 1: New Poets.

“Performance poetry in Western Australia is vibrant and diverse and we can recognise this talent by publishing a title of this kind,” said Richter.

Poets will be selected by an editorial committee comprised of Georgia Richter and Wendy Jenkins of Fremantle Press and guest editor Scott-Patrick Mitchell.

Mitchell, who is currently undertaking a PhD in Performance Poetry at WAAPA, said the publications and events associated with July’s Fremantle Poetry Month were helping him attain new skills in poetry publishing.

“I was published in Fremantle Poets 1: New Poets, performed at the launch, ran a student poetry writing workshop and now I’ve been invited to edit the next edition of Fremantle Poets -- it’s been an exciting process,” said Mitchell.

“I feel I can bring an understanding of how performance poetry is written, performed and the process of becoming a published poet to this new volume as a result of my performance experience and current studies,” he said.

Submissions for Fremantle Poets 3: Performance Poets close on 1 June 2011.

Contributing poets will be announced at the Fremantle Poetry Month launch on 7 July 2011 at the Fremantle Arts Centre. Submission guidelines are available here.

The 2011 Fremantle Press poetry list includes The Argument by Tracy Ryan, The Moving World by Michael Heald and Fremantle Poets 2: Two Poets by Kevin Gillam and Andrew Lansdown.

More information about our free poetry month events, workshops and competitions will be available soon! For the most up to date information, join us on facebook from 1 June 2011.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW:

Zoe Thurner

23rd May 2011

Debut author Zoe Thurner discusses Dress Rehearsal, her novel for young adults.

The protagonist of Dress Rehearsal, Lara Pearlman, is very matter-of-fact about her weight. Her mother is more concerned about Lara’s frame than she is. Why?

Lara’s mother is a perfectionist who worries endlessly about appearances. But Lara wants to be free. Lara has vitality and embodies everything her mother fears. She does not want to be constrained by her mother’s rules, so she rebels. She eats what she wants, wears what she wants and does not worry about her weight. Instead she flaunts it because Lara knows that to become herself she must separate from her mother and enjoy the fullness of her body and her life.

In the book a high school drama production becomes the point of transformation for the students who participate in it. Is this something you have witnessed in your job as a high school drama teacher?

I once adapted a popular novel for the stage about two brothers who were fighters. The material was gritty and difficult, the group was diverse, there were a lot of big personalities with competing agendas. Rehearsals were fraught. Somebody got banned for throwing a chair. However the production process worked its magic and as the play took shape and the music was added it gathered momentum. The students began to identify with the group and yield to the joint enterprise. They came to see themselves as performers building a play together that had meaning and purpose.

You’ve written several play scripts for school productions and community theatre, but this is your first novel. How is writing a novel different?

To me, writing a play is a bit like building the foundation and walls of a house then leaving the inhabitants to furnish it. This is because the final vision of a play depends on the joint interpretation of the script by the director, actors and designers. However as a novelist I provide all the elements and I am responsible for what the reader experiences. What I especially enjoy about writing a novel is being able to describe the landscape and rooms and bodies that my characters inhabit and so direct what the reader sees.

In a novel I also have the freedom to explore all the unspoken thoughts and feelings of my characters. It took me a while to realise this. I kept throwing my characters into difficult situations to demonstrate how they would respond before I realised that I could just tell the reader directly. However I find that writing a novel can be a lonely and deceptive task without a theatre workshop to test-run the script. I think that writing a novel requires enormous stamina and self-belief.

The Australian Bookseller+Publisher says Dress Rehearsal is ‘filled with real characters, and believable conflict’. How does a writer of young adult literature achieve a believable young adult voice?

I think by being deeply interested in the problems that young people face and curious about how the characters you have created will solve those problems. I think this curiosity keeps the writer inside the characters’ skin and stops the writer from deferring to adult wisdom.

The young adult voice can be a mixture of many things but it often has a sense of immediacy and discovery. I think that by maintaining these qualities the work is kept lively and prevented from becoming weary or false.

In the book the students produce a play on the topic of world poverty, and money – having too little or too much of it – directly affects your characters. Are issues of class relevant to the lives of young Australians today?

Australia is sometimes seen as the classless society but there are big discrepancies in our education system, community services and income streams. These differences affect the kind of opportunities that young people from disadvantaged families can access. But young people’s lives are also governed by how they learn to meet life’s challenges and I think that in Australian society these differences are not completely insurmountable as they may be elsewhere.

Lara, Oggy, Chelsea, Nathan, Blake, Tom and the others are all very different characters, sometime polar opposites. Which is your favourite character and why?

I have a sweet spot for Nathan because of his loyalty to Lara but I find Oggy the most interesting character because she is full of contradictions. Oggy is petite and feminine but wears men’s boots. She is artistic and eccentric but utterly practical when it comes to financial affairs. She often finds herself in competition with Lara over intellectual ideas and romantic interests but she remains her close ally. But ultimately Oggy is a survivor and she surprises Lara by the action she takes to protect her mother and herself.

The themes of identity and selfhood are central to your novel. What shapes identity?

Identity is influenced by our environment. This includes family and social background, peer relationships and the range of experience that an individual encounters. Identity formation is a dynamic process and adolescence can be an important and exciting time for trying out new roles and seeking new experiences. But it can be a tricky balancing act as well. The process demands that you learn how to challenge the rules but remain safe, and discover how to become separate and unique while remaining in relationship. In my novel the main character goes through a difficult process of opposing her family in order to discover who and what she truly values and this shapes her idea of who she really is.

What are your current or future writing projects?

I am currently writing a young adult novel about the lives of two youths but there is a lot more work to do. I hope to rework an adult comic play that I wrote some years ago and I have also been asked to review a memoir.

Dress Rehearsal is available online and from all good bookstores.

Glen Hunting, author of 'The Island'

2011-05-11T09:27:00.002+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

If my nameless wanderer ever became too distressed by his situation to think about his dignity, he might rouse himself into giving a mournful rendition of ‘If You Could Read My Mind’, in the style of Gordon Lightfoot (definitely not in the style of Stars on 54). He’d have to change the lyrics for the verses i.e. ‘I don’t know where we went wrong, but my Island’s/wife’s gone and I just can’t get it/her back.’ That would give the punters something to puzzle over, if they weren’t already too drunk.

