Sydney's part in the UN
Dialogue Among Civilisations Through Poetry
A gallery of poems and pictures
Nihat Ziyalan
After a Sunken Ship
- translated by Gündo du Gencer
don't recall the day
I was launched, after I'm gone
that I was spoiled
with my name paraded
on the heaving seas
the sleeping of the dolphins
in my shadow
their licking my body with their fish smells
racing my speed
that, do recall
'cause it's like life that water is
cut with each arrival
forget after me
how I was drowned
my lungs scorched
with the hellos
and the good-byes
that, do forget
'cause it's like life to be drowned
don't gather after me
my scattered body
my memories
the remnants of my cry
let them float on the sea
let them wave
those, don't gather
'cause they're like life, the waves
don't cry after me
such is the sea
with its dizzying smell
caressing waves
its merciless storm
and its absolute calm
don't cry
'cause it's like life, the sea
say after me
he once was a haughty
and a distant ship
so glad he hit the bottom now
we saw recently
waves scattering his pieces
this, do say
'cause it's like life, man is
(l to r) unknown spectator, Jill
Jones, Rudi Krausmann, Angelika Fremd, Joanne Burns, Peter Boyle.
(Photo: A. Willis).
Nihat Ziyalan (Photo: A. Willis)
Nihat Ziyalan is a poet and novelist and has also been involved
in the theatre. He has also operated a stall at the Paddington
Markets.
joanne burns
dependence day
the astroturf blisters, bubbles in the hollywood hills,
the forests of the world become landfill, no bushes
left to burn, to illustrate those gutsy gods
of fire, old dieties grown senile on donuts
and cheap cheesyburger bites, their powers idled
away in puny farts, billions of eyes lift
to read the sky: huge fire clouds billowing
out like wild miracles, a festival at
the end of time, the aliens' spaceship is
about to arrive,
the world dances in its
deserts, gulches, dried up
streets like a mob of
extras in an old movie
marathon, nostalgia
rules the skies
Joanne Burns reading. (Photo: A. Willis)
joanne burns is a sydney poet. her most recent book is aerial photography (Five Islands Press 1999). she is working on a new collection, all of me.
Les Wicks
Out and about
Hand in hand my daughter & I move around
the sleepy Australian roar of her first rally.
She's quiet, busy eyes/ that
student over there on all fours
shirtless gold like
a day warming up.
The polite men in marshal vests move as
fingers brushing through this hairy head.
A pulse of drums, the breath comes in
as the crowd shifts &
the ligaments of banners join muscle to bone....
We are a lumpy, lazy
beast in the streets.
green left, resistance
akubra & nike
joined for the first time
by a daughter teasing out the
way of waves & wars -
the teeth of ideas for good or otherwise.
Speeches go on
words an accompaniment to sunshine & city park fountain.
Then like galahs the flock rises to the beat
Racism OUT.
Cars fly past with waving or complaints.
The lovers in front are whispering -
her voice rises above the crowd
for 4 words
& when I'm naked....
Ears are busy as
they always are
but we are all naked here functionally
-subsumed to the idea -
a mix of mechanical & thrill
that naked always is.
Then I'm crying, grateful for the shades.
& Melina, 12 years old is just
out of reach of everything -
but she's standing
venerable & vital
as any grey haranguer on that stage.
It's the best truths,
those rendered down.
A rainbow demolition in the early spring.
(first published Afternoon (US))
Les Wicks (Photo: A. Willis)
Les Wicks has been published widely in Australia & elsewhere.
His five books are The Vanguard Sleeps In (Glandular,
1981), Cannibals (Rochford St, 1985), Tickle (Island,
1993) and Nitty Gritty (Five Islands, 1997) and The
Ways of Waves (Sidewalk, 2000). "... varied, nimble,
humane & well timed" - Jennifer Maiden. He's performed
at festivals, schools, prisons etc. Les runs workshops &
Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects. Les has
a web site at http://leswicks.tripod.com/lw.htm
and can be contacted at leswicks@hotmail.com.
