Free Definition (or The Best Things in Life Are Conditional)

Free
adj. fre·er, fre·est
1. Not imprisoned or enslaved; being at liberty.
2. Not controlled by obligation or the will of another.
3. Not affected or restricted by a given condition or circumstance.
4. Unconstrained; unconfined.

Setting: exit to Melbourne Central Station, January 28, 2010.

Spruiker one: Chocolate, free chocolate. Do you want a free chocolate? (holding it out to me with an enticing smile)
Me: Is this a dream?
Spruiker one: (Smiling) No
Me: Okay then, I’ll have some free chocolate please
Spruiker two: (holds out a leaflet)
Me: (holds out hand toward Spruiker one for the sweet chocolate treat)
Spruiker two: Would you like to take a pamphlet?
Me: No thanks
Spruiker one: Take a pamphlet
Me: I don’t want a pamphlet.
Spruiker two: C’mon, we’re almost out
Me: I thought you were giving away free chocolate
Spruiker one: (looking around nervously) We are
Me: Except I have to take a pamphlet to get one
Spruiker two: (looking relieved that I finally got it) Yeah
Me: I don’t want a pamphlet, I just want the chocolate thanks
Spruiker one: (starting to get defensive) Just take a pamphlet. You don’t even have to read it.
Me: (setting down my gym bag on the pavement and settling in for the argument) I don’t want a pamphlet.
Spruiker one: How do you know, you haven’t even looked at one
Me: I don’t have to look – I don’t like pamphlets.
Spruiker two (irritated) Whatever.
Me: Sorry, you said you were giving away free chocolate. Now you’re telling me I only get a chocolate if I take one of those pamphlets.
Spruiker one: So?
Me: Well, it’s just that that’s not actually free, is it?
Spruiker two: It is free. You don’t have to pay for it.
Me: Well, no, that’s not free actually: it’s conditional. I have to do something you want me to do before I get a chocolate
Spruiker one: Are you serious? If you want a chocolate, just take a pamphlet. Otherwise go away.
Me: I don’t want a pamphlet. I want free chocolate. You just made my day by standing there yelling out that there was free chocolate available, and now I find out it was all a ploy to get me to take some kind of propaganda I don’t even want or need.
Spruiker one & two: (look at me, perplexed).
Me: Are you familiar at all with the Trade Practices Act?
Spruiker one: What are you talking about?
Me: Are you familiar with the dictionary?

Poetic Angst

On Obama, Healthcare & Massachusetts

Given Obama's low rating in the polls and the whole healthcare disaster, I thought I'd re-post a poem I first posted here in May 2009. It seems as relevant now as it ever did.

Unmiracle

his kind of gospel might not be sopho-aristophilosophy
this man might not be dream in baritone like king
or dangerous like us black folk
all kind of thought malcolm was but never said / he
might not bring healthcare / world peace
race peace / education / unpoverty / a revolution
to his country / this country / the world / anyone
anywhere in fact he surely won’t / he
might not even be a good father / husband
lover / leader / person who knows or hell even cares
if he’s all that genuine / us browns know the man
ain't no solution but / he / lets us eye our knock-kneed sons / like
hey / maybe one day
my boy could be the one

so every early morning late night newscast / every
can I get I witness same old black shit day
I drag my baby to the screen & make him watch the man
& say his name / the boy says
obama
banana obama
obama in pajamas

& he cackles in his crazy two-year old way
a no worries in the world mud pie
brown boy who just might be president
one day
the checkered crowd swells & heaves
like a living—it is a living thing this
right to breathe like
damn
maybe my breath counts
that closing in of a noose under alabama tree/ that
back-bent-cotton-picking wheeze / that
diving deeper for master’s pearls until one day
your body just won’t surface / those
cold grey lungs salt-logged likea genesis curse

will you blame us that
when he called we heard / will you
blame us that when he called we heard / will
you blame us that when he called we
packed up the house / the life / the kids / the conscience
we / grabbed the cardboard / the car / the coin jar
& came running with all we had

we knew the man was mostly no
solution might not bring healthcare / world
peace / education / unpoverty / a revolution
will you blame us / we didn't know or hell even care
was he all that genuine

that man / let us eye our knock-kneed sons / like
hey / maybe one day
my boy could be the one


