Weeks have rushed by of late. I don’t think I can honestly say I’ve been feeling very lazy in the last fortnight—in reality I’ve basically been run off my feet. It’s been good though. I feel a little electric: every time I sit down to the thing that needs my attention right now I feel like the attention is right there.

What’s been keeping me so busy? Writing Center and running my workshops, which have started to gain attendance. It’s funny—some days I feel really exhausted by the very idea of tutoring, but the moment my students arrive I’m right there in the work. I wish I could remember this ahead of time. I feel like I’m a grump. I guess it’s partly being so protective of my own time, which is divided between so many things. I’m tutoring at Duke Ellington, a performing arts high school a few blocks from Georgetown, two days a week—though there have been weeks when I’ve only made it to one of my days. (This week for instance: I really needed the whole of Tuesday to get things done…) But students are starting to come in, and I love talking to these students about writing—it’s really getting into fundamentals, and instilling ideas about writing as a process at the outset. It also gives me a chance to talk to them about the contexts for writing, so they know that there are different conventions for different types of writing, and they can use those conventions, and play with them, as long as they’re aware of them. I’ve also been working intensively with one particular student, and spent an hour going through a single paper he had already handed in, looking at where the writing was really strong, and where he could take it further. Every time I look at these pieces of writing at this level I feel like I’m learning about my own writing. When I grade papers, I limit myself to the amount of time I spend on individual papers, and don’t comment on every possible aspect, but instead what I think are the next steps the particular writer can master to improve, so writing improves incrementally. Perhaps that’s ingrained from my flute-playing days: I’ve read bits and pieces of gaining expertise in writing, with comparisons to the type of training a musician undergoes, and I know that it’s counterproductive to try and work on everything at once.

Of course, I don’t get around to implementing every suggestion I make to students in my own (critical) writing. But slowly comes to matter less—each paper I write there’s something that is becoming more ingrained, and my conscious attention can shift to a different factor. It generally takes 10 years—or longer—to gain mastery. (This is, in fact, a problem for wind players and singers. To reach maturity as a musician, you really do need that ten years. String players and pianists start at a very early age, but you can’t really start serious lessons on wind instruments until later, because they are physically demanding in different ways—the breath required. Wind players will often graduate from a music degree only just beginning to reach a level of expertise—or still not quite there—while string players are at a different level. This interests me a lot.) Oh, the point? I feel like I’ve really been focusing on what it takes to write a critical paper for no longer than 5 years—and I’m not sure I’ve been focussing truly for that long. I mean, I know I started at university over ten years ago (oh—realising that is… huge) but I was at sea when I started, and the feedback I got didn’t really help me figure out how to improve. I figured some things out for myself—but at the same time I’ve been reformulating my writing since I’ve been in America.

So, tutoring has been keeping me busy. Thinking about writing has been keeping me busy. Wordsworth and Coleridge have been keeping me busy—sadly it’s started to turn cold, and, today, wet, which means soon I’ll be giving up my canal-side position. I wonder where my new reading spot will be?

I feel like my thesis has been a little on the backburner in the past fortnight. I managed to sit down on Thursday morning—there were no clients in the writing center—and get some writing done towards my thesis. I want to finish the analysis of the poem I’m looking at soon—today? I can dream… maybe it will become a reality. I also have a paper to write for Monday: I have to choose three lines of a poem and write an analysis of them, between 600 and 1000 words. And that will happen today. Writing about poems takes time, but it is also joyful. I feel like reading Helen Vendler’s book Poets Thinking has helped me think about a particular way to write on poems. I learned a few things about writing from her. Good stuff!

I’ve also started to be a research/general assistant with the other hours I’m allowed to be employed by Georgetown University. This has been great—at present I’m organising a research library. It’s actually a really good workout—running up and down a stepladder with piles of books, especially when I have to reach up to the top shelf. The day after my first shelving marathon my lats were sore… it was so nice! And a good excuse to settle into a lavender flavoured bath with a copy of Vogue.

As if all that weren’t enough, there’ve been poets in town. Ilya Kaminsky came to Carolyn’s class on Wednesday, and I got to chat with him before and after class. Marvellous! He is a joyful poet, and a joyful presence. He gave me some recommendations—I love getting recommendations!—and quizzed me on who to read from Australia. (I threw in a few New Zealanders for good measure…)

And then! And then! Thursday night Adam Zagajewski read at Georgetown. Now, some people may remember the day, several years ago, that I pulled Tremor out of the Melbourne University and started reading it. The result? Well, I accosted more than one person and made them listen to or read certain poems. I went home and wrote certain poems, including “Testimony.” Then when I found books of his essays, and Without End in bookshops I immediately bought them. The days I walked into Readings and swore to myself that I just couldn’t buy any books today… that I couldn’t afford it. But whenever I found Zagajewski’s work I was scared I wouldn’t see it in Australia again. Though I suspect it’s getting to be more and more available. So—meeting him. Hearing him speak. Listening to him read. And talking to him about music—about Shostakovich and about Messiaen. About Chopin and about Mahler. About Lutosławski and about Pärt. It made me crave music!

If you haven’t read his work, please, please do. Here are a few quotes from his talk at the Lannan reading on Thursday night:


"A dissenter is someone who knows the answer—and more and more I felt that to write poetry was to know nothing."


"I think poetry is an instrument that measures the world. An instrument is a scale—but there is no knowledge built into the instrument."


"I think we survive as poets thanks to a system of illusions. We do something, and we think we do something else. And my illusion is a search for radiance."


"The border between poetry of dissent and questioning poetry is not very thick, and I think there is probably always something dissenting about poetry.

"Poetry by definition is a dissent—because it is read by few, written by few, with high standards. It’s elitist, but elitist in the least exclusive sense, in that it doesn’t cost any money. It’s a very democratic elite."

Okay, so I went to the Library of Congress last night—it was Charles Simic’s final event as poet laureate, and he gave a lecture. The lecture was on translation and poetry—a favourite subject of mine—and yet I felt grouchy with it. He shuffled papers and told occasional anecdotes, in between repeating the same things I’ve read over and over about the act of translation. He read one poem by Vasko Popa. One? Only one? I was hoping he’d talk about a specific translating—what was involved in translating Popa’s “little box” poems—but he didn’t. I feel a little like I’ve spent the last several months breaking up with Simic. In part it’s that I enjoy reading his poems the first time, and then rereading them, they’re a disappointment.

