States of Poetry Queensland - Series Two
Series Two of the Queensland States of Poetry anthology is edited by Felicity Plunkett and features poetry from Pascalle Burton, Liam Ferney, Zenobia Frost, Anna Jacobson, David Stavanger, and Samuel Wagan Watson. Read Felicity Plunkett's introduction to the anthology here.
Born in Brisbane 1972, Samuel’s poetry has collected numerous accolades and opportunities. His writing is featured in anthologies, public art works, films, and on-board the international space station. Love Poems and Death Threats is his latest collection with University of Queensland Press. He recently won the 2015 Raw Roar Poetry Slam in Wagga Wagga.
Poems
'A Self-Help Book for Broken Writers: Some Zen notes'
'Forensic, all in one breath ...'
'Conversation with a Decommissioned Electric Chair'
Further Reading and Links
Wikipedia - Samuel Wagan Watson
Poetry Foundation - Samuel Wagan WatsonPoetry Foundation - Samuel Wagan Watson
Australian Book Review - 'Monster (0.2 Reloaded)' by Samuel Wagan Watson
Anna Jacobson
Anna Jacobson
Anna Jacobson
Anna Jacobson
Maps are for memory. I see
palm trees by the forest. Their shadows
form an X at noon. I dig
using hands feet mouth, bite
against treasure – not gold but worry dolls that I spit
out like multi-coloured teeth into my palm.
They tell me I buried
them here when I wasn’t
my self. I tell them my predicament – of finding
out who I am again by knowing
what troubles I gave them. The dolls relinquish
my worries one by one.
Anna Jacobson
Anna Jacobson is a Brisbane-based poet, writer, and artist. Her poetry has been published in literary journals including Cordite, Rabbit, Australian Poetry Journal, Tincture, and Verity La, and it is forthcoming in Meanjin. Anna is currently shortlisted for two categories in the 2017 Queensland Literary Awards: her unpublished memoir How to Knit a Human, which weaves together poetry, photography, and prose, is shortlisted for the Emerging Queensland Writer – Manuscript Award, and she is shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Young Writers and Publishers Award. In 2016 she was shortlisted for the Scribe Nonfiction Prize and the University of Canberra Health Poetry Prize. She was shortlisted for the 2015 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. Anna is undertaking her Master of Philosophy (Creative Practice), specialising in poetry at QUT.
Poems
'Kleszcz'
Recording
Anna Jacobson reads her poems ‘Finding a Translator' and 'Without Corners or Guide'
Further Reading and Links
Cordite Poetry Review - About Anna Jacobson
Red Room Poetry - About Anna Jacobson
On Pompeii, 79AD
The violence of that night. I sat
notating Livy, through
the earth’s contractions.
A thin dawn-choked sky
shook chariots. The crowd rolled back
onto itself. Neptune threw up animals.
Every thing convulsed. On the shore
across, a great black cloud broke
with light. Shrieks rang out: endless
night, with gods up and gone
like wayward husbands. Then:
the silent dark. We stood
to shake off ash.
The air was seasick
winter, dense with panic.
I thought I would perish
with the world itself.
Zenobia Frost
1. Toowong
A possum nestles
in the split
crook of the kitchen’s
plasterboard ceiling.
I shake my attention
back to the man who peddles
the empty front room:
working ceiling fan carpet
with pleasing bath-mat grit
natural light self-steaming
equipped with tilting dresser if you want it
and a front-row view of a famous graveyard.
I let the texture of his pitch
wash over, sneak my eye contact
in increments
up into the furrow: the sleeping possum,
the ceiling’s luxury embossing,
which like any real fur insists
touch me touch me touch me
2. Moorooka
It’s a break-lease.
We inch across tidal boards
that dip and creak, asthmatic
in the damp and dust.
We follow the agent
past orphaned dressers,
shelves, a piece of torn shirt.
The house smells of wet earth,
the bitter spice of deep-
dug yards.
Downstairs, the agent
unlocks the chain
and with two hands wrenches
the sliding door
off the bricked-in under-house,
rests it like a ladder against the wall.
