Helen Hagemann

Sunday, March 21, 2010

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

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)

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.

Allen Ginsberg & Friends

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.

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?’

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

Helen Hagemann Interviewed on Radio

VISION AUSTRALIA RADIO INTERVIEW - 23rd October 2009

Since my visit to the Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne in May and also because I am published in Melbourne by the Australian Poetry Centre, it appears that I have an affinity with this fair city. I have been interviewed on Vision Australia Radio. The program called "Hear This!" has now gone to air in Melbourne (with internet streaming). The interview centres around my images, influences & the challenges I face in the future as a poet. So, I'm using this space to sincerely thank Michael Heyward, Regina McDonald and the gang at Vision Australia Radio for their time & effort and for especially highlighting "poetry". Vision Australia Radio brings the news, articles, literature and topical items to vision impaired people. You can listen to the interview here on HEAR THIS!

Poem for the Day - Percheron Horses & Carriage

Percheron Horses & Carriage

In Melbourne you move between two sidewalks
as the wind lashes the leaves from trees.

It's time to look at the city beyond its people,
people who will never change their looks. You've

waited for a friend who didn't come & now with
deceptive tenderness you watch two white horses,

nodding at the curb. Feather-plumes float like
breath. You unfurl fingers beneath a horse’s snout.

The coachman stirs. There are city streets to cross,
a handful of reins to snake from a dickey box.

There are lanterns for light, glass for warmth,
a Victorian carriage in gilded trim, top hat and

coattails, a blush of red inside for Cinderella
in ball gown, a Prince fawning beside.

Now autumn crowns gold into leaves, & the carriage
moves on in soft footprints, without clip-clop

on cobblestones, or a sinking into snow. Sitting
across & beside each other, we enter this horse-

drawn world, slowly progressing, as if we might
look back on another time freshly made for this.

Poem for the Day - Fitzroy High School

Fitzroy High School

Overload Poetry Festival

The day after your arrival
is a high school reading.
We agree as poets it’s been a long time
between classes. Our eyes are pressed in
outward glances at closed doors,
Headmaster's office, a walk in the past.
Fear means we’ve survived school days,
a hijacked front seat, the less kind
at assembly, sports-day in F-team.
Yet here, school bags and lunch boxes
are full of tomorrow. It’s spring and everyone
is a new leaseholder in this estate. Waves
of green-grey-cobalt assuage otherwise old red brick.
In the front office, a ceramic bowl, toilet paper,
flowers, lighthearted verse; an assemblage
of nature prints as if this is an animal ready
to breakthrough from the past.

In the corridor there is friendly chatter,
boys swaying in sync, jovial song,
a guitar thrumming the air with every step.
Now we enter the sphere of year 8’s writing
prose, Year 10’s, pens on the Beats. Thank you −
Mr. Ginsberg − they hear your Howl.
An applause comes after our spill of words.
We wrestle the page in an attempt to hold them
in fierce syllables; gather enough faith
when James from Overload has them
in a rhythm of fountain pens. We uphill
shoulders, expiring breath from a ribcage
of doubt. ‘Is the struggle over to keep awake?’
‘Is poetry boring?’ Hands diminish in the count.
We pack up and go.
Unanswered questions remain,
At least, we concur, poetry has imprinted two hours
on young writers’ minds.

