dublinka

Dublinka goes to sleep.

2007-12-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

Ok thats it for now folks. Dublinka is going into hibernation for all of 2008. Other projects are calling. You can still send mail, but replies are likely to be very very slow. Thanks to all who made it possible. You know who you are!

Into The Wild: Poetry of Byron

2007-12-09T14:10:00.000-08:00

Byron pops up in the beguiling Into The Wild. One of the movies of the year for those of you who haven't caught it yet.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and the music in its roar
I love not man the less, but Nature more.

The lines are from Childe Harold. Catch the rest here.

Poetry of Abby Oliveira

2007-11-20T13:24:00.000-08:00

Abby Oliveira, of the poetry chicks (a specious nom de plume which also takes in Pamela Brown and Jenni Doherty) is author of the sardonic and bitter Saddam is Hanged, a blunt reminder to its audience of the pointlessness of capital punishment. You can get the tone from the first verse below, which if it stays with you, and I think it might, will rescue from any dull and inane new years celebrations.

Ring the bells!
Revellers rejoice!
Hang gay garlands in the streets!
Meet your neighbours,
Sing, shake hands!
For Auld Land Syne
Saddam is hanged.

You can find the poem in the trios' promo Alphabetitudez Loose Lettters Vol.1.. Look out also for Milk and Black coffee., in which Oliveira recounts the story of her savage beating "when I was six years old and playin' in the play-park alone...". Its gritty, frightening and depressing. But like Saddam is hanged, it creates a public and necessary space, through which we, the theatre of the oblivious, should pass.

In passing the collection of micro stories, Wonderful of Worders (edited by Jenni Doherty) contains the great observation by Perry Gretton:

Truth says Keats is beauty, beauty truth.
But truth is no match for vanity,...no match at all.

Collected poems of Francis Harvey

2007-11-13T22:01:00.000-08:00

Dedalus have just released the Collected Poems of Francis Harvey. In addition to presenting new work it culls work from a number of collections such as In the Light on the Stones (1978), The Rainmakers (1987), The Boa Island Janus (1996), and Making Space (2001).

After opening the book, you find yourself wandering across rugged landscapes, in the presence of a deeply authentic voice, which at times is given to wry remarks or incidental observations, before fading into ellipsis. This is not then a collection of poems, as you first thought, but the passing of a long conversation, which was ongoing before you opened the book, and which will continue long after you shut it. In some respects then it recalls Edgar Lee Masters and the spoon river anthology. But this time the voice is largely singular, and the presence, not underground but fleet of foot and gigantic. It's hard to forget some of these poems. They are not radical in composition; they are quite traditional. They range from the naturalistic, Snow Again:

...the small print of a bird, A footnote
to nothing on the white page of the lawn.

To the small town snapshots, Referendum

...it was a clean thing to kill Brits
with guns but that he'd take a horsewhip
to any son of his he caught with a condom.

For Harvey you discover, is a chronicler and cartographer of Ulster and in particular South Donegal. Perhaps no other Irish writer has claimed a space as well as this poet. Not even Kavanagh. He knows its skies, its islands, its headlands, its beaches, its fence posts, its rocks, its trees. He knows its small towns and its people. Each poem stands alone, but all build into a masterful composition. No one is spared from this work of art. Even the poet himself, is snared in the dripping amber of this poetry.

In Wittgenstein, the poet retorts that there might be someone who...could teach him the private language of the heart? and in Theorem he states that One way or another, I know what they think of Euclid in Lettermacaward in West Donegal. Such writing is not so much an anti-intellectual stance, but rather the insistence of recognition for a world, which happily ignores the abstract in favour of happier thoughts such as those found in Epistemology, where Age has not yet sucked all the sweetness out of a voice that reaches me faintly as I lie in bed reading in the room above., or grittier problems, as in The Sheets: Daddy she'd try, Daddy, stop, stop, it's your Flossie! Her arms stretched under him like a cross. Giving voice to these people, Harvey sounds the opinion that like a bird in Living Art, this world is, a...living abstract botched by Mondrian. The simpler philosophy of the people the poet documents, is, we may infer from his introspective poem Getting through: I am what I am. - The response God used in the Bible when Moses asked for his name.

Do not go to Donegal without this voice. It is half shepherd, half sheep. And quite Beautiful.

