Now I realise that I've left this blog lying fallow for a little while, so I have no idea if it will do any good to post this info, but my book is apparently in shops in Australia now. Selected shops. The independent ones that usually have poetry books. I imagine. I don't really know anything.

I've been told it's pretty, so that's nice. I know at least 2 copies have sold. That's also nice. That said, I looked at a handful of the poems the other night and wanted to edit them. It's hard to let go...

So. There. I'm proud of it, even as I'm aware of my little book's shortcomings. Fire Season is out in the world.

My wordle above comes care of wordle...

I’ve been doing a lot of alphabetisation, organising Carolyn’s university and home offices. And talking about definitions of “poetics,” which, as she points out, is being used in rather a vague manner. I was inspired after discussing this over lunch (there are some wonderful perks in helping organise the library…) to go home and check the OED on poetics and poesis…

The OED lists the noun uses of “poetic” (no entry for “poetics,” even though that is almost exclusively how I hear it used here…) as follows:

B. n.
1. In sing. and pl.
a. The aspect of literary criticism that deals with poetry; the branch of knowledge that deals with the techniques of poetry. Also: a treatise on poetic art, spec. that written by Aristotle.
1656 T. STANLEY Hist. Philos. II. VI. 31 Philologick... Poeticks. 1702 Perfidious P 134, I believe you are the only Man that ever read Aristotle, that had the shadow of a Reason against any thing he has said in his Poeticks. 1776 C. BURNEY Gen. Hist. Music I. Pref. p. viii, It is imagined that Plutarch took it either from his [sc. Aristotle's] Treatise on Music, or the second book of his Poetics. 1807 BYRON Let. 30 June (1973) I. 123 Even the hero of my Cornelian (who is now sitting vis-a-vis, reading a volume of my poetics) passed me in Trinity walks. 1834 Penny Cycl. II. 335/2Aristotle's genuine extant works may be divided into three classes: 1. Those relating to the philosophy of the mind... To this head may be referred..his Rhetoric and Poetic: the last of which works is imperfect. 1879 M. PATTISON Milton xiii. 200 The principle of the Aristotelean Poetic. 1917 T. S. ELIOT Prufrock 38 With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute. 1990 Bull. Hispanic Stud. 67 331 In the past few years, the application of narratological and semiotic approaches has proved to be crucial for the development of a poetics of the romancero.
b. The creative principles informing any literary, social or cultural construction, or the theoretical study of these; a theory of form.
1927 Contemp. Rev. July 59 M. Valéry's poetics have been accused of hermetism and of preciousness. 1973 Word 1970 26 66 Jakobson avoids the term stylistics, preferring instead poetics. 1976 Times Lit. Suppl. 2 Jan. 11/2 To subscribe to this poetic was to doubt the validity of art and the veracity of dreams. 1977 A. SHERIDAN tr. J. Lacan Écritsiii. 102 This notion must be approached through its resonances in what I shall call the poetics of the Freudian corpus.1990 Lit. & Ling. Computing 5 197/1 Now more than ever poetics aspires to integrate itself within the evolving larger field of the human sciences.
2. A writer of poetry, a poet. Obs. rare.
1687 J. PARRY To Cleveland in J. Cleveland Wks. 286 Where all Poeticks else may truckle under. 1687 J. PARRY Elegy on Cleveland in J. Cleveland Wks. 285 'Tis your Crime T'upbraid the State-Poeticks of this time.
3. In pl. Poetic composition; the writing of poems. Obs. rare.
1851 T. CARLYLE Life J. Sterling II. x. 285 Our valiant friend..was not to be repulsed from his Poetics either by the world's coldness or by mine.

Most people seem to have abandoned the original, Aristotelian use of the word. So 1b is the winner when it comes to the way the word is bandied around.

