Roller Derby swings

Slay Belles Roller Derby queens at work

Tango8: Love and Food

OK here comes the media release ... promotion is just another thing I like to do for worthwhile and creative projects ... like I did for Artful Dodgers Studios recently ... AND THIS IS ONE!

A fresh new Australian comic anthology to savour
To be launched by Melbourne food legend Dur-e Dara at
Mr Wilkinson, 295 Lygon Street, East Brunswick
Wednesday December 17 at 7pm
SPECIAL LAUNCH PRICE $20

In sumptuous black and white, bumper comic book Tango8: Love and Food celebrates two of our greatest obsessions in sizzling style. The eighth issue of the giant Australian romance comics anthology Tango follows on where the provocative Tango7: Love and Sedition left off. This banquet of contemporary stories includes new work from talented graphic novelists Nicki Greenberg (The Great Gatsby, Allen & Unwin), Bruce Mutard (The Sacrifice, also Allen & Unwin) and Mandy Ord (Rooftops, published by Finlay Lloyd), whose great story on food and fatherly love will ring true for many.
Works from two brilliant cartoonists from The Age, Andrew Weldon and Oslo Davis, are among the 70 very different offerings. These vary from 1 to 18 pages in length, exploring the theme of 'love and food' in hilarious, romantic, creepy, nostalgic and heartfelt ways. Tango8: Love and Food’s 70 contributors mostly hail from Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney; four live in New Zealand.
The ongoing Tango project presents work by established and emerging comic book makers in annual collections from Melbourne-based Cardigan Comics. These are edited and published by Bernard Caleo, a fine comic writer and artist himself. Caleo’s collaboration with Angela Savage (For Natasha) is a highlight of Tango8: Love and Food, comparing piquant memories of red icy poles at the Brunswick Baths with the swooning joy of breast feeding. (Savage won the Victorian Premier’s Best Unpublished Manuscript by Emerging Author award in 2004 for her book Thai Died, published by Text Publishing in 2006 as Behind the Night Bazaar)
Tango8: Love and Food is a rollercoaster ride through the wealth of comic book talent in Australasia. At 242 pages of affordable comic book goodness it’s a great gift for foodies, comic lovers and those hard-to-buy-for teens, twenties and thirty-somethings - as well as the baby boomers who learned to read from Marvel and DC comics and achieved puberty poring over Robert Crumb and Zap!
Cardigan Comics has been kindly supported by Arts Victoria in the publication of Tango8: Love and Food. The trade paperback sized collection is available at book shops, comic book sellers and at http://www.cardigancomics.com/
For further information and interviews, contact: Publicist Jen Jewel Brown
Ph 0408 898 338 jenjewelbrown@fastmail.fm
Publisher Bernard Caleo Ph (03) 9497 8098 bernard@cardigancomics.com

Tango8: Love and Food

Aurora Australis

Barack Obama: President

Hail to the chief

A bran new dae ...


I cried with joy today. Thank you American voters. Now the world has a chance to live. I think today means that much. Quite apart from the searing journey of a nation forged in blackbirding, civil war and a black vote won 40 years back - pretty similar to in Australia when we decided our original inhabitants, around 60,000 years of environmentally sound prior habitation notwithstanding, were actually citizens who could be counted and vote. Just for a start. And there's a long, long road we'll travel, but ...

This is a new world.

From Times Online
November 5, 2008
Forty Acres: a poem for Barack Obama from Nobel winner Derek Walcott
The West Indies poet Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature, writes exclusively for The Times to mark the election of Barack Obama as President
Derek Walcott Nobel prize winning West Indian poet

Derek Walcott was born in St. Lucia in 1930. He divides his time between New York and the Caribbean


Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving —

a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls,

an emblem of impossible prophecy, a crowd

dividing like the furrow which a mule has ploughed,

parting for their president: a field of snow-flecked

cotton

forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens

that the young ploughman ignores for his unforgotten

cotton-haired ancestors, while lined on one branch, is

a tense

court of bespectacled owls and, on the field's

receding rim —

a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him.