'Terrorist' Poetry of Samina Malik

2007-11-08T15:11:00.000-08:00

Today's Guardian is running a story on the conviction of Samina Malika -the supposedly self dubbed, but conveniently media friendly label, 'Lyrical Terrorist'. Malika was found guilty under anti-terror legislation for possessing information useful to terrorists. On interest to Dublinka is that her poetry was cited in court as evidence against her.

Malik, wrote at least two poems entitled How To Behead and The Living Martyrs:

The Living Martyrs, read: "Let us make Jihad/ Move to the front line/ To chop chop head of kuffar swine".

The second poem was called How to Behead. "It's not as messy or as hard as some may think/ It's all about the flow of the wrist," it read.

On first impressions you might indeed be tempted to think of these as gory evidence. But the sad reality is, that if poems now count as terrorist fingerprints, you could probably, with a little probing, arrest most poets in the country - for an array of crimes. And imagine how many nationalist folk/terrorist singers you could fill the Old Bailey with...The paper merely reports the lyrical 'evidence' however, and simply files it under its now burgeoning 'terrorism' folder - as can be seen by looking closely at the url:http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2207426,00.html

Has the Guardian ceased to think about what it reports?

Halloween poetry from The Science Fiction Poetry Association

2007-10-31T02:45:00.000-07:00

The Science Fiction Poetry Association have released their annual selection of Halloween Poetry. Liz Bennefeld, has once again like last year come up with a nice piece called: At Allantide. It's a reference to the old Cornish custom at Halloween, of keeping apples under your pillow, in order to dream of your future lover. It's vivid, gothic, and spooky, and resonates with quakerish imagination. There too, Karen Romanko (author of image above), has an eerie underwater poem of murder and reclamation. A link to Sue Burke's Gods in Galcia, a wonderful composite prose poem, can also be found. See extract below:

A bronze statue of the Spanish writer Ramón de Valle Inclán, recently erected by students of the local university where he had studied a century ago, sits on a bronze bench on a park hillside. With his trademark long beard, arms crossed, wearing spats, frail and thin, he watches the distant, lichen-encrusted granite spires of the magnificent cathedral in the city of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, northwestern Spain. "In this petrified city, the idea of Time flees," he wrote. "It seems not old but eternal. It has the solitude, the sadness and the force of a mountain."

Poetry of Ian Curtis in Control.

2007-10-14T15:44:00.000-07:00

Like many Joy Division fans, director Anton Corbijn clearly favours the proposition that Ian Curtis, was a poet of first rate distinction. Unfortunately he promptly sets about undermining this idea by making our hero recite the terminally uncool Wordsworth, and worse never really takes us into the little folders of angst that, who but who, at one time, doesn't possess. Little wonder that Time Out New York speaks of smudged poetry. That said a passing, shot of some book spines and a reference to the Hollow Men, breaths some life into our understanding of the intellectual background of Curtis, who's lyrics in his best songs, which are all on play here, remain exceptional in their simplicity and depth:

Mother, I tried, please believe me. I'm doing the best that I can. I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through. I'm ashamed of the person I am.

All in all though you'd be much better getting the book which inspired the film Touching from a distance, because unlike the film, it has the missing goods. In passing Dublinka readers might, enjoy the casting / guest appearance of John Cooper Clark playing himself, and reciting Evidently Chickentown.

Burmese Poet Aung Way calls for People action

2007-10-07T03:41:00.000-07:00

After yesterdays demonstration in Dublin and around the world, I think its kind of appropriate to point you to this you tube footage of a poem by Burmese Poet Aung Way. Apparently Aung Way dedicated his poem to the quest for peace with the monks and call for the joint action with the monks toward the struggle for the freedom of Burma from dictatorship. Only a little bit of the dialogue is in English but you can get the spirit of the movement by the images, tone and music.

Poetry in the Devils Dictionary

2007-10-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten how much poetry there is in Ambrose Bierce's Devils Dictionary. An unholy amount given the nature of the author one might think. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines as he puts it himself. Perhaps he foresaw blogs? Still, they bring the odd smile.

FAMOUS, adj.
Conspicuously miserable.

Done to a turn on the iron, behold
Him who to be famous aspired.
Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold,
And his twistings are greatly admired.

Franz and Schrader: Concrete poetry cut up book.

2007-09-29T02:16:00.000-07:00

Oto-housebooks are flogging this interesting concrete poetry collaboration by Mon Franz and H. Schrader. From the blurb...

