Entries by Jennifer Liston

Here are a few fun photos from the fab Australian launch of my book Lead Skeletons on Friday 6 August 2010.











A big thank you to all who supported me, who came along to the launch, and who bought books.

And another reminder that 10% of the sale price of each book will be donated to Ovarian Cancer Australia: a worthy cause.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Lead Skeletons is officially released!

Visit White Wave Press to hear my interview with Galway radio station Flirt FM and my book launch in Galway.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Okay, so here's an excerpt from a poem I wrote after doing the free writing exercise I described in my previous post.

I opened the SA Weekend magazine, selected the headline, and off I went. Here's the first half of the resulting poem. Enjoy!


Thereby hangs a tale...

The night-black bat
with buggily-busting gut
paw-paw plumped
spiderliciously sated
gazes longingly
from his branch
where he and his family
hang (out)...
He nurses to himself his
sordid
socky
secret.
He can hear the
seductive swing
of humans' items
on the clothes line.
His little bat-heart beats
ten times faster
than the rate at which the
sultry
socks
sway
in the night breeze.


© Jennifer Liston 2010
...


Who would have thought that a headline in a weekend newspaper would have lead me to write about a sockaholic bat? As some might say: go figure!

What do you think?

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I attended a fantastic workshop recently run by poet and novelist Lorraine Marwood. She shared three techniques with us to stimulate our writing 'flow'.

My favourite one was the 'free writing' exercise. In the centre of the table, Lorraine placed a big selection of cards with questions printed on them. We each chose a card. With a timer running for five minutes, we had to answer the question in writing. We were not to stop, think or edit, for the entire time. This meant writing ANYTHING that came into our heads as a result of the prompts. Then for another (timed) five minutes, we reviewed what we'd written, selected a few key words or phrases, and wrote a poem including them.

The results were bizarre, interesting and downright entertaining.

Since then, I've done this exercise about eight times. I usually open a page of the newspaper and select a headline or a phrase at random, although once I used a word from our new vacuum cleaner's warranty booklet!

I love this process. It kick-starts my brain, and the free or unconscious writing that I vomit forth brings up some very interesting stuff indeed! I probably have the guts of six or seven fairly decent poems so far.

It's great fun; I never know what my incessantly chattering and eternally 'on' brain is going to serve up. I'll definitely keep doing it.

Maybe I'll share a few unedited lines from one of these random poems in another post.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Here's the start and end of a poem I wrote in 2002.

This is its first time getting an airing (even a virtual one).


One hundred nautical miles

Scarlet
star lit night
becalmed
in phosphorescenced waters
...
up on deck
lying side by side
under an ink velvet
silvered canopy
one hundred nautical miles
already between us.

© Jennifer Liston 2010

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Many people ask me are my poems suitable as lyrics for songs, can song lyrics be called poetry, and is songwriting a very different genre from poetry. These are interesting questions to which I have no definitive answers.

Most of my poems have internal rhymes and rhythms which only become obvious when the poems are read aloud. I feel that I have hundreds of songs just waiting to bust their way out of the lock-up in my head. And the prison gate is this idea – right or wrong – that writing a song and writing a poem need a completely different approach.

This is definitely worth discussing, but perhaps in another blogpost.

In the meantime, today I start a songwriting course with Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier. I’m hoping it will kickstart my songwriting habit and unleash some of those falsely imprisoned songs.

In spite of the lock-up, some songs do escape!

Last year, my very talented and kooky DJ pal Paul Allan aka The Krakafaktri wrote a tune, I wrote lyrics, then we recorded it (I sang).

You can hear it here.

It's had some airplay on Adelaide's Fresh FM radio station.

I thought I'd share the lyrics with you here.


Serenity Now

Inner space
is where I find that place
safe from grief
safe from disbelief
bring me to that space:
a state of inner grace.

Serenity now
that blessed state
I had to wait
such a long, long time

to feel
to heal
to reveal
my real self

serenity now
in your arms
I float
my boat
on the sea
of serenity.


© Jennifer Liston 2009

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Here is an excerpt from a poem that will probably be included in my third collection:

Note to him/self

You've seeped through every living cell
you've made my bones your home.
Your presence shades my past uncertainties...


...What do you think?

Posted by Jennifer Liston

...so I'd better get writing!

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I was thrilled to do two poetry readings in Galway last week: one at the Roisin Dubh (4th November) and one at the Crane bar (9th November).

Both were well attended, and it was great to share the podium with such talented local poets, and with Canberra's own Tobias Manderson-Galvin, who is Munster Slam Champion 2009.

Many thanks to Kevin Higgins of Over the Edge, Laurie Leech and John Walsh for organising speaking slots for me at short notice.

Much appreciated...and I'll definitely be back mid-next year to do another few readings. Perhaps even a book launch...

Posted by Jennifer Liston

...in dreams I see
a wise old man
draw our lives in sand: they meet
our old, vibrant spirits
dance
close
to another dimension’s beat...

Posted by Jennifer Liston

The Hon. Michael Atkinson, MP, Attorney-General and Minister for Multicultural Affairs, launched my second poetry collection in the SA Writers’ Centre, Adelaide today.

Entitled 17 poems: one for every year of innocence, it is published by White Wave Press and is available for purchase here.

Each edition includes an audio/mp3 CD of me reading the 17 poems. The CD also contains bonus readings of two poems from my first collection, Exposure (2003).

Only 150 imprints of 17 poems: one for every year of innocence have been created.

Go here now and buy a book or several.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

The anthology Poems in Perspex, Max Harris Poetry Award 2007, was launched at the SA Writers' Centre on Thursday 6 November 2008.

One of my poems, Egg, was featured in the collection, which is available from Lythrum Press.

Here it is.

Egg

I take an almond-brown egg from the fridge.
Hello, egg.
Into almost-boiling water you go.
There you are, bobbing and twisting.
No use trying to escape.
Off what free range did you spring?
I’m told not to put you all in one basket.
You, potential sunny-side-up-runny-yoked half-life.
What chicken will you not become?
Your chocolate siblings dispersed at easter
by commercially cute button-nosed bunnies.
All the eggs in my womb basket
already broken,
devoured,
disgorged.
What boy or girl did they not become?
No sickly Hallmark verses marked that occasion.
An almond-brown man I know ate a raw egg daily.
He's 80.
Egg, your time is up.


© Jennifer Liston 2008

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I entered three poems in the Max Harris Poetry Award 2007 but didn't feature in the winners' circle.

I've just received an email from the Poetry and Poetics Centre Committee, however, and the good people there have told me that they selected my poem, Egg, for inclusion in the Max Harris Poetry Award anthology.

Apparently the anthology will be published soon.

Of course, I'm absolutely delighted; this was quite unexpected.

When I have it, I'll post a link to the anthology.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

...at last.

I'm thrilled to report that White Wave Press has published my second poetry collection. It's called 17 poems: one for every year of innocence, and it's available now.

Only 150 imprints of the collection have been created. Each one is numbered individually.

What makes this collection particularly special is that each edition is mailed with a bonus audio CD of me reading the poems.

Think of it as having me as a guest in your lounge room, car, or wherever you happen to be listening.

Sounds scary, doesn't it?

But I'm quite nice really.

Honest.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

--- Carl Jung

"We become what we think about."

--- Earl Nightingale

Posted by Jennifer Liston