Entries by Jennifer Liston

I read yesterday (over here) that the body of Chilean poet and senator, Pablo Neruda, was exhumed on Monday to establish the exact cause of his death in 1973. He was reported to have died of heart failure when suffering from pancreatic cancer. His driver, however, has long claimed that Neruda was poisoned by the Pinochet regime just two weeks after the coup in Chile during which Neruda's friend, Salvador Allende, was murdered.

So I wrote a poem, using a selection of approximate poem and book titles from this much-loved Nobel Prize winner.

On exhuming Pablo Neruda

On the blue shore of silence –
calm as if absent –
the briny soil yields broken things:
crushed mud and light,
unquiet stones,
your socks,
salt, tomatoes and wine,
mermaids and drunks,
a carnal apple and a burning hot moon,
a full woman
and a rose, separate,
fleas (that interested you so much),
a book of questions
and songs of despair with the saddest lines,
a lemon absence,
a yellow heart,
a clenched soul in a continent of hope.
A gentleman, alone.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Last night I went to the 10th anniversary celebration of Poets' Corner, a wonderful poetry group that hosts guest poets every month (Alison Flett and I were guest readers at the most recent one in January, which was the evening before friend and poet John Pfitzner passed away). Yesterday's celebrations included a tribute to John. Sean Gilbert delivered a moving opening speech about poetry and prayer, and how poetry, like prayer, is a 'reaching out'.

I was thinking more about this, and about how some prayers are poetry in and of themselves, if you slough away the heavy chains of association with man's religious prejudices.

Raised a Roman Catholic, my childhood was sprinkled with learning and 'reciting' prayers. I wondered what poem I could rescue from a selection of prayers that I know so well. I chose seven: the 'Our Father', the 'Creed', the 'St Patrick's Breastplate', a 'Guardian Angel' prayer, the 'Salve Regina', Psalm 23 ('The Lord is my Shepherd') and the 'Act of Contrition'. To be consistent I took the text from here.


you are the banished

Almighty guide descended
eyes of earth toward evil resolve.
In the darkest valley of temptation
a quiet stranger
sighs,
dies.

Spirit me to forgiveness
beside rose waters,
beneath the light of grace,
behind gracious power;
restore me to hope
above buried heaven
near a hallowed presence
through days of mercy;
lead me to believe
that the worthy shall lead,
that a god shall comfort,
that tears for a mother and father
are tears of an angel,
that to walk above waters
is communion with earth
and that when life and light are done
I shall come
in from exile.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

here.

I just read today that yesterday, 7 April, was William Wordsworth's birthday – he was born in 1770. He figured heavily in my introduction to poetry: my mother and I used to recite together 'Lucy Gray' and 'Daffodils' when I was about six or seven years old.

The two poems are very different: 'Lucy Gray' tells the story of a young child who goes missing in a snowstorm, while 'Daffodils' recounts the joy experienced by the poet when he comes across 'a host of golden daffodils' when he was out for a walk.

So I decided to shake up the text of these two poems and see what poem was waiting to be rescued. Here's the result, which is definitely influenced by how well I know the subject of both poems.

Happy birthday, William. Thank you for your poetry. I hope you're not turning in your grave at this.

She is all, and night is just

Sound never looks this lonesome.
She wandered, small,
overlooked, scarcely there.
She was inward, broken,
dancing vacant
on solitary wild.
Night was tossing
the wretched daffodils.
She danced, wanton,
chanced a glance
at lantern moon
shine sprightly golden
reached downwards beside
on milky snow.
She gazed wide at lonely heaven
and through sparkling
stars tracked waves of twinkle.
She danced, pensive,
yonder mother mountain
a steep, stormy rise homeward.
She danced, wept,
her footmarks lost,
never to be seen.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I listened to a ‘Poem Talk’ podcast today of a discussion of Caroline Bergvall’s poem ‘Via: 48 Dante Variations’. The poet collected English translations of the first three lines of Dante’s Inferno from the British Library and arranged them in a certain order.

(The podcast is here.)

So I decided to do a little experiment of my own, which turned into something completely different from what had been discussed in the podcast! I selected a poem called ‘Je suis comme je suis’ from the book Paroles by one of my favourite French poets, Jacques Prévert. The first two lines of the poem are:

Je suis comme je suis
Je suis faite comme ça

I translated them, then worked my way through repeating the two lines – but each time I changed the punctuation and/or order of the words without altering the rhythm of the first two lines. In the first few lines I changed a few words. I retained the same number of lines of the original poem (32) and a stanza break at the same point (after line 12).

The meaning transformed and ended up somewhere quite poignant. Here it is.

just words

I am what I am
I am made that way.
I am who I am
I am made like that.
I am who? I am.
I am. Made. Like that?
I am I am who?
I like that, am made.
Who am I? Are you
like that? I am maid.
Who are you? My eye
likes that maid, I am.