In the yawning space, a nest
of mattresses.
The toilet
veiled by a shower curtain
seems subtle in contrast.
We are silent in the doorway. The agent
shrugs. I half expect to see
a pair of pliers,
a few loose teeth,
a bucket.
It’s as-is, the agent says,
but make an offer.
Zenobia Frost
It’s a town with a veggie patch
in the cop shop yard.
Outside the grocer, with shelves
of tins and faded VHS tapes,
a boy on a scooter asks,
Are you looking for wi-fi? as if
he’s bootlegged some to sell.
In the café we bemoan the goat-track
we drove in on: the Elephant Pass.
Swaying huge and daft,
the van was elephant enough
mid-slalom to have me swigging benzos.
The sweetshop lady, who hand-makes
the fudge, the jam, the knitted toys, the doilies,
says, You’re set up at the racecourse.
It’s not a question. We wonder if
the tomato-tending officers will catch us
rifling in the ghostly stables of the off season.
She’s straight-faced. That’s where I take my walks.
I saw your caravan this morning, rocking away.
Like a rocking horse. We buy blackberry jam
and back out, found wanting.
That morning, it had been the cold
that woke us. We’d turned on the gas stove
for warmth, and for a little while, watched our breath
fill the space like fog inspecting the empty stables,
the whole van on a low boil over the frost.
Zenobia Frost
Maroochydore, 1999 – After 10 Things I Hate About You
A girls’ weekend. Just me, Mum
and Blockbuster, probably fish ‘n’ chips,
surely chocolate.
Maybe I mistook the word menarche
for men-ache, watching Mum watch Heath Ledger
croon the song that she said
once lured her into marriage: ‘You’re just too good
to be tru-oooooh—’ She sighed.
I sighed, her mirror, on the motel’s
twin bed. And locked Heath’s shit-eating grin
to a sensation low in my body:
a sudden peristalsis – as if
my uterus had seen his face
and smashed some internal bottle
of cheap wine against my bow,
set sail.
So many firsts might stain
the linen of stopovers
like these. Later I find the merest blip
of ochre blood, as if the film itself
was my induction to our
family legacy: bleeding for men
who sing for forgiveness.
Zenobia Frost
\\ everything before was
fine \ sure \ orderly love
\ I recollect \ aisles of ex
in home-brand \ sober
\ procedural acts \ leg
by leg \ recipes for low-
fat sex \ clear-cut \ past
tense \ a lab report on
routine me-and-thems
\ but \\ oh // and then
/ emboss the date of I
and you / you effortless /
a looping tune / in fluent
cursive-fever / static skin
/ somewhere these hands
must start / or end / ask
them-upstairs who listen
in / a texture unconditional
/ sing a little more / sing //
Zenobia Frost
Zenobia Frost is a writer from Brisbane, Australia. Her work has appeared in Overland, Cordite, Arc (Canada), Scum, Woolf Pack, and the Hunter Anthology of Contemporary Feminist Poetry. In 2015, an ArtStart grant allowed her to study poetry in Germany at the Black Forest Writing Seminars and through digital workshops with Warsan Shire. Her first collection, Salt and Bone, was published by Walleah Press in 2014, and was shortlisted for the Thomas Shapcott Prize and Anne Elder Awards. In 2017, she was shortlisted for the inaugural Red Room Poetry Fellowship. Zenobia is a Master’s candidate at QUT, researching the poetics of transient domestic spaces in Queensland.
Poems
'Distractions at Rental Inspections'
'Pliny the Younger to Tacitus'
Recording
Further Reading and Links
Circa September, 2015
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
I first admired your arms, brown and unrefined like mine, the scars and veins unhidden. Straight
back. Strong neck. An inanimate object that would never be caught slouching. I pay
acknowledgement: you were always professional and executed your charge efficiently...
in the end.
But what say you of right or wrong? Guilty or not guilty? That you know that I know that hardwood
is a memory-medium. The acoustic resonance of a final whimper and breath may haunt your joints,
limbs, and possibly persuade a vibration of inconsequential requiem...
in the end.
