Printed Shadows – 40 Years plus of Writing and Cultural Journalism

Tag: Poetry

  • Three new poems to appear in Catalyst 23

    Three new poems to appear in Catalyst 23

    I am delighted to announce that I have three new poems ‘The Red Motorbike’, ‘Gladesville Bridge’ and ‘Frozen Ravioli’ appearing in Issue 23 of the Aoetearoa (New Zealand) based journal Catalyst. If you are close to Sydney you can hear me read these poems, and perhaps one or two more, at the Australian launch on Saturday:

    Catalyst Literary Arts Journal: Volume 23 Australian launch will be held in Sydney on Saturday 11 July, 3-5pm at ellipsis Gallery, Level 1, 41 Crown Street, Woolloomooloo NSW 2011. 

    For further details on the launch and Catalyst 23 go to https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2026/07/05/catalyst-literary-arts-journal-volume-23-australian-sydney-launch/

     

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  • 2025 – Going out with a bang: ‘Best Australian Poems 2025’ & ‘The Stony Thursday Book 50th Anniversary Edition’

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    As 2025 drew to a close I was excited to find my work featured in two anthologies, the Best of Australian Poems 2025, edited by Nam Le and Jill Jones (Australian Poetry) and The Stony Thursday Book 50th Anniversary Edition, edited by John Liddy & Jim Burke (Limerick Arts Office, Republic of Ireland).

    Le and Jones chose ‘Shadow Birds’, a poem from my 5 Islands Press collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours, for the Best of Australian Poems 2025 and it was great to see this short poem that I tried to pour so much into, included in the anthology.

    Liddy and Burke selected ‘Knitting’ for The Stony Thursday Book 50th Anniversary Edition. Knitting is a new poem, once again quite short, but a poem I have been working on for well over 5 years. It is wonderful to see it finally emerge into the light of day. I was particular pleased to have been included in this anthology, which is one of Ireland’s longest running literary publications and to be in the company of so many wonderful poets. My only regret was that my trip to Ireland this year did not coincide with the launch!

    Over the next few weeks I look forward to working my way through each of these publications – a great way to start the new year!

     

     

  • Rose van Son on ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’

    It’s always nice when you realise that someone has actually read your book – and enjoyed it! So it was lovely to find Perth based writer and poet. Ros van Son, mentioning The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Islands Press, 2025) recently on social media. More than happy to go with “Memorable language and crafted lines by a master poet”!

    The Office of Literary Endeavours is available from https://www.5islandspress.com/product-page/the-office-of-literary-endeavours-by-mark-roberts.

    It is also available from Gleebooks in Sydney, Readings in Melbourne, and The Little Lost Bookshop in Katoomba .

  • My shortlisted poem, ‘Theory of flight for two voices’, appears in ‘Poetry of Flight: The Liquid Amber Prize Anthology’

    Earlier this year I was excited and honoured to be short-listed for the 2025 Liquid Amber Poetry Prize and this coming Thursday the resulting anthology, Poetry of Flight, will be launched by Zoom.

    “The 2025 Liquid Amber Poetry Prize invited poets to respond to the broad topic of ‘flight’ – and to take it in whatever direction they wished. Perhaps being in flight from something, or towards new places, experiences or elements. Perhaps knowing the ecstatic flight of emotions or the spirit, or an engagement with the feathered world of what inhabits air and branch…

    The astounding stylistic and thematic range of poems in this Longlist do what powerful art always does – they offer the reader the insights, connection and joy which enable us to live our lives for the better.

    This anthology has the 51 poems of the Longlist, including the winners.”

    If you want to catch some of the contributors to the anthology read their poems on Thursday night you can book your Zoom place here: https://liquidamberpress. com.au/events/ where you can also purchase copies of the anthology.

