‘how many more are coming’: Cordite 53 THE END edited by Pam Brown

To conclude an extremely busy day for poetry my poem ‘how many more are coming’ was published today in Cordite 53, edited by Pam Brown.

‘how many more are coming’, like some of the slide poems which will appear on Project 365+1 over the coming month, is part of a larger work/book called LACUNA. The poem records the death of Jack Marsh, an Aboriginal cricketer, who was bashed and left for dead in Robinson Park in the Centre of Orange NSW.

The poem can be found here: http://cordite.org.au/poetry/theend/how-many-more-are-coming/

The complete issue, which includes some amazing work, can be located here: http://cordite.org.au/content/poetry/theend/

My thanks to Pam Brown and Cordite Editor Kent MacCarter.

 

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Project 365+1: A poem a day for a month – #1 Slides – Prelude

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February appears to be the busiest month. Just lucky this year is a leap year and February has one extra day to help fit everything in. For the next 29 days you will have the pleasure of reading a new poem from me everyday on the 365 +1 Project website http://project365plus.blogspot.com.au/

So what is Project 365+1? It is described on the website describes as:

Project 366 is a poem-centric collaboration of artists and writers taking place daily throughout 2016. And why? Because poetry is a process, art is a process. Poetry and art happen because we do it, because we make the effort to make it. So the object of this project is not to create finished art objects on a daily basis; it’s to get work on the way every day. Project 366 is to encourage the everyday business of artmaking for those who work – however they work – with word and image. Some people will post only pictures, some people will post only poems or short prose pieces. Some people will alternate among the various forms of their practice. And some may evolve new practices over the course of the year. (http://project365plus.blogspot.com.au/p/about-this-project.html)

I have approached my month with a box of old slides from my childhood – the kind you put in a projector and watched image after image appear on a wall or screen. Almost lost technology now, but the physical slides, like a floppy desk, remind us of something almost forgotten. So each day I will take a slide, either the physical slide itself or the memory of the projected image, and write about it.

Some of the poems may form part of a project I am working on with the working title of LACUNA (an empty space or a missing part; a gap. Inprinting, lithography & bookbinding) a gap or space, esp in a book or manuscript) – this is longish piece about place, history and memory set around the Central Western NSW town of Orange). Other poems may exist for a day and be placed back in a mouldy box, other poems maybe stand alone works.

My first poem has been posted today. Have a look and feel free to take part in a conversation about the poem, the process or the project….

http://project365plus.blogspot.com.au/2016/02/mark-roberts-1-slides-prelude.html

Project 365+1 is also on Face Book https://www.facebook.com/Project-Three-Six-Six-1542051856107487/

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My forthcoming poetry collection, Concrete Flamingos, with will be launched in Sydney by Anna Couani on Saturday 27 February from 2.30 pm at the Friend in Hand Hotel 58 Cowper St Glebe. Further details and purchase details at https://printedshadows.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/concrete-flamingos-poems-by-mark-roberts/

‘Byron Bay’ published in Plumwood Mountain Volume 3 Number 1

Byron Bay Whaling station operated from 1954 to 1962. (Photograph ABC)

While it is always exciting to have a poem accepted for publication there was something very satisfying about having my poem ‘Byron Bay’ accepted for Volume 3 Number 1 of Plumwood Mountain. 

Ever since I started writing poetry as a teenager one of the driving forces behind my writing has been a political awareness and a deep concern for the environment and ecology – indeed my first real political involvement was with the Friends of the Earth campaign against uranium mining in the late 1970’s and the anti-yellowcake export pickets at the Glebe Island terminal.

Plumwood Mountain describes itself as a journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics which it then goes onto to say is broadly a “poetry that may broadly be understood as engaging with a more-than-human context, in a variety of poetic forms, articles on the poetics and intent of ecopoetry, exploring ways in which poetry not only responds to and affects its world, but also ways in which poetic practice can model ecological systems and concerns, the ways in which poems themselves are material, breathy things in a world of animate matter, and reviews of collections of poetry that understand themselves or could be understood as ecopoetry”.

Given this I am particularly happy that Plumwood Mountain has published my poem about the old whaling station at Byron Bay in its latest issue. You can read ‘Byron Bay’, along with many other amazing poems by an extraordinary group of poets at:

http://plumwoodmountain.com/plumwood-mountain-volume-3-number-1/

‘Byron Bay’ also appears in my forthcoming collection, Concrete Flamingos, with will be launched in Sydney by Anna Couani on Saturday 27 February from 2.30 pm at the Friend in Hand Hotel 58 Cowper St Glebe. Further details and purchase details at https://printedshadows.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/concrete-flamingos-poems-by-mark-roberts/