Παρουσιάζει ο Ειρηναίος Μαράκης*

Αιχμητή απλότητα

«Έξυπνες βόμβες» είναι η νέα, έβδομη σε σειρά, ποιητική συλλογή του Θεοχάρη Παπαδόπουλου που κυκλοφορεί από τις εκδόσεις Μανδραγόρας. Είναι μια συλλογή με ποιήματα γραμμένα και βασισμένα στην ποίηση των χαϊκού, που εκφράζει περισσότερο από ποτέ την αιχμηρή απλότητα της ποίησης και της ποιητικής του Θεοχάρη Παπαδόπουλου.

Η γραφή του, ολιγόστιχη, λιτή, άμεσα κατανοητή, κοινωνική κι επαναστατική, βαθιά πολιτική και συναισθηματική δεν αφήνει ασυγκίνητο τον αναγνώστη. Ποιητής καθόλου φλύαρος και πάντα περιεκτικός κατορθώνει αυτή τη φορά να φτάσει την απλότητα της ποίησης του στα υψηλότερα όρια που θα μπορούσε να βάλει, μέχρι την επόμενη ποιητική συλλογή του βεβαίως, εκφράζοντας σε μόλις τρεις στίχους τις ιδέες, τους προβληματισμούς, την οργή του για τα κοινωνικά ζητήματα αλλά και την αγάπη του για τις απλές απολαύσεις της ζωής. Για τον έρωτα γράφει ο ποιητής, για πρότυπα που μοιάζουν ντεμοντέ, για αναγκαίους συμβιβασμούς με ανεπούλωτες πληγές, για όνειρα που επιμένει να γίνουν πραγματικότητα ή για όνειρα που είναι περισσότερα ρεαλιστικά από τα σύγχρονα πρότυπα ζωής.

Και για να γίνουμε λιγάκι τολμηροί, μπορούμε να πούμε ότι στις «Έξυπνες βόμβες» ενώ έχουμε ένα κοινωνικό (τόσο πολιτικά, όσο και υπαρξιακά) Θεοχάρη Παπαδόπουλο άλλο τόσο έχουμε ένα ποιητή που συνομιλεί, ίσως περισσότερο από ποτέ, με τον εαυτό του. Και ο οποίος παρουσιάζει αυτή την εικόνα στον αναγνώστη, χωρίς φόβο αλλά με πολύ πάθος, κάνοντας τον κοινωνό της δημιουργικής διαδικασίας που ακολουθεί, που δεν είναι άλλο από μια διαδικασία που ματώνει και πονά. Ίσως βέβαια αυτός που συνομιλεί με τον εαυτό του να μην είναι ο ποιητής αλλά εσείς κι ο οποιοσδήποτε αναγνώστης… Αλήθεια, ποιός είπε ότι είναι εύκολο να γράψεις ποίηση στις μέρες μας που δεν θα αναλώνεται σε φτηνούς εντυπωσιασμούς αλλά και που θα έχει μέσα της τη δυνατότητα για πολλαπλές αναγνώσεις;

Αλλά νομίζω πως ακολουθώντας το παράδειγμα του ποιητή θα πρέπει να σταματήσουμε εδώ. Αρκετά φλυαρήσαμε. Περισσότερα και ουσιαστικότερα θα βρείτε στο βιβλίο ενώ για τον ποιητή μπορείτε να βρείτε εδώ σε σχετικό αφιέρωμα που είχαμε κάνει στο περιοδικό μας. Ακολουθεί ένα σύντομο σχόλιο σχετικά με τα χαϊκού και κάποια ποιήματα από το βιβλίο, δική μας επιλογής.

Χαϊκού

Τα χαϊκού (ή χάι κάι) είναι μορφή/φόρμα ιαπωνικής ποίησης, που εμφανίστηκε τον 16ο αιώνα και υιοθετήθηκε, κυριολεκτικά και μεταφορικά, από την λογοτεχνική σκηνή της Ευρώπης και της Αμερικής στις αρχές του 20ου. Στην αυθεντική και παραδοσιακή τους μορφή αποτελούνταν από τρεις ομάδες των 5, 7, 5 συλλαβών, οι οποίες τοποθετούνταν σε τρεις στίχους για έμφαση ή σε έναν, χωρισμένο με κενά. Στα χαϊκού συμπυκνώνεται η σοφία και η απλότητα της ιαπωνικής φιλοσοφίας και ζωής, με τις εποχές, τα χρώματα και τις ιδέες που προάγουν τον σεβασμό στον συνάνθρωπο κι αποτελούν βασικό πυρήνα τους. Στην χώρα μας τα χαϊκού, εμφανίστηκαν για πρώτη φορά το 1925 από τον Γ. Σταυρόπουλο στο περιοδικό Λυκαβηττός ενώ γνωστότερος εκπρόσωπος μια ποίησης επηρεασμένης από τα χαϊκού είναι ο Γιώργος Σεφέρης. Το τελευταίο διάστημα ξεκίνησαν να αποκτούν μια κάποια σχετική αναγνωρισιμότητα τόσο στο αναγνωστικό κοινό, όσο και στους νεότερους ποιητές μας.

