Jul
03

Pride Week: Fury’s Top 5 Poets

To round off the Metre Maid’s celebration of all things PRIDE & all things POETIC, the amazingly talented and charming FURY gives us a delicious eye-feast that is her TOP 5 FAV POETS. So all you have to do is listen, get inspired and remember to always be furious!

 

Fury is a Melbourne based writer and poet who flits between book covers and sheet covers. She loves love, OkCupid and poetry that punches you in the diaphram. You can check out her work at littlefurycreatures.wordpress.com or soundcloud.com/fury

Jul
02

Pride Week: Emma Haller

Featured today is cool-cat Emma Haller and her poem, DRIFTING. Below we have a conversation about poetry and how sexuality inspires Haller’s poetry. Here at Metre Maids love having discussions surrounding poetry and where our poets feel their poetry comes from. We each have a different place that we pull stuff from, and it’s still important to talk about. Without further ado:

 

DRIFTING

Strength holds me,
a coin among the cloud,
shoulders wide and engulfing.

Freckles she once hid,
shine bright,
the Sun and I kissing her elbows in cheeky glee.

Waves creep up,
flew back,
and distill.

I half smile,
feeling myself drifting, towards an unsullied place.

I clasp her hip,
hold my breath in the tenderness,
the opportunity of her world.

A sadness lingered,
I hope for clarity.
Phantom limbs,
scrambling together as one.

 

How did ‘Drifting’ come to be?
 Moving from one relationship to another, it caused a re-evaluation of every facet of my life, and it was a significant and intense relationship so I wanted to capture a sense of that. I tried to convey that new relationships have a wonderful crisp edge to them, the butterflies and all those cliches are real.

How does your sexuality inform your poetic imagery?
 I think sexuality is fluid and informs everything I do. My emotions, I’ve come to realise are important, and sometimes you need to let whatever feelings you’re having inform your day-to-day life. My sexuality is vital to who I am as a person and I try to channel feeling however I am able.

What poet do you most look up to and why, how do they speak to you?
Gwen Harwood is a main influence for me, I studied her a lot throughout school. Her poetry has a lovely naturalistic quality and has always been relaxing to read. Also a bit of Emily Dickinson as well, apparently she was obsessed with white clothing which is fun, Judith Wright’s poetry is also engaging.

What is your editing process like?
 I read the poem out and try to gauge it’s sound and meaning for the reader/audience. I edit as I go, usually on a computer but I edit a lot in my journal. All my ideas are written down first, then I piece the stanzas together if I see some links or interesting connections.

What is the best tip you’ve received for dealing with critique?
 Focus on what you are trying to convey. I’m learning strategies to be able to teach poetry, and putting myself in my student’s shoes is important every now and then. Critique is important and discussions around interpretations have always been enjoyable. I love teaching and writing, they are large parts of my life and wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Emma Haller, a curious observer from childhood, grew up on the Mornington Peninsula where coastal living and traditional Aussie charm helped shape an evocative voice. Her poetry explores the manifold nature of human emotions and poems such as ‘Drifting’ seem to offer contemporary thoughts on relationships as being beautifully despondent experiences. There is an emotional truth that lingers throughout her poems, memorable for their honesty and stunningly constructed design. Currently, Emma is completing a double degree in Arts/Education (Secondary) at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) and writes poetry in her spare time.
Jun
28

Pride Week: ReVerse Butcher on Sticking To Your Subjectives

Today we feature a spoken word performance excerpt by ReVerse Butcher during her feature poet set at the Dan O’Connell (Melbourne, Australia) poetry reading on 11th of May 2013. The poem, STICK TO YOUR SUBJECTIVES, was baked in her brain after being forced to absorb 3 years of Foucault’s writings at university and speaks back to her identity-bending alienpoet persona. She both agrees and disagrees with Foucault.

 

If you missed ReVerse Butcher’s Collage Poetry you should really CLICK HERE!