Red card board box (11 x 11 x 10,5) that houses four parts of a book that measured originally 35 x 9,5 cm. The book is printed on red and white stock. The white stock (approximately 60 pages) is bound in the center of the book and these pages print Mon’s concrete poetry. After completion the book has been cut in 4 parts by Schrader.

- First edition. One of 100 copies, numbered and signed in pencil by both Schrader and Mon.

German Poetry Slam Flyers

2007-09-29T01:56:00.000-07:00

A small collection of German poetry slam flyers has a certain charm, over at kamalatta-kamalatta.

Can Americans write poetry with 600,000 dead in Iraq?

2007-09-14T03:45:00.000-07:00

To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, wrote Adorno in a much understood contemplation of the role of poetry in a post holocaust world. In a similar vain, which will be equally misunderstood, I'd like to ask, can Americans with over 600,000 people now estimated dead in Iraq as a result of the war on terror, write poetry during this bloodshed? The naive answer to this, yes we are living in dark times, we poets must write on, we must, we have to, and besides we're doing all we can to help. But in fact the truth is darker. It's a matter of simple statistics. There is no earthly reason to think that all poets, when they vote at all, vote democrat. Many will have voted Republican. They will have, by their actions, if not in their poetry, actively chosen war. Can Americans write poetry with 600,000 dead, oh yes, without doubt. Of course these poets in a post Iraq reckoning, will be excised from the history books. The unpalatable does not tend to be remembered. It was Ginsberg and company who entered the pantheon after Vietnam, not such shadows who write, about beauty, truth, and being, on the wings of bombers over the deserts of blood. This war must stop. There is poetry in action too.

40 poems Peter Brabazon.

2007-09-11T00:47:00.000-07:00

Peter Brabazon of Callan Co. Kilkenny, released a slender collection entitled 40 poems just last year. It's a slice from over 28 years of writing and shows a poet in search of form, but never quite settling. Brabazon tries his hand at acrostics (one to Deirdre O' Connell formerly of Focus Theatre), concrete poems, and to my knowledge, a new and novel form, in the poem 81 Squares: The question, which when you look at it for obvious reasons can only be called the Sudoku. It's slightly beyond concrete though and for that reason is probably enough to earn him entry to OULIPOU. La Stampa Pagina 7 steals the show however, with a copied list of women's names from an advertisement in an Italian newspaper advertisement. Pure music. Some of the other work is uneven, but there's enough here to make you want to read more. I'm sure there's more to come.

Nick Cave at the Vienna Poetry Academy

2007-09-06T00:21:00.001-07:00

Here's a shot of Nick Cave doing a little teaching at the Vienna Poetry Academy (schule fur dichtüng), back in 98. The school concentrates on the the multimedia & the multilingal aspect of poetry. Cave themed his lecture: the love song and how to write one: a practical investigation into the love song.

Look out especially for the quirky europop video with Cave, Ginsberg, and Falco. With loveable old Ginsberg singing the international crazy wisdom poetry school will save the human race it's oddly touching in a eurovision/ school play kind of way.

Dichtung and Goethe

2007-09-06T00:12:00.000-07:00

For those who don't quite get it, this little gag refers to Goethe's Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit. See here.

Gustav Klimt's poesie

2007-09-02T08:02:00.000-07:00

Gustav Klimt's poesie revels in a certain dreamy way, an endlessly enduring conceptualisation of the reader of poetry. One in which lovers share each other as pillow, page and word. In which sensuality, and ritual, enfold and enrapture. In a post human poetic, we can expect this idea to be consigned to oblivion. But for now, it remains deliriously irresistible and iconic.

And skyward the seas. Johann P. Tammen.