I wonder if it’s the tyranny of distance wearing off. In Australia I’m so excited when anyone international becomes accessible. Here it feels like so much is accessible, and so the novelty is gone. Instead of feeling like a thirsty girl at an oasis, I feel like I can just evaluate each thing I go to on what it added to my thinking. This, unfortunately, added very little. (He did read the first poem he ever translated—a twelfth century Serbian “poem” that was pretty fantastic. I want to track it down. So—there was a glimmer of joy. Plus, hearing just one Vasko Popa poem read aloud was also pretty great. Not a complete loss.)

Still toiling on George Eliot and thinking through authority and framing texts and the way she defines audience through use of foreign language texts and literary allusion and proto-Zionist rants by Mordecai and the two incredibly anti-Semitic sequels and… you get the general idea. I was telling Professor Ragussis about my big chart and pile of notes on the epigraphs, and the odd anomalies I found, and he was really interesting. Mediating Jewish space and Deronda as Moses, baby.

Bought Cage’s lectures and essays on silence yesterday. Opened it and instantly remembered reading these texts a few times back when I was studying music intently. I’ve been reading a few different music texts recently, and as well as thinking through the implications in poetic terms, I found myself wanting to compose something. Something small. Oh! It’s been so long… Oh! John Cage!

Gewanter yesterday. Wearing a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts t-shirt. Hmm. The class met at his place for pizza and general conversation. A couple of people said they’d be reading more poetry over the summer—success! Surely that should be the measure of a good contemporary poetry class? He amusingly revealed the “key” to getting papers accepted for conferences.

I have to get a couple of conference papers together, actually. Timely advice, oh sage one.

For the second time this week I’m going out to Actually Be Social. Gathering at Robyn’s house for a cheap happy hour. How cheap? I’m tossing up between taking “two buck chucks” wine from Trader Joes, or splurging and taking a bottle of whisky. (I am still amused I’ve become a whisky drinker. Even if it’s only a bit of whisky, and only now and then. Still, my celebratory evening a few months back of mussels, whisky and chocolate mousse will live on in my memory forever. Best celebration ever.)

Robyn! Most likely going to Hungary! On a Fulbright! I’m so, so proud of her. And a little devastated that she’ll be gone… Actually, my friend Carolyn too—to Bulgaria. While I just want to get somewhere to write. To get this paper done, and think about poems and poetics and other writings for myself. The countdown is on.

It’s been quite a few days—I’m exhausted, and in recuperation.

I haven’t been sleeping consistently—odd hours, not enough and then making up for it later. It’s got me a little bit out of whack. On Thursday, following my final Contemporary Poetry class, I was pretty shattered. But, I had to push on and go to the Library of Congress for the reading.

Unfortunately, I was cranky. Things that I would normally have found charming grated on me a bit—this was both being tired and hungry (my food intake on Thursday was appalling. Damn finals season) and also sitting near the infamous Library of Congress Poetry Readings Laugher. A loud laugh at the slightest thing that could be construed to have an iota of humour in it. It wasn’t pretty.

Charles Simic gave an intro that indicated he, Mark Strand and Charles Wright had all known each other for over forty years. Ah! The camaraderie of old men! See, I’m recovering my normally sunny disposition, because once again I find this lovely, adorable. At the time, it made me cranky. But it seems the reading blooms after the fact, and my mind is revising the whole experience. It’s nice that readings, like books, are allowed these afterlives…

At the time, though, crankiness. While that is slowly being revised, it seems to have left at least one lasting mark. Mark Strand read this poem, and the information he gave beforehand blew me away. He quoted Apollinaire and his question—“Who will be the first person to forget a continent?” His poem was about the forgetters. It kind of followed the trajectory of Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.” This does strike me as a brave move—and I don’t think any poem can really bear the comparison. I completely understand the impulse to take the Apollinaire quote and imagine it into being—and yet, the poem can’t live up to the suggestion of the quote. In everything it leaves unsaid, the Apollinaire allows for some kind of hugeness that unfortunately the Strand didn’t quite have—Strand’s poem in comparison was “a mere bagatelle.” Cranky? I love Mark Strand. I will continue to love Mark Strand. I apologise for being cranky.

Charles Wright was great. I loved his southern accent. I didn’t take in a lot at the time—so tired, so hungry—but, after the fact, it seems it did sink in, and is now starting to resurface. Thank god! I may have been cranky, but it didn’t mar the transmission.

Yesterday, recuperation in earnest. Unfortunately, my body just wouldn’t get up after only 6 hours of sleep, so I missed the dawn service. Only the second in several years. I feel bad about it—I think it would have been wonderful to attend it in DC. I suppose there’s always next year… But I did tell all the lovely folks at Baked and Wired that it was Anzac Day, and I like to think that Meg made my caffe latte with extra love. I read Daniel Deronda for a while, and then, on a whim went to see a film.

Two films, actually. I snuck into the second. I also got invited to a free preview screening of a new Spike Lee film on Tuesday night. Score!

I saw In Bruges first. In a way, it seemed like two—or maybe even three—films to me—first this drifting film that was beautifully shot, and explored the morality of two very different hitmen. Contrary to Anthony Lane of the New Yorker (! I like to take on the New Yorker when I can…) I found both Colin Farrell—at least in the first hour or so—really did match Brendan Gleeson, and that lingering over their faces, the minutiae of their reactions was beautiful - almost mesmerising. Then turned into a slightly surreal midget comedy, and tightly choreographed cat-and-mouse carnage. That first section, where the two characters are wandering around Bruges, having their very different reactions to the city, as the viewer is trying to come to terms with the morality of the two, sold me. The rest—well, really quite engaging to watch once, but I feel no need to watch it again. Still, some of it will linger.

Then—Smart People. I was disappointed—well, except for when Ellen Page was on screen. (I find it very difficult to be disappointed by Page.) The developments were okay, but there wasn’t enough justification for any of it. The relationship between the two main characters—I don’t understand the why of it. Besides the weird thrall of a former professor. Thomas Hayden Church was worth watching, besides Page. But—huh? Even the professor’s son, a very underdeveloped character—out of the blue he sells a poem to the New Yorker? Um. Okay. It was extreme-lite The Squid and the Whale. I loved The Squid and the Whale. This, not so much. Plus, they didn't seem so smart.