     

  • Mark Roberts – The poetry of place, history and memory – Guest editorial, Live Encounters

    I was honoured to be asked to write the guest editorial for the September Issue of Live Encounters. In my editorial I talk about the importance of place in poetry, and in my recent work in particular. Beyond my editorial there is great work in the issue from a plethora of my favourite writers and poets, including: Linda Adair, Mark  Tredinnick, David Rigsbee, Jordan Smith, Brian Kirk, Jane Frank, Hugh McMillan, Terry McDonagh, Angela Costi, Richard W Halperin, Anton Floyd, Phil Lynch, Indran Amirthanayagam,
    Lincoln Jaques, Edward Caruso, Justin Lowe, LaWanda Walters, Stephen House, Amy Barry, Ma Yongbo, Patricia Sykes, Daphne Wilson, Gita Chattopadhyay – translations by Paramita Banerjee & Carolyne Wright and Dr Salwa Gouda.

    Many thanks to editor Mark Ulyseas for the opportunity to contribute my thoughts.

    You can read my editorial on-line https://liveencounters.net/2025-le-pw/mark-roberts-the-poetry-of-place-history-and-memory-guest-editorial/. 

  • Mark Roberts & Linda Adair to read at Poetry Plus, Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary

    I’m excited to be reading work from my latest collection, The Office of Literary Endeavous (5 Islands Press 2025) and Concrete Flamingos (Island Press 2016) along with my wife and co-editor of Rochford Street Review, Linda Adair, in Ireland on Friday 12 September to kick-off a new of Poetry Plus at the Brewery Lane Theatre & Arts Centre, Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary. This will be a special reading for me as my great grandmother was born just up the road in Mullinahone.

    If you are anywhere in the vicinity on Friday night it would be great to see you there. Seating is limited so you will need to book at https:// www.ticketsource.com/ booking/select/pqeayjldoxqn and admission is only €10.00.

  • 5 Islands Press Reading at Gleebooks: Mark Roberts & Kai Jensen

    I am excited to be reading and discussing poetry with Kai Jensen at Gleebooks this coming Sunday afternoon!

    5 Islands Press is excited to collaborate with Gleebooks in this event featuring Mark Roberts and Kai Jensen, the authors, respectively, of two of our most recent publications, The Office of Literary Endeavours and The Zebra Path of Tree Light. Readings from both of these books will be complemented and enlivened by conversation between the poets about, among other things, where the poems came from and how they came to find their final shape. The event will be introduced by 5 Islands Press Managing Editor, Mark Tredinnick. Why not join us for a drink, nibbles and an entertaining and instructive afternoon?

    This is a free event but registration via Gleebooks events page is essential. Click here to register.
  • Tina Giannoukos talks to Mark Roberts about his latest collection ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’ on 3CR Spoken Word

    Tina Giannoukos talks to Mark Roberts about his latest collection ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’ on 3CR Spoken Word

    Tina Giannoukos recently interviewed me on the Spoken Word program on Community Radio 3CR about my latest collection The Office of Literary Endeavours. You can listen to the interview on the Spoken Word website https://www.3cr.org.au/spoken-word/episode/mark-roberts-office-literary-endeavours or you can listen below:

     

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    You can buy The Office of Literary Endeavours from 5 Islands Press

  • The violence of erasure: Les Wicks launches ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’ by Mark Roberts

    Les Wick’s launch speech for my latest collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Island Press), is now live on Rochford Street Review. If you couldn’t make it to the launch you can see what he had to say at https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2025/07/09/les-wicks-launches-the-office-of-literary-endeavours-by-mark-roberts/

    “For me, I was struck by the constant violence explored in this collection. What is remarkable is the way Mark with a deft and gentle voice recreates that violence on the page. The way he presents it makes that violence even more tangible. Impossible to disregard. It is physical in the poems shadow birds, how many more are coming and the conscription vote 1916. Economic violence is explored throughout alongside extensively the violence of erasure”.

    The Office of Literary Eneavours by Mark Roberts is available from:

     

     

  • The Office of Literary Endeavours – Sydney Book Launch

    5 Island Press invites you to the launch of this stunning new poetry collection from Mark Roberts, co-editor of Rochford Street Review and the occasional poetry journal P76.

