Helen Hagemann's Hike Up Blackwall Mountain, November 2010

Steep path up Blackwall Mountain

I rested on occasions before the massive climb!

This time, drinkies!

I made it to the top, what a view!

View over Ettalong to Broken Bay

On the way down was cool

These granite outcrops could kill you if they broke!

Ah, Blackwall, the massive mountain I conquered

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Amazing Bird Life on the Central Coast, NSW Holiday November 2010

Rainbow Lorikeet in the Grevilleas, Entrance shops

Feeding Pelicans at The Entrance, 3.30pm

All male pelicans - one female

Cormorant drying wings at Tuggerah Lake

Black & White Cormorant about to take flight!

Pied Oystercatchers bedding down for the night, Tuggerah Lake

Duck & Eleven Ducklings in Town!

Ducks live in the streets of Ettalong

Ducks & Pheasant Pidgon side-by-side

Pelicans waiting for a feed, Woy Woy

Puddle Duck! Blackwall Mountain, Ettalong

Pelican, Woy Woy baths

Lone Pelican, Ettalong Beach

Wagstaffe behind Pelican

Rotary feeds the birds

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Happy, happy holidays!

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OOTA WRITERS take over Westerly's Pages of Volume 55: 2, 2010

Check out all the West Australian poets & writers in this latest Westerly Spring Issue Volume 55. No 2, 2010. Most of the poets, FOURTEEN!! all told, are from OOTA WRITERS!
Westerly Magazine

Why not join OOTA WRITERS? We rock!
oota writers

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Poetic Graphic of the Day - Cow Poem

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Poem for the Day - After John Ashbery

When you Pass Go, Collect $200

                                    After John Ashbery

How little we know of someone’s brain,
and not that we want to!
Too much static going on.

Who was it who said, “We had macaroni each day,
except Sunday. Wait! I know who wrote that!
                It was….

Never mind, the bottlebrushes are blooming
at my window. Geraldton Wax flairs pink.
I envy the spring, signs of new life each year,
while I’m getting older.

Soon, I have to take up riding.
It will be body fat on centre leather. Yet there's
a certain stillness where you push your legs through,
pathways of gum nuts, acacia pollen that backs up
with the breeze, joggers in white headbands.

Whether or not I make it, it will be fun,
nostrils aflare, track suit flapping. I’ll have to
squander spring before the summer comes, thinking
about Sunday lunch, the heat of the two emerging
into walls.

What do I make of walls?

They have freedom when someone’s gone.
I can’t wait to shuffle back into mine, touch
the emptiness. Two relaxed feet under the desk
will be mine, the cat on my lap, too.

When I come up for air, I’ll pass go.
Collect $200.

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Poem for the Day - a found poem "Picnic"

Picnic

Live blue spray kicks against the mountain.
There is a lesson here at the creek, boys
& girls like handfuls of gladiolas arrange

a camp fire, rummaging in the bush for flint,
paper, kindling to smoke out Apache. Geronimo!
The Lone Ranger, high-ho Silver, away!

Roundup time. Cowboy suits flash, arrest the sun.
White shoes hang in trees like cockatoos
nibbling seed pods. Frogs serenade from the

bank, their voices deeper than night. The boys
heighten noise playing bandits. Stagecoach.
Kids playing shotgun in this watery world,

scooping up miniature forts in river mud, until
the myth becomes cannonball fodder. Cazzam!
Shoot the enemy. No enemy, no feathers dancing

only people on the shore, waggy dogs, blue boys
playing tag, shovelfulls of laughter. Hello,
goodbye whisks across the water like smoke.