The rest of this weekend really revolves around Daniel Deronda. I just finished the penultimate book of the novel. I am taking some time before jumping into the rest of it—it’s hit me with such an extreme force. I both dread writing my final paper, and can’t wait to jump into it. How to touch this monument?

It’s going to be a very busy few days—besides the end of semester insanity (we’re all living in a state of denial, because if we think about how much there is to do we want to cry…) the Lannan symposium, which started this evening, goes until Thursday. This year’s symposium is takes the theme “Let Freedom Ring: Art and Democracy in the King Years,” and a number of people involved in the civil rights/black freedom movement in the 1960s are assembled at Georgetown. There is something amazing about having so many people in the one place.

This evening, after the keynote by Vincent Harding, there was a reading featuring
Haki Madhubuti, Eugene Redmond and Amiri Baraka. It was certainly an occasion where no-one would have suggested that politics and poetry should be kept separate! Politics was not just part of the poems themselves, but the readers talked about Barack Obama, and follow-up questions also focussed on Obama. While the fierce support of Obama was no surprise, I was a bit disappointed at the language used to disparage the other candidates. Mainly because I hate that aspect of politics. I was particularly happy to hear Baraka read—all three, though, were very engaging, with a very biting sense of humour.

The days are seeming longer and longer—there’s so much to do! I’m trying to make sure I write at least two pages a day towards all my final papers. If I can keep that up, then I can keep my head above water.

A recent anthology from the Dalkey Archive—Contemporary Russian Poetry: An Anthology. At nearly 500 pages, this bilingual anthology introduces a new generation of Russian poets to English language readers. In celebration of its release, the Dalkey Archive has organised a number of readings in different cities, including a recent reading on 6 April in DC at Bridge Street Books. Though Bridge Street Books provides only a small space for readings, when the event is poetry-related one hardly expects a packed house—so it was a pleasant problem to find that downstairs it was “standing room only” and a group of listeners crowded upstairs to look down on proceedings too.

It would be nice if all readings of work in translation could be presented the way this reading was organised: each poem was read twice, by two different readers—once in Russian (by one of the anthologised poets) and once in English. Give that the audience was a mixture of Russian and English speakers this method was important, but it also allowed us to hear the rhythms of the poems as they were read in the Russian—this element was quite muted in comparison in the English translations. While I suspect this was partly a result of the reading styles (and, perhaps, the amount of singsong English language listeners tolerate) it was also clear that many of the rhythmic elements and patterns of the Russian originals had not been fully captured in the translations. The gap between the two provided a simple lesson on what is “lost in translation.” The poets present in DC for the reading were Evgeny Bunimovich (the editor of the anthology), Elena Fanailova, Yuli Gugolev and Alexei Tsvetkov. Each poet read from their own work, and Bunimovich, Fanailova and Gugolev each presented work by other poets represented in the anthology as well—a gesture that promoted the work of other poets and in some measure gave the audience an idea of the diversity of work captured in the book.

In introducing the anthology, Evgeny Bunimovich gave some background to the project, indicating that the idea for the anthology first arose when he was talking with poets in DC some years ago. The general rules for the anthology were as follows: poets would be born after 1950; poets would be still alive; poets would be living in Russia. The rules weren’t hard and fast—Bunimovich advised that there were a lot of poets who deviated. Nonetheless, this was a useful set of parameters in creating the anthology—that the majority of included poets still live in Russia means that nearly all of the work captured in the book are new to English-speaking audiences.

Bunimovich opened the reading with an untitled poem of his own, the opening lines of which ran:

It’s no longer awful knowing why they go on about God.
The time is coming when our ranks will thin.
The product of my country, my family, my time,
I stand wrapped in cellophane with a price stamped on my side.

Given that this touches on many of the themes poets in the anthology return to (religion, nation, era, ancestry) this was an appropriate starting place. (The Russians in the audience nodded appreciatively.) He read four of his own poems, including a haiku that had been written as part of a haiku-dialogue with Yuli Gugolev—a touch which added to the notion of a poetic community not simply within the pages of this collection, but among Russian poets in general. The fact that this haiku (“just three lines in all/ of which two are already spent/ so life will pass by”) also functions as a commentary on the form of a haiku broadened the scope of the reading—after Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva or the novels of Solzhenitsynit’s easy to imagine readers who don’t make it a general practice to keep up with world literature to have a ghetto-ised, Stalinised view of the trends and subject matter of Russian literature. Bunimovich also read two poems by the poet Ivan Zhdandov, “Before the Word” and “Transfiguration.”

Elena Fanailova read two of her own poems—“Freud and Korczak” (“The worst thing about murder/ Is not that a friend or lover/ Suddenly becomes a useless victim…) and “As if a caged little beast is running”—as well as one poem each by three women represented in the anthology. (I suppose the rationalisation here is that through Fanailova’s reading we could hear these poems in the female voice.) She read Elena Shvarts’s “Tract on the Indivisibility of Love and Fear,” Olga Sedakova’s “The Earth” and Maria Stepanova’s “The Morning Sun Arises in the Morning.” The highlight of these poems was my introduction to Elena Shvarts’s work, whose poem “Tract on the Indivisibility of Love and Fear” opens:

Deaf man: If a bomb goes off,
you think, “I can’t hear.”
(Don’t enter the dark room,
don’t light a candle,
God might be near.)

Looking into the anthology after the reading, I’ve been enjoying the way she uses voices—in this poem in particular (The next stanza is the speech of a blind man).

Yuli Gugolev read two of his own poems—including the piece “From The Book of Four Precepts,” the poem in which the rhythms in the Russian came out most strongly, seeming near impossible to reproduce in the English—though the translator did a good job, and the English reader was able to replicate the rhythms at some points in his delivery of the poem. Gugolev also read a poem by Aleksander Eremenko, “The Empty Diagram of Complicated Woods”—a poem that, thankfully, became more concrete beyond the complicated emptiness of the opening.