OVERLOAD POETRY FESTIVAL 2009 REVIEW

2009 OVERLOAD POETRY FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS

I had never been to the festival before and I was charmed by the friendliness of Melbourne poets. They kiss & cuddle! Or was that after the beers? Nevertheless, the festival gigs that I attended were exhilarating and the poets more so. My first poetry call was the Northcote Social Club on Wednesday night, 9th September. The Slam Heat got off to a great start, MC'd by a lively and well-spoken Ninja in a Black T-shirt Crazy Elf (bulging muscles & all). During the night (All-Stars included), I was entertained by new and seasoned performers. I especially liked Gabby Everall's performance with her firstly whipping off a silver lame jacket, and then taking the risk to speak about the body & its invasion. Author of Dona Juanita - and the love of boys, Gabby performed a similar medley of words from that dark undercurrent of female experience that often brings women to poetry. Geoff Lemon was also a standout poet, delivering a well-paced, funny, entertaining, oft serious troupe of modern day harangues. A duel act at the end of the slam was also a highlight. The winner Steve, seated next to me, said he was broke and so welcomed his prize of $10. When it came to the best performances on the night in the All-Stars line-up, I think Lewis Scott and Maxine Clarke shone in their individual, inimitable style. They made me listen and hunger for more of their cultural rhythm & soul. My contemporary Ali Cobby Eckermann was by far the most uplifting performance of the night. I wholeheartedly concur with Koraly Dimitriadis's review Overland Overloaded, that we are so ignorant of Australia's Stolen Generation and the latest Intervention imposed on our indigenous brothers & sisters. And yes, when I listen to Ali Cobby Eckermann’s poetry I want to punch "The Minister's" lights out, but at the same time I am pleased that she is informing us of her personal struggles within her beautiful, heart-wrenching, poetic elegies.

Next stop: Fitzroy High School. Poets Lewis Scott, Kimberley Mann, Warren Burt and myself entertained years' 8's and 10's. Year 8's are writing narrative and year 10's are studying the Beats, especially Ginsberg's Howl. Some students strained to listen, while others contorted with boredom. However, thanks to James Waller's intermittent rescues, like getting the student to click pens, and then asking them up to read, it all went fairly smoothly in the end. The highlight for me was that several students spoke to us at the end of the session, and away from the pressure of their peers confessed that they had enjoyed the poetry. One young man is going to be invited to next year's Overload after reading his poem to the class with confidence and enthusiasm.

City Library, Flinders Lane, Melbourne was next. I awaited in anticipation for more stories from Ali Cobby Eckermann in the session Stolen Voices. Chaired by Kevin Brophy (Uni of Melb), I gained more insight into the massacres of aboriginal people. Ali confessed that in her travels now as a teacher of aboriginal children she is also learning more of the sad histories and stories of her people. Dr Tony Birch - Writer, Curator and Lecturer, Creative Writing at The University of Melbourne gave an informative talk on his experiences working with indigenous poets and students. Lewis Scott - Jazz Poet and performer from Wellington, New Zealand again performed his cultural enlightenment wherein he remarks, 'In my father's house are many mansions. If it was not so, I would have told you.' As an interpretation, I would say Lewis delivers a twenty minute monologue that is meant to have a unifying effect, wherein he tells us as human beings we are all one and the same, we have parents, a birth mother who delivers us into a cruel world. And once we are on that path it is for us to walk that path alone, to discover the self in the larger world, experiencing the sins and the revelations. How we deal with that world and the self is very much up to us.

Launch of the New Poets Series 2009 at the Dan O’Connell was the "pièce de résistance". Kimberley Mann, Ali Cobby Eckermann and myself launched our new poetry books. Ron Pretty our mentor, poet and editor spoke highly of each poet, first with a short biography which also included our back cover reviewer's comments. We read for 12 minutes to great applause from an audience of around sixty people. Teresa Bell, Director of the Australian Poetry Centre, spoke about the publishing opportunity now undertaken by the Centre. She also congratulated each poet as unexpected high sales of our books had been achieved with Ali Cobby Eckermann selling out!

I want to sincerley thank James Waller & the team of Overload for putting on such a wonderful festival. I wish I had taken the time to go to all events. I want especially to thank the Melbourne poets, and invited poets who I met for the first time, for truly being my contemporaries. Thank you: Andrew from ACT, Benjamin Theolonius Sanders,(sorry I missed your reading!), Johnny, Steve Smart, Denice Smart, Susan Fealy, Ann de Hugard, Michael Reynolds, Luis Gonzalez Serrano, Lewis Scott and Warren Burt.

2009 WA SPRING POETRY FESTIVAL LAUNCH 28th August

Launch Event at the WA SPRING POETRY FESTIVAL 2009: Friday, 28th August

Soon-to-be, and recently published poets, including Graham Nunn (QLD), Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Gary Di Piazzi, Vivienne Glance & Helen Hagemann will read from their new collections at the launch. Special mentions by invited speakers, including Roland Leach will introduce each poet and talk about their latest successes & how WA poets are reaching further than their own shores for publication.

