Category Archives: Cottonmouth
Cottonmouth XXII, Thursday 6 January
We got to thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to start the year off hand-in-hand? Golly me, golly my, skipping into 2011 together.
With just enough recovery from New Years, Cottonmouth blazes onward this week with the first of what is looking to be a bright-eyed and fresh-faced year. There’ll be hooping, there’ll be hollering, there’ll be hand-clapping, there’ll be foot-stamping.
On Thursday 6 January at 7:30pm, the 459 Bar stage will once again bear the magnanimous Tomas Ford who will sweetheartedly give you spoken-worders, poets, sound artists, playwrights, new-media-welders and modern lovers.
With performances by:
Jay Pruyn
Eva Bujalka
Renata Sain
Claire Potter
Chris Arnold
Sam Knee
Matt Giles
Kaitlyn Plyley
With musical guests:
David Egan
Luxury Cat
For a spot in the open mike section presented by the Chancellor of Open Mike Byron Bard, sign up before 10pm. Read up on the Bard’s friendly proclamation.
When: 7:30pm Thursday 6 January 2011
Where: 459 Bar Rosemount Hotel 459 Fitzgerald St North Perth
How much: $5 entry; $20 entry + Cottonmouth anthology
‘Zine: by donation
Filed under Australia, Cottonmouth, Fiction, Perth, Poetry, Show, Spoken Word
Cottonmouth XXI meets Amnesty for ARTillery Spoken Word, Sunday 5 December 2010
Filed under Cottonmouth, Fiction, Perth, Poetry, Show, Spoken Word
Cottonmouth XX, Thursday 4 November 2010
Filed under Australia, Cottonmouth, Experiment, Fiction, Perth, Poetry, Show
Cottonmouth XIX, Thursday 7 October
Our first Cottonmouth huzzah back from hiatus last month went off like a big ole welcome back party.
With performances of exciting new Western Australian fiction and poetry, as well as heartfelt chansons and drone re-interpretations of Indonesian pop hits, we’ve hit the ground running with scissors.
At 7:30pm on Thursday 7 October 2010, Cottonmouth convenes for its monthly hootenanny of spoken-worders, poets, sound artists, playwr…ights, new-media-welders and anyone with narrative art tickling their epiglottis.
October’s featured performers are:
Gabby Everall
Jay Pruyn
Anna Dunnill
Jessica Currie
Andy McNeil
Gerald Lillywhite
Istenad Haddad
Zoe Barron
Our musical guests are:
Obscotch
Prince of King
For a spot in the open mike section presented by the Chancellor of Open Mike Byron Bard, sign up before 10pm.
We’re back in full swing publishing our monthly ‘zine. You determine the cost of these manuscripts of sweetheart-ness and can get your hands on a copy by donation on the night.
Submissions are open! We’re always accepting submissions of new fiction, poetry and artwork. Contact us with your psychedelic and far-out ideas. We want to hear from you.
Check our submission guidelines and submit to zine@cottonmouth.org.au
When: 7:30pm Thursday 7 October 2010
Where: 459 Bar Rosemount Hotel 459 Fitzgerald St North Perth
How much: $5 entry; $20 entry + Cottonmouth anthology
‘Zine: by donation
Filed under Australia, Cottonmouth, Experiment, Fiction, Music, Perth, Poetry, Published, Show, Spoken Word
Cottonmouth XVIII, Thursday 2 September
We’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching about you. When we said we needed to take some time off from our relationship with you, it was just to reinvigorate our souls – so we could come back and love you better.
Can we please just put this whole break-up behind us? Can we get back together again? We’re ready for commitment because you’re ‘the One’.
We know it was tough on you, and trust us, we had a rough time too. We just miss you so so much. How you used to visit us every month and how you used to listen to our shenanigans and how you used to weave narrative-new-media-spoken-word-art-awesomeness for us was just tops. And we know we’re supposed to say ‘let’s take it slow babe and make the most of our second chance at love’, but we kinda have this idea…
Let’s get back together with a big party! A big huzzah!
We’ll call it Cottonmouth XVIII and you know what that means? We’re turning 18. And that means we’re all kinds of legal now.
Oh won’t you rekindle the fire with us for our first night back together again in our monthly affair?
The inimitable and illimitable high-steppin’ and high-croonin’ Tomas Ford returns to ringmaster us through a night of spoken-worders, poets, sound artists, playwrights, new-media-welders and narrative grandstanders.
And bands, oh sweet glory, the bands!
Open mikers, blessed open mikers, your new Open Mic host is none other than the infamous and, in the matters of love, indefatigable and never ineffable Sir Byron Bard! And just wait until you hear what he has in store for you dear open mikers. The Bard giveth and the Bard taketh, and for you sweet open mikers, the Bard doth only give, Give, GIVE!
We almost forgot… did you know we made something special during our separation? We called her Cottonmouth: An Anthology of New Australian Writing. And she’s beautiful.