First performed at the Human Rights Arts & Film Festival Slam (www.hraff.org.au/melbourne-poetry.html), Melbourne Australia, 2008. First published at overland.org.au, 2008. Unmiracle also appears in my new poetry collection Gil Scott Heron is on Parole.

Wordplay Lives On

Wordplay holds a special place in my heart. It was at Wordplay that I performed my first feature set (which you can listen to here in it's entirety), on the invitation of Melbourne poet and founder of Wordplay, Geoff Lemon, on a quadruple bill which included two of my favourite poets, Anthony O'Sullivan (check out the latest issue of Harvest magazine, which contains several amazing O'Sullivan poems) and TT.O.

As we all know, Wordplay has come to an end...or has it? Geoff writes from Argentina, in the moments before he sets sail for the Antarctic (lucky bastard):

...Wordplay may have hung up its microphone for now, but our legacy still lives thanks to the internet. Our mountain of recorded audio is going to be increasingly available for human consumption. Mr Stephens has been editing his little face off (many think it's quite an improvement) on the stealth-camouflaged offshore oil rig that comprises our headquarters, and we're now ready to move things up a gear. We're talking reliability, and regularity.

Our website will now release a new set of poems each week. Or four times monthly, anyway. On the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of each month, one new set from one past performer will be uploaded for you to stream or download. It's free and it's easy and there is a lot of gold to be discovered.

December's show has just been posted; July 2009 is next to come (don't ask why, we have a system, dammit). EZB is already there and waiting. 360, Nick Powell and Joelistics will hit the web one by one over coming weeks. We also have video recordings of several shows, so at some stage this year we hope to bring you visuals of the wonderful Felix Nobis, the lovely Josephine Rowe, and many more besides.

So keep checking out Wordplay, with the assurance that there will be new things to find. Hit www.wordplay.org.au and go to the Podcasts tab on your right.

I'll be throwing you over to Wordplay every now and then, for your thoughts on one poem or the other. It's an amazing audio snap-shot of spoken word Melbourne (indeed, Australia), and I'm really stoked that it's continuing to grow, despite the end of the Wordplay gigs.

Randall Stephens talks about Wordplay's ressurrection over here at his blog. Check it out.

Cover Art

I'm hoping the next cover of Overland Literary Journal will be amazing...because I've been asked to design it.

This has come completely out of the blue, the invitation rolling off the back of graphics and artwork designed (purely for my own joy/amusement) for coverage of the Overload Poetry Festival on the Overland blogsite last year (many designs you can see down the left hand side of this site).

After my initial jubilation and shock, I proceeded to practically dirty my pants with fear, and am still doing so every few minutes, so much so I'm gonna have to get some more (metaphorical) underwear soon.

Just recently, Alec Patric (a Melbourne writer and bookseller) and I were standing in Readings bookstore in St Kilda, having a discussion about how detrimental a boring/inappropriate cover can be to book sales, particularly literary journals. Weird.

I want this book to sell. I want a cover that says buy me now, I rock. I am left, I am challenging, I am engaging and I am well worth the cover price. I want to create a cover that does the writing inside justice. I'm overwhelmed, but excited, but overwhelmed, but exci...you get my drift.

So what about you guys? Do you have any favourite book covers? Any you despise? Any which offend you? What kind of cover makes you pick up a book and flick through it? What colours catch your eye? I wanna know it all. Oh, and some new underwear wouldn't go astray either.