The small plough continues on this lined page

beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado's

black vengeance,

and the young ploughman feels the change in his veins,

heart, muscles, tendons,

till the land lies open like a flag as dawn's sure

light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower.

the campaign to end global poverty - sign and make your pledge

I pledge to keep seeking out and requesting stores stock Fair Trade products, to keep doing volunteer work and to keep campaigning for rights of the voiceless and most underprivileged in our society through my work on the management collective of the Council of Single Mothers and Their Children in Melbourne, Australia, and other orgs and by letter writing to pollies and the media, through my poetry and through Get-Up, Greenpeace, AVAAZ and other important and powerful online petitions. I pledge to continue to keep giving away rather than selling all items no longer needed by our family and to ask for donations to important charities rather than presents in the family Kris Kringle at Christmas. I pledge to never give up trying to make a difference to halt global warming through human inaction on greenhouse gas emissions and overclearing. I promise to compost and recycle and buy pre-loved stuff or no stuff as often as possible. I promise to give back for what has been given by a provident universe to me. I pledge to continue to do what I can to lift the profile and promote the talents and knowledge of the indigenous Australians for the benefit of all.

Hey ho - let's go!

Hawthorn, the Hawks, have made the Grand Final to play Geelong, the Cats, at the MCG this Saturday. I'm supporting the underhawks. They have five fantastic indigi players - Mark Williams, Chance Bateman, Cyril "Junior" Rioli, Cameron Stokes and last but not least, Lance "Buddy" Franklin. Buddy is the most althletic, graceful, powerful, marvellous player I've ever watched. He's still like a big Great Dane puppy too, not always sure of what he's doing. I really love to watch the sheer thrill he gets from being out there on the grand stage of finals footy. Can the MCG still hold 100,000 people? If so, they'll be there on Saturday. Logic says the wrecking ball that is Geelong will win, but I'm barracking for the Hawks since the Maggpies and Bombers have bombed out. I'll be watching round at the neighbours' place. Battered cat, anyone?

Junior Rioli and Jason Akermanis: the black and the white of Australian Rules football

shadow got lost

cargo ships
containers
your shadow got lost
when you came through here
10 days ago
back on your way out to sea

cargo ships
containers
your shadow curls around my body
your arms a deadlock
I fought 10 days ago
laughing
wrestling
twisting
fighting
pin you back onto my bed
the wonder in your eyes
acquiescing


cargo ships
containers
lashed down with your will
the swell splashing in the strait
lurching 10 gallon drums
singing like whales
of fiery orange, yellow
banging in the north easterly
heading purposefully out to sea

but your shadow stayed here
belonging time
sleeping spooned with me
belonging time
as the sun
circumnagivates
our bed

Slow fuse

on through the night following she thought about the night before
there had been a small ember left at the heart of the burnt-out
section and when the extreme dark swallowed her and the morning
was at its zenith of cold the secret barely-there coal throbbed faintly on

a day later she was scrubbing at the stains in the jail issue clothing
when a shower of sparks fell in the southern section
a crack of coal split open the corner of her eye blazed tangerine

a string of poets gathered by a brazier singing
in the distance in the rain a meteorite entered the sea
the swamp grew the ruins charred artists took charcoal
the stains disappeared from the jail issue clothing

the frogs came, and they sang too
one day we will be free
we will be free on day

blood pheasant

splittism

our crockery is decrepit
I buy new crockery
I stand on my toes in K-Mart
and reach for a cheap
plain white set
on the top shelf.
marked down.
“made in China”.

it has flaws in it
but it is beautiful
flaws are at the heart of beauty.

I like to eat and watch tv
: exactly what was banned
in childhood.
ah, the simple, deep pleasure
of disobeying

on TV tonight there
is a secret documentary
filmed undercover in Tibet
I hear the plate I’m eating off
may have been made
by forced labour in Tibet
and labeled
“made in China”

I have also bought
towels today.
two creamy, one slate –
cotton, “made in China”.

one hand towel
the first I have ever owned.
I suspect this is decadent
even if it came from Safeway

a woman is talking with
the bottom of her face hidden
she has been sterilized
without anesthetic.
she shows the scars.

if I could give her
my hand towel, I would.
it is slate, quite lovely.
the hand towel was
“made in India”.

the Tibetan government in exile
is in Dharamsala, in India.
thank you India.

a man talks about handcuffs.
apparently there are several kinds.
ones for the thumbs.
some for the wrists that cut the wrists

for a picture of the Dalai Lama
they could hang you from the ceiling
your hands would be cut off
and so you can stand on your toes

at just the right height
you can stand all night

when they release you
you aren’t much chop at working
(that’s what one old man says)

the interviewer went undercover
for three months
in Tibet
his face is very sweaty

how can I watch this bravery
in the magnificent brilliance of Tibet
as brilliant as a mountain blood pheasant
red and green?