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Cartoon for the Day - The Wrecking Ball

Acknowledgement: Eureka Street, 1st October 2010

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Poem for the Day - Marble Tornedo

Marble Tornedo

My girlfriend Heather experienced a
weather adventure. The havoc she caused
upset the boys squatting at marbles.
She had several hundred of her own, shoulder-
slung in a string bag, betting everyone.
As the storm bullied clouds off Barrenjoey,
she joined their game with forty of their
Tom Bowlers, Cat’s-eyes and Peewees in the rink.
At the line, the wind lifted her skirt, her plaits
like marionette strings. The Big Bonker she fired
carried itself nicely to a suitable distance
inside the circle, shooting glass for miles.
Strangely, though she collected all their marbles,
she wasn’t injured by their hailstones,
and remained intact.

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Graphic for the Day: I'm Such a Feminist!

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John Ashbery on PBS News

John Ashbery on PBS News

A Perfect Hat

I forget what it is I would rather be doing.
Floral and verbal, I am in the thick
of what I would rather be doing, jumping off a cliff,
rousing subordinates. There are just so many things
one would rather be caught out doing, like measuring the tree,
the swift shadow of which menaces us and bluebirds.
Oh the mill sang of many things but its wheel
was always rolling whether you noticed it or not.
The wheel that is still today but much larger.

It cautioned us to leave but we slept
the exact duration of the idea that never leaves us now.

And this is the perfect poem after teaching Personification on Saturday 11th September, so I thought I would post Ashbery's poem here. During class, we had a long discussion about 'pathetic fallacy' and the difference between this kind of trope and personification. I felt that if we were to worry about such terminology as 'pathetic fallacy' this might stifle our creativity while writing personification. Eventually, we reasoned, that we could attribute human feelings to a poem. Here Ashbery attributes "thinking" (or is it some kind of annoyance for the poet?) to the voice of the hat. Rainer Maria Rilke attributes the emotion of 'loss of freedom' in his poem, The Panther.

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Hagemann's Saturday Poetry now at "The Grove" Library

Saturday Poetry at The Grove Library, Peppermint Grove

Join Helen Hagemann's second Saturday Poetry class for Term 2 at The Grove, 28th August, 1.30pm-3.30pm. This class will look at the inclusion of “MOTIF” in poetry and ways of making your contemporary verse richer with wider references. Prior to writing exercises we will look at the work of Andrew Marvell, Nathan Curnow, Kate Llewellyn, Michael Ondaatje and Andrew Taylor. The Grove Library is situated at 1 Leake Street, Peppermint Grove (just around the corner from Stirling Highway). Check out the blog for directions and map @ http://www.writingatthecentre.blogspot.com All welcome!

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Poem for the Day - Claremont Showgrounds

Claremont Showgrounds

When you enter this microcosm
 country life meeting city 
you're not thinking of Sideshow Alley.
Your ear instructs you to the polo,
wood-chopping, craft and produce show.

You're not thinking of bunny hops, eagle
drops on the Roller Coaster, your name called last
for the Camel Ride, or the one-off number
you couldn't collect for Big Bear or Panda.

All winter your children saved for the whirligig
of whoops and jolts, the Bumper Cars, Animal Farm.
And later, not wanting the consequence of home,
the tattle of how much money they spent, they ate
all the lollies, cramming each showbag into one.

Aloft and linking arms with your children,
bodies close in sync, you rocked and tilted a view
above the fairgrounds: your small family made up
of, one boy, one girl, minus the boss at home.

Time to reflect then on the good grace
of the author above who tossed down one, pure,
cloudless day under September sun.

The Chair Lift: a slow bird over Claremont
The Fishing Game: cardboard you couldn’t eat
Sideshow Alley: a crushed amble of heads and hats
Carnival Tents: a series of fringes and fur
Fairy Floss: gone in seconds
The Exit Turnstile: one last ride for home.

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Vale - Alec Choate 1915-2010

Vale by Helen Hagemann, 4th August, 2010

I met this lovely man at his book launch of My Days Were Fauve, an Autobiography in Verse. I attended the launch with a friend, enjoyed Alec's reading, the wine and the company of many poets I knew. I bought Alec's book and was amazed at the creative, kinetic energy of his verse that was sustained throughout in imabic pentameter & rhyme. I later discovered that My Days Were Fauve was shortlisted for the WA Premier's Poetry Book Award 2002.
This book is now a good resource for me. I teach poetry in Fremantle, and know that Alec Choate's major works will eventually be held up to the light once more.