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ReVerse Butcher is from outer space. She often surfaces publicly on Earth doing a thing called poetry. ReVerse Butcher thinks that poetry should not be looked down upon as a lesser form of literary stimulation simply because it mostly is a solitary pleasure. Poetry can be a group OR solo activity, it often masks its shifting identities, and also frequently hybridises with other genres to better ensure its own survival in hostile territories. You’ll never catch it, unless it wants you too.

ReVerse Butcher finds language both sexy and confusing, so she does with it what any self-respecting alienpoet should do with confusing and sexy things. She cuts it up. Mostly then she glues it to other things and makes cut-ups & collages, better (dis)orders from existing (dis)orders. Not everything she performs or publishes is a collage, but everything that is performed or published is fodder for one.

 

Jun
27

Pride Week: ReVerse Butcher Features Collage Poetry

The Revenge -- ReVerse Butcher 2012

THE REVENGE – ReVerse Butcher (2012)

ReVerse Butcher’s collage poetry style is one that hybridizes cut-up theory, erasure poetry, plundergraphic theory and other experimental writing techniques such as the Jeff Noon’s Cobralingus language filter system, among other methods of her own invention. The idea is to enter into, to take control of, and change the meanings of dominant meanings and source texts. ReVerse Butcher believes that reality is only possible because of language, both flawed systems at best. By accident, she discovered the two systems were not only linked but co-dependent, which meant if you found a way to change one system, the other would mimic the alterations with unexpected creative results. She focuses on destabilizing theoretical binaries by using context as her plaything, in exposing meaning to be a multiple, changeable and uncontrollable thing.

 

Identity Fakers -- ReVerse Butcher 2013

IDENTITY FAKES – ReVerse Butcher (2013)

She focusses on paradoxes as the way to do this, by using source texts that have received a certain amount of privilege and have achieved a sense of artistic legitimacy which she feels may be dangerous to leave unquestioned. As a feminist writer, ReVerse Butcher is always looking for ways to create or exploit new or existing schisms in culture where the power held by conservative men is shaken loose, if even only for a few moments.

 

SUDDEN MOVEMENTS - ReVerse Butcher (2013)

SUDDEN MOVEMENTS – ReVerse Butcher (2013)

These pieces are part of a larger series and creative practice/method that calls for an emotional and intellectual reaction, and is an ethical intervention. It hopes to achieve, through the intelligent application of absurdity, what feminist collagist and cut-up agent Kathy Acker suggests might be:

 

…the only reaction against an unbearable society is equally unbearable nonsense.

WHAT MAKES ME THINK I'M DYING - ReVerse Butcher (2012)

WHAT MAKES ME THINK I’M DYING – ReVerse Butcher (2012)

 

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ReVerse Butcher is from outer space. She often surfaces publicly on Earth doing a thing called poetry. ReVerse Butcher thinks that poetry should not be looked down upon as a lesser form of literary stimulation simply because it mostly is a solitary pleasure. Poetry can be a group OR solo activity, it often masks its shifting identities, and also frequently hybridises with other genres to better ensure its own survival in hostile territories. You’ll never catch it, unless it wants you too.

ReVerse Butcher finds language both sexy and confusing, so she does with it what any self-respecting alienpoet should do with confusing and sexy things. She cuts it up. Mostly then she glues it to other things and makes cut-ups & collages, better (dis)orders from existing (dis)orders. Not everything she performs or publishes is a collage, but everything that is performed or published is fodder for one.

 

Jun
25

Pride Week: Chloe Brien

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Kicking off Pride Week 2013 with a beautiful piece of poetry from Chloe Brien. This piece shows us how to see, how to fall head first into a disaster, into love and then learn how to walk without a second shadow.  A perfect way to celebrate the beginning of Pride Week on Metre Maids. We will be featuring more poetry and pieces on Pride throughout the end of June.

ANATOMY OF ABSENCE 

Abandoned weatherboard house, room of syringes and
their plastic wrappers. I watch her scrawl poetry
across plasterboard walls of the living room—
kicked in television and carpet depressions
where a couch used to be. Rain of chalk dust, green,
pink and yellow on her shoes, streaking black stockings,
bruising the purple jacket — colours she’d never wear.