Getting Published

Last week I received notification that my poem Show Us Where You’re Publishing has been accepted for publication in Miscellaneous Voices, Australian Blog Writing #1. This felt right for many reasons. If you’ll recall the poem (which I posted here last year), it is about being refused funding due to lack of paper publications. The fact that this particular poem is being published would be ironic, if it weren’t for the exact publication it’s been selected for. As it is, I can think of no better place for it.

Although I wrote Show Us Where You’re Publishing from the point of view of a spoken word poet (though I’d previously been published in Voiceworks, Kunapipi, The Paradise Anthology and several other places as a result of being involved in specific conferences/competitions where being published was kind of a by-product of entry/performance, and published my chapbook Original Skin), the poem could be just as relevant to poets who blog, or publish in other-than-traditional methods.

In the particular instance recounted in the poem, despite being able to pull a crowd and having performed at some of the most prestigious venues in Melbourne (including the Arts Centre, the Edge Theatre at Fedration Square and at the Melbourne Writers Festival), I was not able to be considered for a grant to tour poetry internationally on a mic. This was and still is, quite frankly, absolute bollocks. Crusty, stinky, fly-swamped, rabid dogs bollocks to be precise, but probably the cause of funding bodies, rather than the organisation I applied to for the grant. And as much ranting as I can and have done about it, it is the reality in which I (we?) write.

After my little rant about not being accepted for grants and other writing privileges because I’m a spoken word poet, I decided to start submitting poetry and some other writing to literary journals. It was purely a strategic move. I hate to say it, but it was. I ticked the boxes, I jumped through hoops, I signed on the dotted line. No matter how much the view is railed against by those trying to ‘crack’ the industry, there’s always been, and probably always will be, a perception that, well, if no-one independent has published your work it might well be...well, crap. Embarrassingly crap.

Much as we might lament it, blogging alone in this industry does not count for much to the Powers that Be, no matter how many readers one has, how much traffic, how many commentators. For the sceptical Power that Be, clever tricks can drive people to our blogs, comment-returns can sustain readers, and longjevity builds an online presence. At the end of the day most writers would like not only to have their work read as widely as possible, but to survive from their writing, and to be published in all the conservatism of the definition: to be in bookshops, libraries and on the shelves of people’s homes.

Since my August publishing vow, my work has appeared in Page Seventeen, The Emerging Writers Festival Reader, Peril, Cordite Poetry Review, Harvest , Indiefeed and Going Down Swinging (though the last two were a result of being recorded during the Overload Poetry Festival late last year, so they probably don’t count. Each publication I submitted to was chosen for a particular reason. Cordite is online, and has an audio submissions section, Peril gives a voice to those who might otherwise be marginalised and deals with issues of significance to Asian-Australia, Harvest makes me swoon and is the most beautiful literary magazine I’ve yet come across, The Emerging Writers Festival is what really kicked off my writing career, Page Seventeen offers new and emerging writers a hand up.

Did I prove a point? I’m not sure. Did it turn out the way I expected? No. There were many, many surprises. I thought I’d get more rejections (I did get one, though I guess I was submitting from a unique position in that in a bizarre way, I was already a ‘known’ poet, despite my past print-aversion). I didn’t think I’d feel so proud. Yes, I’m ashamed to admit it and all the dedicated spoken wordsters out there who choose never to publish will be wanting to gag me, pull me into a back room and break my thumbs with a hammer right now. I don’t mean proud in the sense of feeling my work was good enough to be published. More that, despite the fact that I choose to publish my poems over radio waves and on the stage, the print selection process of the Powers That Be deem that my work can actually hold it’s own as (gasp, gulp, shudder, convulse...) print poetry.

I’m still figuring out where to go from here. With these publications and my poetry collection out next month, maybe it’s time I stepped back into the slamming and performing spotlight...? We’ll see.