2007-09-02T03:32:00.000-07:00

Johann P. Tammen released in 2006, a trilingual edition (Gaelige, German, and English) of And skyward the seas. The text layout works surprisingly well, and if you find a poem you like, having it in three languages feels like a bonus. Such is the case for me with the work Snow summer night at Loccum, which as it seeks to capture and present a snowscape for the reader, has a certain acrobatic delicacy in its play with light, sound and movement. Perhaps poetry is finished when it tires with snow. The endless versatility it offers the imagination is irresistible for most poets. But probably because of this very fact, this poet has drawn his words, over a layer of self. When it opens with "Flakes all forlorn Snow in a Flurry" (not to be confused with the Mc Flurry of Burger empire fame), it soon gives way to "the ear that listens and sounds out the poem's engineering". And so this muted awarness enters the readers consciousness, who thanks to having these three languages in the one bed, can also begin to tinker. Reading the Irish we can remove the burger pun, with an sneachta ina raiste. And we can make the snow crisper by reading der lauen Zunge der Nacht instead of the mild tongue of the night. It's alot of polyglot fun, kind of overriding a work that has at times a stilted academic resonance to it. This feeling emerges as Tammen engages the themes concerning the production (a mechanics of information flow) and function of poetry: without ever really exciting the reader. This is not really a surprise, these words were written for other words, as much as other people. It often feels cold and impersonal then. But for the same reasons, on the level of ideas, certain pieces work very well:

this poem
is merely a poem
a machine gleefully dancing
between the words
mocking other machines

Poetry in waitress...

2007-08-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

Dead director or no dead director, the overrated Waitress for all its efforts (a show it how it is darkness behind glorious technicolour illusions) falls flat on its own pie. But of interest to us, is the appearance of the glorious cringe Oggi (Eddie Jemison), half nerd, half accountant, all poet. Oggi, is given to 'spontaneous poetry' and his presence in the film constitutes a justified satire on this particular mode of expression - a worthy idea - especially when, as such spontaneity often dictates, a certain lowering in quality be experienced by the audience. Spontaneous poetry aficionados however, may take heart in the fact that their poetry still has an integral place in the rom genre (better than nothing one may sigh), and that if this is how spontaneous poetry is viewed in the mainstream, it will remain refreshingly cultish for the foreseeable future.

The Spoken Word Revolution Redux

2007-08-16T00:37:00.000-07:00

The Spoken Word Revolution Redux (edited by Mark Eleveld), has been on my table for a while now. It's a big clunky mulch of an ugly book reminiscent of a computer programming manual, not something you might carry around with you. Nevertheless it managed to hold my attention because of the dazzling variety of poetry it contains: a fascinating slice of diversity, from slam to laureate, complete with glimmering audio cd and interviews.

Each section contains a mixture of treasure and trash. One section musicians meeting poets / music meeting poetry, throws out an interesting letter from Jeff Buckley, where Buckley addresses Dylan in a gesture of public intimacy "It just kills me to know that whatever they told you is what you think I think of you", two beautiful curios from Jeff Tweedy of Wilco "the least wanted crayon" and the damp squib of Billy Corgan's Poetry of my heart ". But pride of place goes to Simone Muench's homage Tome Waits, I hate you: "the way your voice snags my skin when I'm waltzing." and Linton Kwesi Johnson's unforgettable Sonny's Lettah, which should be posted on the door of Brixton's cop shop. It's the story of Sonny, writing home to his mother from prison, having inadvertently killed a police officer, after stepping in to help resist a brutal attempt to arrest his brother. "mama, I jus couldn't stan up deh, nah do nuttin"

More policman come dung
dem beat me to the grung
dem charge Jim fi sus
dem charge me fi murdah

On a social level the work casts back into the light the reality of Brixton prison and many of its inmates, who find themselves locked away, due to the continued failure of London's policing to integrate itself into local communities; and which still after all these years operate on a policy of mistrust, tension, and brutality. On an individual level it speaks of loyalty, love and the randomness of life. Proving that effective communication which has broken down, or is absent on one level, is very much alive on another.

Elsewhere in It's History, Brendan Murphy tackles the interesting topic of an Essex's man attempting to rationalise the history of English behaviour in Ireland: It's 'istry, innit'ey? It's 'istry. Ben, from Essex attempts to balance up the various injustices inflicted by the English, with some of those carried out by the Irish. "And what about the horses in London? When they bombed the bloody horses. Poor bloody horses. I thought the Irish were meant to like horses. I thought the Irish were meant to like horses. I don't blame them for that, do I?". His solution, which gives voice to the dubious idea of writing everything off to the bad debt of history, fails to take into consideration the effects history continues to have on the present, whether we like it or not, and that it is not merely something past, without further effect. His failure to recognise this continued effect of history on his own emotions, and the taciturn Irish pub drinkers at who he rants, highlights a tension, that has recently been recognised in many societies; the problem of reconciling or making sense of the lingering sentiments of historical injustice. A first rate piece of poetry.