I wish all of the governments
of the world had missed
the opening ceremony
of the Olympic Games
I wish no-one and gone at all

how can I afford
my disobedient pleasure?
I switch off the brilliant
colours of my TV.
of course
it is “made in China”.

David Hicks arriving back in Australia

Detainee 002 (for David Hicks)

Detainee 002 is back
He’s wearing this jumpsuit like a tradie
and it’s a blood orange colour
like a day-glo explosion
in the gloom of the news at six

And there’s a pixelated stumble
cos he’s tripping down the stairs of the jet
short-shackled/ wrist to ankle
Detainee 002 is back
from Guantanamo Bay

But these new chains
are like the old chains -
rewind 1788:

sailing into focus
come 11 convict hulks
casing for a place
to start rendition

La Mama's tree has many leaves

For the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Senator Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy ... June 5 1968

on the campaign trail

The Runt
(for R.F.K.)

You were the smallest brother of the three
- the one your father called The Runt
- your teeth a tad bucked you were
small next to your broadshouldered brothers John and Ted
running your hand through your hair
a shy determined sweat in a suit and tie
at the deep south summer country town campaigning
eyes like bleached Levis slant down on the edge of the shot

We drank the truth, heard it tumble from your mouth
through opiated lies and paralysed hands,
rattlesnake poison you saw and named,
cut and sucked and spat out.
(You never hear that kind of dangerous talk now Bobby
- nowadays they bind the poison in.)

You named the slow ‘violence of institutions;
indifference and inaction and slow decay.’
Poisons ‘because their skin has different colors.’
and ‘the slow destruction of a child by hunger
This is the breaking of a man's spirit…
And this too afflicts us all.’

Meanwhile ‘Please pay to the order of/ to the order of’
Sirhan Sirhan wrote in his diary (or so they claimed).
‘My determination to eliminate R. F. K./ is becoming
more the more [sic]/ of an unshakable obsession …
‘Please pay to the order of/
to the order of’

‘…look for scapegoats… for conspiracies …
this sickness from our soul’

LA 12.15 am
5 June 1968

Having just won the California Democratic Primary
your words a banner in the wind from a fire rising
poetry for tongues stapled to silence
past John’s assassination
even King’s
a new rush of hope
then

in the food service pantry
of the Ambassador Hotel
an El Greco comes to life
falling bodies and blooming blood

Five shot yet somehow all survived
but Bobby …

In your ruddy pelt a gunpowder scatter
your jacket hole-punched
Young bellboy kneels cradles your head,
rosaries your hand …
Your pooling halo draws the flash bulbs
pop pop pop echo of gunshots but
you’re at absolute peace now Bobby
though the world
writhes around you

Who will guard us from the guardians?
And did they take Marilyn too?
And the evidence, that too?

And where did your words fly Bobby,
out of the hole of the blasted public throat?
Did they fly south for the endless winter of our bloody discontent,
this terrible quickening we face now without you?
I am ashamed and furious – where
did your words fly Bobby?


Robert F. Kennedy’s speech ‘On the Mindless Menace of Violence’ was delivered April 5, 1968, at the City Club of Cleveland, Ohio, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, and a year and a half after his elder brother, President John F Kennedy was shot in office. Exactly two months later he himself was assassinated. Words in italics are quoted fragments of this speech.

Some crew of the marine rescue ship the Steve Irwin

corvidae

corvids and astral travel

Corvids: Here's the tail of the post I put on the super blog of Scaughtfive, who lives in Seattle.

http://thelastrung.blogspot.com/2008/05/one-hundred-flowers.html

'Would like to be in Seattle tonight; a raven sitting on a wire feeling notes singing through her feet in the darkish wind.'