In the servitude and the conditioning, the extreme prejudice, the fact that no one except the killer
and the victim know the truth ... Does a confessional simmer into your timbers on the last moments
of your charge’s rapture? If the crimes fit the punishment, you only respond one way anyway and
know not reverse, even for the slightest mitre of compassion. And is any of it relevant in the final
seating arrangements of judges and assassins and lambs...leaving one to ask this of
a decommissioned electric chair ... in the end.
‘If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be punishment-as well as the prison.’
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
Samuel Wagan Watson
For my late mentor,
(Kumantjayi) Uncle Martin Harrison
Be sharply accustomed to the anatomy of your writing; inside and out...Where you have
slivered the bones of your storyline, mark the points of ruin and resurrection ... Count the
gouges ... Here is where you lunged ... Careful! ... There was a finely delivered sentence;
precise and without mess ... Note any self-inflicted scaring ... Always be succinct; never run
verse through a sloppy gauntlet of conception ... Flag the spots of incursion with wonder
and sculpture charisma from your extraction...
(And without pausing he would assume you have interpreted everything he has
mused...)
You know what Gertrude Stein would have said about that, don’t you? Yes, of course you
do...
You were my teacher, my Captain, you were forensic, all in one breath...
Samuel Wagan Watson
(1)
Try to remain in bed for a few days without picking up a single
word ... Avoid that on-again/off-again/suddenly appearing without warning
again partner in your life who sends you passive-aggressive dispatches
and threats ... Do not respond to their needs until you can provide
constructive editorial advice, i.e., ‘Your grammar is improving in your last
suicide note...’ Only work with editors who reject you with phrases like:
‘It’s not you ... it’s me.’
(2)
A broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a
broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a
broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a
broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer is a
broken writer is a broken writer is a broken writer ... is a poet...
(3)
Remain as unhappy and as inanimate as a jigsaw puzzle, completed but
missing that one vital piece ... Apply for a Writers Residency in North
Korea before applications close on the Day After (No
pressure...)...Always be good to your ink quills but be content without a
pen in your grasp; a spider without a fly.
Samuel Wagan Watson
for Aunty Suzie Wilson
We’d often give Dad a lift to work along this bent stretch of the river.
Maiwar curved here like a boomerang hook. Ghosts that tasted heavy
of pork bones hung in the dawn; most of Murrarie had been invaded by
K.R. Darling Downs. You would almost hear the unified groan at 5 am,
when all the workers formed a single-file; it was our own home-bred
Metropolis of slaughter yards and runs of silver pipe lines ... like some
communist propaganda film out of Kampuchia ... The refinery provided
an eternal blue flame to honour the troops; Borthwicks carved up
countless bovine for the mess-tents of Vietnam’s theatres ...
I still had no comprehension for English; but, one day a bloke called
Robert Adamson would show me how to punctuate fish ... Riverbend
Books eventually sprouted in Oxford St., selling some pages of my
poetry ... bending the fiction of my 1970s pulp-reality ...
I will never forget,
cursing me
with her crooked encouragement..
‘Sammy...Watson...you’re just...a stupid...little...daydreamer!’
Where Logan Rd and Creek intersect there used to be an old
gas station that looked beat even when it was new. You could
feed a fuel-pump shiny 20-cent pieces at any hour of the day
when petroleum was 17-cents a litre. The solid steel rods of the
tram lines were stapled into the Earth, under Kagaar Mabul;
home of the sleeping echidna mountain, watching over us all.
No one needed to own a phone but phone booths were
essential for kissing your steady-one; JC 4 MM TRUE LUV 4
EVA scratched into the concrete floor. There was a time no
child would ponder going missing and our folks had little idea
where we were anyway, until dinner was ready. And you never
wasted coin going into Kentucky Fried Chicken until a special
occasion, when we all could afford to dream like Kerouac...
Samuel Wagan Watson
We dream, we heal, we are reborn.
