after Horny Sticks and Whispering Lines, Ian Gentle’s Sculptures, G. Fairley, 2009.
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"I like mongrel animals and plants—I have a bonsai lantana... [I like] a kind of bush picnic in suburbia." Ian Gentle.
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Image: Echidna Dreaming by Ian Gentle from the exhibition Horny Sticks and Whispering Lines at the Wollongong Art Gallery featuring the work of late Illawarra artist Ian Gentle (1945 – 2009), December 2 through to March 11 2024. A few more images of Ian Gentle’s work for you here.
Some found and assembled poetry using glass leaves text manipulator (lots of fun to be had here).
and on the appointed day, or thereabouts, everyone drives off to find it going bumper to bumper audiobooks at a standstill till they hit the the bridge at the Bay where summer officially begins.
Reversing vans onto powered sites families arrive at crazy angles, lean-tos bottom hand down, unrolling tarps unfolding tables and what are you wearing? barely shorts, palm prints and heavily logoed tees
rising over swollen bellies. Staggered by the embrace of eucalypt and diesel, you’re pulling cones in a juice bottle bong and holding in that sweet herbal until the contours of the day
swirl with laughter so you finally put aside the self that was half the body’s winter. Cicadas so loud you have to SHOUT 'I've arrived' thongs for the blaze of sand or go barefoot fuckit where every shadowed path is alive with blacksnakes
and the water is revelatory—a turquoise roaring familiar as a Cronulla childhood until the flash rip takes the legs out from under you, and you’re up to your neck in it.
Notes: ‘the Bay’ refers to Batemans Bay on the NSW South Coast; a juice bottle bong is a makeshift water pipe for smoking marijuana – comprised of some aluminium foil, a section of garden hose and a plastic orange juice bottle; thongs in this context are a rubber soles held to the foot by two straps that meet between the first and second toes; Cronulla is a seaside suburb of Sydney; a flash rip is caused by the unexpected collapse of a sand bar.
And for music this morning here’s London-based jazz ensemble seed with their 2021 album balletboyz (Youtubers try this)
lately, I take a book from the shelf, Freud or Du Fu, but return it unread
wander a glass back to the kitchen, grate zucchini consider the etymology of that hard double c (or the ens in ennui).
The humpback migration is nearly done. I register the stragglers through binoculars, an infrequent bloom.
A tourist boat motors by, last of the season— floral prints, polo shirts, life preservers, lookouts posted.
In his later years my father talked of building a yacht, a sizeable ketch, in our backyard. He’d bought a set of plans
paced out the workshop, made the lumber yard quote on marine ply and cedar ribbing.
One day, he said, he’d hitch it to our little Mazda and we’d drive down to the sea. My mother would crack
champagne on its bow, say a quick god bless and he’d be off, a new breeze freshening the sails.
And there we’d be, his little family, waiting on the wharf as he shrank to a dot past the headland.
Lateness fills a full page of Roget’s: last minute or high time, tardiness
versus blockage. All those verbs. How is it to stall, defer, hold-over, be left behind?
Is it better to linger, loiter or simply wait for something to turn up?
The view is empty now, whale-watchers depart so I come back to the page to finish this piece—
whitecaps before the southerly far off, a sail returning on rising seas.
Image: c/- State Library of NSW on Flickr. Charles Laseron, Cape Denison, 1912, by Douglas Mawson This photo of naturalist Charles Laseron standing next to sea-ice forming at Cape Denison was taken by Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition.
And for music this morning here’s Australian jazz trumpeter Ben Marston with his 2018 album Unfound Places (Youtube) – very cool.
And apologies for being a slack blogger in 2023. Hope you’ll stick around for the new year…
Recently, while photographing in Wollongong Cemetery, I met a woman who used to be in the ‘industry’ and we started talking. As an ex-funeral director, she pointed out those she’d put in here: one over there, a couple further back. Even family members, a cousin, an uncle by the fence. Not her husband though, he’s buried elsewhere.
Since he’d passed, she’s been touring the country with her friend looking at cemeteries. I asked what she was searching for but all she said was, ‘I just like them, they’re peaceful.’ They’ve even visited Western Australian graveyards, tooling across the Nullarbor in their Daihatsu hatchback with purple wire wheels.
Graves, grandiose black
marble and a patch of lawn
for the stillborn babes.
Originally established on the outskirts, over the last hundred years the city has grown to surround the cemetery. Light industry on one side, housing and a high school on the other; it takes effort to block out road noise and the clanking of a backhoe being unloaded.
Flowers and tended plots
then Ryan’s pine cross—ten years
and still no headstone.
We talk about masonry styles, urns and torches, the broken column of a life cut short. She points to the earliest part of the cemetery dating back to the 1850s, now an enclave behind the courier depot and the indoor sports centre. Aside from the trees, we’re the only ones breathing in all this crowd.
I have no graves
Dad’s ashes off Fremantle
a bloom in deep water.
Image: the old section of Wollongong Cemetery. I hope you like the reading of this piece.
Recently, I’ve been busy recording some of my favourite Illawarra and South Coast poets for our forthcoming poetry anthology 34-37 Degrees South, Country which is due out later this year from the South Coast Writers Centre.
To whet your appetite, here’s a few poets (Dr Elanna Herbert, Sandra Renew, Kai Jensen and Moira Kirkwood) reading their poems and talking about the making of these works.
