Victorian Premier's Award for an Unpublished Manuscript

oklahoma wind

oh oklahoma
today i tried / and failed
to write another man-made
disaster poem
i spent / two days on
bundaberg was not a flood
half an hour on earthquake in haiti
i remember shaking non-stop for three days
the week i penned new orleans
when i sat down to transcribe black saturday
the air became
so smoky i
could barely breathe
oh oklahoma
oh oklahoma wind
you are the tragedy
that finally bled
the ink

Caliban & Notorious Big Othello

In memory of Paul Squires. 

Foreign Soil Shortlisted for Victorian Premier's Award for Unpublished Manuscripts.

My short story collection Foreign Soil  is one of three manuscripts that has just been short-listed for the Victorian Premier's Award for Unpublished Manuscripts.  The winning manuscript will be announced next Thursday evening.

The Hate Race

"My early ancestors were part of the Atlantic slave trade. They were dragged screaming from their homes in West Africa and chained by their neck and ankles, deep in the mouldy hulls of slave ships – destined to become free labour for the New World. If slaves were lucky, they died in transit to the Caribbean – bodies thrown overboard, washed clean of the blood, sweat, and faeces in which they’d spent most of the harrowing journey. If they survived, they found themselves mid-nightmare: put to work on the harshest plantations on earth, at the hands of some of the cruellest masters in the history of the Atlantic slave trade.

I carry proudly the burnished mahogany of my ancestors, though I have been away from Africa five hundred years or more. My Africa is four continents, four hundred years of slavery, one forced migration, two voluntary migrations and many lifetimes ago. So long ago, in fact, that Africa herself might not now recognise me. So long ago that when I die, the fierce, fertile continent of my origin might refuse my spirit entry: the wooden pombibele might refuse to drum out my funeral rites. Mwene Puto, the lord of the dead with long thin fingers as blonde as bone, might refuse to appear and claim me. My soul will be spirited back south, away from my first motherland, past the open corners of Yemen and Somalia and out into the Indian Ocean, sent packing back to Australia, the land of my birth: my country, the only home I know."

This is an extract from my non-fiction manuscript The Hate Race. Pardon? What's that? It's great?You want to publish the book? Please contact Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown Australia.

somewhere on your street (a mothers day poem)

somewhere on your street
there is a mother
who kept her children home from school
tuesday of last week
who couldn/t scratch the dollar fifty / each
to send with them
to the stall
who paid a day of education
to erase their shame
who saved them from
comparing empty hands
with flowered flannels / embossed lavender soap
and silver photo frames

somewhere in your city
there are children
holding hand-made cards
collages cut from old target catalogues

who want to give the world / and are
too young to understand
the unconditional nature
of their own mother/s love

somewhere in your neighbourhood

is a woman who / for ten days
has been hiding the last three eggs
at the back
of the barely working fridge
tomorrow morning
she will use french toast
and sugar sprinkles
to sticky the apologies
from her two boys eyes
she will trim the mould
from the edges of
begged baker-cast-off bread
& say
it doesn't matter
all i really need
is a smile

in a damp terrace house
just across the motorway
is a woman who can/t shake 

the cold she/s had for nineteen days
who will wake up anyway
frozen toed
from lack of autumn heat
let her daughter snuggle in her bed
and beat back the chesty hack
to  re-energise dr suess

there is a woman
right across the road / from you
so consumed
by landlord/s letters
empty shelves / shadows
beneath her child’s eyes
the blind trust 

in every infant gaze
that she will not even notice
tomorrow
it is mother/s day

Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize Shortlist

I'm really excited to announce that my poem Nothing Here Needs Fixing has been short-listed for the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize. Nothing Here Needs Fixing is the title poem to my new collection, which will be launched in August as part of Melbourne Writers Festival. The prize will be announced on June 1.

HOWL - Melbourne Jazz Fringe Festival

When jazz pianist and composer Darrin Archer contacted me a month or so ago to ask if he could put my name down in an application for the APRA Melbourne Jazz Fringe Festival composer commission, I was really excited, Archer's idea was to compose a jazz piece to accompany a reading of Allen Ginsberg's HOWL, one of most iconic anthems of the beat generation, and he was looking for a spoken word poet to read the work.

Unmiracle

the mac daddy is dead

1992
from a shiny smash hits poster
on my rose dusk dulux wall
the mac daddy brooded down at me
mock hardened gaze / two
middle fingers raised
on his bad brown boy lips / a
go f*ck yourself grin

backward semi acid wash jeans
& sassy micro braids

damn

the mac daddy
made me feel things
i hd never felt before
bt wanted to
again & again

uh huh
uh huh

the mac daddy

badding down at me
wide eyed
on my thirteen year old bed

and now

can i get a
glory hallelujah

the newspapers
are asking me
to believe

the mac daddy is dead

Howl

Ginsberg's HOWL. Today @ 5.30pm. Composer Darrin Archer on Piano, Sam Zerna on Bass, Danny Fischer on Drums, Luke Moller on Violin, Julien Wilson on Bass Clarinet, Gideon Brazil on Tenor Sax, Pat Thiele on Trumpet and Maxine Beneba Clarke at the mic. Yes. HOWL. Be there. Northcote Townhall. 189 High Street, Northcote.

Three Poets Journeys - Williamstown Literary Festival.

Really looking forward to reading at Williamstown Literary Festival next month, alongside the amazing Matt Hetherington and Amanda Anastasi. This will be Matt Hetherington's last Melbourne reading before he relocates interstate. His work is fricken amazing:



THREE POETS JOURNEYS

"Melbourne poets Matt Hetherington, Maxine Beneba Clarke and Amanda Anastasi read poetry from their recently published collections, and talk about the road to being published and how they got their work out there. Come and join them and indulge in a glass of wine whilst listening to these great poets. And stay on for more refreshments prior to our showing of Harvey Krumpet with Adam Elliot"

Saturday 1 June
5.30-6.30PM LIBRARY AUDITORIUM
104 Ferguson St, Williamstown VIC 3016.
Tickets available here.