Frozen in time travel

A favourite of my poems has appeared The Wild Word #46: Frozen. While you’re there, check out the rest of their fabulous collection of essays, stories and poetry. And if you like what you see, please consider supporting their tireless volunteer efforts to promote good writing via a donation.

Now out: The Wild Word issue #9: Lost & Found

It is a true delight to be featured this month in Berlin-based magazine, The Wild Word. There’s a span of about seven years in the three pieces (more if you go back to the beginnings of each piece), which also feature a couple of my favourite collaborators and muses.

Wordless – a poem inspired by poetry.

Suitcase & Sand – a collaborative video piece combining poetry, photography and music. This was performed at the 2015 Queensland Poetry Festival, and is the latest incarnation of a tale that has been through many iterations. This version, in collaboration with German musician Lina Paul, started to come together in Berlin in 2011, but there’s nothing like a looming performance to push me to finish writing something. It took over four years, but think it’s better for the long incubation.

Credits
Poem, Photographs & Video: mr oCean
Music: Lina Paul (hear more from her here and see videos here)
Additional photography: Tams Fletcher, Marsel van Oosten, Colleen Tully-Wilson, Maren Imhoff, Ally Weinrauch, Bettina Leupold and Chris Sanderson.

Escapement – a poetry & photography series, prepared as an installation for the 2008 Queensland Poetry Festival. This is another one that’s part of a larger and many-versioned tale, actually another aspect of the same tale as Suitcase & Sand. Mysteries and wonders, loss and escape. Part 6 borrows lines from Brisbane poet, Nerissa Rowan.

Check them all out here, then be sure to explore the rest of this magnificent mag.

Graveyard Shift

I am the ghost who leaves the lights on,
the doors propped open, the water running—
the murmur from upstairs, the whisper in the vents,
the glitch in the software, the echo on the phone.

My watch shows tomorrow’s date.

I am the bookmark for the day
you can’t get out of bed,
the holding pattern above
the damage from the last big crash,
desiccated leaves still hissing from the shock.

I am chasing the horizon.

Through the window: a red kite
at the moment the wind stops
after covering our tracks with sand,
and the kite’s still hanging like a photograph
when sunset swallows land and sea
and even the sky, stars and all.

 

mr oCean, September 2012

Steven Heighton: Ten year memoranda

I’m slowly heaving through the gargantuan and sometimes Sisyphean task of emptying my email’s inbox. Among the little gems awaiting time to be read was an update from Another Lost Shark about this collection of poetic wisdom from Steven Heighton. I still haven’t read it, but maybe with it posted here, I’ll remember it without the pang of panic that comes from hundreds or thousands of waiting emails!

To the Edge Chapbook at QPF2012

Toasty-warm off the press, my first chapbook is ready to make its way out into the world! I am more than a little excited! It features a handful of my best poems, with delightful illustrations by Steven Wilson (and cover art by Rod Wilson and me).

Brisbanefolk can pick up a copy for just $7 at the Queensland Poetry Festival, 24-26 August at the Judith Wright Centre, Fortitude Valley. I’ll be performing on the Saturday evening, and delivering a full set, complete with music and video, on the Sunday afternoon at 3:15. All Saturday and Sunday sessions are free, but you can happily show your support via the bookshop 🙂

The book is a Headful of Bees publication.

The River of Stones – January 2012

For some time I’ve had the idea that time seems to speed up as we get older because we filter out more details. This is necessary, but it can be quite an astonishing feeling to stop and notice even the simplest things. That’s what the River of Stones is all about.

In January, Kaspa and Fiona Robyn from ‘Writing Our Way Home’ are encouraging people to pay attention to one thing every day and write it down.

You don’t have to consider yourself a writer to take part: you just need to put aside three minutes a day, and channel those minutes into a notebook or blog, with the aim of slowing down a bit and falling in love with the world a little each day.

You can find out more here, and here’s a nice little endorsement from one of last year’s participants:

“…I keep finding that [writing a small stone] doesn’t eat up time or mental space; on the contrary, time stops and a new space is created.”

~Jean Morris, writer of small stones