Rest in Peace, Alec, where the good poets go.

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Poem for the Month - The Only of Only Being Woman

I want to write the language of my sex
hear the crack of rope again
a childish squeak of crosses into desk
I want the oranges and apples of my chest
to be those grown-up watermelons
I want to feel the crack and split
the burrowing erotic trip between two thighs
I want the moment when a raspberry splits my teeth
the naked juice cascading open lips
I want the bulging sweet fecundity
of birth again
the unconditional taste of love that opened every pore
of earth
earth's sweet parlay of flowers
happy birth
that barefoot walk of motherhood.
I want to feel again those suckling lips
swimming sleepy in my milk
that gentle calm of dummy rocking on my hip
I want a new un-written law
of 'woman' at the washing board
where stooped she dyed the sheets with blue
and hung them on the travelling hoist
or dropped them water cold
to copper hot
I want to
talk about the nothingness of being
backyard bound
the claim that wife and house are one
take out the flack, the jokes, the puns
the only
of only being woman

from Until the Last Symphony Rises

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Evangelyne & other poems - Poem of the Month

First Failed Boyfriend


Fearless, he drove his Austin to Patonga.
Steep mountains, rock-slides, wash-aways and slush.
He travelled through these treacherous hills
on winter mornings, on his way to work.
Ambitious, he worked in Woolworths.
I fell in love with his movie-blue eyes
above the beets and sprouts.
He had a cute radio-voice when he announced the specials.
I got to know him, his face cocked in terror
when I asked him out.
‘Elliot Ness eyes,’ my mother said.
We did the courting thing, car ride to Patonga
every Sunday morning, hand-brake cuddle,
his hands going down, where I thought he’d be exciting –
Instead, he raised static on the radio’s lit face.
After six months, his heartbeat flapped
over a new girl in town.
Lined up at the Regal pictures,
dressed in white socks, sports shirt.
She pranced and spun like Elizabeth Taylor.
I tuned-in to Sunday night TV, The Untouchables –
Robert Stack. I fell in love with his undress-me eyes
over Coca-Cola and a bag of chips.

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Evangelyne Speaks! 'Play it One More Time' - on CD 22

“22” is a poetry resource that has been developed for use in secondary schools in Western Australia.

The resource comprises an audio CD featuring 20 Western Australian poets reading selected works. Poets include Andrew Burke, Lucy Dougan, Kevin Gillam, Dennis Haskell, John Kinsella, Andrew Taylor, Morgan Yasbincek, Fay Zwicky and many more...

The CD is supported with an accompanying text publication, in addition to individual lesson plans relating to each of the 22 poems featured on the CD. The lesson plans have been developed specifically to assist teachers to make maximum use of the resource in the classroom.

To download the Lesson Plans click here

“22” has been produced by writingWA with investment from the Western Australian Department of Culture and the Arts, and developed in collaboration with Western Australian Department of Education.

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William Carlos Williams in 92nd Street in 1954

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Evangelyne & Other Poems - Read a Poem a Month

First Sex

After we got into bed, and after he told me
‘I’m glad you’re not wearing lipstick,’
he lay across me like the map of Australia.
I’d heard about ‘the battle of the sexes’
but knew little about naked bodies rolling,
sweating like Sumo wrestlers on a mat.
You could liken my first sex
to martial art.
His sword was searching the scabbard
of my mother-of-pearl.
Glaring – pushing my legs apart –
he fingered the little slit between my legs.
He was hard against me, giving off little grunts
and puffs of air. I remember lying flat
like the map of Australia,
thinking about all the male dogs
in the street,
how they did all the work.