    The Office of Literary Endeavours with be launched by Les Wicks; Angela Stretch will be your MC.
    Time & Location: 25 May 2025, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm. Benledi House, 186 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe NSW 2037, Australia.
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    This is a free event but please register to assist with planning and catering  https://www. 5islandspress .com/…/ book-launch-the…/form
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    If you can’t make the launch you can buy the book from https://www.5islandspress.com/…/the-office-of-literary…
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    About The Office of Literary Endeavours
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    “This is a book evidencing a life spent in appreciation of poetry, deep observation and participation in ecologies of many kinds. Discomfort is constant but there is succour and reprieve in kin and creative expression. The Office of Literary Endeavours is a wise and reverential book by a gentle and accomplished poet at a high point of their writing life”.
    ………………………………………………………………–AMANDA JOY
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    “The poetry is carefully crafted and elegant. The subject matter wide ranging and richly brought to life within the forms Roberts has chosen. Reading through this collection has been a privilege and a delight”.
    ………………………………………………………………–LES WICKS
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    “The Office of Literary Endeavours is a witty and insightful collection characterised by its lucidity. The strength of these poems lies in their interrogation of migration and colonisation through poignant familial memories that are never sentimental but always elegiac, with their critique of colonisation and account of Irish dispossession. A feature of the collection is the way it deftly navigates different moods, so that alongside the poems of migration and colonisation there are also poems about the landscape, the passion of lovers, old friendships, and favourite films. A sharply observant eye unites these poems into a cohesive manuscript of layered emotions and experiences”.
    ………………………………………………………………–TINA GIANNOUKOS
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    “Roberts lends his deft touch to subjects and places both new and old, and specifically to what must always resonate as essential to the human condition–continuously, from pram to old age. In his shared memories, real and invented, ancient and modern, a jam jar or two might be shot for target practice, deadly snakes slung over wire fences, trains might be caught or missed. Here is subject matter to engage seasoned poetry readers, as well as keen students of Australian literature and cultural history: a lively content able to both re-trace and advance, often simultaneously”.
    …………………………………………………………………..–JOHN JENKINS
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    “The Office of Literary Endeavours is an excellent collection of poetry that demonstrates the poet’s range, skill, talent, experience and wisdom, along with his willingness to experiment with form (including lines, stanza structures and the shape of the poem) and to engage with crucial contemporary issues (such as Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships to country) as well as European culture and history (as demonstrated through the sequence of poems inspired by films). The book is engaging, accessible, insightful, entertaining, witty and, at times, playful”.
    ………………………………………………………………–NATHANAEL O’REILLY

  • Redundancy

    ‘By Five o’clock’ by Kevin Higgins from The Boy With No Face, Salmon Poetry 2005

     

    Yes. I have been made redundant and today is my last day at a company at which I have spent the last 17 years. They say one door closes and another door opens. As Kevin Higgins once wrote:

    “A universe of time for nothing but writing!”

    Leaving the office this afternoon I will think of Kevin’s poem ‘By Five o’clock’, from his 2005 collection The Boy With No Face (see above). While I suspect I will end up in a better place than Kevin’s character (note: Please contact me for paid writing gigs – reviews, articles commissions etc), Higgins poem is a reminder of the viciousness which lies at the heart of capitalism.

    Anyway – I’m looking forward to reading Kevin’s final collection Life Itself available from Salmon Poetry

    Tomorrow, perhaps, I will share my own redundancy poem…..

     

     

  • Mark Roberts at the Sydney Poet Lounge – 21 May 2025

    I’m excited to be one of the feature poets, along with JR Grogan, at the Sydney Poetry Lounge at the Glebe Hotel ( 63 Bay Street, Glebe, New South Wales) on Wednesday 21 May from 6.30pm. I will be reading from my new collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Islands Press 2025).