Rudi Krausmann
The Void
It is, he said
strapped to the seat
the clocks, the hours, the machines
feet and future
becomes a shadow
only the scream and the news are real
and our age racing and losing
so much in such a short time
when Borges died
I turned my toes twice
what does it matter
the proof is still on the table
(whisky, a cake, the cat)
why worry when the girls now
hold up their pants with suspenders
and the boys
long for drugs and negresses
at this moment
everything seems irrelevant
the aesthetes turn into cliques
the objects into objets d'art
the actors into marionettes
the politicians into mandarins
somewhere there is a party
the media is getting drunk
in London the Thames dried out
in Cologne the Rhine and
the best have no future
only few tackle the real problems
someone once said
who was just a little more with it
how it looks and how it is
never mind, I go to the movies
have it all on the screen
sex, romance, even sin
then later, silence sets in
breakdown and oblivion
and of course what Hollywood left!
an expensive coathanger, an abstracted concubine
in the museums
at least the dynasties pass
a moonvase, a burial suite
made of jade for the princess
a bronze chariot, a chisel
made of stone for the slaves
and don't forget what Mao said
'let the past serve the present'
it's amazing what some knew
and what some didn't know
or knew in the wrong order
how different history looks
wrapped in new ideologies
but what have Chinese relics and
Lui Shang's tomb to do with me
I am still waiting
for an occasional god
in the pauses I read the headlines
'a kidnapped heiress buried alive in New York'
walk into hell
and then shoot out again
or recline onto a soft cushion
and wait
until the outer or the inner
cracks, as there cannot be any relaxation
perhaps vanish into a luxurious death
which even the strong cannot resist
*
here the mornings are foggy
the women promiscuous
on Sunday I use a French knife
cleaning my toenails
no thought for the universe
usually I fall asleep
my drama is in the dream
or just keep busy
with abandoned cars and plastic
guys and dolls or any splendour
of the western world
perhaps it was only meant to be
an ironic illusion mixed with fumes
a bric-à-brac
unreflected & unrelated
in parts with an obsession
for some kind of happiness
certainly not ideas, rectangles & stones
or a solid landscape
rather the sketch of a street
with disturbed figures
uneasy & contemplating
not peace, but the void.
Rudi Krausmann (Photo: A. Willis)
Angelika Fremd
accident victims
when the tins come
out bent, the foreman
gestures with his hand
and I know he means for
me to come and look.
in silence we stare
at the damage and i
think it's like looking
at accident victims lying
bruised and broken on the road.
and sometimes there
is blood; the beetroot juice
leaking out onto the
factory floor.
the foreman's mouth
moves like a big carp's
i can't hear him above
the dragon roar of
the engines and i shrug
my shoulders and nod.
and even if i could
hear the words i wouldn't
understand, not without my
friend who tells me
what he says.
i always wonder why
he shows me the battered
cans. i just slice the fruit
in season. my friend says
where i came from a lot
has been destroyed and he
thinks i'll understand.
Angelika Fremd (Photo: A. Willis)
Angelika Fremd is a poet, novelist, literary translator, performance writer, and literary editor. Two of her novels, Heartland, and The Glass Inferno have been published by the University of Queensland Press. Her volume of poetry and stories, Ice, was published in 1996. Her poems and stories have been widely published in literary journals. In 1998 her performance pieces, Invocations and Days in White, were staged at the Goethe Institut, Sydney, and the Lookout Theatre. She is currently working on a book of translations of the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann titled Days in White and a novel about 'street life' at Kings Cross.