But dignity is such an important part of the man’s character; it’s what prevents his sense of loss from becoming maudlin. So I can’t really envisage my protagonist ever taking part in karaoke. He has neither the exuberance, nor the lack of musical taste, nor the total disregard for his vocal inability that such an activity would require of him. This applies equally to his wife. As for the island, well ... I know my island talks, but whoever heard of a singing island? Really, people; that’s just silly ...

John Stubley, author of 'The Light of Home'

2011-05-10T09:53:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

I think it is fair to say that the narrator of my piece would be inclined to take more of a supporting role – as listener to others’ songs, as back-up singer if required, musical improvisationist when needed, applauder of fine works, awaiter of the next song and of higher singing. In so doing he'd probably argue that this is his small song-contribution; that this is in fact his singing, his offering towards a new karaoke – a new music – a new space-and-stage making for the artistic other human being to stand upon, in full lighting, in surround sound, and in true offering to the enlarged community of there-gathered beings; a human being who is sung.

Photograph courtesy of Bob Zuur

Paula Gallagher, author of 'Rebyonak'

2011-05-09T08:39:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

Given that my narrator does actually sing karaoke in the story, I thought an extract would best answer the question:

‘The only solution right now is to drink. The dining cart is in full-swing karaoke mode and I am invited to join a table of women intent on performing Britney Spears’ entire back catalogue, in Russian ... Last thing I remember is singing a bilingual version of The Doors’ “People Are Strange (When You’re A Stranger)”.’

Andrew Relph, author of 'You Get What You Get'

2011-05-08T11:54:00.001+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

Are you joking – this guy goes to the Metropolitan Opera for a good time!

Without being a party pooper or wishing to miss out, the narrator of ‘You Get What You Get’ would not go to a karaoke bar and if he happened to find himself in one would adopt a dignified silence.

As you will find in the story this is not because music and songs are not important to him but because he knows that singing with one’s own voice is a person’s highest calling; that irony and other defences interfere with real relationship; and that celebrity, and more so hollow celebrity, distracts from bona fide merit. By contrast the narrator finds all three of these aspirations to be objectives of literature.

Therefore when it comes to karaoke the narrator wishes to let the poet have the last word:
‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter ...’

Malcolm Rock, author of 'The Deluge'

2011-05-07T14:20:00.002+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

In spite of the lifeless scene at the foot of the stage, the ice twinkling as it reflects the glitter-lined karaoke machine, the blue cadavers with hands and beer bottles frozen as one, it is likely that the narrator of ‘The Deluge’ would sing George and Ira Gershwin’s ‘A Foggy Day in London Town’.

Adriana Ellis, author of 'The Underground River'

2011-05-06T11:02:00.001+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

My character Stephen would choose the Ray Charles song ‘Tell Me How Do You Feel’ and he would sing this to his wife Eva. Stephen is a successful migrant story, he feels strongly connected to the place where he lives, connected to the history, connected to his family. However, at the heart of his marriage there is still this underlying question, how does Eva feel? How much does she love him? Stephen is a man who is secure in his place in the world, connected to the environment, and aware of the undercurrents, the feelings, the underground rivers.

Alice Nelson, author of 'The Pearl Divers'

2011-05-05T08:24:00.001+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

Karaoke – both the concept and the necessary joyousness to carry it off – is something far from the world of my characters, who inhabit an unspeakably troubled Broome in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If, however, I had to think of a piece of music that somehow evoked the feeling of ‘The Pearl Divers’ it would be Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor. The opening fugue, where each violin seems to answer the other, the sublime largo with its ineffable tenderness and enormous sadness and the complexity of the final allegro all seem to speak somehow of the story I was trying to tell.

Peter Docker, author of 'Funeral Song'

2011-05-04T09:41:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

The main protagonist in ‘The Funeral Song’ is lying dead in the coffin during the story – the DEAD-WHITE-BROTHER (DWB). The only other force that could be defined as a protagonist is a concept called SHARED-BLACK-AND-WHITE-HISTORY (SBAWH). DWB is obviously dead, and SBAWH can exist amongst either the living or the dead.
So DWB and SBAWH are walking down a street in the afterlife. This place amazingly resembles Rundle Street in Adelaide, late on a Wednesday evening. They’ve had a couple of beers by now with a young Aboriginal man that DWB didn’t know was in the afterlife already. Of course, SBAWH knows him as well. As they walk down this street, they come across a plain doorway with a very wide set of white stairs going straight up. There is a simple sign, no neon or flashing bulbs, just a word written on a blackboard: KARAOKE.

They go straight up the stairs without another word. On the stage there is a gangster doing ‘Lady Is A Tramp’. He is out of tune, but has a big pistol shoved down the front of his pants, so no one is complaining. DWB and SBAWH barge their way to the front. When the Tramp finishes they take the stage. A large man with a suit off the rack and a swallow tattooed on his neck steps up to the stage like he might protest. SBAWH gives him a look, and the fulla steps back, and puts his gun back in his pocket.

‘What song?’ calls out the operator.

‘Whatever’s there,’ the DEAD-WHITE-BROTHER and SHARED-BLACK-AND-WHITE-HISTORY yell back in unison.

‘“My Way” – Frank Sinatra!’

They step up and sing. There is not a dry eye in the house. They kill them. Towards the end, Kumanjai from Warumpi Band and Johnny Cash materialise to do some harmonising.

Samuel Carmody, author of 'Deeper Water'

2011-05-03T09:10:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

‘Deeper Water’ is the story of two brothers on a camping trip along the isolated coast north of Geraldton, Western Australia. The eldest brother and the protagonist of my story, Jacob, is a young man haunted; haunted by a recent tour in Afghanistan and a secret horror. Haunted by the memory of his late father, an impossibly good man. Haunted by guilt. Haunted by the recollection of simpler time that can’t be restored.

If pushed on to the karaoke stage, Jacob would likely sing ‘Under the Milky Way’ by Australian band, The Church: an appropriately haunted, melancholy tune about sitting, disturbed, under a big night sky.

Ted George, author of 'I Sit Here – We Sat There'

2011-05-02T09:01:00.012+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

On the karaoke stage the narrator of my story would sing the chorus from the 1965 Animals’ song ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’.