Distinguished guests include Professor Philip Mead - Chair of Australian Literature at UWA who will launch the festival, as well as other well-known poets Annamaria Weldon, Deanne Leber, & Kevin Gillam.

Venue: State Library of WA

Day/Time: Friday, 28th August: 4.50pm - 7.00pm

Grand Master: Peter Jeffery

WA Poets Inc. President

Poem for the Day - Street Puppet

Street Puppet

In the middle of Swanston Street
in wires of rain, cross-walk lights,
a puppet skips over puddles.
In a cache of strings, a jiggled turn, a rise of torso.
The wooden man is small, barefoot, slightly
hidden under quivering shadows. The puppeteer
assures him there is no danger, as he guides
his puppet through the sidewalk crush
lifting his blue tattoos to the sky.

On the pavement, two living beings
tap out the rhythm of the dance;
the puppet in ragged pants, too short for winter,
the man alone, working the soles of his feet.
The streets are filled with emotion, shoppers
grazing the silent puppet,
as if he is one more obstacle to pass.
There is no enthusiasm for tiny legs
barely touching the ground.
No applause for the man who brings the circus
right up to the people.

Why, in the middle of a crowd,
doesn’t he lift weights?
Why doesn’t he rotate the sky
with Juggling Clubs or Knives?
Why doesn’t he pass a hat
when no one gives anything?

Poem for the Day - The Drone of a Single Bee

The Drone of a Single Bee

A single bee collects all morning,
a sense for the endless storing of honey.
She knows the way in, the way out.
Her drone busier, softer
than the swarm of home.
Her legs brush against stamens,
forsythia crammed with sweetness.
Her saddle-bags are strapped
and yellow against the light.
She knows she cannot stay, already there
too long; the hive a world humming away.
She knows this winter there's an
absence of rain, fewer blossoms.
The honeycomb full of consequence & distance,
a queen's desire, eggs ready to hatch.
The cold wind might come
whisk her away, white clover
and pollen drying her tired, aching legs
curled against their hunger.

Poem for the Day - a haiku

Tibetan temple
a worn rattan mat welcomes
the bleeding sandals

Poem for the Day - The Intruder

The Intruder

The heads of the flowers are purple. Even the scattered wood pile is aromatic. Shrubs explode into green splinters and the air is super-heated. Dwellingup in January, and you sense by noon a tactile touchdown on floral sheets. Your compassionate friend has given you her house, a page of notes: the way the light falls, how the heat works its way through the house. I've made up the front room, please eat all the food! In the table centre purple flowers pout from their stems. You add a hasty smile to all that you touch: Italian coffee, wine, a complimentary shower gel. There's a washing machine, and no telephone! No mobile reach in this town where wheels jog along the ground. A cargo of timber spilling somewhere you imagine for a new Yunderup school. And there on the table a map spread across your palms: inland roads to Lane Poole, Hotham Valley railway; a history caught up in the text of a town, tree walks, the Bibbulum track, Nanga Mill, Yarragil. You think about the next seven days, watering the lawn, the timber-mill across the street; logs lazy as sleepers stacked for dreams. The chance of meeting a companion in the house! You'd rather choose a passage of flowers, the quietest of rooms, a glass of wine, even your nocturnal notebook & pen. You roll up the blinds, put the hi-fi on, lay topless on the bed. There's a rhythm of shuffling at your feet, a thick, black lizard trailing the dust from his skin. He sways side to side as if in adoration, then slips out. Soon to be located in the sun on the porch. Rounding off his gaze, his task finished, he ambles back to that little plot of earth where his life is contained, where there is a garden going on, and no one is singing.