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Read Carol Jenkins' review of Evangelyne & other poems

Carol Jenkins' Review of Evangelyne & other Poems
You can read this review on my website, along with the Mary Gilmore report from judges, reviews from Roland Leach, Jean Kent and Andrew Burke. I've taken out the negative bits from Carol Jenkins' report of the book mainly because someone's ideas of what poetry should and shouldn't do can be very subjective.
Click here for Reviews Helen Hagemann's Poetry & Prose

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Evangelyne & Other Poems - Curious About Cormorants

Curious About Cormorants

Tempted by the sea's lull to snorkel,
I find their passage curious,
the way these great divers descend
to steal the frugal tips of waves.
Our group jack-knifes from the hem of reef,
paddles out. And something else sinks forward,
a lone cormorant, roused from her fluid stare,
follows the scuttle of sediment from swimmers' legs.
Flippers sink into the eye of the blue,
identical hunters at best, careful over rock
and pool; probing for abalone, shrimp and crayfish.
On channel marker, the cormorant spreads her gown.
Such a wingspan: the sea describing her as meditator,
crouching tiger, the Jing in the I-Ching,
cyclic Tui of the joyous lake.
And infused into her shape, where no oil begins,
is the rich glaze on black feathers,
dark as a rain-soaked night.
Even more curious is that final glide to rock;
a composure of wings drying out like laundry,
and a conviction, it seems, to be that still beauty at sea,
silent as effigy.

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Southerly 69.3 2010 Launched

Southerly 69.2 - My poem Ferris Wheel - published in this issue!

 













Southerly invites you to the launch of 69.3, the Poetry Special Issue. This volume continues Southerly’s tradition of publishing and promoting the best in Australian literature, and with this launch, we wish to celebrate this issue's focus on poetry and poetics.
Venue: University of Sydney,
Address: Common Room, John Woolley Building
Time: from 6 - 8pm
Date: Thursday March 25th.

A poem of mine, Ferris Wheel was recently published Southerly 69.2, so I don't mind promoting this wonderful Poetry & Poetics issue. I found out, you can't buy the magazine in WA! Click on to Southerly 69.2 here at Southerly Magazine

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Judging Panel ASAL, 2010 on Evangelyne & other poems

Helen Hagemann's book [Evangelyne] looks the size of a chapbook but is actually quite substantial. Every line is packed with content, in coastal poems of memory and nostalgia that are celebratory, sometimes elegiac, and often both simultaneously. The poems have a wide range of reference even while maintaining a consistency of subject matter. No words are wasted and this with rich imagery creates an emotional intensity, but an intensity that does not preclude humour. The shortlisted poets include Emma Jones, Emily Ballou, Sarah Holland-Batt and Joanna Preston.  

Although my book didn't make it, it made it into The Australian Newspaper. Check article by Rosemary Sorensen, 13th March 2010

Congratulations! now to Joanna Preston for The Summer King winner of the Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize 2009 - (9/7/10)

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Poem for the Day - Christmas Pageant

Christmas Pageant

On the train your children fog
a sunlit window. They sway in
silence to a landscape not yet filled with
Fat Cat or Percy; your son dreaming
of Star Wars men, Yoda to appear.
We pass factories of ochre roofs, car yards
like gods of steel. Shops & cafés string
past in reminisce of tangy fish & garlic,
movie days of Thai food, coffee & cake.
Your son interrogates with blue eyes, his cool mouth
almost pouting, 'Are we there yet?'
At the parade, we are comfortable in second row
when a clown, red nose, striped suit, paces a single wheel
like children do back & forth in order to pee. Your daughter
studies the end of the street, talks up her dancing school,
the sequin castle, Santa & Rudolph without the team.
Children love mayhem & noise, even if the sun
burns, even if the wind nettles.
As a family you cannot crowd into minimal shade
threading its coolness over babies in prams,
toddlers shy of motorcycles & whistlestops.
You must drift into the rhythm of sun, the beat
of tambourines, bagpipe & sporran, a big pipe band.
It's infectious fun when marching girls parade
their unity of spangles, each lightly twirling a baton
like ropes of hair. We let go of each other,
fantails & bon-bons caught mid-air like awkward balls
from cricketers in the score of one.
'Where is Santa?' your children say. No sooner
Cadillacs appear, residents waving amoré. There's a netted
boudoir, courtiers, princesses in gold lamé,
a Christmas Queen clutching her sceptre.
In the final car, on his throne, acrobats in front,
the jolly man in red works his hands into canvas,
digs deep for the thrust of toys.
Parcels rain down into a crowd’s wave of hands
catching the day that is almost
Christmas.

