Friday, September 22, 2017


Tom Cox is a writer I have been following recently on all social media platforms. I was first alerted to him by my daughter who insisted that here was a writer to look out for. He especially has a love of cats, and being a cat lover myself, I decided to follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and also read his blog posts.
    Tom is a Nottinghamshire-born British author, now based in Devon. He has published nine books, including the Sunday Times bestseller The Good, The Bad & The Furry and Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia, his account of his year as Britain’s most inept golf professional, which was longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year award. Between 1999 and 2000 he was the chief Rock Critic for The Guardian newspaper and went on to write columns and features for many other newspapers and magazines, before quitting print journalism altogether in 2015 to write pieces exclusively for his voluntary subscription website. He also hosts a monthly show on the experimental radio station Soundart. His new book, 21st Century Yokel - “a nature book, but not quite like any you will have read before” which crowdfunded in a record-breaking seven hours - will be published by Unbound in October, 2017.
  Tom Cox posts news of his books, his philosophy on life, family and especially tales about his cats, Roscoe, Ralph and sadly The Bear (who has since died). He highlights his writing with his own personalised photographic record, and sometimes a video of Sweary Cat. His concerted efforts to self-promote have gained him as many as 23.6K followers on Instagram, 69.3K on Twitter and 805,000 followers on Facebook (approx).

Tom's views on publishing his latest book 21st Century Yokel with Unbound.
As I began to write 21st Century Yokel, I could see other potential commercial decisions ahead of me that had nothing to do with whether or not the book ended up in the Pets section of Waterstones. I had sold all of my previous eight books to publishers on the basis of a synopsis and two or three sample chapters. Being sensible and thinking about my own financial security, I would do the same here. But to do so I would have to package the book with a very rigid theme that appealed to a sales department. It would need to be honed: made into a “journey”. Unfortunately, the word “journey” - if used in any literary sense - makes vomit spontaneously appear in my mouth and I enjoy writing a synopsis roughly the same amount that I enjoy crawling about in heavy sleet cleaning up the contents of a split bin bag. I know why synopses need to exist but writing them is, in many ways, the opposite to writing books - or at least all the factors I most enjoy about writing books. It’s unfreeing, self-branding, corporation-pleasing. My favourite non-fiction books are on quite diverse subjects but tend to have one uniting factor: none of them would have made sense as a three thousand word pitch. I do not think it is any coincidence that my worst book, Educating Peter (reminder: don’t buy it), made for the pitch that was most exciting to a publisher. A book needs coherence and rhythm and theme but coherence and rhythm and theme are often a mystery that can be hit on only by doing one thing: writing that book.”
His website : www.tom-cox.com

Wednesday, September 20, 2017


Vase

In some obscure town in Portugal the potter left his mark. When did he finish it? Where were the fields of yellow daisies? When the object went into the kiln, did he think of the blue sky he once laid under by a river with his lover? The potter had enthusiasm for its shape and contour; tall and robust, small neck like a woman. It appears to have something that men think about. And men think about fields, country roads, edges and woods with the strong scent of spring. The vase will be thirsty for his plucked yellow daises, valentina, or gold acacia, for her table.


Tuesday, September 19, 2017

To be published in Plumwood Mountain Journal

Flute of Milk by Susan Fealy
Perth, WA: UWA Publishing, 2017.ISBN: 9781742589398

I recently visited a small country town in Western Australia and attended Saturday morning markets. I bought a small plastic tray for $3. A memento I assumed from the seller by visiting the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. It’s amazing when serendipity occurs. Imprinted on its surface is Johannes Vermeer’s painting the Milkmaid. after The Milkmaid’ is an epigraph in Susan Fealy’s first poem titled Made in Deflt, and perhaps the first line conveys a museum visit, where ‘White walls melken the daylight’.  

Ekphrastic poems loom large in this collection. However, as a reviewer I’m not here to praise how well Fealy defines these works as an inspiration for her poetry. They are merely a backdrop for her visceral language that creates a kind of Droste effect; an image within an image, or her words over art-form: the map of the world / has been painted over.  

Only a woman, blond
Light from the window,
Her wide-mouthed jug
And bread on the table
One can almost taste the milk
Escaping her jug.    Page 15

An emotional response to this work might be through an ecological valence. The poet responds positively to coloured environmental objects, cultivating Henri Matisse’s blues. A certain blue penetrates your soul is a quote from Matisse and used as an epigraph to the poem A Confluence of Blues. Colours are conveyed in sensual language and are a visual experience for the reader. Fealy uses the sense of sight (even sound) to convey her unique expressions of blue; ones that indeed penetrate the soul.

Blue
The frequency
of light that lies
between violet and green
Arthur Dove once said
Painting is music of the eyes.
A fleet of blues flute violet
others oboe green.       Page 18

This collection published by UWA Publishing is enriched with Fealy’s use of known-mediums such as Literature, the Melbourne Museum, The Oxford Dictionary, a Sculptor, as well Australian Artists and Poetry. All are referenced as “Notes” on Pages 75-76. Michael Sharkey suggests in his review of the work. ‘Fealy’s references “go beyond description of the objects and processes of each object or art-form she considers, to suggest an interest in the causes of artistic inspiration across all the modes of art that strike her eye and mind. On the face of it, her poetry is provoked by surprise confrontations with arresting verbal accounts of events and phenomena, and with artistic work in other modes than poetry. Visual art, plastic arts, film, flower-arrangement, ceramics … they’re collisions of eye with object.”

These lines are highlighted from For Cornflowers to Sing (Still Life with Cornflowers, Brett Whitely). And The Vase Imposes.

For cornflowers to sing
each line must scar
its making

There must be light
and the idea of a window   Page 65
………………………..

The Master of Flowers respects
the economy of nature ─

confines them
in slim vessels, quells
a mad thirst with still water.  Page 66


The Milkmaid (on plastic)



to be continued when published ......


Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Elvis Presley's Pink Caddy

50s Cars

You saw them go by. Sometimes on the spare-tyre back carrier – an immobile army of kids.  50s cars moved through the town with chrome headlight bezels and concave grilles. Some were toothy tail-finned dream machines. The Oldsmobile, with flying colours, 202 horsepower engine, went like a Rocket. The powerful Pontiac proved performance with pleasure and profit. Elvis cruised in a pink Cadillac, crooning a tune in cool leather seats. The Buick convertible thrust manual transmission, while wolf whistles followed its swerve through the streets.
    Under a clearing of clouds on a blue day, people waited at the top of a hill; a convoy of expressions as midday shutters went down. An FJ Holden drifted into town, whitewall tyres, classy black-and-white upholstered seats, green roof top, a shimmer of chrome. At the other end, a Chevy gurgled and shifted its dicky seat. The men looked up and down the street at one another, displaced dust in the rumble of engines. Kids lined the sidewalk, thrusting arms. It was a strange form of experiment, a game, a massive attack of bravado and wheels – entertainment for everyone!


Bounty

Bounty
Prose Poetry

The Five Lives of Ms Bennett

The Five Lives of Ms Bennett
A Family Saga

The Ozone Cafe

The Ozone Cafe
White Collar Crime

The Last Asbestos Town

The Last Asbestos Town
Available from Amazon

Evangelyne

Evangelyne
Published by Australian Poetry Centre, Melbourne

of Arc & Shadow

of Arc & Shadow
Published by Sunline Press, WA

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