Intellect is a hot thing in the hands.
Without life, one cannot breathe.
You and I are travellers of this galaxy
airing our differences with space.
Only a traveller can unpack this suitcase.
Some say there is no season for camping.
Look up at the stars, there is no reason.
A hunch is angel talk.
Love remains explored.
To navigate the story is never
to become one with another.
We can no longer afford to live without bondage.
You and I are dreamers of the dreamscape.
If the sun stays awake the moon will be unresolved.
Each generation’s job
is to have faith in what their parents divorced.
Nothing is impossible.
(This myth never ends.)
David Stavanger
David Stavanger
David Stavanger
bipolar record lows
insecurities exchanged
new rashes trending daily
each doctor a new violence
a meteor gets closer to your face
it misses and hits your face anyway
it’s hard to match choice of dog
to the make of car you’re called to chase
lightness of spirit in heavy hands
carry a briefcase full of uppers
this latest crash has people talking
reports of a rise in self-flagellation
if you could talk to the board
you would tell them not to sell right now
the best groomed of us
can sweet talk our way out of any pill
the graph seems to indicate
that the voices we hear are our own
companies are becoming more sensitive
to the profit margins of lost sleep
free-floating liquid options
publically traded, nil by mouth
the highest point in the building
is the time to open up to pigeons
but the shares get us nowhere
write that down on a pink note pad
another script without a lead
(don’t buy into things you can’t see)
look around
you notice they have put up a fence
on one side of the Story Bridge
perhaps when we think of jumping
we plan on flying
David Stavanger
I am hearing voices –
banging pots, something
living in my skin, trucks
picking up what’s left of the week.
A man appears at the front fence, wants
to know if the cattle dog is friendly.
‘I’m not sure but you’re welcome to enter.’
The man asks if he will be safe
on the other side of the bolted gate
looks first at our dog’s bared teeth
then my worn underpants.
He wants guarantees that can’t be given.
I say ‘You should be okay, just don’t touch
his head or make sudden movements.’
It is important to explore the possibilities
even though our dog’s yellow teeth
could no longer puncture
a meter man’s shaking hand.
I tell him it’s a dingo
which could be either of us
hairs up, hunched, position downwind
not canine nor tenant
staring through him
from the burning deck.
David Stavanger
David Stavanger is a poet, performer, and cultural producer. In 2013 he won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, resulting in the release of The Special (UQP), his first full-length collection of poetry which was also awarded the 2015 Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. David is currently the Co-Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival. His prose-poem ‘The Electric Journal’ was a finalist of the 2016 Newcastle Poetry Prize. He is also sometimes known as Green Room-nominated ‘spoken weird’ artist ‘Ghostboy’.
Poems
'one must utilise every part of the animal (when faced with one's own fears)'
'I. The Counsellor' and 'II. The Reflection'
'I lied'
'New Age'
Recording
David Stavanger reads his poems ‘I lied' and 'New Age'
Further Reading and Links
University of Queensland Press
'David Stavanger (Ghostboy) at TedxNoosa'
O Hail! to the days of wine and typhus,
the arrangements of battlefields in early spring,
the glory of a factory that rifts your body
before it wipes your mind, religions vivid
as blood sacrifice. Rise up King Pepe!
Pwn the noob descending the staircase,
these Chads will know the beta’s far cry.
PTSD was straightforward
when you could just belt your wife.
These days all we have is a toilet stall
where you can sharpie ‘Ted Bundy
would have loved her as prey’
across a picture of Patricia Krenwinkel
and no one will delete it.
These days it seems to me
people have their favourite monkeys,
bonobos or capuchins, smart as dumb likers.
I might just borrow yours.
Welcome to the shit show
and remember to vote with your wallet.