The reading was rounded off by a single poem from Alexei Tsvetkov, who read a poem that is not included in the anthology. He only read the English, and he paused at the beginning to find the poem (“Love Letter”) on his mobile phone. It was a slightly disappointing way to end—I had grown used to hearing the Russian ahead of the English, and I liked to know that at I would have a chance to revisit the poems in the book. Tsvetkov’s poem—read from a small bluish screen—was an ephemeral moment preceding the rush of people chatting, greeting, finishing the wine that was left and departing the scene

An odd experience last night: in what was perhaps a first for me, I couldn’t make any real evaluation of the work of Noah Eli Gordon and Joshua Marie Wilkinson because I was laughing too much. Which is not to say they’re poetry was comical—I don’t think it was (again, I’m hazy…)—but their reading was a somewhat delirious double act that was—hilarious. At 7.15 I was still wondering if I was really going to leave the house (the couch was awfully comfortable, and I haven’t had a night in, cooking, for ever so many nights…) but I’m glad I got myself out the door. If I’m still a little knocked sideways by the whirlwind that the reading seemed to be. That they’d driven all day from Boston seemed fitting. There was an underlying manic energy that I was quite enamored with.

Spoke to them both afterwards—Noah more than Joshua. Found myself babbling about Milton—(he’s taking over my life, or at least my consciousness, at the moment). I tried to buy one of his books—A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow—because David Shapiro had written very nice things that appeared on the back cover, and David Shapiro (an underrated, under-known poet) has interested me ever since, way back in 1998, I messed around with setting a poem of his to music. Anyway, I would have bought a book, but then I suddenly found that I had lost my ATM card. Brilliant move. So, I went home and rang the bank, sympathising with the customer service man who had to ask every single customer if they were “satisfied.” Oh! Those were the days.

I realised, while searching for all my account details, that at any given time I’m less likely to known where my chequebook is than the draft of a new poem. Anyone else have that problem?

Having written all about Milton this morning, I’ve moved on to thinking about Anne Carson. I’m planning, now, to write on her for my final paper for Gewanter. A project that will, I know, make me happy.

I had a friend who, for a while, was thinking about writing (at least a section of) her thesis on oranges and happiness in 20th century poetry. I’m so sad that this project didn’t end up being her focus. I was hunting through my books, finding oranges. I’ll never read a poem about or including oranges the same way again.

No poetry reading tonight. Unless you count Milton. The class does always involve us reading sections of his work aloud.

Returned a stash of books to the library today, am replacing them with the few Anne Carson’s I didn’t bring with me when I moved here last year, and Lorca’s Selected Poems. Lorca. More happiness. Coffee, the scent of oranges and good poems. That, apparently, is all I need.

One last thing for today (I hope... Milton's been calling me for a while now...) is that, should anyone read this before tonight, the line-up at Bridge Street Books (on M Street, next to the Four Seasons Hotel) should be interesting. Noah Eli Gordon and Joshua Marie Wilkinson. No, I don't know how he ended up with Marie as his middle name either. 7.30. Free. (After 5 days in a row of paying for readings the lack of a price tag is appealing to me - and my budget.) Both are new to me, but their lists of accomplishments sound impressive. And, again - free.

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.

An exhausting weekend, and very un-Easter-like. I was quite surprised by how little Easter I saw around me—in Australia there’s chocolate everywhere for months in advance. In Cambridge a few years ago, Good Friday was quiet as quiet can be, and the colleges were holding services all around the place. Then catching a ferry from Livorno to Corsica on Easter Sunday, I arrived in a shut-down Bastia. (Where I had a very strange adventure—that could have turned dangerous, but didn’t—which is a story for another time.) And here—everything is open. I saw one shop shut today for Easter Sunday, though it was open for Good Friday. I’m used to Good Friday being the much more solemn day. I was getting something to eat, and was surprised when my waitress asked if I would like to add beef to my order. For me it’s only a cultural idea, but I’m so used to eating only fish on Good Friday. After midnight last night I celebrated with a few bites of dark chocolate… but my Easter has not been Easterly. And it will be over far too soon—still so many things I’d like to read, not to mention things to do. Time flies…

Split this Rock is over now—though there’s lots of a talk about how the movement can continue. Yesterday I managed to get myself to a few events, and then I attended a reading this morning.

In the afternoon I attended a talk about archives and vaults, with three people involved in radio and digital archives discussing their work, and things that have been sitting on tape for decades that are now being digitised. While I’m increasingly interested in listening to things, I have to admit my greatest interest is still the written word: interviews, notebooks, correspondence, ephemera... and these are works that I find more interesting in getting to know a little about the author than being especially illuminating. Perhaps I’m just a flibbertigibbet. I’ll listen, and then my attention drifts—even with my newfound nightly podcast lineup that puts me to sleep—mostly radio national, sprinkled with New Yorker programs. Nonetheless, I’m fascinated by what sounds like a huge number of programs that will be available early next week through the Pacifica Program Archives—they’re making available programs from 1968, which will cover a fascinating historical moment. I’ll need to find even more listening time in the day.

As well as this panel, the last twenty-four hours have seen me at 3 different poetry readings.

First up was the 5pm reading with Coleman Barks, Pamela Uschuk and Belle Waring. Lucille Clifton had been scheduled to read as well, but due to illness was unable to make it—each of the poets read a poem of hers, so in a way she was still present.

I wasn’t entirely taken with this reading. Coleman Barks is largely known for his translations of Rumi—which are wonderful. But he was reading his own work, which didn’t really stack up to his translation work, to my mind. In fact, the most charming moment in his reading came when he read a poem written by his (quite young) grandson. In a way, I would have liked to hear more of his grandson’s work, or more Rumi. Still, it must be tough to be a well-known translator who is also a poet (rather than the other way)—you’re best known for someone else’s voice.

Pamela Uschuk’s reading didn’t really penetrate the surface for me—this is at least partly because I find it very difficult to listen to what seems to be a prevalent style of reading poetry aloud, especially by female poets, that is really quite mannered. I can’t at this stage comment on what her work is like on the page, because universally well-read as I’d like to be, I’m still just a grad student, and I have Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley to finish, as well as more highlighting of Paradise Lost left to do in the next few days…

Belle Waring, though, was wonderful: Waring has worked as a nurse, and this experience is apparent both in her knowledge and presentations of the body in her work, and also the steady gaze she brings to her subjects. She read the poems simply, and came across as very modest—but the work spoke for itself. I want to read more. (Time, as ever, the key factor here…)

This was followed by an all-star lineup last night (well, all-star to me) of Kenneth Carroll, Alicia Ostriker, Mark Doty, Dennis Brutus and Carolyn Forché. It was, I guess, really the last three that I came to hear—and I wasn’t disappointed. Kenneth Caroll’s work was by turns fun and serious (and often both at once). A piece in rhyming couplets about “Schnooky” and his relationship to the army and the war in Iraq was a real crowd-pleaser. Alicia Ostriker, unfortunately, didn’t penetrate—again, this could be her presentation as a reader of her work. Because I was really experiencing her work cold, it relied on her, and—well—it didn’t “do it” for me.