    Details

    Welcome back to the May 2025 chapter of the Sydney Poetry Lounge, featuring poetry from Mark Roberts, JR Grogan and our incredible open mic! Join us upstairs at The Glebe Hotel for a night filled with powerful spoken word performances and heartfelt poetry.$10 entry, $5 concession, tickets available on the door or via Humanitix. The May SPL Facebook Event 

    Mark Roberts

    For much of the last four decades, Mark Roberts has been involved in writing, criticism and publishing. In 1982, he established P76 magazine with Adam Aitken and has been involved in small press publishing ever since. In 2011 he set up the on-line journal Rochford Street Review with his wife, Linda Adair, which has recently published its 41st issue; the Review is one of the leading (and long-lasting) independent cultural journals around. Mark’s work has been widely published in journal and magazines both in Australia and internationally. He has also published three collections – The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Islands Press 2025) is Mark’s third book, after Stepping out of Line (Rochford Street Press 1986) and Concrete Flamingos, (Island Press 2016).
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    JR Grogan
    John Robert Grogan (aka: JR) is an Irish-Australian poet based in Sydney, Australia. His childhood in Ireland and wanderings since, spawned a love and curiosity for the connectivity of the natural world and the human condition. He has poems published in a number of anthologies and online at: The Madrigal, Blue Bottle Journal, Live Encounters Magazine and From Whispers to Roars literary magazine. He is one quarter of the SPL team & sometimes known as ‘the voice of reason’. Find on Instagram: @jr_grogan.

  • Dublin GPO – Easter Poem from ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’

    Easter means different things to different people. For many it a time for deep religious and spiritual contemplation, for others it represents a holiday and lots of chocolate. For the Irish Catholics on my mother’s side of my family it was a time of great solemnity, not just because of the Christian celebration of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, but because it was the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland.

    In my poem ‘Returns’, which appears in my new collection The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Islands Press), I write of my return to Ireland, over 150 years after my great grandmother was forced to flee with her family. In the final part of the poem ‘Dublin GPO’ I remember my grandfather. While he never saw Ireland, he grew up with the stories of Irish resistance and the memory of hearing about the Easter Uprising and it’s aftermath stayed with him all his life. Before I read the history of Easter 1916 in books I had already heard his version of events numerous times.

     

    The  Office of Literary Endeavours is available from https://www.5islandspress.com/product-page/the-office-of-literary-endeavours-by-mark-roberts

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  • Michael Witts double book launch at the Shop Gallery Sunday 16 March

    This coming Sunday I will be doing the honours and formally launching not one but two books by Michael Witts at the wonderful Shop Gallery in Glebe Point Road. I first read Michael’s work in 1982, the year Adam Aitken and I started P76 magazine, when Fling Poetry published his third collection, Dumb Music. More recently I have enjoyed more recent work his has been published in various journals and magazines and we now have the pleasure seeing this new work collected together.

    If you are in Sydney this Sunday try and make it to the Shop Gallery to see me launch 28 Sonnets and Some Dualities and. more importantly, hear Michael read from these collections.

  • Four new poems from ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’ appear in the ‘Lothlorien Poetry Journal’ blog

    Four new poems from ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’ appear in the ‘Lothlorien Poetry Journal’ blog

    It was a great feeling to wake up on New Year’s Day to find four poems from my upcoming collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours, published on the the Lothlorien Poetry Journal blog. Many thanks for editor Strider Marcus Jones for publishing ‘cutting the grass’, ‘the other city’, ‘consolidation’ and ‘Northern Stone’.

    You can read the poems here:  https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2024/12/four-poems-by-mark-roberts.html.

    Make sure you check out the rest of the site – there is some amazing work there.

     

  • Three new poems from ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’ appear in ‘Live Encounters’ 15th Anniversary Edition Volune Five

    It’s alway exciting to be contacted by about contributing to an upcoming issue of Live Encounters and particularly so this time as the November-December Issue celebrates the on-line journal’s 15th anniversary.

    My contribution to this issue consists of three poems from my upcoming collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours, which will be published by Five Islands Press in the first half of next year. The three poems include two of my film poems, ‘Final Reel’ – After Breathless (1960) directed by Jean-Luc Godard, ‘Taking Tea’ – After Cléo from 5 to 7 – directed by Agnès Varda (1962), and another shorter poem titled ‘Consecration’.

    You can read the poems here https://liveencounters.net/2024-anniversary-editions/mark-roberts-final-reel/

    You can also download a pdf from here  https://liveencounters.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/LE-PW-Vol-Five-Nov-Dec-2024.pdf

    My thanks to Mark Ulyseas for including my work in this milestone edition.