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Allen Ginsberg & Friends

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Poem for the Day - Monster Fun at the Pier

Monster Fun at the Pier

We came a distance for entertainment. Kids
wanting action, dodgem cars, Leather Man above
the ghost train, pythons twisting through skulls,
jaws below the waterline invasive and mean.

We left our parents’ smiles for a grinning clown,
bolted through an arcade spitting silver as we talked.
My brothers made a circular ‘o’ with their mouths
pressed on scanty ladies stripping on cards.

In their sweaty glow, your bothers spun cylinders
of soccer men, pumped mouths as a bolt-action
on B-B guns, kangarooed from high-scoring pinball
machines to rock-n-roll the Continental.

Kids moved through the ghost house with smug
expectation, until someone tickled our cheeks with
phantom breath. We screamed at ghosts’ brains
spilling in doorways, untold Zombies wailing ahead.

Behind us, murder; to our left a bloody rope, to the
right, a seashore spilling bright. We wanted to live and
queued for the next ride. Later, when the carousel
stopping spinning, you bought a rubber ghoul man with

matted hair. It was dark as black ooze of oil cans,
a shrunken knight of death. At the dodgem cars,
its hair furred your brother’s nose, his frenzied karate
chop carrying it further than laughter in the air.

Seated on the pier, watching Houdini swim, your
brother spirited a zombie over your dress. You leapt
out of the seat of your pants, past a box of locks, the
magician’s cuffs and keys, wanting your own escape.

That was childhood, when you played on the surface of
water, when you carried menace as an amusing grin,
when you crept slowly towards your siblings, your
gelatinous ghoul man poised to horror them from sleep.

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Poem for the Day - The Travelling Tent Show

The Travelling Tent Show

The show had come to town.
big-top, small caravans, a lion

chasing its tail. It was an outing
with hairy camels, no one familiar,

only neighbour’s faces, some unknown.
Except for Dracula out front, there

were no zombies inside, no clattering
chains to pattern a death. Only lipstick-

clowns in toothless grins, twirling dogs
in tutus. There was more excitement

when tent pegs popped, when wall
skirts collapsed in the wind. Did they

hire a poltergeist or comic from
another town? Imagine us on the

hillcrest to home, a mother’s face
drooping, the circus torn on the outside,

vacant within, and your daughter’s
voice stretched as her red balloon,

calling, ‘Mum, will that nurse throw
the sword at the man, next time?’

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The Handsome Family in Perth

Thursday, 7th January 2010

Woohoo! The Handsome Family has chosen to come to Perth in their Australian Tour. Great gothic/new country/blue-grass/Cormac McCarthyism style songs. Can't wait to see them this Sunday at the Rosemount Hotel, 6.00pm.

THE HANDSOME FAMILY consists of Brett Sparks (music) and Rennie Sparks (lyrics/also a poet) who live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They consider their songs Romantic in the 19th century sense of the word: full of an awed sense of emotion in the face of nature’s mysteries. They wrote their eighth CD, Honey Moon (releasing April, 2009 to celebrate their twentieth year of marriage). As a fan of new-country including Patty Griffin, Alison Krauss, etc, I was taken by their music & style when they were featured on a film called Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. In this film, their haunting lyrics convey the deep south of America. I have their new CD Honey Moon and hopefully I can purchase their other albums on Sunday night. Listen to Linger, Let me Linger here at Friday Download

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