But then! Ah yes, but the… there is also poesis. It’s entry is as follows:

1. A poem; poems collectively, poetry, verse; poesy. Now rare.
1565 J. HALL Courte of Vertu (title) A poesis in forme of a uisyon. 1567 T. DRANT tr. Horace Arte of Poetrie sig. Aiiiv,Not lore enough in Poesis, let them be sweetlye fynde, And let them leade to where them liste the hearers plyante mynde. 1617 J. DAVIES Wits Bedlam sig. H3v, Poesie be..A speaking Picture..Then must a Picture needs be made, by this, A silent Poesis, subiect to the Eye. 1742 W. CLARKE & W. BOWYER tr. J. Trapp Lect. Poetry 22 We generally use the Words Poesis and Poetica, Poesy and Poetry, indiscriminately. 1894 Amer. Jrnl. Philol. 15 16 Before Lucilius's time a single play (poema) had been called satura, he gave this designation to his thirty books (poesis). 1899 J. E. SPINGARN Hist. Lit. Crit. 27 Poetica is the art of composing poetry, poesis, the poetry composed according to this art.1993 Faquery 1: who writes R.A.P.? in rec.arts.poems (Usenet newsgroup) 16 Apr., Discussions about the art of poetry and the science of poesis, including issues about use of language, poetical forms, and the work of various poets.

2. The process of making; production, creation; creativity, culture (cf. POIESIS n.).
1903 L. F. WARD Pure Sociol. II. v. 88 Poesis is a form of creative synthesis. 1939 S. CHUGERMAN Lester S. Ward 271Poesis is the creative, synthetic process of the intellect applied to all the sciences and practical arts. 1963 F. C. CREWSPooh Perplex (1979) 91 It is clear that the object of study here..falls essentially into the category of art, or broadly speaking, poesis. 1989 Requiem 9 I. 35 The first poem, the Original original one..was God's literal poesis of the world.2003 Chicago Rev. (Nexis) 49 31 Reading as poesisa materially based making of the text into something of use, positioning it phrase by phrase..in complex..relation to one's projects.

This second meaning seems to me to have been lumped into “poetics” these days. Yes? No? And I’m interesting that all the uses of poesis in this second sense fall after the start of the 20th century.

As usual I’m feeling insanely busy. I also think I’m probably not managing my time as well as I could be—should be. But I got through some tutoring, some reading, some scribbling of notes today. Got through some knitting. Thought about of Anne Carson’s work. Started to think about Wordsworth again, after two days off—and at the moment, taking two days off from Wordsworth feels almost like a crime.

But I did enlighten the ducks of the C & O Canal last weekend when I saw canal-side and read the whole of Lyrical Ballads aloud to them. (I’m glad I have a segment of the canal near me that I really don’t have to share with anyone but the occasional dog and its owner, and the ducks.)

Tutoring at the Writing Center has been really busy—today was the first shift where I’ve had a breather. Read about Hegel for a while after I saw my client. While the Writing Center was quiet, I had two students come in to see me while I was tutoring (as a volunteer) at Duke Ellington this morning—it’s nice that those students are starting to take advantage of the tutoring service.

I have to write a short paper on a poem from Lyrical Ballads in the next few days—I want to get a draft of the thing done tomorrow morning, so that I can go through my ideas of the next few days. I’m mostly likely going to write on “The Idiot Boy”—there are things that interest me in it, though also things that don’t work for me. I’m giving a presentation in class next week on “Tintern Abbey” too.

Last week I was quite social—in between doing an intense amount of reading I went to see the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Romeo and Juliet with my friend C, and two of his friends. Thursday I went to a great launch at the Library of Congress—short and sweet speeches, a few good poems, and a couple that were wonderful. Discovered the work of Sinead Morrisey. I can't wait to read more. Friday I decided not to go dancing at the last minute, and instead stayed in. But then it was back out on Saturday night—after reading all day I ended up at a friend-of-a-friend’s party. Dancing, handstands, talking with fabulous people and general fun ensued.

And I’ve been thinking and thinking that soon I will get to writing some poems. It hasn’t happened yet, but I have high hopes. I have ideas—both reading Wordsworth and Coleridge, and all the poets for Carolyn’s class on Poetry of Witness, and any extra poetry I happen to be able to stuff into my days.