I read the poetry she uncurls. I’m not sure if it’s hers
or another’s. In that moment I can’t care. Beautiful,
I breathe. And she says, Read more…

Apr
19

Sherry O’Keefe On Laundering Imagery

Sherry O’Keefe presents us with 4 vignettes which teach us how to launder our own imagery. This post reminds us constantly to look around ourselves, even the smallest of happenings are ones which can be spun into a poem or a story. Everything has a story. Everybody is their own storyteller.

 

Sugar On a Rope:

He told me potatoes were complicated. I know this is true because I wrote it on a scrap of paper and saved it in my back pocket. Some conversations later, I retrieved the scrap of paper from the lint trap in my dryer. Apparently I had laundered the words when I washed my jeans. The scrap of paper looked a bit like a former leaf, except I could see these words in faded ink: potatoes are complicated and some poems are born in badness. The trouble is I cannot remember the conversation that produced these quotes. I don’t remember anymore where these words came from.

I don’t always know what to keep and what to let go. I’m not the sort to let anything go. There are scraps of paper all over my house. For example, these are the words next to my kitchen sink: We don’t even need to talk about houses on the hill. As writers we deal with the hanging on and the not knowing when to let go. Read more…

Feb
11

REVIEW: THE LONG MOMENT BY KATE FAGAN

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Kate Fagan – The Long Moment
Salt Publishing
$19.95

Kate Fagan is an exceptional Australian poet and musician whose collection, The Long Moment, was published in 2002. Her latest offering is First Light (Giramondo Press) published last year. Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Salt and Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets. Fagan’s previous works are the chapbooks Thought’s Kilometre (Vagabond Press) and return to a new physics (Tolling Elves). This is a slim and beautiful collection spanning 105 pages, and a work that revisits the former collection.

Think science, music, geology, biology and mathematics. Fagan’s poetic ear is finely tuned and her poems are polished and each is a humble image. Reflect on how these small moments expand outwards and approach complex themes. The first section Calendar starts at April and continues on with 9 prose poems which expands on the idea of organisation on a monthly basis, becoming somewhat of a diary. My favourite lines are from (august) with ‘Emptying over a balcony, slow light recalls the loss of a city.’ There’s something that’s both simplistic about the nature, but also knowing in its grief. Grief, too, is a slow process of gathering oneself. Read more…

Jan
11

REVIEW: 666 SHOULD BECOME THE SEA BY SHANE JESSE CHRISTMASS

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Illustration Cover by Hannah FantanAt first glance this collection reminds me of the way MTC CRONIN accounts for each image, the way one might do so with a list, or taking stock of an item. It’s kind of what I love about CRONIN and what impresses me about Christmass’ poetry. The poetry even utilises space beautifully, echoing precisely the metronome pattern of the sea. At the same time this space is precarious within its typography.

At the beginning of this self-published collection released from Scribd. The site is essentially a huge shared library where you can upload original and innovative works, accessible online or on your smart phone. There’s a keen consistency of rhythm and this undercurrent carries each line as an individual, which is very much what the players of this collection rely on. The narrative can be interpreted on different levels or perhaps an intended gathering of all aspects. The title and the way the poem expresses itself makes me think perhaps a homage to Kerouac’s, The Sea Is My Brother.

Some images that caught my eye which I loved were:

a tempest of albatross
and death
a globe beneath
surface of brine

The thing I soon realised is that 666 SHOULD BE THE SEA doesn’t let you up for air, it keeps you under like a careful and practised anesthetist  It doesn’t even give it’s subjects—the crab or the swordfish—pause or mercy. The ocean swallows everything.

666, the enigma of numerical evil represents unknowns. The sea overtakes the highway and Christmass does well in this transition of the sea (the natural) to apocalyptic (the unknown). There’s no sense of panic in this shift, the directions are soft and kind ‘Let the sea in’ almost like a chant. As readers and witnesses we become the sea and the poem proclaims ‘Become the sea, and so become idealess’. Drawing imagery from lines and curves, ‘hooks’, ‘nets’ and put up against an altered nature: ‘symmetrical fish’. The poem tells us to try not to drown, when the odds are against us.