     

     

  • Just a bit of fun – Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Special Humour Edition, June 2024.

    MARK ROBERTS – THE DEMISE OF POETRY

    Many journals have themed issues but, as guest editor Les Wicks points out in his introduction Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Special Humour Edition, humour is not a theme normally associated with contemporary poetry. Forms such as limericks and nonsense verse obviously have humour at their core, but aren’t really recognised as ‘serious’ literature. Perhaps the first ‘real’ poem which really made made me laugh out loud in public was Chris Mansell’s Definition poem: Pissed as a parrot, which I seem to recall I first heard at a reading upstairs in a strange, secret, vegetarian restaurant in Leichhardt, NSW.

    But onto the issue at hand – my attempt at a humourous poem, The demise of poetry, somehow made the cut and made it into the Live Encounters Special Humour Edition. I hope that it provokes at least the hint of a giggle…….

  • ‘Gweagal Shield’ published in ‘War’ 24 Hour Chapbook Challenge

    WAR: 24-Hour Chapbook Challenge VII, edited by Colin Dardis, Rancid Idols Productions, Northern Ireland

    I tend to take time writing a poem. A first draft, some initial revisions and then coming back over a period of time, reviewing and editing. I think my record from first mark on paper to completed poem is 30 years. So the concept of writing a poem from a single word prompt and being published all withing 24 hours was a particular challenge for me.

    The challenge, by Rancid Idols Production, was part of their sporadic poetry challenge series: a one-word prompt was sent to participating poets, we replied back with a brand new poem, It is then collated and a free digital chapbook available to be download all within 24 hours!

    The one word prompt was ‘War’, unfortunately currently a very fertile ground for artists. My poem is based around the Gweagal Shield, which is currently held, under dispute, in the British Museum. Although its providence is questioned, is it supposedly the shield dropped by a Gweagal warrior following the confrontation with British Marines on the shore of Kamay (Botany Bay) in 1770.

    The chapbook, which contains some remarkable poems, all of which were written withing 24 hours over the weekend, is available for download here:

    https://rancididols.weebly.com/war-chapbook-challenge.html.

    Many thanks to Colin Dardis who coordinated and edited the project and to all the other poets who took part in producing this remarkable little artifact in such a short period of time.

    Rancid Idols Productions also runs the Poet Alone project and maintains a Bandcamp channel of music, poetry and noise. You can access these projects at

    https://rancididols.weebly.com/

  • ‘Gaanha-bula’ translated into Hindi

    Ganhabula

    Although it was published in 2019 I only just discovered that my prose poem ‘Gaanha-bula’ was translated into Hindi as part of the Spineless Wonders Shuffle Translation Project. The work first appeared in in Shuffle, An Anthology of Microlit, published by Spineless Wonders in 2019, so it was a pleasant to find it had been translated.

    Many thanks to the translators, Anindya Singh and Ishrat Parween, to Paulette Smythe who produced the video poem of the translation and to Anindya Singh who read the poem. And of course thanks to the Spineless Wonders team who pulled the project together.

  • ‘The weather was perfect for making movies outside’ – Film Poem published in Sublunary Review

    ‘The weather was perfect for making movies outside’ – Film Poem published in Sublunary Review

    I haven’t sent much work out over the past 12 months, but I did try to find a home for one of my film poems and was excited when ‘The weather was perfect for making movies outside’ – a poem based on the Godard film Made in the USA – found a home in the excellent Sublunary Review. Many thanks to poetry editor Ruslan Garrey and the Sublunary Review team. You can read it here:

    https://www.sublunaryreview.com/home/weather-was-perfect-for-making-movies

  • ‘Cadogan Place, Orange, 1992’ – published in ‘The Blue Nib’

    Almost 75% of the work in the Lacuna cycle has now found it’s way into magazines, journals and anthologies in Australia and around the world and I’m excited that one of the more personal memoir poems, Cadogan Place, Orange, 1992, has just appeared in the wonderful Blue Nib Literary Magazine. Many thanks to editor Denise O’Hagan for giving this poem such a wonderful home.