Ruark Lewis
FALSE NARRATIVE
5 Movements are advice to targets getting nowhere but where one addresses the thing that enveloped by principle is little known than to letter writers and archaic correspondents. That is another parting and the thing in psychiatry refers to this other plateau, not necessarily elevation not necessarily much more than moving, taking self into silent tomb forms that he called peripatetic and even worse or better if there was water or somewhere else to rest as you probably know from experience is it better to escape than to find that your stasis travels with you it may not dissolve sounds like you were abandoned on a rock
Ruark Lewis (Photo: A. Willis)
Ruark Lewis is an artist and writer, who works in multi-media installations, and text, video, audio, drawing and makes artists-books.He has exhibited in Australia, England, Germany, Holland and in Spain. He was commissioned to co-create the permanent environmental text installation Relay, for the Olympic Coordination Authority at the Sydney Games site. His publications include Depth of Translation The Book of Raft (with Paul Carter), Just for Nothing (with Nathalie Sarraute), and False Narratives in 2001. His work Raft is currently on show at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover.
Amanda Stewart
The War Poem
1. No =
No
2.Yes
No
War, absent, war remains.
The days rationed in threat.
Voices crackle over the wireless,
'It happened it was and then it
Was.'
FearTridentStarWarsaweMxuncertaintAngerdeterred.
'45-'85. Threat. FT SW MA. Threat.
Domestic dramas : events played
out and known
to
occur
the
European Theatre, the Pacific
Outposts,
Spectacle
: the voyeurs (would) take part.
Cancer. AIDS. Repetition and
Health:
I want. 'Just get down
and ...' 'I don't want to die.'
'Just
get down and ....' 'Luv.' 'Luv.' N n
'I
don't want t...' 'Just get d...'
Deterrence. Threat. Counterforce.
Strategic. Threat. Tactical.
the sounds, and the act of vision,
and dreams, the city, its last breath,
without meaning.cancer.snap.
the harbour bridge.snap.gold sydney tower.
bondi beach.burning.snap. Watching
onself like an American, embraced
by that warm, protective smile.
It beams straight and true from the heart,
its military organ, its economy.
Holocaust. Apocalypse. Genocide. Contamination.
N
The bomb appears like a postcard. N n
'the raw and the cooked' (civilised at last).
N N
nOrder came forth from chaos.
The land came forth from
the seas.
Order turns in and comsumes
its being.
The land is consumed by fire.
No.
3. Energy is matter
The atom was. The great expanse of west.
The atom was and was.
Seen in the shape of cells and stars.
Energy = Mass times the speed of light squared,
And that is easy to say. Deranged,
the old contraptions of a nineteenth century
flap about,
threaten to destroy ourselves,
We : in audience of audience.
In the name of. The mechanics of. The.
Matter is energy.
Ownership is exchange.
Monopoly : money was simple, minimalistic.
The mid-west town reclaims the earth (and theyr
ya go).
Nations dissolve in the networks of capital,
emerge
In the interests of 'the land'.
Ethics = expediency.
No. People do duty.
to remain. Detach, continue, b b B,
While time shrinks in the cities, bound
by the highways of air, St St.
The speed, the absolute, the means, the speed.
4. time : no
When you're at the movies you think you're
there
And when you're there you think you're at the
movies.
: absent, war remains: Irian Jaya, the Marshalls,
the
Philippines
: absent, war remains: Sydney, Australia,
SS ground-to-air necessity.
And as the sand splits the hourglass
These are the lives of our ways. No. Again.
Move. This time. No.
And it is now
It
is now. and never.
It is now.
Amanda Stewart (Photo: A. Willis)
Amanda Stewart is a poet and performer. Her latest work is a
book and CD called IT.
Peter Boyle
In the small hours
It's three a.m. in the morning
of a day you won't enter for so many hours.
Where you are
yesterday's sunlight still bathes your feet as you walk
and tonight, hearing your voice,
I worried that one day
I'll lose my images of all those I love.
Outside the city's still restless -
taxis alert and shiny as golden birds
waiting for the crumbs of dawn.
At fifty five I know so little how to live.
In cafes across this city
lovers still hold hands
and cups balance on the edges of tables.
Darkness falls around me like soft snow.