Mark Doty—what is there to say? The man is beautiful, the poetry is beautiful, and, apparently, his taste in art is beautiful too, because he read a poem about my favourite painter Joan Mitchell. In opening his reading he quoted from Taha Muhammed Ali:

And so
it has taken me
all of sixty years
to understand
that water is the finest drink,
and bread the most delicious food,
and that art is worthless
unless it plants
a measure of splendor in people's hearts.

The measure of splendour is front and centre in his poetry. I am enamored. He reads beautifully too—his poem on Joan Mitchell, though new to me, was drinkable. I drank.

Dennis Brutus didn’t really read—well, there was a short poem at the end of his time on stage. Instead, he stood and talked for about half an hour. Reflecting on the festival title, he recalled his time in prison on Robbin Island (the same prison in which Nelson Mandela was held) when he was kept in the maximum security area of the maximum security prison. He was give stones and a hammer, and each day he had to split these rocks—at the end of this effort to reduce them to gravel each day, they were scattered around the cell: illustrating the futility of the hard work he had to do. Nonetheless, this wasn’t the hardest job. Because he had once been shot in the back (a through-wound, the bullet came out his chest) he was spared the harder job that Mandela moved on to: splitting not just regular stone, but limestone. Just hearing him talk (and, really, after his life he is entitled to speak in absolutes) was a privilege.

And—Carolyn Forché. I’m under her spell. It looks like I’ll get to spend a lot more time talking to her soon. She read what is probably my favourite poem of hers—“Prayer,” which I read in New York in 2003, sitting in a Barnes and Noble (I couldn’t afford to buy the book, so I copied the poem into the notebook I was carrying with me). She also read a beautiful list poem, “The Museum of Stones”—I should tell her that I too have a miniature stone museum: a small black stone from the first time I swam in the Mediterranean, a pair of stones from Skågan in Denmark, from the day I walked off the northern end of Jutland, another pair my parents brought back from Gallipoli for me, a stone from the ground at Hanging Rock to hold in my palm when I need to feel Australia.

Then today Naomi Ayala and Galway Kinnell. A wonderful reading. This was being followed by a silent march to the White House—but for some reason I didn’t feel like joining the march. Perhaps it was the cento poem they were creating, with everyone contributing a line of no more than 12 words. I’m already exhausted from listening to all these voices—I don’t think I could take the buzz of many, many more today. After so many words, I need silence too.

I’ve been a bit exhausted lately—what I imagine Ezra Pound’s “emotional anaemia” must feel like. Attending a reading that was part of Split This Rock last night helped—I heard Brian Gilmore, Susan Tichy, Semezdin Mehmedinović, Jimmy Santiago Baca and Patricia Smith. I like these readings that have a lot of featured poets—they seem to keep my attention with relatively the swift changeover to a new voice. (I guess I’m more of a reader than a listener, generally.)

I skipped most of the first night of the festival—I went to the opening with Sonia Sanchez, which was something of a disappointment to me. Sanchez spent more time talking in a fairly rambling fashion (and, to my mind, extolling her own work and opinions) than reading her poems. I’ve only read a little of he work, but I feel that what I have read was stronger than the two pieces she performed. The opening was at Bus Boys and Poets (my first visit there) and it was really too small for the turnout (a pleasant problem at a poetry reading to be sure) and so I felt a little oppressed by the crowd. I just didn’t have it in me to head up to another reading at the Bell Multicultural High School, so I went home and did crosswords. It’s a pity I missed the reading—it would have been nice to see E Ethelbert Miller read again (and to see if my blogging warranted another hug) and to hear the work of a new crop of poets, but I was feeling a little “fragile,” so home I went.

Similarly, I skipped the panels yesterday and wandered around, then sat down with my copy of Milton, rereading the first few books of Paradise Lost—I felt like I couldn’t quite take all the talk… I’ve often felt frustrated with talk about social action—I just want to get out and do things. It’s different when it’s the more personal, educating narratives. Hearing Carolyn Forché speak, for instance, is at once horrifying, amazing, energizing, inspiring. She is reading tonight, in what is a stellar lineup—I have high hopes.

I was so pleased to finally meet Semezdin Mehmedinović, whose work I’ve admired for a while now. I was reading his two books available in English (Sarajevo Blues and Nine Alexandrias) a while ago and fell in love. It made me feel possibilities for a looseness and ease that interests me, in the voice itself (as translated by Ammiel Alcalay). And then the poems - devastating. When I spoke to him after the reading, I mentioned that I’d like to interview him, and he gave me his details. Again, I have to find that elusive time.

I was interested to hear Jimmy Santiago Baca, because he’s a big name, with a fascinating background: sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison for drug possession when he was twenty-one, he learned to read and write, and it was there that his interest in poetry really began. I was actually most interested in his talk in between the pieces he read. He mentioned that recently he’d been on a trip around the world, meeting poets everywhere, and getting recorded interviews in many, many different countries and languages. He talked about a sense that so many countries—and therefore their poets—seemed to be suffering from pervasive post-traumatic stress, and the poets responded by wanting to give and give. The interviews (over a hundred of them) need to be translated into English: I don’t know where these will end up, but I’m so interested to read them if they surface somewhere accessible.

Patricia Smith’s work was new to me, and I’m so glad that I got to experience it: she finished with a poem written in response to Hurricane Katrina, and the 34 residents of a nursing home that were left behind and died. As she was introducing it she said “the poem is long—but the stanzas are short,” which for some reason was charming! The poem was in 34 sections, the voices of the dead: it was a beautiful elegy for these forgotten people. Her next book as a whole addresses the aftermath of Katrina. If this is an example of the work she’s doing with that, then I’ll be interested to read the book as a whole when it comes out. Again, I’m hoping that an interview will emerge—we talked about finding a time in between two readings today to have a brief chat.