Our ‘zine COTTONMOUTH will return in October and we’ll tell you more about it when we see you on 2 September.
It’ll be the perfect night for you and us to get back together and make up.
With performances by:
Lily Chan
Sam Fox
Kaitlyn Plyley
Julian Staltari
Allan Boyd
Matt Giles
Amber Fresh
Tristan Fidler
Musical guests:
Rachel Dease
Gilbert Fawn (Matt Aitken)
When: doors open 7:30pm, Thursday 2 September 2010, and then the first Thursday of every month
Where: 459 Bar Rosemount Hotel 459 Fitzgerald St North Perth
How much: $5 entry, or $20 entry + anthology
Filed under Australia, Cottonmouth, Experiment, Fiction, Music, Perth, Show, Spoken Word
Deep-sea diving in the wisdom of Scott-Patrick Mitchell
I got to spend a lot of time hanging out with fellow Black Rider and Cottonmouther, not to mention homme-extraordinaire, Scott-Patrick Mitchell in Melbourne recently as we strutted the literary catwalk and flaunted our wares.
Scott-Patrick penned a poetical collection titled {where n equals} a determinacy of poetry and is included alongside collections by James Quinton and Emma Rooksby in Fremantle Press’ first edition of their New Poets series.
It’s no secret that Scott-Patrick’s poetry bowls me over; so much so I performed some of it in Melbourne.
Freo Press interviewed Scott-Patrick on their blog and he’s got some great things to say.
He also kindly sent the Black Rider a hat tip along with Gabby Everall, Amber Fresh, Lily Chan, Bec Giggs, Allan Boyd, Kevin Gillam and more. Thanks Scott-Patrick! Your kindness abounds.
Now go dive into some SPM wisdom!
Huddle round these roadmaps, alas, we’ve outstayed our welcome
Photo by Ryan Michael Swearingen (www.myeyemachine.com)
This year the Emerging Writers Festival 2010 in Melbourne is going to be slightly more surreal than usual. Yep, the Black Rider’s swooping.
Amid a schedule filled with general literary tomfoolery and brazen broohaha, I’ll be:
- hosting a panel on writing
- in conversation with the inimitable Kirk A.C. Marshall on translating foreign works to English, and
- appearing with best buddy Scott-Patrick Mitchell to launch the Cottonmouth Anthology at a gig called 15 Minutes of Fame.
If only I could be as awesome as two of my heroes, Carl Craig and Moritz von Oswald, teaming up with a pianist named Francesco Tristano, and playing this show a couple months ago.
Filed under Cottonmouth, Music, Show, Spoken Word
Tell the boys back home these songs are for them
Photo by Ryan Michael Swearingen (www.myeyemachine.com)
The coolest response I’ve gotten to The Casual Stroll to the Top is: “This would be way more awesome, Balius, if you took out all the parts that sucked.” — Well played, dear foe of mine.
Mirroring Herman Melville’s hypnagogic scene (without the tattooed hulk lying in bed), but extenuating into a hypnopomp sequence, the narrator finds himself playing out the role of the Milesian poet Amergin in a battle between the Milesians and the Tuatha De Danaans. (Spruce up your Irish mythology.)
Instead of Amergin’s Invocation of Ireland (if you click that, scroll all the way down for the Gaelic and the English translations), he invocates this jive:
The band strikes up Waltzing Matilda for the men of the sea
In billowing star-strewn shimmering fields,
Shimmering in the undiscovered country;
Undiscovered steppes and paths like streams through wood,
Streaming in cascading founts of diamante sheen;
Diamond-eyed the gaze upon endless waves rolling,
Endless waves thundering dark bluffs in crystal spray;
Crystal-like also the rain upon the family tree,
The family tree as history of ours and what is,
Our forest dense with time and history –
Time and time again we make the same errors,
The same struggles for families and friend circles,
Friendship as apples of burrowing eyes,
Burrowing into the darkly sung tunes of yesterday;
Tuning the radio to a Country & Western station,
My country and I are inextricably bound,
Bounding heart for the beating rhythms coursing,
Rhythmic my thoughts of what is and what should be
And what was and what could never be,
Nevertheless I hope and hope and hope;
The band strikes up Waltzing Matilda for the men of the sea.
Random fact: Before they started pumping out pop music out their speakers, my favourite pub in town was an Irish pub and I could once be found sitting in the fireplace room with my Guinness scribbling away. Sadly those Guinesses flow no longer.
Filed under Cottonmouth, Fiction, Poetry, Published
All of tomorrow’s parties
Photo by Ryan Michael Swearingen (www.myeyemachine.com)
All of tomorrow’s parties
contain complex humours, child-
like rhythms, rich colours & playfulness,
but they hit hard in the beginning.
We’re not trying
to make a better world –
we just want to be
semblances of
folk artists,
unyielding to despair.
Filed under Cottonmouth, Poetry, Published
Am I the Black Rider? Yes. 