Singing that chorus was a brief escape from where we were.

We were ex-civilians wearing green clothes and carrying guns in a foreign country.
We sang it at the end of the night at the end of the bar.
We sang it many times when friends were rotated home, some walking, some not.
We briefly spoke it in the field when a grab of civilian life back home was needed.
When your power is out of your control and your destiny is a long way away in the back of your mind, you must have something to look forward to, even if it’s leaving a place while looking back on the run.

Bruce L. Russell, author of 'A Night in Hell'

2011-05-01T10:46:00.002+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

If Karaoke had been popular in 1957, he’d have been into it. It would sound a bit like ‘The Gambler’ by Kenny Rogers ... not so much the tune, but the way it’s delivered and the country-and-western flavour. Why? Because singing and drinking go together like rum and coke.

There’s a feeling that you’re falling

A warm stream of delight

A gradual unravelling

A steep track in the night

Then you know that you’re a Palms boy

You’re a clubbie, you’re a clown

And it’s hell that you were seeking

And it’s Hell you finally found.

David Hutchison, author of 'Snakes Don’t Die Until Sunset'

2011-04-30T13:09:00.002+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

My story, which is set in the mid to late 1930s, is based on my own childhood, but is substantially fiction. In those days, of course, karaoke was unheard of. Also, at that time we were probably becoming fearful of the then militaristic Japan, and would have been reluctant to adopt anything arising from that nation, although we still bought cheap Japanese manufactured goods, including toys. However, my mother took me and my three brothers to a community sing-along — I have forgotten the actual name given to these gatherings — that were held in the Perth Town Hall every week during part of the year. If my memory is correct, the compere of these functions was Dave Howard, a popular Perth saxophonist in those days. We might have gone several times; we certainly did not go every week.

At these functions, everyone in the audience was urged to join in singing the popular songs of the era — such as ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’ — which were very tuneful. The words of each song were projected on a screen. A white dot bounced on each word in a line to the rhythm of the music. This was intended to encourage everyone to sing in tune. This would have been of little help to me, as I was born tone-deaf.

Jo-Ann Whalley, author of 'Saltwater Memories'

2011-04-29T10:41:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’ by Lucinda Williams. The vivid imagery of country driving and living in a remote area, the undercurrent of tension and subtle hint of potential violence and rural decay, this song encapsulates the story Gaye is narrating. And all to a rocking good country tune!

Frances Finch, author of 'Little-big Sister'

2011-04-28T12:45:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

Erin Pearce, author of 'My Scallywag Suit'

2011-04-27T07:46:00.001+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

The narrator of my story would probably get a little frustrated that the Top 100 rarely features songs by or even about pirates. She might even host a Karaoke Night featuring only songs by or about pirates in protest, and everyone who attended would have to dress up or walk the plank. (Unfortunately, always-managing-to-go-slightly-overboard was just one of those things she inevitably inherited from her dad. That, and a stripy blue-and-white shirt …)

Natasha Lester, author of 'One Week Later'

2011-04-26T10:40:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

The main character in my story has a two year old and a four year old and has just found out that she’s pregnant with twins. So the song she would choose to sing is definitely ‘Help!’ by the Beatles. She’s sure going to need it!

Marcella Polain, author of 'Beautiful Negatives'

2011-04-25T11:05:00.002+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

My character prefers to sing loudly in cars. She wouldn’t be seen dead in a karaoke bar. She tried it once with ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush but now she knows that women in diaphanous white and with long wild hair, singing in the voice of ghosts, just make people laugh. Besides, she can’t stand the way the shiny bottles all wink at her from behind the bar.

Amanda Curtin, author of 'The Sound of a Room'

2011-04-24T12:31:00.004+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

Click on the image to read the answer.

Naama Amram, author of 'The Exhibition'

2011-04-23T12:46:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

If the protagonist of my story, Beatrix, ever gets out of holding the painting she’s stuck under and onto a karaoke stage, she would sing ‘Given to Fly’ by Pearl Jam. As a bright and inquisitive seventeen year old, Beatrix accesses grand philosophical themes – independence, choice, the nature of meaning – with limited maturity, but earnestly.

‘Given to Fly’ in this context represents a desire to seek truth and give love despite the misunderstanding and rejection people offer in return. This is an essential condition for an artist to continue to create. In my story, Beatrix learns the hard way from her photographer brother Ezra that people’s opinions are perceptions of reality, not reality itself.

Graham Nowland, author of 'Chomsky and the Kultigator'

2011-04-22T08:04:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

Paul, a publisher’s editor who attends the Frankfurt Book Fair and keeps being mistaken for Chomsky, would karaoke over ‘Louie Louie’ in the version by Iggy Pop. He would sing instead that ‘The nuclear dream has fallen apart’ before plunging on to bellow Iggy’s original lines about capitalism breaking our hearts and money being the reason to be. These are sufficient reasons for Paul wanting to sing ‘Louie Louie’, he advises me.

Mike Williams, author of 'Barcelona'

2011-04-21T11:00:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

Unless Ernest Hemingway was doing a few bars of ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’, it’s extremely unlikely my word-weary bookshop owner would be enticed into a karaoke bar; however, it has been known, after a slow chardonnay afternoon, reading Roberto Bolano, he has attempted a rendition of ‘The Weight’ while making coffee. Something about pulling into Nazareth, isn’t it?

Richard Rossiter, author of 'Divini'

2011-04-20T11:07:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

Sharonn, the protagonist of ‘Divini’, would choose ‘I Am Your Sunshine’. She is convinced she is a shining light in others’ lives – in spite of the very different reality.

Extract from ‘Divini’:
Each morning, before setting out to work, she refreshed her skin and clothes with the complex array of scents that was Divini, oriental and spicy, as the advertisers claimed. She could distinguish the strains of berries, citrus, caramel, vanilla, chocolate, honey, sandalwood and patchouli. It was all there. So uplifting.
‘We can smell you before you arrive, Sharonn, and after you’ve left,’ said her friends.
She didn’t like the use of the word ‘smell’ and would rather they used something more subtle and sophisticated, like ‘We sense your arrival’ or ‘We can discern your presence’ but this was not something easily conveyed to her admirers. They would often add, ‘We would love to use that perfume, but we can’t afford it. You’ve got it all to yourself, Sharonn.’