The festival has also been my first real opportunity to explore the U Street neighbourhood—I get the impression that it’s more of a nighttime area than a daytime place, but it’s been great wandering around. I don’t know why exactly I hadn’t made it over there earlier, but I hadn’t. I really love the multicultural areas of DC though, and am looking forward to getting to know the area better.

Speaking of things to look forward too, I’m excited that Siri Hustvedt’s new novel, The Sorrows of an American, will be coming out on the first of April. I wonder if I’ll be able to make some out-of-university time as the final phase of the semester starts kicking in to read it…

It’s been a week of just barely keeping up (or, in a few cases, catching up) but it’s been a good week.

Tuesday was another Lannan reading—E Ethelbert Miller and Ilya Kaminsky. Both the seminar and the reading were great. I’m so glad that I have the combination of my poetry class with David Gewanter and a lot of readings that I can go to this semester. I’m feeling words as very tactile objects right now—it’s a beautiful experience. I’m still finding it difficult to find time to write myself (and when I do, I feel like I’m not quite reaching the place I want to go) but at the same time, it’s been a really fruitful time for editing work that had been in the unfinished pile for a long time.

The theme for the latest Lannan reading was “Ancestors,” which proved an interesting starting point. Miller talked about poets that he has known personally whose work he tries to keep alive: he likes to include a few poems by these poets when he does a reading, and this was no exception, with work from, among others, June Jordon and Charles Bukowski included in his reading. I always find this a generous act on the part of poets: I suppose it is so rare that you have an audience for your own poems, that to use some of that time promoting the work of others is a lovely thing. He read a series of poems on Iraq that were particularly moving—I’d like to see these in print.

Miller also gave me an odd moment that pierced what I thought was relative anonymity—upon entering the seminar (early, as usual) he greeted me with “Ah! The blogger!” and gave me a hug. He wouldn’t tell me how he found this little blog, nor how long he has been reading it, but it was a lovely moment to realise that there are occasional readers beyond the audience I was aware of. I have a copy of his most recent book—How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love—that I’ll be reading soon—and it looks like a (face-to-face!) interview will materialise, in between the juggling of everything I find myself doing.

Ilya Kaminsky was equally wonderful. I’m already a fan of his book (once again, Dancing in Odessa. If you haven’t read it, do.) In the seminar I was particularly fascinated—and delighted—by the approach he took to ancestors, which was so text-based. In particular, the way he looked at the continental European poets that I love so much—Zbigniew Herbert for instance. (I have to say it once again: I love the Polish poets so much. There is so much at work in their poems.) He traced the movement of ideas and forms from a poem by one poet into a poem by another: unfurling genealogies that he had obviously thought deeply about.

His reading was also a treat: eccentric and musical. Kaminsky speaks with a Russian accent, and this is particularly strong when he is reading his poems. Aware of this, he distributed copies of his book for the audience to follow as he read. I had brought my own copy with me, but I laid it aside—I already knew the poems, and while I didn’t catch everything, I wanted to listen to the rhythms that came out in his reading, that I felt in my own reading, but not quite as strongly. This is, I suppose, because I had the meaning-making foremost in my mind—and because I didn’t read most of the poems aloud. Hearing him read, it was rhythm that I wanted to think about the most, and it came out beautifully.

On Wednesday, I put on my academic hat again, and headed to Charlottesville for a conference at UVA—“Things Matter.” Last year I wrote a paper on Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and the notion of a mental cabinet of curiosities. I had rewritten this paper to include Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, thinking through aspects of travel writing as an experiential “thing” that acts as both journey and souvenir for the reader. I wasn’t sure if I had spiralled into abstractions until I presented it, but I got a good reaction.

What I saw of Charlottesville was lovely, but as it was really all about the conference, I have to go back sometime for a more leisurely visit. And I have to get to Monticello.

Attending the panel following mine, I met four girls who are doing interesting work in nineteenth century literature—Emily Madsen (her paper was on the image of the black doll that appears in three illustrations in Dickens’ Bleak House), K. Irene Rieger (she was looking at nineteenth and twentieth century texts and nostalgia—she had a lot of fascinating information about hair jewellery that made me want to look into the phenomenon) Christen Mucher (a paper about the “ginger nut” in Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, that unfolded into an investigation of the relationship between the Caribbean and the US) and Eugenia Gonzalez (writing on “the doll” in Vernon Lee’s story of the same name). It was a really rich experience—both to see what graduate conferences are like in the US, and also to meet people. The standard was really very high.

Rewriting my paper, it made me interested in doing some more work on travel literature—particularly some early travel texts from Australia. Another little island of material to connect with my work at some time.

The other exciting aspect of the conference was that the keynote speaker was (the almost impossibly hip) Bill Brown from the University of Chicago, who edited the issue of Critical Inquiry entitled Things, and a few years ago also published the book A Sense of Objects. Working on Henry James and systems of collecting, his work was particularly inspiring. Similarly, I found the collection of essays on “Things” just as I was starting to get really interested in the subject.

In his keynote he talked about the art of Brian Jungen—I wasn’t familiar with the artist before, but I was fascinated. I have to read more. The masks he made using deconstructed sneakers are beautiful. Last week (gosh! only last week?) I was making collages, and looking at art again made me want to get right back into making things. I started thinking about the number of things I could recycle, transform. Brown talked about the desire of materials to be transformed—I felt myself responding.

He also mentioned that in the book that this writing is going to be a part of, he has written on Walter de Maria. I asked him if he is also writing on other earthworks artists, Robert Smithson in particular. I’m always excited when I get a chance to talk about—think about—Smithson in any way. I feel like an interrogation of Smithson, and the way he uses entropy as a subject for his work, is such a fruitful area to look into. And it reminded me again (travel being on my mind) of my determination to get to the site of the Spiral Jetty in Utah. One day.

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 recently twice had the privilege of seeing the poet Carolyn Forché speak and read from her work. Later this year Forché’s memoir is being published, and I have to say I’m thrilled that this is the case. The memoir is addressed to the poet Ilya Kaminsky—a former student of Forché’s (who, incidentally, did his Bachelor's degree at Georgetown) whose first book, Dancing in Odessa, I’ve read recently. (There should be a review of the book and his reading at Georgetown as part of the Lannan series sometime soon.)