Free Verse

Poefrika Posting

It was a pleasant surprise that earlier today one of my all-time favourite poetry blogs Poefrika requested permission to post my poem Earthquake in Haiti (which appears in the post below). Of course, I was ecstatic to oblige. You can check out cyber-sister Rethabile Masilo's Africa-inspired poetry blog Poefrika here. Grab a glass of wine, it's well-worth an evening: Rethabile presents an amazing array of Brown poets from all over, in fact all my heroes and trailblazers are hanging there: Nikki Giovanni, Rita Dove, Okigbo...truly an honour to be asked.

Earthquake in Haiti

seems jesus
& his big daddy
both white men / to me

else what the hell do that pair / have
against the poor
& brown
& free

the pale trinity
hz crushed haiti in their fist
did it feel as good as phuket
tsunami / quake / or lava
what jacks them off the best

long bone fingers at the throb
aiming down on new orleans

jesus is a white man / i'm sayin
jesus is now a white man / to me


Maxine Beneba Clarke's new poetry collection Gil Scott Heron is on Parole will be launched at Readings, Carlton on February 18.

Street Sign for Emerging Writers

Get That Chicken the F*ck Outta My Face

contrary to recent television commercials
or maybe even popular belief / we
are not pacified by a white man
with a large bucket of kfc
do not spend every evening
calypso-ing round the coconut tree
& you know what else
(shock horror) might not
even give a fuck about the cricket

contrary to popular (which really
means anglo let’s face it) belief
no / i am not nursing a garage full / of
montego bay hydroponic weed
for christ’s sake / wd you all cease
accostin me in the street / the best i cn
get you on a good day
is a double shot of caffeine

contrary to popular belief / some of us
were watchin hey hey
three living rooms down from
you / & are not so
small-island good-time rum-belly layabout
tht we are unable to feel
(it wz marley after all / the one
person you conjure
to sum the millions-strong
of us / who said get the fuck
people / stand the fuck up
set my people free)

& perhaps most pertinently:
contrary to popular knowledge
it was / in fact / a jamaican man
who detonated at piccadilly

ever think maybe germaine lindsay
wz tired of seeing you blacked up on stage
oh yeah / just maybe germaine wz screaming
get that chicken the fuck outta my face
the only way popular belief
taught him how / to say it


Maxine Beneba Clarke's new poetry collection Gil Scott Heron is on Parole will be launched at Readings, Carlton on February 18.

The Vanity Googlink (otherwise known as the Egosurf)

Brad Frederikson has amazingly named me as a poetic influence over at Maekitso's Cafe.'

Paul Squires invited me to stab him in the ribs with a sharp object to assist him in accomplishing his New Year's resolution.

Simonne Michelle Wells caught me reading at the Peril launch in December.


And when I worldwide image-google my name (yes I confess, I just did it...due to a horror story a fellow writer just told me about googling herself) here is my favourite image that comes up. Yep, they caught me on a good day.


Wiki says on the matter:Egosurfing (usually referred to as Googling yourself and sometimes called vanity searching, egosearching, egogoogling, autogoogling, self-googling) is the practice of searching for one's own given name, surname, full name, pseudonym, or screen name on a popular search engine, to see what results appear.[1] It has become increasingly popular with the rise of popular search engines such as Google, as well as free blogging and web-hosting services. It is sometimes combined with third-party tools such as Googlefight when several people egosurf together, or with Pimp My Search when people create their own Google-like search engine, or accessed by SMS through services such as 199QUERY (Australia) or AQA (UK) which people SMS their name to a number and an "egosearch" is performed on that name and returned (egotexting).

Similarly, an egosurfer is one who surfs the Internet for his own name, to see what, if any, articles appear about himself.

The term was allegedly coined by Sean Carton.[2][3] Egosurfing can be used to find data spills, released information that is undesirable to have in the public eye.

Poetry City

i said get back / mother fuckers
i am warning you
i got poetry

& i held it out at them

my hands were trembling
their eyes were wild
& i could
smell their fear

it wz poetry



(extract from my poem novel 'we all know what happens next')

Withdrawal