Liam Ferney
What happens after the rain is pure speculation
And this is a weekend where I exhale my body weight
In cigarette smoke and a hangover’s regrets
And The Boss’ call and response calibrates
And my city blossoms like an orchid or a cancer
Spreading over an investor’s heritage listing
And this is what it’s like when the evening three step
Picks up a fourth The heart’s dervish
Or a carnival ride carny have let certification slide on
The first responders aren’t responsible for mopping viscera
The inquest will record points of impact velocity
Lay appropriate blame but never explain
The urge to buy the ticket in the first place
Liam Ferney
The marker: Bruce Lee happy snapping
Opposite Trajan’s stables.
Not up to scratch, we replace
Dostoyevsky with an app
And clap enthusiastically
At the dud soundtrack’s tub.
When the Premier dished out
Shit sandwiches in the Executive
She called them pineapples.
They swapped ironic gifts
Post-catastrophe.
Now: giant, projected,
They hew faces
Like burns.
Of course I’m obtuse.
Civilisation is all about
Me not telling you what I really think.
Creativity’s industry,
A one-inch punch we’re not set for.
And if we were?
Who am I kidding? It’s Bruce Lee.
Liam Ferney
a gunman is a gunman is a gunman
like the chorus line tryout i felt nothing
it was worth noting the small matter
of gathering rare ingredients for a drink
a monday morning death toll
as specific as thursday’s Powerball
this time he can’t be arsed with the filter
it doesn’t come up at the crumbs
of somebody from the health team’s birthday
in a lunch room packed with a mail out
she forgets about it and hits refresh
details washed like an easy stain
the untroubled market hardly wobbles
while the algorithms digest the data
Liam Ferney
my name is abundance his name is love
charlie doesn’t advise does charlie
command? accrete necessary details
you can parse anything try
what’s a poor girl to do? parade us
as students we are your daughters
we lived as armies liberate villages
we all knew money wasn’t pure
my name is disturbance his name is love
you have an awful lot of guesses
Eisenhower’s front had faded
the judge couldn’t comprehend the
unfulfilled promises this world is
vaster first moments of morning
when everyone had folded into sleep
they were faded principalities fads
frayed as values we trusted in blossoms
in M16 barrels but the barrels
didn’t trust us myriad opportunities
for walk ins bri wigs out in
& out of the studio for some parents
it never mattered it was a thing
they never noted then it came time
to find meaning at the end of it
nothing is without consequence
the war is not stationary creeps
westward far too slowly they discover
the universe is too lonely things
that happen on cowboy sets deserts
desolate as fat predators with keys to
the best parts there is a time
for living the time keeps on flying
some pleaded stay with me until
the horror goes pleading begging
begging pleading the press wonder
how you’ll feel about him minus beard
the soul sure did pick a lulu but the
soul did a good job stabbed from
various angles on the lawn all
testimony is fabricated in blood
you tell us we needn’t be monsters
to do monstrous things sifting
for carpet bombers’ ruffled trails
political piggies die for prophecies
the trio a girl group costumed
variously in sky blue skirt &
darker cardigans shaved heads
flower power prints the time of the season
he looks the other way when it suits
his hard cock the song doesn't land
& the producer mooches off to the lido
a stolen car grunts venice
beach malibu topanga canyon death valley
in suburbs my cup runeth over
you look at my game phil asks
if the angels are beating on kids
we stay up all night calibrating everyone
we know calls ring out houselights
start new stories clues
misaligned still it doesn't quite tell
the freezing bonfire’s story
locusts be beatles his family
fumbles the trigger the plain dealer
front page kids lie in a my lai pile
sanction etiquette’s breach miss
manners’ guide to domestic tranquillity:
the authoritative manual for
every civilized household, however
harried is essential reading
every family falls apart face it
we love charm more than we love character
we bleed a butchery of book deals
the dead are so many so few
our century of paradise & horror
stay with me while it ends we've shared
too much it will be over too soon
mr & mrs america you are wrong
i am what you made me: mad dog
devil killer fiend leper my thoughts
light fires in your cities
Liam Ferney
Liam Ferney's most recent collection Content (2016, Hunter Publishing) was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. His previous collections are Boom (2013, Grand Parade Poets) and Popular Mechanics (2004, Interactive Press). He is a media manager, poet and aspiring left back living in Brisbane.