I am who? Are you
who I am? What maid?
You are who my eye
likes, you are made you.
I am. You are. I.
You are. I am. You.
I am. You are. I.
You are. I am. You.
I am. You are. I.
You are. I am. You.
I am. You are. I.
You am I am you
You are why. We made.
You are I, my who.
You are who, and why.
You and I, who are.
You who are my why.
You and I were who?
You who were my who?
Who? You? Me? We? Why?

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Earlier this evening we watched an animation about how our complex universe evolved by following a set of defined scientific rules.

That lead me to think about how writers use language and its associated rules to bring complex worlds into being.

And thus poem number six was created. (Maybe I should rest on the seventh day.) I think this one has potential (pardon the pun) to be reworked into a good piece.

how physics and poetry collide

we are creators:
we start, uncertain
with the magic of our ideas
we combine quarky commas
electron verbs
protonic nouns
molecular sentences
craft countless worlds and universes
with their own laws
for inhabitants to understand and follow
for observers to wonder

meanwhile, physicists
take simple rules
to deconstruct our complex expanding universe
from galaxies
to stars
to us
via a periodic table
to a quantum world
where all becomes uncertain:
at Planck's levels
it's magic

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Today I was reading through contemporary conceptual poet Caroline Bergvall's 'Eclat'.

A statement from it hopped into my awareness and swung around the beams there:

'Where are you not who.'

No question mark.

No punctuation.

So of course I wrote a poem. When re-reading it, I realised that it touched on the idea that there is no trace of an author's self in conceptual writing – unlike more traditional poetry, where the self of the writer/poet/narrator is apparent.

éclat de conscience

where are you not who:
you might peek around the edge
of a deconstructed sentence
or curl up, contortioned,
in the shelf of an A,
drape yourself languidly
in delirious-sounding prose,
meander through memory-loss
in mis-spelt words,
imitate the yellow blob
that means something
(but not everything)
to someone.
wherever you are
you'll not discover
who I am
here

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Today's poem had an interesting birth. Earlier in the day I was reading 'The Ubuweb: Anthology of Conceptual Writing' . The article discusses the idea that conceptual poetry turns its back on traditional 'romantic' notions of poetry being a vehicle for emotional expression and instead, embraces procedure and logical process.

Later I was thinking about ideas for today's poem. I decided to go through my 'rescued' poem process (read more about that here) using the Ubuweb article about conceptual writing as my source text.

Here's the rather interesting result: a conceptual/constrained piece about itself.

art crossings

poetry experiments
misapplied language
allowed,
respaced;
the presented form
scored,
conceptual;
extraordinary writing abstractions,
which the story words,
string legible pleasures and
bleed verbal probabilities,
reengineering écriture possibilities;
a collection of cannot language
a recall to chance concept
vibrate structures
into sculpture:
the idea of
truth itself
embodied
in rigorous procedure
and derived into presence

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Today I was reading an essay from Lyn Hejinian's book The Language of Inquiry. This intriguing title, 'A thought is the bride of what thinking', prompted today’s rather tongue-in-cheek poem.


An inquiry of marriage

A Thought is the bride of what Thinking?
What glamorous wedding occurred?
Who oversaw the conjoining?
Who had the final word?

What Thinking was led to this Thought,
seduced by her insight and flair?
Her poetics and logic astonished
her pithy expressions compared

to no others that Thinking considered.
Did Thinking find her, alone?
Or was she ensconced in a fortress
waiting for Thinking to come?

Or did she come to Thinking, no warning
while he was alone in his room?
While he partied with friends in the city?
While he walked by the ocean at noon?

This union's unlikely to last
Thinking will wed many more over time,
but Thoughts will have the last laugh
when they check out of his aging mind.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Today's poem - which I think has potential to be developed into a good piece - is inspired by one of my city loves, Sydney. I used to live in Sydney and I've just got back after spending four glorious days there.

Although I've called this 'Ode to Sydney' it does not have an ode's traditional rhyming scheme. Actually it has no (external) rhyming scheme at all, but it does praise Sydney. That's ode enough for me.


Ode to Sydney

You wear your days with panache
and your nights without care,
your harbour bling and city diamonds glitter,
your Opera House is pitch-perfect
while your gold-scarf beaches and ribbon-waterways glisten.
I beat your streets, loving every hot minute of your shimmering bitumen.
I breathe your air, loving every cool moment of your moon-dripped water.
I gaze at your nonchalant posture with a backdrop
of sapphire skies and clouds that change their names like underwear.
You seduce me and I leave,
jealous of every designer-shirted exec striding your streets,
jealous of every gym and drug junkie working your corners,
jealous of every angry cabbie and the silent, hunkered homeless,
jealous of every bored regular, of every wowed first-timer.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I've committed to writing and publishing one poem every day for the month of April. Mike Hopkins and I did it last year and we both agreed that while it was a challenge, it was certainly worth it.