Beside the narrow bed
my night-light is staring right into me.
I will hold your voice inside me as long as I can.
When I sleep you'll go on walking
through a steady explosion of white flowers.
Peter Boyle (Photo: A. Willis)
Jill Jones
The pure in heart
They have taken babies
and blamed it on dingoes.
They've planted foul words
on the righteous tongues
of six-year old bigots.
They have joined hands
with the makers
of warheads, purification
and sub-Arctic famines.
They have studied love
and found it wanting.
They have flushed their water
through cataracts of ice.
They praise the numbers
in their heavy books.
Some of them watch you,
monitor your garbage
for glimpses of hell.
Be careful, they think
their destiny is to drink
from your children.
Jill Jones (Photo: A. Willis)
Jill Jones is a Sydey poet whose first book, The Mask and
The Jagged Star, won the Mary Gilmore Award in 1992. Her
third book, The Book of Possibilities, was short-listed
for the National Book Awards and Adelaide Festival Awards in
1997-8. A new and selected, Screens, Jets, Heavens, is
to be published by Salt Publishing.
Mario Licon
Reading at dawn
Could it be dawn
the best hour to read
poems
where skulls glow as black mirrors
aside dry leaves among a diary of people
from all over the world. Pages/ words/ faces
falling over/ ashes & broken dreams/ through
open gates?
It's at dawn
in its silent darkness
where the voices of many/ diferent poets
blend & build a kind of a world of many worlds.
But
if I would dare
to pinch a piece of a line - without any reference-
would I be marked as a thief, a plagiarist
by doing so?
But how could I dare to snake that
loaf of bread from Saadi Yousef's
hands in state of siege?
3.a.m.
Paddington Markets from Oxford Street (Photo: A. Willis)
Mario Licón is a Mexican poet, he has two collections
of poetry. He has lived in Sydney since 1992. He was invited
to read at the International Week of Poetry in Barcelona in 1999.
He contributes to Oasis, Dos Filos and Alforja,
among other Mexican magazines. He is currently working on an
anthology of Australian contemporary poetry to be published in
Mexico next year.
Judy Beveridge
Caligula speaks to his horse
Incitatus, Incitatus,
I'll invite you to dinner.
Better still -
I'll make you a Senator.
Incitatus just don't grow fractious
or turn ambitious
easing your haunches
too far into my Palace.
Incitatus, have some wine -
but remember
I can turn in my affections
like a snaggle-toothed camel.
I can be the meanest equerry.
My last horse
had his tongue removed.
So don't get too haughty
and whinny during my oratory.
Judith Beveridge has published two books, the award-winning The Domesticity of Giraffes and Accidental Grace. She was also the co-editor of A Parachute of Blue, an anthology of recent Australian poetry.
Wahid Sa'adeh
Migration
- translation by Anne Fairbairn
When they left they did not lock their doors;
they left water in the basin for the nightingale
and the stray dog that use to visit them.
On the dining table, they left bread, a pitcher of
water
and a tin of sardines.
They said nothing before they left, but their silence
was like a covenant
with the door, the pitcher and the bread on the table.
The road, the only thing to feel their footsteps,
could not see them afterwards,
however it did eventually.
But one day it became numbed by the wheat carried
along it from dawn till dusk
and from doors it had seen leaving their place in the
walls.
The sea recalled that some sardines had flopped into
it,
swimming on to unknown places.
Those who remained in the village
said that a stray dog would come each evening
and howl in front of their house.
Antigone Kefala
Blood
In the metallic light
the pavements
were rivers of blood
flooding the gutters
this hot, transparent liquid
made of silk
live, breathing on the stone
trying to defend itself
from the invisible killers
that were watching
watching this magnificence
this red flowering
shrinking, freezing
vanishing into the ground.
Antigone Kefala has published a number of books including the
poetry volumes The Alien, Thirsty Weather, European
Notebook and Absence and three prose works. She has
taught English to migrants and has worked as an arts administrator.