It’s been so long since I wrote a response paper that I’m feeling really nervous! I know I’ve done a lot of other writing, but my ideas seem so chaotic at the moment. also went through some days of panicking about my thesis last week—and then dreamed that Michael Ondaatje emailed me some ideas for it. Odd. I guess I really am going insane: as happens to grad students.

My second birthday in DC. I have, of course, talked to my mum. And, since it’s my birthday (as well as Independence Day for Mali and Bulgaria), I’m trying to ignore the whole economic crisis thing going on. I mean, I know in some quarters people were feeling ye olde “cautious optimism” on Friday, but I’m just waiting for the next thing to fall apart. And I’ve been worried about global warming for 22 years. Wait, it’s my birthday. That’s a day off worry, right?

I read some Coleridge this morning that I really loved. It was exciting, as I thought I was in the Wordsworth and Coleridge class all for WW’s sake. No, it turns out I can be a sucker for Coleridge, and perhaps I will be.

I’ve just started a research blog for my thesis project. This means that I have basically become the queen of blogs in the English department. I don’t think that’s a cool thing—just a fact. Anyway, since it’s messy, it’s pretty much a closed blog. But if you’re interested I can register you to read it. Send your details on a piece of batter pudding… Oh wait, this isn’t The Goon Show (damn it!). Email me.

And I read a bunch of Nelly Sachs on the weekend. Wow. Also, a bunch of Brecht’s poetry. Obviously in translation as my super high school German skills from year 8 and 9 don’t reach to reading… well, anything—beyond “Hi, my name’s [insert name here] and I’m from Australia.” I can also say that I study geography, even though I don’t. It’s sort of like how I can say in Auslan (that’s Australian sign language for those not in the know… and yes, Australian sign is different from American) “I have a duck.” Life skills.

So, I’m turning 29. What’s happening? Well, there’s been some nice news on the poetry front. My book will come out sometime next year, I’ll have a piece in Best Australian Poems and there’s another anthology that wants me to send some work. I also had an odd dream about a journal I could submit poetry to. I wonder if it exists. Maybe I could dream it into existence, just like, apparently, people in ancient Greece could go to a certain temple to dream their own cures.

I have to get into Serious Attention to School mode. With a side serve of Serious Attention to Writing. Any day now. Life keeps being unexpectedly busy.

I’ve been a bit slow letting you know my underground activities this week—things have been busy, though actually a little less busy than last week, when I was finishing off the Discovery Class.

I’m in a really wonderful mood this afternoon—even though my class wasn’t ready to discuss Henry James, we had a really productive session looking through their four page papers on Dead Poets Society. We didn’t get through all of them, but looking at two really in-depth was good. Once again things are being re-arranged—we’ll look at some short papers tomorrow, as well as hopefully the last two Dead Poets responses, and then look through Daisy Miller on Monday. I’m hoping to free up Tuesday and Wednesday for class peer-reviewing, and I’ve given the students extra options with their portfolio: if, having written their four original papers, all around 4 pages, they really hate one, they can discard it and turn another paper into an eight page piece of writing. I told my class, too, about some of the pedagogical articles on the teaching of writing, because I found them useful to thinking about my own writing. They’re really interested in reading them—and the reason I think that this is something very helpful for students is that they make even more explicit the degree to which writing is a process. To teach something, you have to be able to break it down in those process-steps.

Earlier this week I read a draft of my friend Carolyn’s thesis. She’s writing on pedagogies of writing, and one of the things that interested me most what her writing about how experts in other fields approach their work/become experts, and how that may be applied to the writing process. One of her central analogies was to the musician: obviously, with my training, this would appeal. The thing that rang true is the fact that the amateur musician plays a piece from start to finish. Even if they stop to go over where the mistakes might lie and practice those tricky passages a few times, they still “start at the top.” The expert musician will tend to go straight to the problematic parts, and work at the technique. I remember, oh so many times, starting with long tone exercises for maybe half an hour, then an hour or so on the technical parts of playing the flute before maybe allowing a quarter of a two-hour practice session on playing pieces of music… and still rarely from start to finish. I’m less disciplined when I do pick up my flute now, but I have that training, and I know what it means to play at a high level, and I still play through to find where the problems lie and then attack those sections. It’s so interesting. So I talked to my students about this idea, how getting these fundamentals in place allows you to do all the other things: if I can’t get the technique of the flute, putting “interpretation” and “style” on top won’t cover the failure in fundamentals. The basic form of an argumentative essay is, to some degree, a fundamental—getting that in place gives you the opportunity to then have fun with the piece of writing.