Poems
'Sympathy for the Devil: A tweet storm'
'#qla2016'
Recording
Liam Ferney reads his poems ‘Main Street Social' and 'Active Shooter'
Further Reading and Links
after the Saint Louis University Mental Status (SLUMS) Examination
at midpoint I take a call from work – don’t want to, though
all jobs are made up anyway and I’m not in today
the first year without Hansie:
look at the state we’re in
if two dots tie two lines together
is meaning made?
things are not important – I will tell you again
you ask me for things, sell me things, I buy the things
things piled on top of things
last December I bought $100 of groceries a week for four weeks
in a bid to collect 10,000 frequent flyer points
the house was full of cleaning products, sanitary pads and olive oil
it hurts to remember the empty cupboards
the echo of hunger and myopic options
the knock of socket wrench on broken starter motor
who can afford 3-for-the-price-of-2 when you can’t afford 1?
or was it five weeks?
now: waving from the leftover horizon
pinky houdini gamzl petrankrum pigsley brutus leah ninny mrs grey bernard zowie katze kuh
a pile of things on top of things
the spurious correlations
two lines = two dots :
= total revenue generated by arcades : computer science doctorates awarded in the US
= per capita cheese consumption : people who died tangled in bedsheets
what can it all mean?
what does a clock face?
I have a memory of Charlie Cheese’s Pizza Playhouse, bashing the whack-a-mole
but I’m not so sure that happened – maybe I just saw the ad
= cheese : arcade
last weekend I tried to recall a story about Kanye West at the zoo
I mixed it up with that time my cousin Leisha met Snoop Dogg
= rapper : zoo
a few weeks ago I forgot the word for ‘latitude’
even though I know that latitude is flatitude – I still had to check
oh! shebah and sneakers and the little patchy one ... what WAS their name?
Pascalle Burton
Pascalle Burton
Source text: Sound Pages. John Cage’s publications (2014) edited by Giorgio Maffei and Fabio Carboni
(after The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire)
We had better empty the wine-cups.
To-morrow, at bright dawn, the world’s business will entangle us.
We brush away our tears,
We go – East and West.
– Tu Fu
gurgle /ˈɡəːɡ(ə)l
grandmothers carry prams to term / babysit baby’s baby / regurgitated capsule
commuters exhale daily day into night aircon carriage
doors closing please stand
waits for no ma
ri:fle slickstream
fillet knife separates the hairyskin
something seeps almost-clear
financial
review
predict the price drop of value
cue funny anecdote of destitution
fi
re
I rarely wake up feeling rested
☒ strongly agree
what future has not yet
yet what are we working for?
poisonwater?
virtualpunching?
(who could type ‘I will rape you with a metal pole’?)
no one can afford to breathe
committed is as committed does
google ‘how to section my mother’
do that and see how it feels
fi
re
a person is on fire / a building explodes
a leg blown off
a cheek shattered
a superbug eats a brain / a cancer eats a liver
these things really happened
a man can lose his life for dressing as a woman
(person) (person)
I think an x clothed as x can be anyone x wants
we are all ex-something
ex-womb at least
hear that gradual shift
a slight fingernaildrag on a fender
well well well well well
it is hard to know how to help
but I hope they know it weighs heavy
I carry them like a shotput / which is to say I don’t do much
othr thn tht lol
srsly
so much funny stuff
they would have you believe
you can control the darkness
sign up now for 24-hour assistance
get ready for a month of shooting stars
fi
re
a melted slipper in a bonfire
pain feels right like slipping a socked foot through the radiator till it scorches
you pull out then do it all over / sex fuse
even though I have no grand illusions
I still like Miranda July to read me my horoscope
maybe my grand illusion is my lack of one
Schiaparelli and Comme des Garçons walk into a Leigh Bowery
yes, I would try and make it
the headstrong focus the overhead pan
David Byrne starts kinking his knee
did I tell you how crazy I feel when Born Under Punches plays?