You can read more about National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) here.

The most difficult part of this challenge for me is publishing drafts of poems or incomplete versions of ideas. My internal editor has a hard time allowing these to be seen before I've had a chance to polish them a little.

I've been interested for a couple of years now in applying constraints to writing and the effects of doing so. I have found that when I establish rules - for example choosing a particular form, number of lines, rhyming schemes and even certain ways of generating a poem - other aspects of my creativity have been liberated somehow. The resulting poems are often quite different to others that emerge more 'organically'. I will explore more of this during this poem-a-day project.

For example, I've wanted to write a poem based on the mathematical Fibonacci sequence. Then I discovered that many others were already doing this and that there's a great online jounal called the Fib Review which publishes 'Fib' poems.

In the Fibonacci Sequence, every number is the sum of the two preceding it. So, starting at 1, the sequence is 1+1=2; then in turn 1+2=3; then 2+3=5; then 3+5=8 and so on.

The number of syllables in each line in today's poem follows the Fibonacci sequence. I went as far as 8, then decreased. There's also a point-of-view change/turnaround half-way through. And there's no title.

So here we go: the first of 30 poems in 30 days.

Be-
tween
night's and
light's deep folds
lurk our darkest fears,
tasting our sweat, testing our shell.
Shell-blocked, we tease; whetting, we're poised
foretasting moments
when we'll creep
through; hear
you
scream.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

What a feast of poetry performances, book launches and readings over the past few months. (See what I'm doing here? Heading towards the excuse 'I've been too busy to update my website' which, as we all know, is just that: an excuse.)

Alison Flett and I had great fun as guest readers - of the celtic kind - at Poets' Corner in January.

I went to the moving launch of the book Too afraid to cry by Ali Cobby Eckermann.

One great performance at the Adelaide Fringe Festival was Anthropoetry by Ben Mellor. Ben was also a guest at Friendly Street earlier this week.

'Breathing spaces' was an interesting performance at Greenaway Art Gallery by poets Cecilia White, Mike Ladd, Jill Jones, Juan Garrido-Salgado, Jude Aquilina and Andre Lawrence who were accompanied by musician Nick Tsavios and projected landscape images by Annette Willis.

This week we're in the thick of Adelaide Writers' Week. Yesterday I went to see/hear five poets read: Cath Kenneally, Karen Solie, Kurt Heinzelman, Harry Ricketts and John Tranter.

It's also been a sad time, with the unexpected passing in January of a fine poet and friend, John Pfitzner, RIP. The evening before, he had been at the Poets' Corner event at which Alison and I were reading. At the end of the evening, I touched his arm lightly and said 'See you at such-and-such'. With a big grin he replied that he was looking forward to it. Later I wondered why these final words were not weighted with the gravitas of 'adieu' rather than the light certainty of 'see you later'. You can read a lovely tribute to him here.

I haven't been writing very much lately, but this will change as I start to schedule my days to incorporate writing and research. I intend to post more poems here soon, so keep revisiting, okay?

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I just received my two copies of The Best Australian Poems 2012 edited by John Tranter.

I'm honoured to have one of my poems, 'Sampling Lily', included.

You can read more and buy The Best Australian Poems 2012 here.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I'm one of a number of South Australian poets who have written poems inspired by the renowned stained glass in St. Bart's, one of Adelaide's oldest churches.

We will be reading the poems at Light and Glorie: an evening of stained glass and poetry on Saturday 10 November (10:11:12).

Light and Glorie, a book featuring a selection of the poems and colour images of the windows, will be available for purchase on the night.

All proceeds from the event will go towards the work of the Magdalene Centre. Drinks and nibbles provided.

Come along and listen to some poetry for the soul!

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I'm thrilled to see my poem 'Duality' published in Cordite Poetry Review Issue 40.0: Interlocutor.

And I'm in the company of talented South Australian poets Rachael Mead, Heather Taylor Johnson and David Ades.

Hop on over there now for some fine poem-y goodness.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I was thrilled to be invited to read at the Lee Marvin readings last Tuesday (18 September).

Other readers on the evening included Nicholas Jose, Doug Mason and Canberra-based poet Geoff Page.

Here are some images from the evening, including me in action. All of these were taken by Martin Christmas (himself a writer, theatre director and showman). Thank you Martin!




Me (left) with wonderful poets Rachael Mead and Alison Flett.



Me with Doug Mason (who read some of his lovely Haikus).

Posted by Jennifer Liston