Ποιήματα

σελίδα λευκή.
Σε φέρνω στη σκέψη μου
να τη γεμίσω.

Φιλί της ζωής
λέγανε το φιλί της.
Τον φαρμάκωσε.

-σε αμφισβητώ,
μου είπε θυμωμένος
ο καθρέφτης μου.

τι πιο τραγικό;
Να κάνω διάλογο
με τη σιωπή σου.

αλληλεγγύη.
Μια λέξη που την τρέμει
ο βολεμένος.

διπλή μερίδα
Κομμάτι από τη σάρκα
των πεινασμένων.

Καταναλώνω
ληγμένα προιόντα
στην οθόνη μου.

Τον συλλάβανε.
Σε ώρες ανάπαυσης
έγραφε στίχους.

*Από τον Άτεχνο στο http://atexnos.gr/theoharis-papadopoulos-exipnes-vomves/

Βάζω αυτό το βιβλίο στα Σφηνάκια ακριβώς επειδή του αξίζει μακροσκελέστατη ανάλυση, την οποία σκοπεύω να κάνω σε σχετικό κείμενό μου που θα υποβάλω στον “Μανδραγόρα”. Επειδή όμως ο “Μανδραγόρας” είναι εξαμηνιαίος και το επόμενο τεύχος θα κυκλοφορήσει το καλοκαίρι, δεν μπορούσα να μη γράψω τώρα δύο λόγια έστω για το συγκλονιστικό αυτό ποιητικό βιβλίο.

Ο Μεχμέτ Γιασίν είναι Τουρκοκύπριος ποιητής. Γεννήθηκε στη Λευκωσία και η ιστορία του σφραγίστηκε από τις κάθε είδους συγκρούσεις που στιγμάτισαν την ίδια την ιστορία της Κύπρου. Στην ανθολογία “Άγγελοι εκδικητές”, που με περισσό μεράκι και ευαισθησία επιμελήθηκε και μετέφρασε ο κ. Αϊναλής, ο ποιητής προβληματίζεται για τις ανθρώπινες (δευτερευόντως και τις πολιτικές) προεκτάσεις του κυπριακού ζητήματος και διερευνά το περιεχόμενο της λέξης “πατρίδα”. Τα ποιήματά του αντανακλούν βαθύτατο πλούτο συναισθημάτων, αλλά και ευρύτατο ψυχικό πλούτο που βρίσκουν διέξοδο σε μια έκφραση χωρίς αναστολές και γεμάτη ειλικρίνεια.

Θεέ μου! Πού μπορώ να πάω και να ουρλιάξω;
Συρματοπλέγματα, περιβάλλομαι από συρματοπλέγματα
κάθε μέρα τα τείχη υψώνονται, τούβλο το τούβλο, κατάτι ψηλότερα.
(…)
Αν αποστείλω τα γράμματά μου “Στη μητέρα μου”,
πού θα πάνε;
Αν γράψω “Κύπρος”… πού;

Γυρνάω γύρω-γύρω κι επιστρέφω από την κάθε διεύθυνση
μέσα σ’  ένα φάκελο με τις άκρες καμένες.

Δεν θα υπερβάλλω αν πω ότι αυτό το βιβλίο μού άλλαξε τον τρόπο που σκέφτομαι για το κυπριακό.

Χριστίνα Λιναρδάκη

*Από το Στίγμα Λόγου στο http://stigmalogou.blogspot.gr

Reflections of A Temporary Self
by Grant Caldwell

Collective Effort Press, 2015


Publishing a selected poems is an act of confidence. While no one who writes poems would want to be judged on their worst effort, a selection suggests these are the poems that – if readers must judge – the poet be judged upon. The act is, however, doubly denied by Caldwell in the qualified title, Reflections of a Temporary Self, and by the front cover author photo: is he asleep or isn’t he? The I-don’t-necessarily-give-a-fuck attitude is part of the package. I qualify the attitude because Caldwell, in producing an eighth book (consisting of poems from six previous books and new poems), clearly does give one.