I feel like things have been going well, even in the very small class. It doesn’t feel like as much hard work—I’ve gotten better at asking questions, and when we workshopped the longer papers today, I could see the two students whose work we were looking at begin to voice the feedback I would give before I was giving it. I’m really loving this class.

Earlier this week we’ve look at two short stories and the opening portion of a novel. The first story we looked at was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” One student came in and asked why everything was so repetitious, but said too that The Great Gatsby was his favourite book. I told him to go home and read “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” and think about if this was Daisy’s set, 6 years before the action of Gatsby. He came in the next day and said he loved the story. We looked then at two really recent pieces of writing—Nell Freudenberger’s “The Tutor” from Lucky Girls, and the opening chapter of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, to think through what kind of things are set up in the beginning of a story, and how contrasts and oppositions (here, class, race) are set up at the outset of most works. I feel like each student responded to different work, though with such a small number of people it was hard to keep the conversation going all the time. Still, I loved it when a student came in to discuss “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” and said, “It’s just like Mean Girls.” Now I haven’t seen Mean Girls yet, but the trailer told me a lot, and judging by the trailer I agree…

In other news, one of the Baked and Wired boys, Taylor, invited me to this poetry group last night. So I wandered up to Columbia Heights and found myself having such a great time: reading poems, writing poems. (I feel like my poem is a good basis for a poem, but it is, at the moment, a little too “neat.” Sometimes I think my endings resolve too quickly—like it used to be with my music. I’ve gotten much better with the poems, but it takes work, and twenty minutes last night wasn’t enough. Also, I feel like a bit of research will add something to the mix.) It was such a relief to talk about poetry. I feel like I’ve been so ensconced in teaching, that some of my fundamental activities—reading, writing—haven’t had as much attention as they otherwise would, or as they should. So, I’m going to try to get some more bits of writing happening in the next week, even before class finishes. Then I’ll have another ten days or so to think and laze about and maybe get out of town for a day or two before my parents arrive.

Did I mention that my mother and father are coming out? I haven’t seen them since early January, and Skype conversations don’t quite make up for it. In three weeks I’ll be in the Australian fold. I’m a happy, happy Miss Kate.

A recent preoccupation has been Clara Bow—though I still haven’t seen any of her films, including It—the film that gives us the phrase “It-girl.” Sienna Miller has nothing on Clara. I’m thinking of wandering to campus this afternoon and burying myself in the library for an hour and a half to watch this film.

On the plane to Panama City, I read a biography of her (Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, by David Stern) and took notes—another actress poem. Number six. I scribbled bits and pieces towards the poem while in Panama, and then this morning took myself to Baked and Wired to have a stab at putting it together. I think the resulting poetic “essay” works, though I’m never certain.

So many actresses.

I still haven’t managed to write my Louise Brooks piece, though I will. In the mean time (and, interestingly, care of an essay Louise Brooks wrote) I’ve become interested in Lillian Gish—I’ve seen only one of her films. The D W Griffith Broken Blossoms. She’s quite wonderful.

It’s so nice to be writing. Some prose ideas coming too—both articles, but maybe some fiction. Sometime.

I also have to try to get myself into gear to write a few abstracts today, for some conferences I’ve found that interest me. I’m behind—hugely behind—in my ambition to visit ten or more states this year. I’ve been to Virginia and New York. And I’d been to both of those before. I will get there.

Oh! To write is blissful. To follow one book to the next that book suggests.