Sharonn adjusted her broadly padded shoulders. Not only did she love Theodoric Fett’s perfume, she loved his clothes. The claim that they were inspired by Stalinist propaganda did not trouble her in the least. Sharonn respected strength in herself, and others, and she had strong views on issues that were as close to her as her own backyard: she was not happy with what was happening all around her, what she could see day by day with her very eyes. It was the neighbours, when they were in residence. Although she was happy to see house values rise, there was, quite simply, too much foreign ownership by people who didn’t really belong, and she felt, in her bones, that in these times there was a need for strong leadership to sort out the right balance in the community; leadership – not by men, but by women who could learn from men how to do it. Clothes were a start.

Meredi Ortega, author of 'The Wardrobe'

2011-04-19T09:37:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

Pat Jacobs, author of 'The Chrysoprase Plain'

2011-04-18T09:57:00.002+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

The protagonist of my story does not sing; she listens. Her husband might break into song at the karaoke bar, but she would stay home, listening to Satie. I think the extract below from my story explains this:

‘Her life was no different from the other women in the cool beautiful houses by the river. Women who waited ... And herself? Lavishing tenderness on the azaleas, the orchids, in a cloister, light filtering through leaves, listening to Satie; a shadow existence. They were like bees in amber, the flow and movement of their lives congealed in an exotic entrapment. Come with me, he’d said, just the two of us. It was at Nullagine, at the pub, when Constanza and Geoff flew in, that she’d doubted Charley. They had something on. She’d begun watching, looking for the signs that would confirm a minor betrayal: his casual use of her loneliness for his own ends.’

At one point in the journey this character takes an action that puts her at risk. Alone in a plain dominated by spinifex, she must calculate the odds, reflect on the possibilities of her position; weigh the outcomes. The Chrysoprase Plain is real – but hard to find.

‘She sat up, inclined to laugh out loud at the image in her mind of the precisely mapped squares, filled with a multitude of round shapes; the certainty that each square must contain a number of spaces, gaps in which she could be. They wouldn’t find her using squares.’

Goldie Goldbloom, author of 'The Road to Katherine'

2011-04-17T12:51:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

The song for Care is ‘Rack Off Normie’.

“You better believe I’d smash his back window with a great lump of rock. I haven’t even begun to do me block!” So says Care, talking about Scurry, the cement truck driver in ‘The Road to Katherine’. ‘Rack Off Normie’ was an easy choice for a karaoke song. Besides ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, it’s the only song she knows all the words to.

Jon Doust, author of 'The Man with the Moustache'

2011-04-16T14:21:00.007+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

He’s singing Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. No other. In a karaoke bar he would make it his own, bring it up from his guts, relive his miserable life all over and keep on singing ’till the room emptied. Maybe this Freddie Mercury masterpiece was the source of ‘The Man with the Moustache’, but it wasn’t. Was it? So what if it was, or wasn’t, nothing really matters. Does it?

Illustration: James Foley

Sj Finch, author of 'The Kid on the Karaoke Stage Emptied His Beer and Cried. Men Threw Him a Line'

2011-04-15T12:20:00.003+08:00

What song would the narrator/protagonist of your story sing at a karaoke bar and why?

My protagonist performed many karaoke songs in an amateur career spanning over half a decade. He did this for many reasons, and sometimes for no reason at all. Here is the unofficial Greatest Hits in the first person and a somewhat chronological order:

The Darkness – ‘Growing on Me’

Naively, I thought that singing parodic pop-metal would be fun for both the audience and myself because it called for nail-on-chalkboard falsetto and sexy faces. Plus I could just air-guitar when I got too drunk to read the words. Naivety wins.

MC Hammer – ‘Can’t Touch This’

I knew how to do several MC Hammer–flavoured dances, including the crab walk and that nineties pop-rap cross-foot spin that also features in some Salt ’n’ Pepa videos.

Air – ‘I’m All Outta Love’

The one that got the most audience reaction, often either ironically ecstatic or disgusted and captivated, and probably my greatest achievement. Began as just another slow eighties love song warbled off-key in a karaoke bar, but quickly warped into a rather x-rated and hyper-passionate seemingly drug-induced performance where I would scream about being wrong/sorry/ repentant/repugnant for long minutes and writhe on the ground. During the song bridge I would calmly take off all of my clothes and ask the audience what they were thinking of. Resulted in being kicked out of two pubs, once while perfectly straight.

Electric 6 – ‘Gaybar’

Part of the joy of interacting with the audience at a local pub was seeing how far I could swing the meter from acceptable homosocial drunken interaction to deviant threatening homosexual performance. There is nothing more satisfying than pointing to grizzled, beer-bellied middle-aged men and screaming that I would like to take them to a gay bar, put something in them, and possibly start a nuclear war. The repeated vocal refrains are perfect to air-thrust too. Plus it’s got cowbell.

David Bowie – ‘Life on Mars’

Halfway through the performance, my feet got caught in microphone wire, and I fell backwards against the pub wall. With all my weight on the wall, my body at a less than 45-degree angle, and my drunken mind unable to perform more than two actions at once (singing and reading), I slid, helpless, into the crack between the pub wall and the karaoke stage. I finished the rest of the song stuck there to much laughter and applause.

Prince – ‘Kiss’

Prince – ‘Let’s get Crazy’

I had a love affair with Prince that was secretly not ironic. The hypersexuality, the godblesshim falsetto, the pop genius, the kissy faces. Yeah, Prince has it all.

Welcome to 28 Days of Karaoke!

2011-04-14T14:47:00.009+08:00

Welcome to 28 Days of Karaoke – because too much karaoke is never enough. This month you will hear from each of the contributors to The Kid on the Karaoke Stage & Other Stories – a collection of fiction and creative non-fiction stories from some of Western Australia’s finest writers.

Karaoke is a useful metaphor for the creative process – or so it appeared to me when I was making the selection for this anthology. In the title story (Sj Finch’s ‘The Kid on the Karaoke Stage Emptied his Beer and Cried. Men Threw Him a Line’) the narrator is never more the person he wants to be than when he is up on the stage performing karaoke, even though, paradoxically, this is the moment when he is least ‘himself’.

