rob walker poet

poetry unleashed!

robwalker — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:47:39 +0000

My local council, the City of Onkaparinga, is a very progressive municipality which fosters the Arts. I know I’m biased, having won their inaugural Best Single Poet’s Collection in 2006, but I think they do a tremendous job on the local level. Poetry Unleashed 2010, now underway, involves poetry competitions for kids through to adults and a smorgasbord of accessible poetry events for the public. I’m involved with Candles, Wine and Classics at Leconfield Winery, McLaren Vale this Saturday night Sept 4 along with Jill Gower, Julian Zytnik, Ray Tyndale and Mary Bradley.

On Sunday Sept 5 I’ll be performing in the open Spoken Word competition at the Singing Gallery, McLaren Vale. There’s also a Poets & Pizza night
with Geoff Goodfellow, Alice Sladdin, Jill Wherry and David Cookson.
Oh, and a Great Debate that Poetry Sux. Onya onka!
About the logo: Not sure why I’m the soft underbelly. Better than being a horse’s arse I guess.

earthly matters

robwalker — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:11:53 +0000

It’s National Science Week in Australia. A few months ago The Poets’ Union & The Australian Poetry Centre invited submissions for poems on the wide theme of ‘poetry and science.’ I was very pleased that my poem slater was chosen for the anthology Earthly Matters and my audio work Earth’s Greatest Hits will be played at the Science Made Marvellous launches in Melbourne, Sydney and possibly Adelaide. slater originally appeared in micromacro, along with a number of other poems on the science/ eco theme which has always interested me. It’s great to see an entire book of poems on such subjects as bacteria, pollen and stromatolites! The other poets are Martin Langford, Faith de Savigné, Carol Jenkins, Saskia Hewitt, Mike Cooper, Meredi Ortega, Meg Mooney, Annamaria Weldon, John Bennett, Martin Langford, t.w.gee, Benjamin Dodds, Michael Sharkey, P S Cottier, P S Cottier, Liana Christensen and Emily Ballou.

Earth’s Greatest Hits grew from my interest in the Radio Bubble after reading a number of articles most particularly “Radio Bubble: alien couch potatoes? It’s possible, thanks to escaping TV & radio signals” by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (which I accessed online but originally appeared in Natural History, Nov 2001.)
I’d read years ago that these signals, while continually weakening, theoretically continue forever. It’s incredible to consider that the electronic garbage we pump out every day may have an infinite life… I started to wonder what alien civilizations might think of us as seen through soaps and sit-coms.

The original piece I wrote was more an article for a magazine than a poem, but I wasn’t sure where to send it. It sat on my laptop for a time until I started to play around with spacey sounds on Garageband and matched the sound effects and music loops to the audio. I sent it off to a couple of poetry publishers who weren’t interested. Again it sat on my laptop unheard for a year until I read about the Poets’ Union’s Science Made Marvellous project. At last someone else liked it!

a day in the life

robwalker — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:58:57 +0000

I’m in London right now visiting my daughter Amy. I read here that John Lennon’s original draft of his A day in the life recently went at auction for £810 000 & that took me back to the first time I heard that masterpiece when I was an innocent boy of 15. Years later it inspired this (less lucrative) poem:

A day in the life

You imagine the solidity of
bricks mortar suburbs.
The transience of music & memory.
rehearsing the school musical
in the community Hall in Camden
At the cast party the camaraderie
of shared experience.
When you could have a wild time
without booze or drugs wearing the new pinstriped flairs
And the whole night playing
that one new record over and over
called Sergeant Peppers.
Every track a fresh view of
the world.
Thirty five years on taking a shortcut
you find yourself in the same street.
Everywhere beige courtyard homes.
The music and memories more
concrete with time

The Hall, gone.

rob joins THE GROUP

robwalker — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:28:38 +0000

Thanks to The Group literary arts magazine for putting up our (Ben & my) bibliophobia in the latest online edition. We join the esteemed company of Larry Buttrose, Sue Bond, Nike Bourke, Blazenka Brysha, BM Buttrose, Sam Cooney, Jack Feldstein, Matt Hetherington, Belinda Jeffrey, Kavita Jindal, Adair Jones, Mark Kovan, Angela Meyer, Mark Mordue and Billy Marshall Stoneking