I am finally reading The English Patient. I’ve devoured Ondaatje’s poems, but somehow never read all his novels. Now I’m jumping in.

And the weather is beautiful—I feel light and happy. Plan to go to the Kennedy Center tonight for a free performance (a dance showcase) and maybe I’ll take some photographs on the way back…

During the week I’ll start seriously thinking about getting some academic work done too…

I’m feeling oddly crippled at this end of semester. I’ve finished most of the little bits and pieces I had to do—fellowship applications, etc—but there are still tiny administrative things to do in the next week, the kind of things that drive me crazy. And I want just to write, and yet—and yet. Things are coming slowly.

I’ve been starting to think about the shape of a second manuscript. Now—this is not something I envisage coming together for a long time. But—it’s seeding. Three suites. Different types of “monsters.” I wonder if it will work. In, you know, the next five to ten years.

We started up the poetry workshop again today—four of us, add Gewanter, stir. I had this poem that is really the beginning of something—a mere scrap—that is about Hero and Leander, but with an Antarctic fish thrown in because I just discovered “icefish” a week or so again. (My friend Robyn last year described the process of travelling through wikipedia, sticking to the topic you are doing background research and then, all of a sudden, falling sideways into something else. For her, it was biography of the actress who played Rayanne Graf in My So-Called Life. For me, icefish.) I’m frustrated because I didn’t know whether I should workshop that, when I know where it’s going in the next few rewrites. I never know whether to bring something I feel has gone as far as I can take it, to bring something in process, to bring something that has hit a wall…

I want to write. I think it will be scrappy for a while. But I’ve always liked patchwork.

I recently read Darkling, a long poem by Anna Rabinowitz, from Tupelo Press. I was disappointed by the book, but was interested in the fact that the who book was an acrostic work, incorporating Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush.”

It’s had me wondering about why acrostics are used so rarely. Why there seems to be something so “uncool” about them—I have to say, I’ve really enjoyed using them when I’ve thought of it, though I think of it so rarely. Maybe it’s a sense that there’s some riddle there, but the answer is too “easy”—and yet who ever looks at a poem vertically to see if there is an acrostic embedded into it? Considering the fact that I so often set myself arbitrary restrictions, I think I’m going to revisit acrostics.

When I first bought the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry I was fascinated by the fact that it had some poetry by John Cage in it. With my music background, Cage has been someone I associated with music from the age of fourteen, when a teacher played me a record—a record!—of the 4’33”. Later I’ve been delighted when I’ve encountered his work elsewhere. His writings on silence were probably the most profound pieces of musical philosophy I have read. Then, when I took one of my early trips to Brisbane to work on the opera I was then writing, The Crimson, I took myself to the National Gallery, where they have a painting by Cage in the collection. A few years ago, in San Francisco, I was similarly delighted when I came across a “collaboration” between Robert Rauschenberg and Cage—an extremely long piece of paper that went around the room, with a tire track from a painted tyre across the whole of it. These little instances of his aleatoric work spilling out from the music. And—his poems.

The poem I remember was an acrostic—a centred acrostic, with “MARK TOBEY” appearing as a column down the middle of the poem, the work surrounding it.

I want to reread John Cage. I want to reread X: Writings on Silence.

Lewis Carroll wrote a lot of acrostic poetry too. (Incidentally, I’ve recently been very upset to find out how many people I know have not read Alice in Wonderland, which I feel like has been with me my whole life—though really only since about the age of five.)

So—again I’m asking: why do acrostics seem uncool?

And, while epigraphs are in my head, they do actually strike me as having a similar function—or the possibility of that function, if people see the acrostic—in being a place where you can provide a framing text. Though I suppose it is also a framing text that could go unnoticed.

I wrote a poem on Sunday. It made me almost dazzlingly happy, though it is not finished. I think I’m going to try for a pile (or rather notebookful) of poems in their early stages over the next few weeks, and when I get back from Panama I’ll try to whip them into shape. Along with a lot of other poems I want to revisit. Poems! I’m so close—so tantalisingly close—to being able to think of poems. My day will come.