The large type will be welcomed by the poorer sighted and it has a poster effect that gives the pages authority, suggesting that this is public poetry: it’s what I saw, heard, thought; what do you reckon? The poet might have moved on, into a new self, but the gesture remains. In noting my impression of the unapologetic strain in Caldwell’s work I don’t mean that it is necessarily aggressive. It can be unapologetically sweet:
wallabies kissing in a twilight field
holding straws in their little hands
ears revolving
all this and the joey
and the young shoots of clover
they love so much (‘ontos farm’)
Like John Shaw Neilson with the death taken out. You could say with the lilt out, as well; by analogy the impression is of a rock’n’roll Zen, especially this aspect cited by Wikipedia: ‘the personal expression of … insight in daily life, especially for the benefit of others’. The latter part of the quote is pure ironic Caldwell. Reflections contains a sarcastic poem about the facile adoption of Buddhism as an identity (‘einstein, buddhism and my stiff neck’) and it is one of the poems that verges on the genre of the grumpy-old-man poem. Yet, typically, the judgment is on Caldwell, or at least his narrator: thinking about Buddhists, he falls in the creek and bangs his hip. (It seems quintessentially Australian to fall in a creek and hurt yourself, rather than get wet or drown.)

There’s rhythm, there are images, and sometimes they meet. Caldwell is interested in the melancholy affects of repetition, as in ‘across the sea’ (‘the sea comes … it never stops/it never stops’); and in mundane investigations of logic in these concluding lines from ‘thirteen ways of looking at a window’:

with the dark the window becomes a mirror
when you turn on the kitchen light and you
watch yourself reflecting reflected in the light
though you can’t see your face for the shadow

This circularity is given its major form in ‘two black chairs’; as the poem goes on it becomes replete with chairs and tables, and a purse and fairy lights, and ‘elvis before his dissipation’, losing its sense of line (or gaining fullness) as the page becomes full with the swirl of words. All poems are concerned with the logic of their structures, but logic is also a theme of these poems, as if they want to work out the possibilities of logic in poetry. ‘like a tennis ball’ resembles a song structure – what could easily be read as a hip-hop structure, though I think it’s too unromanticised for that – where the abjection of alcoholic (prosaic) unhappiness is redeemed (poetically) by the mundane-lyrical image of a tennis ball in the last line.

Caldwell’s untitled haiku are read to advantage in a column of four, where the effect is of reading a series, rather than one per page, which might well have seemed flat or inconsequential. His haiku momentarily slow down reading by offering change in tone, voice and space. The mode is not completely distinct, however. The following two haiku from a camping sequence point to Caldwell’s interest in logic, circularity and repetition:

red hot coals
in the late night camp fire
tomorrow’s ashes

in last night’s ashes
yesterday’s potatoes
never to be eaten

‘yarra yarra (ever flowing river)’ is a three part collage of Aboriginal place names, and includes many that have negative connotations (‘ONNUA white man with gun’; ‘BOGONG place infested with fleas’) but ultimately the momentum is towards a more positive affect: the final section including terms like ‘WOONINGCANNING where wild ducks flock and play together’, ‘MANGOPLAH people singing’ and ‘QUINDALUP a happy place’.
As a record of ‘more than thirty years’ of writing that tries different modes, the book’s diction is, inevitably, a mixture. At times the disparity’s too great: while irony can give a lot of weight to the vague ending (‘yair … sure …’) of ‘bar-b-q in blue’’s comic anecdote, it’s not so easy for irony to lighten the load of the following poem’s conclusion: ‘into new depths of ontology’ (‘mundane avenues of compensation’).
Caldwell’s version of the ‘I do this, I do that’ poem is one of white poverty: the drug and scam milieu. In ‘the colour of black light’ the narrator makes money from secondhand books then talks to the bookseller about Charles Bukowski, as if he defined the extreme version of white poverty as poetry and he probably does. It’s not as nice or as affectionate as O’Hara, but there is the same compositional thought and structure, where the elements of a day are brought together to make a poem. You can have no money, but if you have a TV you can still watch a documentary on Matisse. Class culture is complicated, and complications are normal.

Other poems (‘terra nullius’ and ‘baghdad etc.’) deal with the logic of hyperbole. Extreme comparisons are made to suggest the fabric of everyday power struggles that are implicated in greater ones everyday intolerance as a sliding scale to that of big business, government, the military. ‘baghdad etc’ begins, ‘it is better not to think’, and in this again, Caldwell is a kind of anti-O’Hara that is not quite paranoid.
When reading his poetry in performance, Caldwell characteristically makes enjambment explicit through a pronounced pause, and enjambment is something that figures in his poetry as much as the line as such. The poem ‘the fat bread’ employs spacing and line breaks to an extreme extent, in a way that is both highly contrived and wonderful; something about this poem – and the way it faces a photo of a child (presumably the author) as a scarecrow with arms wide – makes it seem an original contribution, both obvious and unique. It’s like a couple of haiku added together then stretched apart till breaking point:

in the park
the arrowfast tortoise
shell
cat
stalks
the fat bread
bloated
pigeons
pecking in the sun
dry
grass

Yet it is not completely obvious, because the syntactic inversions are not predictable; yet they do fit, and enliven and ironise the images. ‘the arrowfast tortoise’ evokes the fable of the tortoise and the hare, and makes it a character of the poem, along with the fat bread, neither of which are strictly visible. That ‘fat bread/bloated/pigeons’ are still pecking is itself ironic, but narrative irony is less emphasised than that of syntax, while spacing ironises both word and phrase as image. It is a wry little masterpiece.