Image: c/- Ash Taylor as part of the Wonderwalls Project Port Kembla 2022, commissioned by Wollongong City Council as part of its public art program. The mural is located on the corner of Wentworth Street and Church Street Port Kembla (on the wall of the local bottle-o).
Ash Taylor is a muralist and multi-disciplinary artist captivated and inspired by the beauty found in Australian landscapes and our natural environment.
Her work is vibrant and energetic, mixing carefully chosen colour palettes, gestural mark making and illustrative style to create a connection between the viewer and nature. By bringing the natural environment to public, urbanized, spaces, Ash amplifies the detail of nature and creates space for consideration of conservation and preservation of our ecosystems. http://ashtaylr.com
How like us, all nostalgic about rain:
Jesus-walking through lagoons of tall grass,
forests of floodwater, Kevin 07 knee-deep
down a Brisbane street explaining... how
my seedlings wither, this blue desiccation.
I’m in the garden spraying water and imprecations
this is our fallow year—all that’s left
is to wander through old photographs:
the monsoon in Varanasi (your shirt
is so drenched), sodden in Gaudi’s park,
drizzly in anoraks on Brighton Pier.
We rise early, drink tea, are quiet round the house.
The weatherman’s full of juju; we avert our eyes.
You wake at 3, listening—
that could be rain.
Image: untitled by Daniel Iván c/- Flickr. For those of you who don’t follow Australian politics, the Kevin 07 reference is to the former labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (elected in 2007), who during the floods in Brisbane Queensland in February 2011, helped residents shift their suitcases and furniture (blurry video here).
And for music this morning, here’s Swedish-Estonian accordianiste Tüülikki Bartostik with Norrland (youtube) from her eclectic 2023 album Playscapes (it’s worth a listen).
There’s a herd of horses on Springhill Road, a dozen or so. Agisted on the setback to the Hot Strip Mill, their paddock is fenced with steel made right here.
I see them briefly most days—heads down, leaning together in threes, twos, or pairs with one further off—driving as I do between home and town. Dappled greys, chestnut and horse-brown, they’re ordinary-sized, a medium number of hands high. They crop the vivid green paddocks or stand four-square as horses do.
On the other side of the works, there’s Port Kembla. I’ve lived here for a decade now. The northerlies bring the funk of coal, sooty washing, sheets and pillowcases, grit on the waterbowl, inhaler by the bedside. ‘It used to be worse,’ my neighbour (who’s ninety) says with a shake of her head. ‘Much worse.’ Wonder how we’re inured to train brakes shrieking, huge plumes of steam, ships moaning. And the horses? With flames all night, violet and yellow.
The horses are loved. Dads and daughters pull out of the speeding traffic into the culvert to unload bales, brushes. A granny smith offered on the flat of a hand. Some Saturdays they’ll back a float in and drive to a bridle path or event somewhere.
Blanketed by soot and noise the horses remain, full of possibility. And we wonder, while waiting for the lights, whether in dreams—a dash down savage grasses, the thrill and wind in the run
Image: Horse in Motion, Eadweard Muybridge, 1830-1904 c/- Boston Public Library. Ada Limon is US poet laureate and her earlier work included poems on horses including Foaling Season. The horses at the steelworks are a different herd entirely. Springhill Road runs adjacent to the Bluescope Steelworks at Port Kembla.
And for music this morning, something beautiful from Saint Hidegard von Bingen via Australian artists Kim Cunio and Heather Lee with various musicians: The Sacred Fire (youtubers).
Revived, a house fly cartwheels past my nose, hyper at 20 degrees C. It’s June and in the garden: butterflies (!) skinks on stones marigolds resurgent, magpies carolling, sweetcorn that should have been pulled in May re-shoots. Even the jasmine (tired old trope) blooms.
The brassicas grow rank and bitter in their beds as we, sweating under the winter duvet, argue (over) heated lines or fast-forward through eps. of Alone, to linger on the snow shots.
O winterless world, what’s to become of us polar bears and poets, schooled by the seasons: ‘how frost doth spangle the lips of a rose’ Adapt! Find a new metaphor. I grow old.
Image: Polar Bear at Seaworld Australia c/- Misaochan2, CC BY-SA 4.0 on Wikimedia Commons. Here in Australia it’s been a warm start to winter. Seaworld is an entertainment park in Queensland featuring a range of displaced animals.
And for music today here’s Belgian Afro ensemble Zap Mama with Brrlak! (or youtubers) .
18 March
the tomato vine
once supple with promise
dried, a squat fruit
of autumn—life’s lesson
(as if it needed underlining)
19 March
smokey sunrise
gorgeous pinks and scarlets
street lights haloed
horizon a Rothko smear
crimsoned over charcoal
Image: Mark Rothko – No. 46 (Black, Ochre and Red over Red), 1957. Oil on canvas (1903-1970) Panza Collection. MOCA c/- Rob Corder on Flickr. The Southern Hemisphere moves into Autumn, the vegies die off and hazard reduction burns on the escarpment drape the valleys with smoke.
And for music this morning, I’ve been a bit obsessed of late with Caroline Shaw’s composition Orange (Youtube). So here it is again for all you gardeners.
Peter Frankis writes 