I try not to let it show but
my throat could open my body flail
in Kinsella’s moth-green eyeshadow
and convulsing chest
I wonder what we are capable of on the panopticon patio
computer worms mediate morality
how many lips are being licked *right now*
synapse neuron snap
no fuselage just balance beam creaking
no influence, even in my own dreams
well well well well well
to good friends and good health
to the tough times behind us
what good will that do us?
cursor blinks|
|
|
|
cursor blinks|
can’t wait to see what’s next
Pascalle Burton
(after The New World of Transitioned Media by Gali Einav)
Pascalle Burton
(after Samuel Beckett’s Molloy)
still. but not quite.
I drew on the right
of time.
the other way (I have this solution):
escape that hazard
circulating always.
before I began
(before the hope of circulation)
I began better.
during the remaining of my of my
of my of my
(plus one in my),
I arrive at my mind
my immediate predecessors remain
my turn and turn. turn and turn.
I ran the same
bound to chance
planned to turn and turn.
my mind, a long conclusion.
an extraordinary
hazard.
a pinch of pins
(more than I could manage)
trouble wrangling an instant anger.
I penetrate the obscure.
I grasp my refusal. my insoluble sound:
found found-sound now.
one empty second apart from one other.
no right left.
just other other empty now.
begin again. but not with balance.
time (or end of time) without the end
now. now, away.
Pascalle Burton
Pascalle Burton is a poet and performer with an interest in conceptual art and cultural theory. Her projects include UN/SPOOL (with Nathan Shepherdson), 24 Hour Gym (with Tessa Rose), and performing in the band The Stress of Leisure. Her début collection, About the author is dead, is forthcoming with Cordite Books.
Poems
'a less tangible currency at play'
'bodies breathe in by themselves'
Recording
Pascalle Burton reads her poems 'losing the slums' and 'stones sequence sucked'
Further Reading and Links
Cordite Poetry Review - Pascalle Burton
In his luminous paean to poetry, modestly titled How to Read a Poem, Edward Hirsch writes that ‘poetry is made of metaphor’. This lucid statement is beautiful enough, but as a poet, Hirsch continues, making music, elaborating, forever taking the idea onwards, upwards and outwards, with poetry’s relentless energy: ‘It is a collision,’ he writes, ‘a collusion, a compression of two unlike things: A is B.’
If A is B, everything is mobile, active, and energetic. As Paul Celan puts it, poetry is always ‘under way: heading towards something’. In poetry, ideas are capable of transformation, and of transforming other ideas, and lives. Poetry is about energy. That’s why we reach for the metaphor of poetry to describe beautiful human movement – the flex and reach of a dancer’s body, the loop of a backbend, the arc of a cricket ball sailing over the fence to be caught (usually less poetically) by the spectator who will endlessly relive the moment as the time they reached for poetry. Marianne Moore knew about this when she compared poetry to baseball:
Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement –
You can never tell with a poem how it will go. That’s the thrill. That’s why Emily Dickinson identifies poetry through the rush, the goosebumps, the body’s alert catching of energy:
If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know. Is there any other way.
Hirsh continues, collecting poets’ metaphors about poetry in a luminous assemblage that, again, keeps moving, shifting and unsettling:
the poem is a capsule where we wrap up our punishable secrets (William Carlos Williams). A poem is a well-wrought urn (Cleanth Brooks), a verbal icon (W. K. Wimsatt). A poem is a walk (A. R. Ammons); a poem is a meteor (Wallace Stevens). A poem might be called a pseudoperson. Like a person it is unique and addresses the reader personally (W. H. Auden). A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.
Poetry’s energies reach into other poems. The poems here are allusive, expansive, and mobile. These poems converse with, bounce off, and sail over other poems, to social media, music, and memory, from the therapist’s couch to the therapist on the couch, taking in Yiddish words, Polish words, tweets and amnesia, fish ‘n chips and VHS, Zen and Kerouac, Ted Bundy and Pliny the Younger. A is B. Everything is energy. These are just some of the ways poetry is thriving, in dialogue, mobile and thrilling.