How satisfying! I’ve begun what I guess will have to be my last series of ripping apart my manuscript. (Someone just has to take it away from me soon… That’s hopefully in the pipeline.) Looking at it now, ruthlessly, it’s so fun to wield the scalpel. Take this out, extract that stanza… I’m really glad, now, that I didn’t publish it before now. I feel like I’ve learned all these new ways of looking at poems recently, and that’s been so good for me.

When I caught up with Elena Knox—gosh! over a week ago—I was delighted to hear that her book looks like it’s also in the pipeline. She’s been on a train overnight from Chicago, and (from what I remember) had been working on edits during that trip, as well as, more generally, while she’s been in the States. Apparently an Australian editor had looked at her book, told her he liked it, thought it was great—couldn’t publish it. “It’ll sell 20 copies in Australia.” So, she’s been talking to an American publisher. Elena and I met several years ago at Varuna, the Writers’ House in the Blue Mountains (and, really, a little oasis) when we were there for a mentorship program during an absolutely delicious week of poetry. Our fellow-poets Ivy Alvarez and Kathryn Lomer have published their books already—Kathryn, precocious lady!, has published two volumes of poetry and a novel—so it’s nice that their stable buddies are slowly making good on the process too.

Is it cheating if, unable to find a poem from the Marshall Islands, I choose to use a myth instead? I’ve found a lovely one. But I’ve got over a month before my Independence Day hunt for poems from this particular nation of Oceania becomes pressing. In the mean time, I’m backing up the effort with the myth. I’m holding it in reserve.

Spoke to a friend who is fluent in Portuguese—I’d like to work in partnership with someone to do some translating. I don’t feel that any of my languages are fully up to the task—I can muddle my way through reading most Romance languages these days, but wouldn’t trust myself on a translation, except for some simpler Italian pieces. So it was time to find a helping hand. Or tongue, so to speak. Now I have to find something untranslated that I think it would be good to work on. The next step. I don’t know exactly when this will happen, but speaking to a translator last weekend, he said all I can really do is dive in—you’re never really “ready” as such. When are we ready for anything?

A nice surprise last night: within a few minutes of each other, emails from poets Adam Aitken and Chris Wallace-Crabbe arrived in my inbox. Adam is currently based in Cambodia—he’ll be back in Sydney later this year. So it was one poet-in-exile addressing another. And I was delighted to hear that he’ll have another book coming out soon with Giramondo. I came across his work when I was drawn to the cover of Romeo and Juliet in Subtitles, and, after taking it home, there was one poem that drew me into the book. Something to look out for—I guess I’ll be sending another wishlist home later this year, for books I can’t get here.

Then, Chris. Chris was one of my earliest mentors as a poet, and again I’m pleased to here that another book is forthcoming. A recent notification from ABR informed me that another selection from his diary was published in a recent issue—it made me wish that I could afford to be an international subscriber. If my book does end up working out, it will be in no small part because of his encouragement and assistance over the years. He must be one of the most generous poets in Australia, always willing to look over work and tell me when it’s “flat as a pancake.” (True—among the first ten or so poems I ever showed him, he liked a number of them; but one came back with this comment. I’ve valued his opinion ever since. I was especially proud when he told me I’d recent a quite-good terza rima.)

To top that off, Ella Holcombe sent me her first book, which appeared in last year’s New Poets series from Five Islands Press. I’m currently interviewing Ella, and am looking forward to reading the book, some other poems she sent with it, and writing about it here. It’s always lovely when a parcel arrives! On a purely superficial note, I’m so glad to see that Five Islands have shifted the series into a format that includes perfect binding and much better design. So often in the past, exciting new voices were buried in badly designed, stapled booklets.

