Poem for the Day

Ode to the Post(wom)an
It is always the postman delivering news,
outstretching arms to that most noticeable
point - letterbox at land's edge. Friend and
lifelong reminder of correspondences. And although
those dreaded bills equate to the missing zero at the bank,
there's harmony in a house with gas, light globes glowing dust.
Little envelopes and packages move forward
like gifts: birthday parcels, a postcard from Turkey,
stamps to re-cycle if they've missed the mark.
Most days the postie steers his heart like a looping
Evel Knievel on a wobbly ten-stroke. There's grit & sand,
grass without splendour, cars on-the-verge, savage dogs,
tom cats hypnotised by scent. We hardly praise the postie
in this current road rage, a visitor to our home we never
invite for tea. We don't call out his or her name,
We don't know our postman, do we?

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Helen Hagemann's Poetics - The Female Voice

Problems for Women

When it comes to our writing tradition, it has relatively only been, (& referring to Virginia Woolf 's A Room of One's Own), a matter of eighty years since women have been allowed a sense of equality as writers. We are allowed into university libraries, we no longer hold back in relation to our female psyche. We have established the objectivism of the female through political correctness, and no subject matter is diminished by its inclusion (i.e the domestic). We no longer hide in attics (like the Bronte sisters), are taken seriously beyond the word "scribbler", and no longer experience the undermining of subjectivity re women's health issues/"hysterical" labelling - as with Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. Authors of fiction and non-fiction find success with publishers, embrace all genres, are brilliant at crime writing, literary works, historical romance, to name only a few. However, these are established genres and are formulaic. And why would a female author want to change this tradition.

When it comes to the tradition of poetry for women, there are problems. Firstly, their is no tradition of women's poetry per se. If we look back in time to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron & Shelley we find an overarching predominence of male poets, published with collections tucked neatly under their smoking jackets. One could argue, yes, women were writing poetry at that time, but 19thC poets such as Emily Dickenson, Christina Rosetti, & Elizabeth Browning, were not published in their lifetime.

Therefore, when we discuss/argue/critique traditional poetry (& its various forms handed down), we are looking at a page where poetry is male orientated. In other words, heavily influenced by their psyche, gender, perspective, views, beliefs, attitudes, esp. attitudes towards women. Consider here the male poet's muse, that inspirational female spirit as similar as Shakespeare's Ariel to Prospero. Where does this leave the woman poet? Certainly not part of the 19thC tradition of poetry, certainly marginalised and certainly negated under the label of "woman" historically as lack, deficient, and subordinate in the position of mastery. (Luce Irigaray, - The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine).

Therefore, when the modern woman comes to poetry, what she finds is the traditional "poetry of men". Not that that is such a bad thing. How we love the imagery of Edgar Allan Poe's Raven "knock, knock, knocking at the door" or the Falcon in Gerald Manly Hopkins' The Windhover. But this doesn't alter the fact that there has been a minority voice gone unheard.

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Poem for the Day

Masks

My daughter carries her life
in a suitcase. Life would be cosier,
for her - if she never left home.
Today she returns like a tryst
softening her edges. Perth is home.
It will bathe her in stars, & by day,
her skin will be treated to sun.
Her heels will feel the pacy city
grown, more cars, more trains,
but no trams dividing roads.
Not that she didn't like Melbourne.
No! Melbs was cool, trendy, more nightclubs
& bands. But the men, oh
the men were the same
dark hair, dark eyes from too much
ranting/ ego (or was it drugs?).
In her early move she loved the city,
the Yarra, a song she wrote, her band
at festivals, the Federation squares of art,
more terrestrial than colonised.
She frequented Brunswick, all the organic
vegie shops, two-dollar markets, loved
her Armani suit; those designer clothes
she found in trinket/ op-shops.
In Perth, she will wear these possessions
mask what she has lost.

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The Western & Sydney Rock Oysters

Pacific & Indian Ocean Oysters

Around Australia there are basically three common oysters available. The most popular being the Sydney rock oyster which grows on the eastern seaboard in temperate waters. They are low in cholesterol and high in omega-3, calcium, iron and zinc. The fun is really in the prising, gathering and eating these delicious shellfish. All my life, I have fished from the many bays, inlets & now islands of my home in the West.

Poem of the Day
Oysters

Oysters are the barnacles at land's edge.
Tangled together, we prise them from rock,
gather their gritty caves, as if leaving the reef
wrecked with tiny-white burrs of empty skulls.
Now the sea is touching our tongues,
our minds not listening to each other
as we slide the muscle between teeth;
taste the oyster, if only in one gulp.
We work all morning, the tide inching its high
watermark, renewing a chipped & mottled look.
We bend & stiffen in the gathering,
amble back to the quadrangle for ice.
Olive trees shading our walk, to our own
private view of a cafe island;
the wind gathering in our hair,
pushing us forward to cutlery & tablecloth,
cane chair, eyes swallowing an ocean.

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Australian Book Review

Australian Book Review, October 2008

City of Literature
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has named Melbourne as its second City of Literature, Edinburgh became the first in 2004. The Victorian government announced the bid in late 2006 and committed $9 million in the 2007-2008 budget to support the Melbourne Writers' Festival and establish the Centre for Books and Ideas at the State Library of Victoria.
   The Centre will provide a home for a variety of literature bodies, including the Melbourne Writers' Festival, the Victorian Writers' Centre, the Emerging Writers' Festival and the Australian Poetry Centre.

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