The title of ‘the neverending poem’ suggests its relation to πO’s ‘Everything Poem’. It collects found moments of text, facts and observations. It is not that long, ending with a shudder-making quote from Margaret Thatcher. Its overall tone might be described as rueful. Another found poem, ‘amerika’ is like a dub version of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘America’, with the tone and apostrophe stripped from it. A collage drawn from a 1960s textbook, it is revealing of sexual and economic oppression:

sue is more attractive than ann
jean is more attractive than sue

if you left your jobs
you would look for other jobs

Caldwell brings the two aspects together in the couplet, ‘it is time you bought a new car/it is time sue got married’.

Apart from the typos, there’s a rough and ready feel to this selection, resulting in the inclusion of some poems that do no more than those before them (sequentially if not chronologically), and in some wonky enjambments (‘you have control now’), but these can also have a payoff. Caldwell’s line breaks replicate, at least some of the time, an idiosyncratic verbal style that speeds up and slows down, and can make lines seem strained or truncated on the page. But not all of them; and the style can turn up a great line like ‘there to back him mainly’: ‘him’ being the poem’s titular horse, ‘tobin bronze’. The story of the race is strung out a bit long (if you don’t define being an adult as the ability to defer gratification) before finally arriving at the end’s kicker: no spoilers from me.

Caldwell, as someone who has been teaching creative writing for some time, is under the radar in terms of his influence on thousands of young readers and writers of poetry. Teaching, however, can sideline a poet’s own work. Reflections of a Temporary Self might seem as necessary as a white pepper milkshake, but taste is produced by reading, not by not reading: and besides, conventional poetry readers are the last thing a various place like Australia needs.

*Michael Farrell‘s Cocky’s Joy was published by Giramondo in 2015. His scholarly book, Writing Australian Unsettlement: Modes of Poetic Invention 1796-1945, was published by Palgrave Macmillan.

***From Cordite Poetry Review at http://www.cordite.org.au

Fitzroy: the biography
by Π.O.
Collective Effort Press, 2015

For Π.O., ‘Fitzroy is what you, bump into/ when you leave home’ (599). It was outside his family’s first front door after they escaped the Bonegilla migrant reception centre in 1954. After sixty years and homes in other suburbs, it is still the place that his poems gravitate towards. If anyone were to attempt writing the biography of Melbourne’s first suburb, Π.O. is the poet.

It’d be reasonable to assume that Fitzroy: the biography is about a person rather than a place. On the cover is a photo of Π.O. as a grinning infant, about the age he would have been on first moving to the suburb. The vowels of the title (Fitzroy) are highlighted yellow signalling that the poet, Π.O. (or Pi.O.), is integral to this version of the suburb. The 740-page epic (the same length as his 1996 Fitzroy-based poem, 24 Hours) recounts the life of Π.O.’s Fitzroy. While acknowledging that the suburb has many different selves – is a palimpsest; a space of competing narratives – this study is as much autobiography as biography.

With a contents page arranged alphabetically like a scholarly index, the poem initially appears to be performing as a reference item. Really, it is a catalogue (like Ovid’s Metamorphoses) of the suburb’s changes. Roughly chronological, beginning with a series of portraits and imagined monologues from 19th century settlement and ending with the poet’s own memories, the poem’s scale is vast. In between is a series of ‘creation myths’. We hear how the streets got their names (Young, Webb, George) and the origin of Alcock’s Billiard Table store, on Gertrude Street since 1854 and miraculously still there. We see the Builder’s Arms Hotel, before it was painted white and turned into a restaurant called Moon Under Water. We learn about the Fitzroy childhoods of chocolate millionaire, Macpherson Robertson, and second prime minister of Australia, Alfred Deakin. The advent of footie in Fitzroy, the rise and fall of Squizzy Taylor, the extraordinary role of Pastor Doug Nicholls, and the erection of the council flats (‘Modernism destroyed my whole life’ [607]) are all described with Π.O.’s idiosyncratic specificity, rhythm, and unabashed bias. The same ghostly resonances that were achieved in 24 Hours are present here; the layers of stories convey how contested the space of the suburb is.

In ‘Geoffrey Eggleston (1944–2008)’, Π.O. writes, ‘i wanted to see/ everything, in Melbourne’ (673). As well as wanting to see everything, he appears to want to share with his readers everything he sees. While this is impossible, the mad, kaleidoscopic rush of details gives a sense of infinite completeness. In the fragments, psychic associations and rapid digressions, there is always something new to notice.