    If you want to read Cadogan Place, Orange, 1992 you can find it here: https://thebluenib.com/poetry-by-mark-roberts/

    A companion piece to ‘Cadogan Place, Orange, 1992, Place Burial, was published in Issue 3 of Pink Cover Zine back in May 2019 https://printedshadows.wordpress.com/2019/05/08/place-burial-appears-in-pink-cover-zine-issue-3/

  • The Lidster Poems appear in ‘No Placebos’

    Poems from the Lacuna cycle continue to find their way out into the world and it was exciting to see a selection of ‘The Lidster Poems 1961-1992’ appear in Pete Spence’s latest journal No Placebos. Many thanks to Pete for including my work alongside so many other brilliant writers. 

  • ‘feral green marketing’ – Plumwood Mountain Volume 7 Number 1


    There are some journals were there is that extra bit of excitement when you receive an acceptance. Plumwood Mountain is one of those journals. The journal is subtitled An Australian Journal of Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics and it is this clearly stated political stance that makes the journal and the work in it so important.

    My poem ‘feral green marketing’, which appears in issue 7:1, is the second poem I have written in a genre which I “invented” some time ago (the first ‘Written Under Duress was published in Australian Latino Press some years ago https://australianlatinopress.blogspot.com/2014/05/written-under-duress-mark-roberts.html). The genre, which doesn’t have a name, takes the form of three stanzas with each stanza having its own title. The overall poem title is a combination of all three stanza titles. Beyond that I guess I am still working on the rules.

     

     

    feral green marketing

     

    https://plumwoodmountain.com/feral-green-marketing/

     

  • ‘self evacuation’ and ‘charcoal drawing’ published in ‘From the Ashes: A poetry collection in support of the 2019-2020 Australian Bushfire relief effort’

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    The last few months have certainly been challenging. Fires, floods and now plague. Already we have seen the offers of support and funding made to those impacted by the Morrison fires of 2019/2020 forgotten and people and the environment abandoned as we are overtaken by the next crisis. In such an environment it is important to remember and to make our leaders remember the commitments they made. This is one of the reasons I am proud to have two poems in the anthology  From the Ashes: A poetry collection in support of the 2019-2020 Australian Bushfire relief effort edited by C.S. Hughes and published by Maximum Felix Media.

    My two poems in the anthology, ‘self evacuation’ and ‘charcoal drawing’, are raw poems, written with the memory of a summer of fire, smoke and danger in the Blue Mountains. My thanks to the editor, C.S. Hughes for including them in the collection.

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    As Hughes says in the introduction to the anthology:

    It has been a season of fire and flood. It is not that we are unfamiliar, in our dry and storm driven land, with such seasons, but these elements, perhaps through our ignorance and neglect, have burgeoned and magnified, returned on a scale that seems unimaginable.

    Hundreds of homes have been lost, nearly two score lives. Each given in defence of what we all value, home, family and thus each life lost in defence of us all. Before such an onslaught, it is only by fickle winds and fortunate rains that the destruction has not been more overwhelming.

    From the Ashes: A poetry collection in support of the 2019-2020 Australian Bushfire relief effort is available from https://fromtheashes.maximumfelixmedia.com/. Proceeds from the sale of the anthology will go to support the ongoing care of Australia’s native wildlife through selected charities and wildlife organisations.

  • ‘Read On 3’ in the quiet carriage

     

    It’s not often you get to read a journal which contains a poem you wrote about a train in the very train you wrote it about! But that was the unique experience I recently had while reading the Pete Spence edited Read On 3 on the way back up the mountains.

    There is an extraordinary amount of great work by amazing writers in this issue and it is an honour to be included among them: Mark Young, Francesca Jurate Sasnaitis, Tim Wright, Julia Knobloch, Sheila E. Murphy, Barbara Henning, Louis Armand, Don Yorty, Tom Weigel, John Jenkins, Gig Ryan, Douglas Messerli, Alan Jefferies, Joanna Walkden Harris, Pete Spence, Pam Brown, Jenn Knickerbocker & Jake St. John, Kris Hemensley and Greg Masters.