With other great pieces from Daphne Gotlieb, Nora Gomringer, and Marc Smith, this book is well worth a look see. The good outweighs the indifferent by a long shot. And chances are you might find a poet for life in here.

Chelly's Sightlines

2007-08-09T15:55:00.000-07:00

Belfast's Chelly has released a number of fantastic works including Friends Reunited, She just wants, and Silence is deadly, over on planet myspace. But best of all is her powerful work Sightlines .It's a poem which speaks for victims of war, which reveals an allusion, not so much to the bible, and a line in which you would think you would have to be crazy to use, as to the vicious darkness that gripped old Belfast. If you were there this poem will bring you back to that time of cold despair and anger. It captures that much. If you were not there, have a look see and learn, from the words and the tone. If this isn't the best poem you'll encounter all year I'll walk off into the night and never return.

Gerard Smyth's The Mirror Tent

2007-07-31T08:42:00.000-07:00

Gerard Smyth's The Mirror Tent is typical of a certain kind of Irish poetry, that more often than not annoys me. It's the kind where somehow an author seems blind to how hackneyed his iconography is, and how exhausted his metaphor has become. It's the kind which is excruciating in its sentimental and pat expression. It draws polite applause out of embarrassment, but in truth installs in the listener the urge to decapitate. The Mirror Tent, is suffocating. It's a languid drawl of canned name dropping nostalgia, that refuses to imagine an audience having to suffer it.

No one reads Ben Barton?

2007-07-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

Ben Barton of No one reads poetry fame, has posted a number of video poems, from his well received The Red book, including The Factory, Only Fruit, and Commandment No 5. Well worth a look.

Ferlinghetti The Berlin Tapes.

2007-06-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Ferlinghetti has released a reading made in Potsdamer Platz, Berlin in 2004. It includes the fantastic History of the Airplane, a beat polemic on planes, war and capitalism, and is worth getting for this alone. It begins with the Wright brothers who "thought they had invented something that could make peace on earth, if the wrong brothers didn't get hold of it" leading to the day the third world struck back and "stormed the great planes and flew them into the beating heart of skyscraper America". On first listen it's powerful stuff, and followed by the melodic Allen Ginsberg is dying you'll find yourself listening to it over and over. Certain criticisms in the poems lose their strength after a while, and there's a certain hokey 1960's feel to it, but hearing this audio really brings Ferlinghetti to an immediacy in a way that the printed word never could. Let's hope he records everything.(Tnx D.)

Mary O' Donoghue's Among These Winters.

2007-06-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

Mary O' Donoghue has just released her second collection of poetry. It's titled Among These Winters, and is replete with a catching image of a seahorse on the front cover by Tammy Peluso. It appears an apt choice given that a theme of twisted spine and curvature, pervades many of the poems and is made concrete in the poem Ess. But these are but preludes to darker material. In fact this volume alone is justified by one poem Leading the Apes into Hell; a title which owes itself to an old proverb, "and you know it well, that women dying maids lead apes into hell". The poem takes us through the gates of hell, (a nod to Dante?), and evokes a surreal renaissance procession, of gibbering and jibing verse, which mercilessly mocks its subject (Guess). At time the energy in this verse make it appear almost out of control. It is as if for a moment, O'Donoghue is inseparable from that same ingenious poetic which influenced Hieronymus Bosch. As it happens other work, such as Dauernarkose, Catalepsy Provoked by the Sound of a Tuning Fork, and Swallows - "The days starve her down, birds scream at her from the fire", bring to mind a different aspect of Bosch: madness. But unlike Bosch, there seems to be a greater urgency to move beyond observation, or description and pass over to judgement. Elsewhere some of O'Donoghue's verse sails perilously close to portentousness and verbosity. With yet other poems a self conscious literary sensibility reflects off their surface. But all this is usually tolerable enough, because of the kind of originality in thought, humour and feeling, that she manages to conjure up throughout. Finally, there's an exactitude of mind and precision here reminiscent of Marianne Moore, and a sentimental culchie streak qua Kavanagh, which seem to sit uneasily in each others company. One I suppose, will eventually give way as her work progress. In sum, five stars. Destined for greatness.

The nuclear option.

2007-05-30T02:09:00.000-07:00

"Konkrete Poesie"
mit Bydgoszcz, Wien, Budapest, Bratislava, Szczecin, Almada
Verena - Wien