Although the structure and scale of Fitzroy: a biography are different to that of its predecessor, 24 Hours, the sensibility behind the poem is recognisable. Even in the imagined monologues of historical figures, and faux archival materials (letters, lists, advertisements, and crime records, which remind me of Charles Reznikoff’s Testimony), there is a latent autobiography. The collaging effect of abruptly juxtaposing miscellaneous facts, and the deliberate (Tarantino-like) anachronisms, stamp the work with Π.O.’s style. Often, the facts that are layered together to create an impression of an historical figure’s life also serve as a commentary on the poet’s writing process. For example, ‘The Latin verb “cogito” (for “to/ think”) etymologically, means “to shake together”./ To smash, to break, to kick down stairs’ (367).

In the later, explicitly autobiographical, poems, there is an openness that is less apparent in the imagined historical monologues, and it is this unmasked storytelling that I think is Π.O.’s forte. From leaving Bonegilla, to being forced to read racist Biggles as a schoolkid, to recalling Allen Ginsberg’s reading at the Town Hall, we see the poet and the suburb of Fitzroy aging in tandem. There are tall stories in which names are dropped (Ted Hughes at the Adelaide Writers’ Festival, whom Π.O. interrogates over Sylvia Plath’s death; Tom Waits, whom Π.O. interrupts while having sex), but also poignant vignettes. At the arrival of ‘students and artists’ in Fitzroy, Π.O.

wrote a poem: Get Out of Fitzroy, and (at night) put
copies of it under / their doors; past their Land Rovers
parked on the footpath, past their Afghan-dogs and
plush-orange carpets; dodging Night watchmen’s torches (in
the only suburb i knew)
(692).

Throughout the collection is the conviction that ‘the future is just “the past” with a bit of a twist’ (45). These changes that Π.O. witnesses in the suburb in his early twenties have always been happening in Fitzroy’s oldest suburb: ‘“Omne vivum ex ovo” (the complete/ description of the organism, is already/ written, in the egg’ (59). But, despite the inevitability of change, there is a sense of grief in these pages at the corrosive effects of gentrification on Fitzroy. Early in the poem, Π.O. writes, ‘The grit must of course, be in/ the oyster’ (133). In The Age this morning (Saturday 27th February, 2016), an article titled ‘Is this hipster heartland losing its cool?’ laments the addition of a Coles supermarket and Subway franchise to Smith Street. According to Fitzroy: a biography, the suburb started to lose its ‘cool’ decades ago, at the arrival of the first hipsters.

Π.O.’s love of his version of Fitzroy, evident on every page, is palpable in ‘Granite Terrace’, in which he wonders about the granite blocks that were removed from a vacant lot and replaced with ‘some shitty little brown-brick factory’ (78). He suggests that the Council should return the granite blocks and ‘scatter them at random (up and/ down) Gertrude and Nicholson Street, as part of/ some public art project’ (79). If this ever happens, Π.O.’s lines should be engraved in them. Meanwhile, perhaps copies of Fitzroy: a biography could be scattered instead, to remind the Coles- and Subway-goers of their suburb’s origins, to put a bit of grit back in the oyster.

*Amy Brown teaches creative writing at the University of Melbourne. Her first poetry collection, The Propaganda Poster Girl, was shortlisted for Best First Book at the 2009 New Zealand Book Awards. The Odour of Sanctity, a contemporary epic poem that formed the creative half of her doctoral thesis, will be released in July 2013.

**From Cordite Poetry Review at http://www.cordite.org.au

Audacious 1
by Benjamin Solah
 (ed.)
Melbourne Spoken Word, 2015


Coming straight at your inner eardrums is the debut volume of Audacious, the audio journal of Melbourne Spoken Word. Like a night at Passionate Tongues, or an afternoon at the Dan, this collection presents a variety of poets at different levels of artistic development. Some are seasoned and in full flight, while others are up-and-comers still finding their voice. In this volume at least, Audacious offers more of the latter. But the uneven, unpredictable quality of live poetry gigs – where sometimes you connect with just one poet – more often than not gives enough to make your night. In this sense, Audacious is an accurate reflection of local spoken word: certainly a gamble, but one well worth taking.

Live poetry in Melbourne is a jumping crisscrossing of mic leads and literary live wires where Melbourne Spoken Word (MSW) is ever-present, organising and promoting a broad spectrum of poetry events. In this spirit Audacious has potential as another developing platform for Melbourne’s spoken word scene. By no means the first of its kind, issue one is preceded by similar chronicles of audio poetry such as Project 3056(2010) compiled by poet Benjamin Theolonious Sanders (IQ), and sits alongside the recent audio accompaniment to Unusual Work 18. While these latter collections may be more nuanced in their focus, what makes Audacious distinct is precisely the unevenness characterising its inaugural outing. The loose, open-ended journal format suggests malleability – a potential to reflect changes in the scene as they come. The motley collection spotlights one camp in a diverse local scene: one frame of a landscape in constant flux, this is by no means a definitive guide, but rather a point of entry.