He replied, under my post Tibet: no threat

'Know what? There are two rather large crows that frequently sit on the telephone wires in front of our house. They groom each other and talk at me while I play guitar on the front porch, watching the rain. Maybe yer already here?'

Perhaps you're right Scaught, perhaps I am that creature in my astral travels. Certainly I believe in such things. I tried astral travel when I was a teenager and it works. When you're asleep the subconscious, so much more sure than the conscious, is very active.

And I found this:

"Today the crow is ascendant — suburbia, a kind of urban savanna with both grass and trees, has created perfect crow habitat. Ravens, who favor thick forests and cliff edges, are in decline. In Seattle alone, from 1991 to 1999 more than 200,000 acres of forest was converted into forested urban areas and lawns, prime crow habitat. As young crows from suburbia have moved into the city, Marzluff has documented new crow behavior — crows nesting on urban rooftops, including the KING-TV headquarters and The Seattle Times building, and behind the gargoyles of the University of Washington's Suzzallo Library.

In eras past, native Northwest tribes revered the raven as "creator, trickster and messenger." In the 21st century, crows inspire the names of rock bands (Black Crowes, Counting Crows), and in urban Seattle, a group of urban street people call themselves the 'Tribe of Crow.' "

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/
entertainment/2002575500_crows23.html

In Melbourne people often confuse the more common raven with the crow.

http://www.austmus.gov.au/factsheets/crows_
ravens.htm

Tibet? No threat

The rookie Australian Poetry Centre Festival was an ambitious joust staged over three days/ two nights of the ANZAC day weekend in autumn-struck Castlemaine. In between and around the real program, (literary events stuffed with Bob Adamson, Judith Beveridge, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Esther Ottaway, Jaya Savige, Anthony Lawrence, Lauren Williams, Ross Gillett, Barry Hill, Sam Hamill (USA), LK Holt, Laksmi Pamuntjak (Indonesia), Lorna Crozier (Canada) and many more), sub-festivals and demi-parties raged and fluttered in anarchic fashion. By late Sunday the promised hail fell with a short, sharp flourish followed by a spectacular rainbow. The program was pricey (for poetry) and packed. Debates raged over who killed and who sucked (often the same people according to different punters). Interspersed with tracelike near-dozes which served to recharge batteries, the vibometer was pulsing along happily. Verdict: four horseshoes out of five. A fine idea brought to fruition - well done APC.

Aust Poetry Centre Festival # 1 goes off

boom shakalackalacka boom shakalackalacka!

Eagle

Bunjil

For Docklands’ ‘Eagle’ by Bruce Armstrong,
and the Wurundjeri and Kulin’s
legendary wedgetail protector of those who will accept his guidance


Bunjil
you are the spirit
seeing all that we have
done – the bright
madness of our gleaming
shells of metal
curling towards the Dome
the MCG, Docklands
cathedrals of Australian Rules
where young warriors
dig the possum skin again
leaping for your wings Bunjil,
that marngrook game we mixed
with English rugby

way up high
you
sentinel
though you sit unmoving
over the yellow eel twists
of the Birrarung and Melbourne’s
snake backbone of trains
the wild rushes through your feathers
like an aeroplane
like a storm

Sorry no longer the hardest word

At last - an inspiring and moving recognition of the stolen generations. Kevin Rudd made me proud to be Australian again after Howard's hideous white arm-band view of history. I look forward to taking more steps with our amazing Indigenous brothers and sisters into a new and better Australia. Brendan Nelson gave an offensive and deeply inconsiderate, partially incoherent speech referring to upsetting and most extreme abuse and black 'sacrifice' for a better Australia. How insulting and inappropriate. Every day we read of white men driving their kids into dams and hiding their wives in 44 gallons drums while the mistress moves in, etcetera etcetera, but that's just as irrelevant to 'sorry' as Brendan's mean-spirited ravings were. The fact that old paperwork may be missing or inadequate and tiny children and people who spoke no English can't explain their family circumstances when children were removed via force and subterfuge, separated from siblings and all family and tribal groups, frequently abused including sexually and often forced to work for stolen wages as unpaid slaves doesn't mean no widespread racially-based injustice didn't occur. It did. Rudd said around 50,000 black kids were taken, and this affected 10 - 30% of Indigenous children. That is a form of genocide. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.