forward slash launch in Melbourne

forward slash will be launched by Corey Wakeling and will feature readings by contributors Michael Farrell and Duncan Hose. The launch is part of The Poetry Symposium 2012, this year titled The Political Imagination: Contemporary Postcolonial and Diasporic Poetries.

The Political Imagination is a symposium that brings together some of Australia’s leading poets and poetry scholars to investigate the state of contemporary postcolonial and diasporic poetries. It aims to explore the contentious, at times controversial, issues surrounding the production and discussion of poetry and poetics in work that engages with the politics of the postcolonial, the transnational and the diasporic.

Edited by Matthew Hall and Jeremy Balius, the first edition features:

Duncan Hose
Michael Farrell
a.rawlings
Louis Armand
Kemeny Babineau
Astrid Lorange
Jay MillAr

“In showcasing seven of the most exciting writers either side of the Pacific, this collection demonstrates just how strikingly resonant Australian and Canadian contemporary poetries are in challenging pretexts of language, nation, and the interior.  Here we have undressed affect, meddlesome crossings of intimate and ideological landscapes, and ebullient spurs against aesthetic and political complacency.  It is, in short, redactive iridescence.” – Ann Vickery

Volumes of forward slash will be available for purchase at the event for 10 smackers.

Thanks to Ann, Ali, Lyn and Corey for making this happen.

When: 4:30pm, Thursday 12 April 2012
Where: Deakin Prime, Level 3, 550 Bourke Street, Melbourne

Cottonmouth XX, Thursday 4 November 2010

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

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

The Hank Snow Album Cover Confessional

I fall for people who are trying a new approach.

Michele Battiste is a Boulder Colorado based poet exploring the role of constraint in conceptual poetry and the limit of template as form.

Michele co-opted the marketing and research survey program Survey Monkey and set up three templates for poets to write a poem in: 1) Confessional 2) Love 3) Condemnation.  She’s “interested in how the digital interface affects the writer’s experience, how the concept of ‘play’ factors in the experience, how the digital interface either expands the limits of the forms or speeds their ruptures, and any ways that the writer can subvert the form. And when is the form exhausted? And is filling in boxes in responses to prompts an act of writing poetry?”

I completed the Confessional templete and wrote The Hank Snow Album Cover Confessional, published on Michele’s website.

Have a read of other template poems.  They’re worth it.

Forgive me for being one hundred and one, weary, a good
hum, a bad run. The bar refuses to keep

me out, the doormen refuse to refuse
their number one customer around its face. I’ve fallen for a numberless year

old Bolivian tailor who slows days.
I’ve invoked the cocoon. I’ve slowed no “I” to slow

“I’s” that lead to the deserted ancients. With totem.
Tiny wisps. A palm-eye negotiating third eye, the chakra hooked

inside a guitar string. I’ll get over it and cross his measuring tape all over
again: the lost Bolivian, the desperate seer

with her hair. But I’ll not mediate argument to write
someone else’s memory. At twelve, I was shown by a seventh son

of seven sons within the windy windy canyons of Des Moines. My first cousin
shamed me into horsewhipping a scorn I could hide.

That seventh son is now one hundred and one with a confusion since her
hair the shape of my tailor. My organ grinder is an inappropriate

panhandler I sometimes indulge. I don’t indulge in water.
I don’t wear rhinestones among the stampeding cattle run who disregarded

floral arrangements unlike my chakra the last time we deserted. But I did. Found
damp crinkle of dubious path but let their manhole covers pursue my stormdrains again

and again. I strum. I’m a good landscape who can’t help landscaping
wallflower impeding on the horizon. This is not scattered ruffian.

All of my ruffians are unending.

http://photo.sing365.com/music/picture.nsf/Hank-Snow-The-Southern-Cannonball-Cover/AFEBA66841B4996648256FC200310CBA/$file/Southern+Cannonball.jpg