As well as being considered one of the best poets writing in the America today, Forché is also widely known for her commitment to work in human rights: in 1978 she went to El Salvador, writing poems at the same time as working with human rights networks to document what was happening in El Salvador. The portion of her book she read touched on this experience: it was an account of her visit to an El Salvadoran jail during which she witnessed men being kept in boxes—she afterwards learned that some men were kept in these boxes for months at a time. It was amazing—in an awful way. To hear that read in the author’s voice, ahead of its publication, was a real privilege.

This time in El Salvador was the beginning of a long career dedicated to the cause of human rights, and, too, to the work of poets working out of what she terms conditions of extremities. To listen to Forché talk about her career is to realise how little most people ever do. In addition to her direct work in the human rights fields, she has translated the work of other poets, and encouraged her students to get involved in translation: one effect of her teaching is that she has former students scattered all over the world. I understand this—sometimes people tell me they don’t understand how I do as much as I do, but when I hear Forché speak, I feel that I’m not doing enough. I at least feel that the Independence Day Project is doing a little both to increase my knowledge and also to contribute to a sense of poetry in the world.

As a result of this dedication to human rights and the poetry that emerges out of these conditions of extremity she put together the anthology Against Forgetting: I’ve been reading it on and off over the last few months—there’s so much to discover. (All I can say is buy it: buy it now.)

She read, too, a new poem: this was also dedicated to Kaminsky, as she recently took him back to his native city Odessa: I wish I had been able to take down the poem, but instead it washed over me. I look forward to her next book of verse too—I saw her speak in 2003 in San Francisco when her last book was being launched at City Lights. At the time I couldn’t stretch to a hardback, so I bought The Angel of History, which I read a few days later in Central Park. When I had finished that, I went to a bookshop and read the whole of the then-new Blue Hour over a coffee. (There is definitely an advantage to the chain bookstores: they can be used as libraries.) Blue Hour contains an amazing “abecedary” poem—the longest of its kind I have read in English, and a tour de force.

One of the things she talked about that fascinated me more than anything was the way she talked about Paul Celan: talking about how, out of World War II, he chose to write in this German language that had been broken by Nazism. Celan has been an important poet to me for quite some time—I especially appreciate John Felstiner’s translations, which at times coil back into that broken German. German—another language I have to learn, just so I can see how Celan refigures it in his work.

It’s been a busy week—between classes I’ve been to see a couple of authors speak and read from their work.

The first event was the Lannan reading at Georgetown on Tuesday night. Poets Laura Moriarty and Elizabeth Robinson first participated in a seminar discussing poetics with the theme of “Serial: Open Forms” and then read from their work later the same evening. Seriality was a well-chosen topic—I felt it allowed a lot of scope to discuss the work both poets were doing. Elizabeth Robinson's most recent books are Under that Silky Roof and Apostrophe. Laura Moriarty's A Semblance: Selected and New Poems 1975-2007 is just out.

In discussing poetics, I was struck by the moment that Elizabeth Robinson reported that losing control over the medium of poetry had turned out to be one of the most useful things to happen to her in the development of her writing. I’ve been thinking that through—thinking how that moment of lost control is followed by a moment of reformulation. A new solution has to be found. Robinson talked about the series as an attractive form: she used a lot of terms borrowed from music, and I could see how the serial format becomes linked to a modern conception of the theme and variations format, where the metamorphosis is constant: the material revisited is not necessarily the original form of the theme, but each previous reincarnation/reinterpretation of the original material. As such, it really is an open form that creates and reinterprets points of return.

Laura Moriarty opened her discussion with a quote from Billie Holiday: “I do a lot of travelling with my voice” and then explored the theme of community. In thinking through community, one of her major points of reference was the poet Jack Spicer—who also worked in serial forms, and developed his own theories of seriality. Later at the reading, she read a work that specifically engaged with Spicer and his neighbourhood.

Moriarty was talking about a quite specific community of poets—larger those in the Bay Area around San Francisco. In 2003 when I was visiting San Francisco I got to view a little slice of this community in action.

In thinking through this idea of community, and how it relates to poetics, Moriarty talked about the new book she has just finished, A tonalist - which is also the name of a blog she writes.. Again, a term borrowed from music. (Are we all indebted to music?) She described this work as a long, discursive poem, in which she writes in conversation with the community she I part of—writing about and reviewing the work of others within her community over the course of the poem.

The open discussion following these introductions by the poets really focussed on community, and what it means to participate in a living poetic community. Engagement with other poets, production of chapbooks, running of readings—all of those things.

The reading that followed was in many ways exemplary of these poetics—although I wonder if poetics always in some way describe an unattainable ideal. There must be something to strive for in order for each new poem to have a point, and each poem surely falls a little short—and perhaps in those gaps creates the moments of interest (or, potentially, frustration). I find the Lannan series fascinating, as its something of an open discussion.

On Wednesday Nadeem Aslam, the author of Season of the Rainbirds and Maps for Lost Lovers, spoke as part of the Georgetown Writers series that David Gewanter has put together. He read from his new novel The Wasted Vigil, which will be published on 2 September by Knopf in the US, and Faber & Faber in the UK. This latest novel is set in Afghanistan: Aslam grew up in a family of journalists, and was born and lived for fourteen years in Pakistan. During this time, he said, it was impossible to remain unaware of Afghanistan, during the period of the Soviet invasion. When he was fourteen his family moved to England, where he has been based ever since.

The sections of the new novel he read were packed with sensory information—Gewanter described in Maps for Lost Lovers a “wild imaginative energy” going on amid the story of ethnic relations and immigrant relations in Britain. That same energy was apparent in The Wasted Vigil—I felt almost saturated in this rich language, which, amid the appeal to the sense, wound in history and politics. I’ve wanted to read Maps for Lost Lovers for some time, and this reading has spurred me on in my determination to do so.

Aslam described living with an awareness from a young age that he was always going to be a writer—at the same time, the move to the UK had an impact upon that. Having grown up speaking Urdu, he now learned English—and in school he did better in the sciences which relied less on having perfect English skills, which he was still developing. He ended up in University, reading sciences when one day he had realised that now his English was good enough to write—and that “if I wanted to write, I could drop out”—which he did.