Supermarket in Ohio - Poem for the Day

Supermarket in Ohio

What are you thinking tonight, Mr. Ashbery, because I can see you walking the aisles away from pressing thoughts of words and kin? Are you by chance on holidays back in Dreamland where you felt comfortable in? Positioned near the oranges, zucchinis, avocados for colour & flair. There's more to see when you shop for images. Walt Whitman left the streets of New York to be near the melons, wives & babies with cheeks ripe as cherries & tomatoes. Ginsberg found time to follow Walt around, imagining himself the store detective in the corridors of cans. The refrigerator ladened with pork chops sparked more warmth for Ginsberg's poem, than any other I've ever known. Supermarkets can be boring for women, except when they see poets having a love affair with grocery boys. The cashiers, friendly in green, love to chew over them too. They'll tell you about their town; bamboo glade, rope at the creek. Some days the fog smoking the river upstream, sounds of bumble-bees, men pulling oars, the woodland smelling of pine; daddy out fishing. Not like you fishing for rhyme. It's not that I'm having fun, but the pastries and cream are ready to poke holes in.

I first found you in Dreamland, Mr. Ashbery, imagining your world. You didn't worry about the finish line, you let words drift like the wind does. It was definitely a hothouse, all glass and steam. A veritable market garden of green. Culinary herbs, hybrid forms later prepped for peasant dishes like paella, gumbo & pizza. All the colour and flavours mixed together so that we could cook up some prose.

You didn't stay there, did you in the supermarket? You left town, two wheels turning round. I followed your bicycle to Dreamland, felt the draft of hummingbirds coming on, the sun a bright mineral round. Dragonflies formed a dome in the air, and all the rotted docks that were rained on while Whitman was there, you slid on, and you not wanting to leave those distant hills, except for the cold sun going down. What a trip you had with every adjective and noun. The exercise left like a bicycle, the wheels tick, tick, ticking.

Poem for the Day - Concert

Concert
for Emmylou Harris

The stars are on the stage tonight. I'm spun out by her sound, the melody entrusting you with its strength; clear, crystal. I love how she tattoos the air with her presence. Her blonde hair getting whiter with years. It floats exquisitely like her voice. Her guitar held as a woman might hold a newborn. The child in me - dancing, humming a song within a nearby "hush!" Her sad story of a soldier dad, telling me its poignant song. Why did I think she meant Jesus? The listen deeper than before. Emmylou, you are better live on stage; someone worth waiting for. Now you pass through our town and I don't want this night to end. It's iron hot in the stadium, and something makes me look up. All your songs drifting into each other. We're walking down a powdery road, the blue line of sky unfolding ahead. I stumble into the first tune. You change my version of Red Dirt Girl to Sweet Old World. I ask for favourites, Boulder to Birmingham, and Heartbreak Hill. She beats out a deluge of rhythm and soul. I'm lost in the breath of her lyrics, the soft rise and fall of her range. This Tennessee girl and I, travelling, walking down a road into graceful tunes of steel. Clouds darken and rise, and we disappear into the valley where city lights quiver as different stars; rain falling, reflecting yellow lines ahead. Just the two of us forming 'o's' on our shimmering lips.

Evangelyne & Other Poems by Helen Hagemann

New Collection by Helen Hagemann
My new collection is now available. You can purchase from the Australian Poetry Centre or visit my website on the left.

Poem for the Day - Evangelyne

Evangelyne

In the days coming to your door
from school, you practising Mozart & Liszt,
I wanted to climb inside your songbook.
Your fingers searched a Viennese waltz
− a melody I longed to play.
Evangelyne, you made lullabies of flight, lifting me
as a heron stretched from a lake.
In the practice of scales, I flew with blue wrens
atwitter in the shadows of leaves.

Where are you now, Evangelyne,
so many winters gone from home?
Are you still selling apples in your store,
playing Schubert, Brahms?
I have a daughter who plays,
her voice, mellow between breaths.
The steely notes of her guitar bringing lonesome sounds
of highways & a red suitcase to my door.

Like you, she left home to find meadows of stillness.
At the airport, my voice silent as prayer;
her small belongings clumping along
on a carousel to Carlton.

Evangelyne, I wish you good tidings, fields of clouds,
blessings from an old churchyard. Remember
how we rocked in the bosom of Abraham?
Remember the Minister's whistling teeth,
the mischief of our throats?
− all that's silenced now.

When my daughter returns, she opens a window
through a fretwork of strings.
When I listen to Mozart, to Liszt,
you open that old songbook,
& the youth we stumbled in.

(Inspired by Emmylou Harris)