Which has made it an even more poetry-filled week. Refreshing and exhausting—I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I guess anyone who’s (ever) met me knows I am a bit of an upstart. Sometimes I can’t quite believe the things I do…

The daily poetry readings aren’t over yet. Last night there was a Lannan reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library, with Mark Doty and Galway Kinnell. Even though I saw both poets read over the weekend at Split This Rock, I wanted to hear them again. Besides, feather-brained as I can be, I completely forgot to take the Mark Doty book I have in the US with me on Saturday night, and I did want him to sign it. Unfortunately the book isn’t the most recent, his Fire to Fire: New and Selected (I covet it, but I’m trying to not accumulate too many books) but the 2005 book School of the Arts.

He read a new poem—I didn’t write down the title, and so it’s flitted out of my memory, but it was set on Fire Island. It was incredibly moving—one of the few times I have actually been reduced to tears at a poetry reading. (I usually save the tears for my solo reading sessions.) Even though it was such a transfiguring experience for me, there was something that bothered me during the reading—it was so, so close that when a tiny moment crept in that jarred for me, I wanted to iron it out. So what did I do? Well, I’m an upstart (as has already been established) so—I told him.

Okay, I can’t quite believe my own audacity. But at the moment the words popped out of my mouth it wasn’t audacity, but an automatic response. (Perhaps in having had such an immediate emotional response to it, I felt an odd sense of partial-ownership? Does this happen?) It happened so fast, that it’s hard to know exactly what I was thinking—but the result was that Doty was interested to know exactly where it was that I had my jarring moment, and handed me his copy of the poem to read through again, so I could pinpoint it. I did, and I told him—a line that seemed oddly self-conscious in such a poem that really drags you in. For a moment it pulled the reader too far outside the poem. And the rhythm didn’t fit—there were too many beats in the line. For me. My friend Elizabeth was with me, and I pointed it out to her. She seemed to agree with me, but she might have just been taken aback at my having actually uttered the words! So, I told him. He didn’t seem offended. I can only hope that was really the case. Read him. Please.

But I don’t want to neglect Galway Kinnell. Who could neglect him? I was glad I saw him read again, as this reading was a little more varied than the Split This Rock reading, which of course had a distinct theme. What more is there to say?

Elizabeth and I were very lucky at our moment of arrival—there was actually only one ticket left, but they let us both buy tickets, knowing that there was going to be at least one person who didn’t show up. (I believe this is always the case, because all the Lannan fellows—undergraduate students at surrounding universities—get free tickets, and they never all show up.)

And—following one last reading tonight—my near-week of all poetry, all the time, is at an end. Back to the real world of study, writing papers, reading for classes… At least it’s made clear to me that I really should be writing about poetry. That I should follow my passion, even in that odd world that is academia.

Oh, and a small item—I had my first poem accepted for a US journal. SPECS. It’s taken me some time to get myself into gear, submitting work—figuring out where to submit work, etc. I don’t know much about the journal but at least something is happening on the poetry front after not sending out work in so long. And I wrote a little poem on Friday… More to follow? I can only hope.

Yesterday was quite a day—mostly spent at the Library of Congress, after a coffee at my new favourite DC café, Baked and Wired, (red velvet cupcakes, “manly” quiche and great coffee) and ending with whiskey, mussels and chocolate mousse at Bistro du Coin, home at midnight.

Yesterday I participated in a master class with Charles Simic, the current poet laureate of the United States. In an hour and a half he looked at one poem apiece from about fifteen poets from the DC area. Apparently it hadn’t been well-advertised, which, ironically, is how I came to hear about it: one of the staff of the Library of Congress emailed David Gewanter last week because the class wasn’t full, and he forwarded the information to us students. I seem to have been the only one to follow up (I guess because so any people were out of town this week—and those who weren’t work fulltime, so couldn’t make a daytime class) and so I found myself in the room with a group of poets I hadn’t met before. There was one that looked youngish, but I felt like I was the youngest by quite a lot of years. (I thought this experience would have ended years ago...) There’s no shortage of poets in DC, that’s for sure…

What I liked about the class was that Simic was much more interested in the poems than in the poets. I guess for most people (those wanting to make a personal impression on the poet laureate in order to help with their careers) this may have been a little frustrating, but I found it wonderful how much his attention was on the words themselves. I was pleased that he seemed to like my poem (“Fat Ben Jonson”—written for the lovely Anne Brumley, then in the throes on the aforementioned fat, literary man) though he did point out that, self-indulgently, I had probably used the word “fat” too many times. It was just such a satisfying word at the time. Still, he was right.