Answering questions following his reading, Aslam described a fascination process whereby he writes the story and then consults the repository of notebooks he has kept over the last several years, to see if he can insert the material he has gathered in those notebooks—images, occurrences—into the story.

He describes himself as quite compulsive—he says he spends 15 hours a day working on his writing: not just the act of writing itself, but the reading and thinking and problem solving that goes on around writing. He reads Urdu everyday still—talking about how this feeds into his craft in English he said that he doesn’t just have the 26 letters of the English alphabet—but he has a larger alphabet available to him, a larger conception of language.

He has had the idea for The Wasted Vigil in mind for a long time—in fact, after he finished his first novel, he tossed a coin to decide if he would work on Maps for Lost Lovers or The Wasted Vigil next. I love that chance can still play a large part in the production of art.

I have been busy (as ever) lately—hopping from one thing to the next, and then studying in between. A few highlights:

Last week, Scott Heath, a member of the English department, spoke as part of the Georgetown Writers’ Series on performance poetry, slams and “the archive.” He also performed a number of poems. He explained a lot about the dynamics of slams in the US, and how there are distinct slam styles that vary from city to city. For instance: New York slam poetry has a different rhythm to Detroit slam. He’s been in DC for a few years, and is starting to catch on to the scene here.

I was interested to confirm that the saying that I’ve heard in Australia is definitely one that comes from the US slam scene—“He tried to win with poetry.” Page poetry of course isn’t likely to win the day: a slam is a performance. In showing us what it’s all about—and he did preface it with the disclaimer that he hadn’t slammed in a few years (though he previously participated in National teams)—Heath gave examples of the types of moves—almost a choreography, or perhaps something that reinvents the movements of Elizabethan oratorical handbooks—the slam poet makes, and a number of times he sang. Apparently singing (provided you can do it well) is always a crowd pleaser.

Slams here—the big ones at least—sound like they’re a lot stricter on the rules. Slams I’ve been to in Melbourne felt like glorified open mike events, and as the judging was always based on audience response, it was always the poems about sex or football that won. (What can I say? Even in a poetry crowd, we’re pretty predictable!) In the US, the rules are enforced: a strict 3 minutes time limit. There are five judges picked from whoever in the audience volunteers, and all the slam poets can vet the judges, to ensure there are no friends or enemies on the panel. Also, the poetry is a lot more sophisticated than poetry I’ve heard at slams in Australia. It really is text that’s designed for performance, and it tackles a range of issues. Like in hip-hop, there are some amazing rhythms built into the language. I’m hoping I’ll get to go to a high level slam event sometime while I’m here.

Heath also talked about some collaborative work he’s doing with a musician in recording his poetry. What fascinated me was that he referred to this as “the archive”—perhaps because he simply didn’t have a clear idea of who the eventual audience for this work was going to be. It reminded me of conversations I used to have at the conservatorium with the other composers. Adrian Watkins, who was then recording and performing under the moniker of White Sirens, said that for him the recording was the end point his musical endeavour. Performance was great, but ultimately, what he wanted was this immutable product, the CD. At that time I was working quite a bit with electro-acoustic music, but what interested me the most was the intersection between a pre-meditated electronic backdrop and a live performer: and the experience of that as a live event. I have recordings of the performances, but the problem with recordings is that they flatten space. If I go back to music, space will be the major thing I want to explore. I’m hoping to ask Scott about this notion of the archive—I may report back.

On Saturday morning, Helen Hughes (a fellow Australian in DC—my own kind!) and I went to see an exhibition at the Kennedy Center: Japan! Culture and Hyper-Culture. It was fascinating: we saw three installations, as well as a few pieces in the foyer to the center.

The first installation we saw was Reiko Sudo’s work of giant suspended textile fish. (I have to admit, when I first saw them their shape reminded me of cannons) and, in a little room behind these, there was a projection of a fish pond on the ground. Some people walked through the fish pond—after all, it was only coloured light—but I was struck how so many people, myself included, skirted the edge of the pond.

Next we saw Yayoi Kusama’s installations Day and Night: the first, Day, was a room painted yellow with black spots everywhere, and large, amorphous balloons suspended from the ceiling, and odd, blobby shapes emerging from the floor. The second, Night, was the reverse of this: black walls and yellow spots. It was interesting to see how much my mood changed between the two rooms. (I don’t think it was just the claustrophobia caused by the large number of people in the Night room.)

Between these two rooms was a work by Tadao Ando: Four Cubes to Contemplate Our Environment, consisting of glass cubes covered in words (Water, Rubbish, CO2, and Future?) filled with different things: empty plastic water bottles, aluminium cans crushed into blocks and stacked, a video projected on the ground and—emptiness. There was something wonderful in circling all these.

Saturday night saw me at Politics and Prose bookshop, where Anne Enright, author of last year’s Booker Prize winner The Gathering, was speaking. It took me a while to find my way to the shop, as I hadn’t ventured that far up Connecticut before, but I’m glad I braved it. Enright read from her book for about half and hour and then answered a lot of questions. I think she’s still recovering from her newfound fame: her publishers initially published a run of 8000 copies of The Gathering. Since she won the Booker (which of course prompted a reprinting) the book has sold over 230,000 copies.

It was a convivial event, and I have a copy of the book now, which I hope I will eventually get to read (oh… time) although not a lot stayed with me from the question time—one woman made the comment that when she read a book with such beautiful prose she always despaired of writing herself. Enright responded that writers don’t write these books, or not straight away. First they write 17 books, starting with a terrible one, and getting increasingly better. Something to hold onto. I got a feel for her humor (dark, Irish) and I look forward to reading her work. I have to admit that hearing prose read is usually a frustrating experience for me. I’m so used to the compactness of poetry, that when I hear prose I want to slash it and find the one page poem. Brutal.

Nonetheless, I love to sit down and read. I played hooky from my study on Friday night and spend the whole evening reading Curtis Sittenfeld’s second book—I had hoped to interview her on Tuesday, but it’s not happening. Despite the fact that the interview is not-to-be, I have to admit I enjoyed the book, although The Man of My Dreams has got to be the worst title on earth! There were a lot of things to like about the book—a lot of crispness, and a real feel for the way a character develops—but I did feel, in finishing, that it was a book that made a point.