    In addition to my train poem ‘6.02pm to Mt Victoria’ Read On 3 contains another of my Blue Mountains poems ‘climbing’ together with 2 more of my film poems – one based on Le Redoutable directed by Michael Hazanavicius (2017) and the other on Le Gai Savoir, Jean-Luc Godard 1969.

    Read On 3 is published by Pete’s Press, Donnithorne Street Press and available directly from him – I believe he can be found on Facebook.

  • ‘Returns’ published in Rabbit 29.

    Rabbit is a journal for nonfiction poetry – a genre I find intriguing. The concept of “nonfiction poetry” makes me examine my creative process, where my poetry comes from, the illusion and reality as Christopher Cauldwell might say.  I realised that much of my work is grounded in my attempted understanding of my environment, of where I am, the history and politics that surrounds me and which has shaped me over the years – a history and politics that is sometimes hidden.

    The theme for Rabbit 29 was ‘Lineages’, a word that could be interpreted in many ways  – creative lineages, personal lineages, family lineages and so on. I had been working on a sequence of poems that grew out of two recent trips I had taken to Ireland and these poems seem to fit the lineage theme very well. The sequence was called ‘Returns’ and is based around the notion of returning to a heritage and country that my family left a number of generations ago. My mother’s side of my family is predominately Irish, most of them having left Ireland for Australia in the years between 1850 and 1880, driven out by famine and persecution by the English. I grew up with my grandparents stories of Ireland, though they had never left Australia they had a vivid memory of place handed down to them through their parents. The 1916 Uprising had a profound impact on my grandfather and even 50 years later he talked of it with a passion.

    ‘Returns’ captures fragments of that history, my personal journey, the remembered/imagined journey of my ancestors and visiting places strong in a family memory passed down through generation. It is one of my lineages.

    My thanks to editor Jessica L Wilkinson and guest editors for this issue Chi Tran and Matthew Hall. It is exciting to be included in such a strong collection of work.

    Rabbit 29 is available from http://rabbitpoetry.com/?product_cat=journals

  • Poems on films – Le Quattro Volte: Cordite Issue 92

    I have recently been writing a series of poems about films. The first of these, ‘Poems on films – Weekend – Jean-Luc Godard’ was published in The Tundish Review Issue 9 earlier this year. The second poem to find a home is ‘Poems on films – Le Quattro Volte – Michelangelo Frammartino’. I am particularly please that the editor of Cordite Issue 92, Claire Gaskin, found a place for this poem as the film on which it is based is particularly poetic and beautiful – something which I hope I have captured in this poem.

    http://cordite.org.au/poetry/notheme8/poems-on-films-le-quattro-volte/

     

  • Memories of ‘The Friend in Hand’ and Rae Desmond Jones

    Last weekend Linda Adair and I attended a double book launch at the Friend in Hand pub in Glebe. Nothing too remarkable there, I have been to many book launches at the Friend in Hand, indeed my own book launch took place there (https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2016/03/16/decades-of-percolation-anna-couani-launches-concrete-flamingos-by-mark-roberts/). But, as I listened to Margaret Bradstock launch Les Wick’s Belief and Anna Couani launch Kit Kelen’s  Poor Man’s Coat: Hardanger Poems, I had what is commonly referred to a flashback to the first launch Linda and I had organised at the Friend in Hand.

    Back in late 2012 the launch of two Rochford Press books took place at the Friend in Hand, P76 Issue 6 (The Lost Issue) and The Selected Your Friendly Fascist edited by Rae Desmond Jones. Both these titles were nostalgic in their own right. Issue 6 of P76 had  been over 15 years in the making. Linda and I had created the original layout for the issue in the 1990s on an old Mac and then lost the disk in the confusion of babies and house moves, only to discover it years later in a box under the house. The Selected Your Friendly Fascist grew out of an article Rae Desmond Jones had written for Rochford Street Review on the magazine that he and John Edwards had edited and produced for many years “Lots of energy here, not much control”: Your Friendly Fascist – 1970 – 1984. Rae Desmond Jones remembers…... The article attracted much attention and reminiscing and a few months later I suggested to Rae that he might like to consider pulling together a “best of” YFF . At the time Rae was in hospital and I remember his initial response was “it would have to be called the Worst of”. Shortly after he returned home, however, I received a phone call “is 120 pages enough”.

