Month: August 2022

Drake tanka

girl in the Honda 
smoking as she shift lanes
she's listening to Drake 
driving like she doesn't care 
she’s thinking YOLO

Image: Dodgem cars, Luna Park, November 1952 _ photographed by Ivan Ives, c/- State Library of NSW on Flickr. Drake, is a Canadian rapper musician, who is currently the most streamed artist of all-time on Spotify, with his songs having been played over 46 billion times, as of April 2022.) He also popularised the saying YOLO (abbr. you only live once). A tanka after Drake Equation by British-Nigerian poet Gboyega Odubanjo

You’ll have to find your own Drake (just ask anyone under 40). Meanwhile here’s US bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding with her 2008 album Esperanza, (Youtube) maybe start with Samba em Preludio (Youtube)

a tanka sonnet — August 2

as sun leaves the wall
spider gets busy 
sowing sails and vacancies
scaled to her prey 
in hopper legs and fly husks 

how like this, this is— 
line on line and beauty
bent round purpose 
like a bonsai cypress 
framed by chicken wire 

and how wrapt we are
beguiled by gravity 
stuck, barely able 
to remember the door

Image: A favourite wall in Wollongong, rear of the Bridgestone Tyres outlet, McCabe Park. A bit of play with forms today (apols to any tanka purists, the syllable count doesn’t work either).

And for music this morning, here’s another piece from favourite US soul guitarist Shuggie Otis, Live in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) from 2014 (Youtube).

Chasing the Line – An Anthology of Poems from the Back Room

Chasing the Line: An Anthology of Poems from The Back Room; Well Thumbed Poets 2022, 139pp. $25 (+ p & h) from Well Thumbed Poets

The back room of the title refers to a room in a bookseller – Well Thumbed Books in Cobargo NSW, a small town four hours south of Sydney on the Princes Highway between Narooma and Bega. 

The introduction to this volume describes a long wooden table where a group of seven local poets —  Linda Albertson, Leigh Crowe, Kai Jensen, Kate Taylor, Sandra Taylor, Glenda-mai Morgan and Peter Storey — have worked over the past few years to produce this rich volume. The latter two also provided the gorgeous colour illustrations for cover and the chapter dividers. 

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