The great thing about this collection is that you can read the first column straight down its margin or you can read across the line. This gives us a two for one kind of bonus and is an exceptional feat in terms of how difficult that kind of thing is to pull.

This poem is mad. It gets mad with the way its been such a glutton: ‘the swell, the hairy-tailed current of the towering / ocean drift’. Read more…

Jul
03

Bloodlines: Review of Burning Rice by Eileen Chong

burning rice by Eileen Chong | Australian Poetry 2012
This post first appeared on Virgule.

burning rice is part of the 2012 New Voices series and the debut collection from Eileen Chong. The publication is a sleek, pocket-size 40 pages. Here lies great poetry, tight phrasing and an innate way of telling stories. The title evokes a nostalgic sense of home and food; the notion of absence circulates the poems, reminiscent of scents and fragrances. What strikes me first is Chong’s ability to immerse the reader in two landscapes: the old and the present and this imagery is unswerving, charming and utterly absorbing. Think the sacredness of bathhouses, mooncakes and photo albums braided with beautiful descriptions of quiet and reflected moments. In any other context, these glimpses could have been mundane but here they’re given breath.

The poetry feels like walking through a family home, all those details, ornaments with stories behind them. There’s a familiarity in reading these poems, despite the cultural difference. In ‘Before Dawn’, Chong textually dedicates the poem to her grandfather with wonderful use of language, shifting to present from passing: ‘Father of my father, I was not quite seven / when you died. We drove in darkness / before dawn broke’. In ‘My Hakka Grandmother’ there’s the lines ‘run / through the fields, feet unbound /’ and ‘rice husks, like your dark hair’ evocative of childhood and that memory of food and love combined. This poem describes well the borders of otherness, specifically in ‘I wonder where our bloodline begins. / We are guest people /’. In ‘Kelong’ Chong reminiscences 1980 via the use of photography, the imagery is haunting in ‘He holds the ghost / of a fishing line but has caught nothing’ and ‘my grandmother steams / the orange fish in a wok, when you grandfather picks out / its eyes with his chopsticks’. Like Chong, I can also taste ‘the sweet flesh’ and the poem conjures up a cinematic photograph that I hold in my mind. Read more…

Jun
19

Amy May Nunn On The Poetry Of Exploration And Petrified Bones

Amy May Nunn

Amy May Nunn

I wanted to be an explorer. For a long time I had a clear plan, that I would become an Archeologist, escape my family and their art. I would discover tombs and not art. Ocean divers and tomb raiders, these were my people. Growing up I would disappear into the English countryside for hours at a time, eventually developing a ‘Famous Five’ complex, dressing androgynously and insisting that everybody call me George for the better part of two years.  I even convinced myself at one time that the pond opposite our house opened up into the Mississippi and made a raft to float away on, which promptly broke apart and left me with pneumonia. My aspirations of becoming an Archeologist were eventually quieted as I got older (and realised it had very little to do with Indiana Jones), and having been born into a family of artists with sometimes painfully open minds when it comes to my misadventures, romantic, poetic or otherwise, I was robbed of any controversy that growing into a bisexual poet customarily brings.  I feel like becoming a writer was the perfect consolation. It allowed me an entirely new sense of adventure and discovery, one that I could access any time I wanted.

The tiny ghost of an archeologist in me was brought back to life last year though, at a wedding in Dorset where I stumbled across the idea for my current project. I stayed in a small town named Lyme Regis, situated on the Jurassic Coast, and quickly learned this sea worn, crooked little place is renowned for it’s fossil laden cliffs. I began to notice the name ‘Mary Anning’ cropping up in the various fossil shops, on plaques and signposts. It turns out she was a local fossil hunter and paleontologist in the 1800’s, and made some of the most significant discoveries of the 19th century, including dinosaurs such as the first plesiosaur and ichthyosaur. She immediately captured my imagination, and researching her became a new and bizarre obsession. Read more…