“I have been listening to the train-driver for the name of my station, Shirahama. I’ve forgotten how many stops it is from Himeji. The station names come up in his unintelligible spiel as little lifeboats in a sea of incomprehension. Blah blah blah shikama blah blah blah mega blah blah blah…

It must be soon. I look outside, industrial mixed with domestic, and it all begins to have a déjà-vu feel. I know the school is close because of the smoke and steam pouring out of the smoke stacks I see in the distance every day from my other school…” (excerpt)

It’s nice to see more of my short stories being recognised. This memoir piece began in 2008 but has only now been published.

Last year I entered it in the Lane Cove Literary Award in the “Travel Story” category. It didn’t win, but as a short-listed story it was included in this excellent anthology.

Thanks to the Lane Cove Library for promoting unpublished work!

So this one began as a musing while chopping kindling and thinking back to Vancouver which we’d visited while our daughter was living there. The result was Oregon which was short-listed for the 2015 Lane Cove Literary Award and subsequently published in the anthology. Here it’s remixed by IZ & Grand City Break.

READ & LISTEN

Adelaide people – come and hear guest poet Louise Nicholas and others free at Unley today – or read some of your own stuff at the open microphone!

This is a music remix of the poem recently published in Worlds of Words Lines written on the train between Himeji and Shirohama-no-miya.

Thanks to The Break Soul Club from France.

LISTEN HERE

Last Monday saw the launch of Friendly Street’s 41^st annual anthology Worlds in Words, edited by Edie Eicas and David Harris. Congratulations to the editors and all published poets – particularly those published for the first time. I list them all here because poets don’t get enough recognition:

Maeve Archibald, Martin Christmas, Graham Rowlands, Elizabeth Salna, Sara Abend-Sims, Murray Alfredson, Karl H Cameron-Jackson, Margaret Fensom, Margaret Clark, Edie Eicas, David Mortimer, Graeme Moyse, Nigel Ford, Barbara Preston, Valerie Volk, Michelle Lee Davis, Rory Harris, Kalicharan N Dey, Kerry Harte, Nezy Musicarro, Susan O’Brien, Suzanne Reece, Rosemary Winderlich, David Harris, Pat Lee, David Mortimer, Chris Miller, Kate Bristow, Darrell Coggins, David Cookson, Geoff Hastwell, Roger Higgins, Khalil Jureidini, Gordon McPherson, Avalanche, Ros Schulz, Alice Shore, Don Anderson, David Bailes, David Barker, Elaine Barker, Joan Chinnery, Dawn Colsey, Sue Cook, Veronica Cookson, Judy Dally, Steve Evans, Milly Halsey, Cary Hamlyn, Geoff Johnston, Betty Ann Kaeding, Max Merckenschlager, Jacqui Merckenschlager, Bernard Whimpress, Athena Zaknic, Lynette Zander, Sharon Foulkes, Bruce Greenhalgh, Pat Lee, Christine Polley, Mark Ritchie, A M Sladdin, Maria Vouis, John Malone, Erica Jolly, Louise Nicholas, Rob Ferris, and Jules Leigh Koch.

My special congratulations to Cary Hamlyn for being awarded the Satura Prize for her poem Ultrasound in B-Flat and Inez Marrasso who was awarded the Nova Prize for No Boundaries.

My poems crabbing from James Well to Rogues Point and Lines written on the train between Himeji and Shirohamanomiya also appear in the reader. Thanks Edie and David – as a former co-editor I know how much energy and time goes into this labour of love…

Listen to Edie & David’s Radio Adelaide interview HERE.