    As a result in October 2012 there was a large gathering of those of us who had survived being published in Your Friendly Fascist and/or P76. In my memory of that day the figure of Rae looms large against the red curtains of the upstairs bar of the Friend in Hand and, as I watched Les and Kit read from their new books last Saturday, I looked across at the corner near the stage where Rae had sat just over 6 years ago.

    Of course the fact that I have spent the last 8 months or so working with Linda Adair, Narelle Adair, John Edwards and Ruth Saunders to bring Rae’s final collection of poetry into the world probably had a lot to do with that feeling. So I searched through some old photos and found Rae at the Friend in Hand, launching The Selected Your Friendly Fascist, back in October 2012. I suspect I will have the same feeling when we launch The End of the Line (Rae’s final collection) on Sunday 24 February at 1.30pm at the Exodus Foundation (The Burns Philip Hall) 180 Liverpool Road Ashfield.

    Rae Desmond Jones carefully considers Alan Wearne’s launch speech for The Selected Your Friendly Fascist at The Friend in Hand Hotel, October 2012

     

    Rae Desmond Jones in full flight at the launch of The Selected Your Friendly Fascist

    Joanne Burns, Rae Desmond Jones and Joseph Chetcuti at the launch of The Selected Your Friendly Fascist, Friend in Hand Hotel, October 2012

    The End of the Line by Rae Desmond Jones will be launched on Sunday 24 February at 1.30pm at the Exodus Foundation (The Burns Philip Hall) 180 Liverpool Road Ashfield. Facebook link https://www.facebook.com/events/242278270027993/

    Copies of The End of Line can be purchased at https://rochfordpress.com/rochford-press-book-shop/

  • ‘limestone’ published in ‘Communion Arts Journal’ Issue 8 December 2017

    Windjana Gorge, WA

    I haven’t sent much work out over the last 18 months or so but I was particularly pleased that one poem made it into print. Communion Arts Journal, edited and published by Ralph Wessman and Jane Williams out of Tasmania, has a long and proud history. As part of the Walleah Press stable it can trace it’s ancestry back to the wonderful Famous Reporter journal which was one of the important and long lived small press journals of the last 30 years (back in 2013 I reviewed the last issue of the Famous Reporter edited by Ralph Wessman for Rochford Street Review  https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2012/08/10/an-eclectic-tour-de-force-mark-roberts-reviews-famous-reporter-43/). Unlike The Famous Reporter Communion is an online journal but it shares with its forebear a commitment to powerful writing and a keen critical ear – something that makes being published by the journal doubly satisfying.

    ‘limestone’ is a very short poem but it took a long time to write. Over 25 years ago Linda Adair and I spent a few days in the Kimberley east of Broome. There was an ancient beauty to the landscape which spoke deeply of the history of country and, particularly at night when the Milky Way was almost bright enough to throw shadows,  it was easy to feel a connection stretching back eons. It was a feeling that demanded a poem, but it was one of those situations where the poetic strength of the moment swamped the ability of any words to record it. Gradually over two decades words came, Auden helped a little as did the threat posed to this ancient environment by the rise of the ugly right in Australia and around the world which would deny the value of such a link to country. Once you’ve read ‘limestone’ make sure you hang around and enjoy Communion – it is a valuable journal whihc deserves your support.

    https://walleahpress.com.au/communion8-Mark-Roberts.html

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  • Poetic Journal: 20 December 2017: ‘Ha’penny Bridge.’

    Day 4 of the journal – I observe the Christmas lights from one of the famous bridges across the Liffy.

     

     

    The Liffy reflects back the Christmas lights
    on Ha’penny Bridge forming an imperfect

    oval. The river is as still as a mirror
    yet the image is distorted slightly

    on the southern side – a grimace
    more than a smile. So perhaps

    the opposite of a Dublin frown
    is not complete happiness.

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