Karaoke, like short story writing, and other creative or performance endeavours, can have this transformative effect. It offers a chance for the participant to inhabit an artform and in doing so, to become not so much what they are not, as something more than what they are.

In The Kid on the Karaoke Stage I deliberately did not identify which stories are fiction and which are not. This is because the most effective kinds of creative non-fiction always tell a good story, and the best kinds of fiction always reveal for the reader a ‘truth’ larger than the story itself. This distillation, or offering, or moment of realisation – call it what you will – can be as rewarding for each reader as it was for the writer; spectator and performer gain in equal measure.

Watch out this month for a little white ball bouncing lightly above the lyrics as you enjoy the karaoke-inspired offerings of each author.

Georgia Richter

Publisher, Adult Fiction & Creative Non-Fiction

Fremantle Press

Alan Carter cuts the mustard

2011-02-16T14:56:00.007+08:00

Touring the Great Southern to promote his debut crime novel, Prime Cut, Alan Carter chatted to John Maddison at Albany Community Radio. The offer of a 'kept man' gig gave him the opportunity to write, he says, but the real inspiration came from the landscape of the south coast.

(Click on the title link above to listen.)

New Poets for the New Year

2011-01-06T09:10:00.006+08:00

Scott-Patrick Mitchell, who featured in Fremantle Poets 1: New Poets in 2010, will appear alongside Steve (SJ) Finch, whose title story features in the forthcoming The Kid on the Karaoke Stage & Other Stories (May 2011), at Perth Poetry Club this Saturday.

Get yourself to The Moon, 323 William St, Northbridge, from 2 to 4pm on Saturday 8th January, to kickstart your new year with a dose of quality local poetry. Plus open mike – all welcome.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell is a poet & writer who lives in Perth, Western Australia. He is an arts and fashion journalist for OUTinPerth Newspaper and also a poetry editor for dotdotdash. In 2009 he won The PressPress Poetry Chapbook Award and in 2010 he won the Perth Poetry Slam. In July 2010 he appeared as one of three emerging West Australian poets in Fremantle Press’ New Poets. He is studying a Masters in Performance Poetry, upgrading to a PhD in 2011, at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts. In his downtime, he blogs his photographs of street art and obsesses over fashion.

In 2008, Steve (SJ) Finch decided to cook Christmas dinners for his family. In 2009 he decided to start a Perth-based literary journal, dotdotdash. In 2010 he decided to start a vlog where he interviews his friends about their lives. In 2011 he decided to write some poetry for the Perth Poetry Club. He is currently studying a PhD, and is located somewhere in the Moon.

SNEAK PEEK

2010-11-30T18:00:00.004+08:00

My Dog Gave Me The Clap and Other Near Misses by muso Adam Morris is forthcoming in October 2011. Adam Morris plays in the Murder Mouse Blues Band.

From Chapter 2: Music

Saul had played many gigs like this one before. Three sets, forty-five minutes a set, ten to twelve songs a set depending. They were often strange and unusual experiences. Saul had played in clubs, bars and festival stages to big responsive audiences who appreciated his songs and his singing. But these gigs were different and came up more often. Saul was basically like a lot of musicians, a part-time musician. He couldn’t rely on playing full time as some weeks the gigs simply weren’t there. At times he’d go two months without work. That’s why he worked in the prison, that’s why he sometimes took relief work in schools, that’s why he was going a little off the rails. He had one leg in each camp and couldn’t get a secure footing in either. He had thought many times, if he fully dedicated himself to his music after ten or fifteen years he would be in a solid position. He also thought that if he stayed in the prison teaching or in a school or an office job or some sort of more stable and normal career, after ten or fifteen years he would be earning well, rising in his chosen field, progressing. But the way it was he had his flashes of success in both worlds and more pain and middling in both.

Saul would arrive at the venue like the one he had just played and set up while half the room was already full. No one had come to see him play. They had come to take their wife out for dinner, a casual dinner, they had brought the family and the kids out for an occasion, someone’s birthday, a visitor from overseas maybe. The fact there was a musician playing there was a bonus for everyone in the room. Saul always felt slightly uncomfortable setting up if the room was already in full swing. He felt like he was intruding. There would be some non-offensive light jazz background music over the house PA, the lights would be dimmed, the vibe was nice, you could smell the food, hear people talking, laughing, cutlery hitting plates, glasses clinking. Saul sometimes felt like a little brother at his big sister’s party. No one minded that he was there, but everyone could have a fine time without him.

They watched as Saul walked through the door carrying his PA. They watched as he returned to his car and came back with the leather bag of leads, microphone, mic stand and guitar stand under his arm. They watched as Saul disappeared again and reappeared carrying two guitar cases. As Saul would play these gigs alone, he had no one to talk to and so everything that was said in the room he could hear. ‘Ooh looks like we’ve got a guitar player,’ says a man in the far corner of the room to his wife whose company he’s not entirely enjoying. Saul noticed how usually the people who were having the most miserable evening would be the ones watching him the closest. ‘Two guitars hey, must be alright.’

Saul would try and make the set up as professional as possible. He didn’t want to do it too quickly because then he’d be sitting around waiting for the start time alone in a pub reading a paper he had no interest in. Finally he’d get a drink which was usually included in the pay, ask the bar staff to turn off the house music and wander back, hop on the high stool and create some atmosphere of his own, but not too much as to interfere with the football.

The pay for these gigs was pretty good, about the equivalent of a day’s pay in the prison or the schools. So although it wasn’t Madison Square Garden, one gig like this was a day less Saul had to spend at the prison or the school. He usually played something bluesy and mellow to start the set, trying to blend in with the atmosphere he was replacing, at least at first. As the set wore on Saul would loosen up bit by bit. More often than not the hardest part about these gigs was that hardly anybody ever clapped. If he got a small smattering of applause for each song he considered himself to be very lucky. It wasn’t that they didn’t enjoy it, most of the people who left at the end of the night would thank Saul for his music. They just didn’t clap for some reason while they were actually there for some profound reason. Saul had played many a gig where he sold six or seven CDs at the end but hardly anyone clapped while he was playing. Saul was used to this practice but it was still hard to get used to. In fact it was impossible to get used to, it was like having a conversation with someone who never answered, it felt bewildering. He remembered his first solo gig, when it first happened, he didn’t get a single clap, not one for the whole first set. He was playing in a beer garden in the middle of the day and forty-five minutes went by with nothing from the entire gathering.