The other thing that I really valued was that we were all there to listen to his comments, and so no-one was trying to one-up everyone else.

I also got a chance to write a new poem while I was drinking a post-class coffee. Ah, coffee.

After a few hours break, I went back to attend last night’s reading by this year’s winners of the Witter Bynner award, Matthew Thorburn and Monica Youn.

This was one of the best readings I’ve ever been to—both poets have published one book (Thorburn’s is Subject to Change and Youn’s is Barter), and each have second manuscripts that appear to be ready to go. There was such energy and playfulness—even exuberance—in their work. The audience was also clearly there with them—there was a lot of laughter.

I bought both poets first books (again, hopefully in the coming months some more email interviews will unravel) and last night, on the way to Bistro du Coin, I read a third of Thorburn’s book. Again, I’m hoping sometime I’ll find a moment to at least post a brief review. Sometime.

I’ve been realising just how many very good poets there are in America that we never hear about in Australia—it’s such a pity. Even big names don’t get much press at home. It’s still the case that most poetry is published by small presses—so of course a huge number of very fine poets don’t get distribution outside of America. It’s exciting discovering these poets—I hope other people will discover them too.

I feel like I’m starting to find a balance in which I can get a little poetry written, and also read and think through the type of work I'm doing for classes. Best of all, I feel like I’m already starting to hone my paper topic for one of my final essays for the semester, even though it won’t be due until May or so.

I've been getting really interested in Maria Edgeworth, especially after reading Ennui, which I feel is a less clean novel that Belinda, but also a much more interesting one. I think one of the reasons for this much be that, with Maria Edgeworth’s own interest in her own Irish heritage, her Irish novels have something at stake. Ennui turns on a weird plot twist—one that shouldn’t work (two babies switched at birth) but does, because of the questions it raises about class and nationality, and how these identities are formed. At the moment I’m trying to tease out what position the only Scots character, Mr McLeod, plays in the text. From there I want to start looking at letters, at literacy and both the naming and renaming that occurs in the novel, but also the specifically French names and motifs that occur. So, I feel that Maria Edgeworth and I will be spending some time together over the coming months. Best of all (well, best of all to a nerd like me) is the fact that I think a lot of my research and thinking will tie nicely into the things I want to think through for my thesis, starting in September, on nineteenth century British representations of Australia, and their relationship to national identity.

Spring break is creeping up on me, and I’m starting to think I’m just not going to make it to Louisiana. (Sad—I just haven’t lined it up early enough. Perhaps it can still happen a little later in the year.) So, I’m thinking of finding somewhere a little closer, and setting off for a few days by myself.

I’ve been thinking through poems a lot—partly because I’ve been studying poems in my Modern & Contemporary Poetry & Poetics subject, and also more generally because I’m trying to make a little time for it each week. I’ve been asking David Gewanter to give me assignments—strictures—so I sit down and write something each week. Even if they begin as an exercise, of course I end up getting absorbed and spending some real time on it. Today I got a chance to sit down and look through some recent pieces of work, and I feel like he talked so concretely about the work each poem was doing. There was something so refreshing about it. It made me want to break apart my poems—break apart language—and get somewhere new. I feel that I’ve had an overwhelming schedule lately, so it was nice to sit down and think about this all in a concentrated way. Also, I feel that over Christmas I finished (for perhaps the eighth time) a manuscript, and now I feel like I’m casting about, trying to see what sticks in terms of new subjects. Some of the things I’ve been playing with for a long time—the Hansel and Gretel poems—could end up being pretty drastically re-formed. There’s something lovely in this.

I’ve managed to keep Sunday a complete blank for now. I’m still wondering if I can get myself out of town for the day—someplace not too far away, but distinctly non-DC. Fingers crossed.