The best moments in Audacious are when the categories of poetry and performance support one another; or perhaps, when artists are least self-conscious of these categories. Jacky T’s ‘Landmark’ is exemplary of this and a highlight of the collection. The home truths of the poem – loss and the desperate banality of living in its wake – emerge painfully through voice and its tension with the music simmering underneath. Like a held breath, pushing the words forward, the listener is held by every impression until the poem’s final line: ‘As the traffic lets up, you hold a note and bend it / We listen as we pass.’ And then the music pours forth like an exhalation, a release for the grief that words cannot find.

In regrettable contrast are the frequent attempts to conform to tired notions of ‘poet’ or ‘slammer’. These are immediately apparent in clumsy, forced rhyme (‘this age of apathetic muscles, collapsing corpuscles […] lost in the vortex of your cerebral cortex’ – O’Sullivan’s ‘Language of Ghosts’; ‘gyrate with my mates in my irate pirate crew’ – Dennis’ ‘Pirates’), exaggerated breaths (Hassell’s ‘The Talk’), inexplicable climaxes and denouement (‘you couldn’t even decide between being a couch … or a bed / You don’t know who the fuck you are!’ – Weitzman’s ‘Couch’) and lackluster repetitions (‘we can’t see you we can’t see you we can’t see you’ – Fury’s ‘Google’). The self-loving arrogance evident in ‘I make love to the lyrics of the words of the songs I have written for the girls’ (‘The Talk’) is, contrary to the poem’s intentions, neither sensual nor liberating. The (mis)appropriation of once politically-charged forms like slam is the aural equivalent of donning a Che Guevara t-shirt – opportunistic and insincere in spite of the purported political awareness of the wearer. These poems and their delivery exemplify US slam poet Taylor Mali’s point about performance-poetry-by-numbers in his now classic ‘How to Write a Political Poem’: ‘Mix current events with platitudes of empowerment. / Wrap up in rhyme or r-r-r-r-rhyme it up in rap until it sounds cool.’ In other words, what is actually being said becomes secondary, incidental to the form. The uncritical adoption of the stylistic idiosyncrasies of performance poetry, slam, and hip-hop – from the punchy delivery and syncopations, down to the drawn breaths and American swagger – are imitation verging on parody. There are even instances where the accent shifts from Australian to American within the same piece.

Things don’t really start to cook until the third track. Anastasi’s ‘Initiation’ is conspicuous by its comparative modesty: at forty-four seconds it is lamentably short. ‘An abrasive lace-lined collar / the tickle of water winding between nose and cheek / the forming of hands into towers…’ delivers the listener directly into the sacramental moment. The economy of sound and word carves intimacy in earnest between poet and listener. Like any good performance, the occasional bum note or clichéd phrase is eclipsed by sincerity of feeling. Richardson’s ‘Love Song to Poetry’ is another case in point: ‘There among the used condom heaps of the world, among the McDonald’s wrappers and discarded babies’ toys I saw poets hanging on meat hooks … I saw the hero with a thousand names knowing anything is possible…’ Here, and in the poems that storm the album home (Woolf’s ‘Beloved Brother,’ Burrows’ ‘Cancer,’ Sapoznikoff’s ‘Grip’ and Supski’s ‘For Them / There’) delivery is unaffected, conjoining voice and word in unusual ways. Supski’s poem is another major highlight. A biting response to Audre Lorde’s maxim, ‘Poetry is not a luxury / It is a vital necessity of our existence,’ Supski asks, ‘Can a word unlock / unlock a door? / Can a word cut / cut a barbed wire / barbed wire fence?’ The urge to weed out tired devices and trite observations is enacted in poems such as this, with earnestness unfeigned and unafraid.

The journal’s editor and MSW’s founder, Benjamin Solah, navigates these disparate poems by underscoring their contrast to one another. Following Solah’s argument for a subjective definition of ‘slam’ in his article ‘In Defense of Slam,’ the interpretation of spoken word here is also subjective: we get from it what we bring to it. With this collection, Solah doesn’t attempt to unify these performances or define spoken word:Audacious invites the listener to make their own inquiries and reevaluate their own preconceptions. The first issue of Audacious may be a little unsure of itself, but these are the understandable growing pains of a debut. Proving that poetry is always in flux,Audacious is now already somewhere else. Its second volume, released earlier this year, suggests an encouraging improvement in content and a broader collection of voices. It is well on its way to becoming an important platform and proving ground for Melbourne’s spoken word artists.
This entry was posted in BOOK REVIEWS and tagged Benjamin Solah, George Mouratidis. Bookmark thepermalink.