Saul was at first mortified. Maybe I’ll just pack up and leave after this set he thought, that will look terrible. Maybe I’ll just take a long break, like a nine-hour break and pack up when everyone has gone home. Maybe I need to kill myself to apologise to these poor people. But the pub asked him back and each person who left the beer garden who passed Saul thanked him for a wonderful afternoon. These were things which baffled Saul, yet also these were things Saul was proud to have endured.

PHOTO GALLERY: Rock 'n Roll Reunion

2010-11-30T11:12:00.005+08:00

More photos from the reunion concert of rock 'n roll bands from the 50s and 60s, held to celebrate the launch of Jive, Twist and Stomp on Sunday 28 November at the Swan Yacht Club.

PHOTO GALLERY: Rock 'n Roll Reunion cont'd

2010-11-30T11:00:00.000+08:00

PHOTO GALLERY: Rock 'n Roll Reunion cont'd ...

2010-11-30T10:55:00.000+08:00

Twist and shout!

2010-11-29T12:00:00.003+08:00

A line-up of WA rock 'n roll stars from the 50s and 60s helped launch Jive, Twist and Stomp at the Swan Yacht Club yesterday. A crowd of over 1000 turned out to jive to their favourite tunes and dance the night away.

Kelly Green

Clive Higgins

Pieter LaBrooy

Colin Nichol launches the book, joined by Murray Gracie (left) and Fremantle Press publisher and CEO Jane Fraser (right)

Johnny Young

Rod Christian

Jive, Twist and Stomp (December 2010) is available from Fremantle Press.

60 seconds with ... Pieter LaBrooy

2010-11-27T11:55:00.007+08:00

The Hi-Five, Pieter LaBrooy third from left.

My association with Perth bands was basically between postings in the RAAF! From 1964 I was in Phil Mason and the Mexmen (Herb Alpert Tribute), then Reg Carson and the Tollmen until 1965, then I played with Glen Ingram and the Hi-Five until the end of 1965. Unfortunately after that I was off on a posting to Butterworth, Malaysia, from which I had to go to Thailand during the Vietnam conflict. I was back in Perth in 1968, then played with the Top Brass, and later the J.A. Sound Syndicate doing ‘Chicago’ and semi big band stuff. That was it until 1972 when I was off again to Wagga Wagga, NSW as a RAAF instructor. I played some live music over there too, on guitar.

Our house was full of music when I was little so it was a natural progression that I would be involved in music. When I first heard ‘Apache’, that was it. Then Gene Vincent’s guitar playing finished me off – I was hooked and haven’t been the same since (my wife is still a widow!).

I think the Hi-Five was my best time, but I can say they all were great times. The jive songs really used to get the audiences going! Once that beat started that was it, especially if the song had a good feel. That was the essence of the whole deal. There was a song called ‘Tiddlywinks’ (an instrumental based on the Sailor’s Hornpipe) that we rocked up, and that got everybody going. We used to play that at the Bicton Hall Hop. People still tell me they used to go to the Bicton Hop and dance to it.

Jive, Twist and Stomp (December 2010) is available from Fremantle Press.

Musos who rhyme: Ross Bolleter

2010-11-25T18:00:00.002+08:00

Known for his compositions for and performances with ruined pianos, and once a member of The Black-Eyed Susans, musician and poet Ross Bolleter released his second collection of poetry, Piano Hill, in 2009.

Before the Deluge
Nelson, New Zealand, 1999

the white Mercedes
is under cover

the piano’s under
the dripping trees

a little girl comes out
of the white picket gate –
‘It’s ours, but it’s too big
to fit through the door.’

Would she play? she would –
‘Memories’ from Cats –
sweetly tentative in C

after she’s gone
I watch delicate rain
star the piano’s walnut
going black

EVENT REMINDER: Jive, Twist and Stomp concert

2010-11-24T10:00:00.002+08:00

Celebrate the release of Jive, Twist and Stomp with a line-up of your favourite performers from the 50s and 60s!

28 November 2010, 2:00-6:00pm
Swan Yacht Club, Riverside Drive, East Fremantle

Get your ticket on the day at the Swan Yacht Club for $20.
This is a family friendly event.

EXTRACT: The Sixties

2010-11-22T09:00:00.001+08:00

Eion Cameron recalls the 1960s with great wit, in gory detail and with no insight whatsoever, because he’d do it all again, in The Sixties. He plays out the soundtrack to the decade in chapters such as ‘Just Waving’:

1963 was the year the big waves washed over Australia. For the first time it was kids’ music which dominated the charts, and it didn’t come from the expected direction of rock and roll, it came from the beach or, more precisely the surf.

Number one hits included ‘Surfside’ by Digger Revell’s Denvermen, ‘Pipeline’ by the Chantays, ‘Surf City’ by Jan and Dean, ‘Wipeout’ by the Surfaris, and ‘Bombora’ by the Atlantics. Little Pattie almost made it to the top but stalled at number two with her double-sided hit ‘Stompin’ at the Maroubra’/’He’s My Blond Headed, Stompie Wompie, Real Gone Surfer Boy’.

Perhaps the most remarkable hit of ’63 was Kyu Sakamoto’s ‘Sukiyaki’, sung in Japanese. The song’s real title, ‘Ueo Muite Arukou’, would have ensured it never got airplay, but some smart cookie decided ‘Sukiyaki’ was one of the very few Japanese words that western DJs could handle.

The inexorable rock-and-roll march continued with big hits like ‘Tell Him’ by the Exciters, ‘Ruby Baby’ by Dion, ‘How Do You Do It?’ by Gerry and the Pacemakers and ‘And Then He Kissed Me’ by the Crystals.

None of this meant we’d lost our taste for novelty songs, because ’63 saw the release of Sheb Wooley’s ‘Hootenanny Hoot’, ‘Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh’ from Allan Sherman and ‘On Top of Spaghetti’ by Tom Glazer.