(Image by OverTheMoon)

my Himeji poem recognised

robwalker — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:52:41 +0000

A poem of mine which had its genesis in a junior high in Himeji two years ago has been recognised in the Australian Poetry Centre’s national poetry competition: ‘Making sense of it’. The competition was looking for poems which “show life from a totally unique perspective, from an author’s own sensory experience, allowing others an insight into this distinctive view of the world - how the author felt, observed and encountered it.”
The top five poems selected were
Lines written in Himeji, 2008 by rob walker,
Night Fires by Mercia Morton,
Now Hear This by Lerys Byrnes,
Talking Behind my Back by Julienne Juschke, and
autistic child with acute auditory processing disorder by Melinda Smith.
I was particularly pleased that my work received glowing comments from Chris Wallace-Crabbe and was read publicly at a ceremony at the Wheeler Centre (Melbourne) on May 7.
My poem was written with a regular rhythm but little rhyme. It was a stressful time for me. The poem was written is an almost dissociated state after I had seen Picasso’s Guernica hanging in a corridor while thinking about plate tectonics and Japan’s amazingly disconnected culture and my tiny place in it…

All five poems will be recorded, performed and released on the APC’s 3RRR poetry podcast Nothing Rhymes with RRR, and published on the Australian Poetry Centre’s website.
Congratulations to winning poet, Melinda Smith.

Read all 5 short-listed poems HERE.

iPlod

robwalker — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:26:17 +0000

iPlod. Hip-hop for the middle-aged. I didn’t forget the words to this one - it was a lot of fun. Ended up with 3rd place in this competition (Royce had a well-deserved 1st.) Thanks to Ivan for the sax-work which was totally impro.

RIP Tuxedo Cat…

SEE THE YOUTUBE VIDEO HERE

RebelSlam virgin performs Plympton Gopher

robwalker — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:45:05 +0000

How embarrassing. My first appearance at RebelSlam last week was the Adelaide Poetry Slam’s swansong at the Tuxedo Cat before the wrecking ball smites the old building in Synagogue Place. The hardest part was trying to look cool when I went to jelly internally at forgetting my lines. Knowing it was being videoed for Youtube didn’t help. Next time I take a prompt card!. This is the same poem I performed at Goolwa with Max_Mo (see the last post.) The better-remembered and better-produced version is on MySpace. Amazingly I survived the dries to make the second round!

There’s probably a way to embed this, but I haven’t figured it out - yet. Follow the link below:

YOUTUBE LINK HERE!

Max_Mo @ Goolwa

robwalker — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:20:54 +0000

I’m really looking forward to our first live gig at the Salt on the Tongue poetry festival (which will be HUGE) at Goolwa this Sat night.
The poetry is hot and the music is cool. Max_mo is poets Amelia Walker, Mike Ladd & me and musos Steve Matters (bass), Andy Mills (drums) and Derek Pascoe (tenor sax). We’ve been rehearsing at the ABC studios over the last couple of weeks & we’re ready to roll. This will be something VERY new. Hope to see some of you there at the Brewery, Goolwa 10:30 pm April 24. Cost: FREE!

bibliophobia

robwalker — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 04:53:41 +0000

I never did mention on this website that my son Ben and I won the 2009 Newcastle Poetry Prize (New Media) for our collaborative effort bibliophobia. In fact we were in Newcastle accepting our prize just hours before my dad died.
Thanks to Ben for posting the news on his website. (You can view the video HERE.)
There’s also more background on The Newcastle Poetry Prize site HERE.

s.a. shorts

robwalker — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:16:20 +0000

Cath Kenneally

Cath Kenneally will be reading my short story Running out of time on Radio Adelaide’s Writers Radio on April 5 & 10.
The programme is usually available as a podcast about a week after broadcast.

HERE