*George Mouratidis is a Greek-born Beat scholar, poet, and translator of Modern Greek literature. He was a contributing editor of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road: The Original Scroll (2007), for which he wrote a critical introduction. He has taught Cultural Studies at RMIT University and American literature at The University of Melbourne where he is currently completing his PhD on the Beats. His translation of Greek-Australian poet Nikos Nomikos titled Noted Transparencies is due out in May with Owl Press, and his debut collection of poetry, Angel Frankenstein, is due later in the year with Soulbay Press.

**Taken from Cordite Poetry Review at http://www.cordite.org.au

East Broadway Rundown
by Louis Armand

Vlak Records, 2015

The Rube Goldberg Variations
by Louis Armand

Vlak Records, 2015


Louis Armand’s poetry is unbending in its loyalty to the aesthetic and moral responsibilities of the avant-garde. In these new chapbooks, both published by Vlak Records, Armand mines culture for its buried messages, showing how fraught with uncertain track is any search for truth and authenticity in a world made knowable by language.

With East Broadway Rundown, a poetic and photographic homage to jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins’ album of the same name, Armand examines the presence of the written word as it appears on a particular street in Chinatown, New York. The collection opens with a description of the project’s beginnings, Armand explaining how Sonny Rollins’ sabbatical in 1959 would eventually lead to his 1966 album East Broadway Run Down: ‘the piece of music that was going to explain it all to him.’ Armand then narrates his own mimetic pilgrimage across ‘Houston, Delancy, Grand, East Broadway to Canal … Retracing the steps of Sonny Rollins.’

It struck me about halfway through East Broadway Rundown that Armand’s photographs were interrupting my spontaneous expectation that the poems would possess a feeling of completeness. As in the novels of W.G. Sebald, the function of the images in the book – whether intended or not – is to break the reader’s attention away from the author’s text. In this way and others, Armand’s poetry embodies the paradoxical mistrust of art that is at the nucleus of the avant-garde. He never permits the poem to become complacent with the truth of any particular image; each line seems vulnerable to modification and contradiction.
Continue reading →

Η Δήμητρα Καραφύλλη στην “Τελευταία χάρη” γράφει τους στίχους της κοφτερά και περιεκτικά, κλινικά σχεδόν. Αποτελείται από 20 ποιήματα και 30 χαϊκού, και για τον αναγνώστη που αναζητά ακρίβεια στον λόγο, μοντέρνα γραφή χωρίς εκκεντρικότητες, και ένα ρεαλισμό ιδωμένο μέσα από τον παραμορφωτικό φακό προσωπικής ποιητικής προσέγγισης, η Τελευταία χάρη είναι η συλλογή που θα χαιρόταν να ξεφυλλίσει. Η προφορικότητα του λόγου της ταιριάζει και ενισχύει την αμεσότητα που έτσι κι αλλιώς δεν λείπει από τα κείμενα, δίνει στον αναγνώστη την δυνατότητα να δει τον εαυτό του ως συμμέτοχο σε ό,τι συμβαίνει, να ακούσει ήχους και σκέψεις γνώριμες και οικείες.

ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΣ ΣΤΙΧΟΣ[1]

Χαράματα ονειρεύτηκα προχτές
ένα ξενύχτη χαρταετό στην παραλία.
Η μακριά κυματιστή ουρά του
Πολύχρωμη, θαρρείς, ανατριχίλα.
απόκριση στο σφύριγμα του μπάτη.
Πλησίασα αθόρυβα, μα δεν κοιμόταν.
Τρεμόπαιζε στην άμμο καρφωμένος
με πένα αιχμηρή από φτερό αετίσιο.
Την ανασήκωσα ανάλαφρα και τότε
άρχισε άλικο να ρέει το μελάνι.

Τα ποιήματα είναι σύντομα αλλά ολοκληρώνονται με ακρίβεια χιλιοστού, τα θέματα είναι τα καθημερινά των περισσότερων από μας, ιδωμένα κάτω από περίεργα φώτα και σκιές.

Νεκρός πιανίστας
σε ξεκούρδιστο πιάνο
ακόμα παίζει.