The real excitement on the music scene in 1963 was caused by the Fab Four, though at this stage they were not quite fab. In September they reached number three on the national charts with ‘She Loves You’, then just before Christmas the surf wave which had started the year turned into the Merseybeat tidal wave when ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ swept all before it to top the charts.

Every Top 40 radio station in Australia jumped aboard the Beatle wave and rode it for all it was worth. In fact, because of the enormous excitement and publicity they’d created in Britain and Europe, the Beatles were famous in Australia before their music had even been heard here, thanks to the popularity of fan magazines or ‘fanzines’.

Any serious observer would no doubt agree that in Australia the music world changed over the summer of 1963-64. During the Christmas holidays, the Beatles were horrifying parents all over the country with their number one hit ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’. The release of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ was an event of national significance, at least for the younger portion of the population, and every self-respecting teenager in the country had a spotty ear glued to the tranny.

Parents pretty much wrote off the Fab Four as ‘those long-haired gits’, or with ‘they can’t sing, otherwise why would they go on with all that yeah, yeah, yeah nonsense?’

But we could hear what the Beatles were singing about, and we loved what we heard. And, at least in those early days, there was nothing remotely subversive or sinister about their songs, they were basically fairly straightforward and simple little love songs, delivered in a way that no one had before.

The pop ship entered somewhat murkier waters in the first week of 1964 when Roy Orbison’s Christmas hit ‘Pretty Paper’ displaced the Beatles, but the tide had at last turned, and what the Americans described as the British Invasion was about to sweep over Australia as well.

The Sixties is available from Fremantle Press.

Dave Warner's rockin' the suburbs

2010-11-21T08:52:00.006+08:00

Like all kids growing up in the 50s and 60s I loved pop music. It spoke to us like nothing else, and the remarkable thing is just how vibrant the WA music scene was – we even had our own live pop TV show, Club Seventeen hosted by Johnny Young. The highlight was always when Johnny and The Strangers played a song. Russ Kennedy was another regular; who can forget ‘Got My Eyes On You’?

The first band I ever saw live was The Valiants who played at my primary school fancy-dress party. They were mainly a guitar instrumental band and I recall them playing the theme song from the TV show Jamie McPheeters. Another memory is going to see relatives off at the airport when Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs were arriving. There was a huge crowd there, and one of the radio stations had actually set up a stage for bands to entertain the waiting audience – outside the buildings just off the tarmac! I was too small to see much but I caught glimpses of Ray Hoff and the Offbeats. Another close encounter with fame was when my sister and her ballet friends walked into The Rolling Stones taking a stroll through the city! My sister’s friends’ favourite local band was Love Needs Care.

Of course Perth was pretty provincial and I think The Easybeats were once banned from their hotel dining room for not wearing ties. How embarrassing! Hoadley’s Battle of the Bands was a highlight of the time and I made the trek to the Ambassador to see one of the finals. I can’t remember who won but I do remember being knocked out by Phil Manning’s guitar playing. Denis James was another great guitar player of that time.

Coming from Bicton I used to follow Johnny Johnstone and his mates through their various bands like Big Time Fred and the Chickens, Mud, and The Crabs. Other favourites were Pete Walker and Steve Tallis with The Jellyroll Bakers, Stafford D, The Bakery (of course), and Al Cash with The Great Pumpkin Mutiny and Dave Hole. I think I recall that Robbie Snowdon used to work at the barber at Melville and everybody wanted him to cut their hair.

My enthusiasm for music got me spoken to by the police for being at The Firecracker while underage. Perth had a great scene then and the bands and musicians inspired me to want to play music myself.

Dave Warner is a musician, author and screenwriter who originally hails from Perth. He played in punk and rock bands in the 1970s such as Dave Warner’s From the Suburbs and, later, The Suburbs. He is the author of City of Light and Footy's Hall of Shame and was the co-writer of feature film Garage Days. Dave also writes for television programs including the hit show Packed to the Rafters. He has recently been commissioned to write a series of children's novels.

Musos who rhyme: David McComb

2010-11-20T10:00:00.004+08:00

David McComb left behind an extraordinary body of work, notably the songs and albums he recorded with Australian post-punk group The Triffids. The fact that McComb also wrote poetry comes as no surprise to admirers of the songwriter’s powerfully evocative lyrics. Collected for the first time in Beautiful Waste: Poems by David McComb, this is an example:

The Township is Sleeping Now

The township is sleeping now.
As you, too, turn to bed,
Listen …
A distant roar in the night;
Traces, a scent,
of almost inaudible music.
The only light
of poems, damned and scoured and purged,
contained in the desperate letters
that lovers exchange.

60 seconds with ... Rod Christian

2010-11-19T14:00:00.006+08:00

Which bands did you play in, and when?

I started drumming in a band called Four of a Kind while still at school in Year 11 at Trinity College in East Perth in 1965. We used to play a lot of dances and university functions in the old Barrack St Jetty Rowing Club and all of the school socials. It was that year I started to teach myself guitar and (on guitar) formed the Jeff Phillips Fan Club band with Jeff Phillips. We regularly played at his fan club dances in South Perth.

When I left school at the end of 1966, I formed a band called The In-Pulse with Peter Waterman, Bob Hawker, Ian Love (of Cocos fame) and Dave Sears. (See photo above, Rod Christian far left.) This was a great band with harmonies and lots of work around the Perth scene. A regular gig was St Pat’s dance every Sunday night in Fremantle, plus dances and cabarets around town including The Italian Club in North Perth.

We often did river cruises to Point Walter on a Saturday night and supported bands at nightclubs in Perth. I played lead guitar along with Nigel Ridgway, Jon Burns, Ron Burns and Brian Ward in The Blue Brass at the Nanking restaurant in Belmont from 1968. We backed many international artists including The Platters, The Sitopal Sisters, Four Kinsmen, and Martin St James etc. This is where I learned to read music (basically by ear) and also to play bass guitar, as we used to swap instruments to keep the music going. It was a lot of fun working with Peter Harries, Kelly Green, Ian de Souza (now a prominent Fremantle artist) and Elaine Mort, amongst other local musicians.

In 1969 I left The Blue Brass and formed The Motivation with Russ Kennedy, Nigel Ridgway (then Maurie Pearson), Peter Waterman and John Quilty. In this band I played lead guitar and keyboards. We played the Swan Hotel circuit in Perth and many nightclubs including Top Hat, Ricki Tik, Two Eyes, The Colosseum and more. In 1971 I joined Triax at the Morley Hotel as bass player. We played four nights a week and then we got the job as resident band at Contacio International in Scarborough. Here, Peter Harries and Kelly Green were the floor show artists and in 1973 Peter started his own nightclub, The Knight Klub in Como, where I joined him as musical director for the next nine years.

I still play in five different bands today including the original In-Pulse which works under the name Cruisin’ Rock ‘n Roll Showband with three of us original members still in the band!

What got you into rock and roll?

When I was seven years old, I lived in Claremont and the radio was always on. We listened to tunes like ‘Build Your Love on a Strong Foundation’, ‘The Battle of New Orleans’, ‘Tammy and Witch Doctor’. I absolutely LOVED these songs and could sing them back perfectly. The next-door neighbours were girls in their late teens and they were dating American sailors visiting Perth. The sailors brought 45 records over from the US and gave them to the girls who used to play them full bore on the stereo next door. My brother Bret and sisters Julie and Jan and I used to dance on the lawn. When I heard the sax solo in ‘Purple People Eater’ that was it! I had to play or be involved in music from that point on. We had an old piano and I could soon bang out the melodies of all these songs. From there I joined the junior choir at Trinity College and then the Senior Choir, then the ‘Four Of A Kind’ band and the rest is …

Is there a gig that really stands out in your memory?

There were many, particularly backing famous people. In the early days I was playing bass in the main backing band for Telethon with Ed Peters and Guy Bart and we used to back people like John Farnham, Cleo Lane, Johnny O’Keefe and Little Patti. It was all live to air, so exhilarating and at the same time frightening.

I remember being support band to Gary Pucket and the Union Gap and to the Deltones. A memorable gig was backing Harry Secombe at Perth Concert Hall and Warren Williams, Johnny Young, and Ray Brown in subsequent gigs. I also went to many great gigs including Peter Frampton, Doctor Hook, Boz Scaggs, Paul McCartney, and, more recently conducted a season of my own musical Cruisin at the Regal Theatre in Perth as Musical Director, with Glenn Shorrock in the lead role. I also write heaps of choral music. A memorable occasion was back in 2002 when 9000 people heard a world premiere of a song I composed called ‘Anthem for Unity for Australia’ at the Perth Entertainment Centre.

What was guaranteed to get audiences off their seats and dancing?

Rock and roll of course! The simplicity, the harmonies, the great string arrangements, the backup vocals all combined to make this a unique genre. I have a very broad taste in music but you can’t beat good old rock and roll. I particularly like the backbeat and the tempo of jive music.

Jive, Twist and Stomp (December 2010) is available from Fremantle Press.

EXTRACT: Jive, Twist and Stomp

2010-11-17T11:16:00.007+08:00

Johnny and the Strangers, 1963–65

Bill Elks vocals 1963; John Mills rhythm guitar; Graham Nicol lead guitar; John Hendrix bass 1963; Murray Thomas drums 1963; Johnny Young vocals; Maurie Pearson drums 1963–64; Warrick Findlay drums 1964–65; John (Scotty) Gray bass 1964; Don Prior bass 1964–65; John Eddy rhythm guitar 1965; Tony Summers lead guitar 1965

The first midnight stomp!

By Graham Nicol

Before Johnny Young there was Bill Elks on vocals. Bill lived down the road from me in Angelo Street, South Perth and became the first singer with the newly renamed Strangers, formed from the Valiants, aka Thin Men — John Mills, John Hendrix, Graham Nicol and Murray Thomas. Bill was probably an unlikely pop star, but had plenty of energy and a touch of theatricality; at an early Battle of the Bands (it really was a sort of sport back then) Bill brought an old violin that he’d picked up at a hock shop onto the stage, launched into a maudlin rendition of ‘Old Shep’ before smashing the thing on the front of the stage and powering into ‘Hound Dog’! Naturally we won first prize!

Bill had a Renault 750 in which he almost went places. One day we almost got as far as the Gaiety Theatre halfway down Angelo Street before it expired (again). His next car was an enormous pre-war Chev that could have carried the Renault in the boot! And it was in the Chev that we explored the possibility of performing at the Trocadero in Rockingham.

Rockingham was sleepy hollow back in the 60s, home to retirees, fisher folk and holiday shacks. Why Bill thought that Rockingham would welcome a rock & roll dance, at midnight no less, was a mystery then and now. But we went to it, printing posters and sticking them up all over Fremantle’s lamp posts and running an ad in the papers. Ross O’Reilly was to man the door, protected by a Dutchman of Bill’s acquaintance who had a black belt in Judo or something — macramé? We’d hired a caravan to kip in after the show, just down the road from the hall.

At ten o’clock that night we were standing outside the hall confronting disaster. There was no sign of patrons and the local chapter of the Royal Order of the Buffaloes was holding a meeting within the hall. When we politely enquired as to when they would vacate to allow us to set up our gear, we were told that it would be when they were good and ready. We could see their hats with the horns stuck on parading back and forth through the windows. At eleven thirty they were still parading, but by then there was a long stream of headlights back along the road to Fremantle, our audience! Soon there was a crowd of bodgies and widgies (real and wannabe) standing on the footpath. ‘When are you gonna start playin’?’ asked one sideboarded duffle jacket who obviously got his way often. We explained the situation re the apparent importance of the rituals being performed by the horned hats inside. Promptly, he and his mates burst into the hall and carried the entire local chapter out onto the pavement, hats, apparatus and all! We quickly set up and the joint was packed and rockin’. The more enterprising patrons were coming in through the windows, to be caught by the Dutchman and thrown back out again (some two or three times)! They were thick on the floor and perched on anything horizontal, including the hall piano which had seen better days and which was getting its remaining life kicked out of it in time to the music.

In the wee hours after the show, we sat in the caravan counting the pile of coins, we made over £17 each! We were on our way to stardom!

Jive, Twist and Stomp (December 2010) is available from Fremantle Press.