Η Δήμητρα Καραφύλλη έχει μια ωραία σκηνογραφική ματιά, γράφει σαν να έχει μια κάμερα στον ώμο, δίνει διαδοχικές λήψεις της ίδιας πραγματικότητας. Σπασμένες οπτικές και συρραφή εικόνων είναι δύο από τα πιο ενδιαφέροντα χαρακτηριστικά κατά τη γνώμη μου: λειτουργούν σαν υπόβαθρο για την σκηνοθεσία των ποιημάτων, και εντείνουν ταυτόχρονα την αίσθηση μιας υποβόσκουσας αγωνίας για το πέρασμα του χρόνου, για την φθορά, για την απόσταση από τον ίδιο τον εαυτό και τις αναμνήσεις. Το εγώ στα κείμενα είναι τόσο υποκείμενο όσο και αντικείμενο, αλλάζει θέσεις, είναι στιγμές που δείχνει να διαβρώνεται χωρίς τίποτα να το αλλοιώνει στο τέλος, σχηματίζει τελικά μια καλειδοσκοπική εικόνα του εαυτού και του Άλλου. Το αποτέλεσμα είναι η ποιήτρια συχνά να αυτοπροσωπογραφείται, βλέποντας τον εαυτό της στον άνθρωπο (πραγματικό ή μη) που στέκεται απέναντι.

Αυτό που προσωπικά μου κάνει εντύπωση, είναι το γεγονός ότι υπάρχει στην Τελευταία χάρη μια αυθύπαρκτη αντικειμενικότητα. Οι στίχοι στέκονται ακριβώς στην κόψη ανάμεσα στο αισιόδοξο και το απαισιόδοξο σενάριο, έχω την αίσθηση ότι οι ισορροπίες παίζονται σε επίπεδο συλλαβών σχεδόν, και αρκεί η μικρότερη ανάσα για να βρεθούν οι λέξεις στη μία ή στην άλλη πλευρά.

Τα ποιήματα της Δήμητρας Καραφύλλη αποτελούν μια προσπάθεια να περικυκλώσει την πραγματικότητα όποια και αν είναι αυτή, ρεαλιστική, μυθική ή τρομαγμένη.

ΑΠΕΙΛΗ [2]

Σε οθόνη ολόφωτη
Σκιά μουντή
Σχήμα άσχημο
Ζωή που γέρνει
Δική μου. Ξένη.

Σε ταινία βωβού θεατής
Στους υπότιτλους κρύβομαι
Ακροβατώ
Με την ψευδαίσθηση ότι υπάρχει δίχτυ.

Καταλήγει να ακροβατεί ανάμεσα στην προσωπική και την εξωτερική πραγματικότητα, με την καθεμιά να μεταβάλλει και να μεταβάλλεται μέσα στην άλλη. Η ένταση είναι παρούσα και συχνά καταλυτική, η ποίηση της Δήμητρας Καραφύλλη είναι μια ποίηση των λέξεων και των αισθήσεων, εξίσου.

Τα χαϊκού από την άλλη, λειτουργούν σαν αναλαμπές συσχετισμών της πορείας δύο ανθρώπων. Φαίνονται σαν ένας ερωτικός διάλογος με τον άλλο, άπιαστο και συχνά απόντα, σαν μια ισότιμη χορογραφία συγκινήσεων. Η αναζήτηση της επαφής και της ανάμνησης είναι ο κινητήριος μοχλός, και η συντομία του τρίστιχου σαν να θέλει να παγώσει τις στιγμές στο χρόνο, για να μπορέσει το εγώ, να ψηλαφήσει και να πιστέψει τελικά τα όρια του Άλλου.

Τελικό συμπέρασμα; Μια ποίηση ψύχραιμη, χωρίς εξάρσεις, με πυξίδα και λέξεις βγαλμένες έξω στο φως.

Κρις Λιβανίου

ΓΡΑΜΜΗ 2 – ΤΕΘΛΑΣΜΕΝΗ [3]

Βαθιά φωνή από έγκατα.
-Βοήθεια.
Σκιά υπνοβάτη.
Χωρίς ηλικία.
Χωρίς εκτόπισμα.
Χωρίς πνοή.
Παραδομένος χρήστης.
Γλιστράει ανάμεσα μας στο βαγόνι
Κρατιέται, λες, μόνο από τα βλέμματα
τα φρικιασμένα.
Πενήντα λεπτά το ξέπλυμα ψυχής.
Περαστικά θα πει
να βγεις απ’ το συρμό
κι αμέσως να ξεχάσεις.
Ο ήλιος στη ράμπα.
Ο δρόμος παλκοσένικο να παίξεις.
Μα στην επιστροφή
στην άκρη της πλατφόρμας
η ίδια τεθλασμένη σιλουέτα
ο ίδιος βόμβος παρακαλεί.
Να ‘ρθει το τέλος.
Ένα τέλος.
Οποιοδήποτε.

[1] Σελ. 16
[2] Σελ. 12
[3] Σελ. 20

*Αναδημοσίευση από το Στίγμα Λόγου στο http://stigmalogou.blogspot.com.au/2016/02/blog-post_17.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/JkQng+(%CF%83%CF%84%CE%AF%CE%B3%CE%BC%CE%B1%CE%9B%CF%8C%CE%B3%CE%BF%CF%85)