Friendly Street Poets

Past Conjugation of the Verb Marry

I married

I married a white knight

with a slow horse

on rough terrain

I was the bee in his helmet

He would sleep in his armour

When he finally took it off

I saw his heart had been given to another

His cause was for lost love

mine for safety

Pearls and black roses

A bad omen they said

Not knowing I chose, loved them

A curt affair

His genes full of generations-bread and butter

Mine of passionate, cruel stones

Forty two degrees in the shade

Sitting tensely in formals

cracking our Crème Brule

Driving from the church

he asked for the cricket score

You married

You married

noun not verb

White whipped candy, French nails

fake tan

Your mother on oxygen

Had to see her first born

married, if not well

Under the tulle, her grandson

a happy family fracas

trimmed in lurid lace

She died anyway

How your milk

must have curdled

at the funeral

What will you marry next

to have her back?

He married

He married, as was the custom

A suit, speeches, the pressies

a days notoriety

Lots of grog to loosen

A chain he already despised

The certainty of open

legs and ironed shirts

He loved his house, the kids

the car, the view

Lamingtons in the lunch box

Pre-wired for the burbs

But they forgot to teach him

the dangers of fantasy

We married

We married oil and water

decorative statements

odd socks, budget and actual

We married mismatched sheets

ends of roof joists

opinion and dissension

ideas of the other

We married anyway

They married

They married like they married before them

Lonely, bored, bedazzled by desire

Because part of them feels whole

inserted in the other

It is logical, ludicrous, popular

They married for the long plough

rocks, stumps and droughts

Taught their boys how to hate monotony

Girls, how to darn, clean and mend

They married for love of marriage

What God has put together

let no verb bring asunder

Carmel Williams

I hear them in the night

scuttling across my mind,

nibbling at neurons,

peeing on synapses,

shorting out links between words.

Renegades in the roof,

they ransack musty boxes –

footprint mother’s wedding dress,

nest in my juvenile poems.

Why did they gnaw father’s hard hat –

the builder’s safety shell –

and sister’s sexy photograph?

Because this is my crawlspace

and these are my ferals

who slink at the edges of dreams.

A nose, a whisper, an ear –

I have trouble recalling their faces.

Are they sharp-snouted, dangerous?

Are their eyes moist and confused

as an old woman’s peering through curtains?

We’re all territorial, I suppose.

Possums must tread the same pathways.

By this age, I’m resigned to the damage.

Once I set traps,

but they’re far too clever,

keeping just out of reach of my pen.

And if I had caught them

where would I dare let them go?

Not on a genteel suburban street,

these wild and jealous shadows.

So I shut up the ceiling for good.

Now we will never escape.

Jeri Kroll

Published in New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. Vol 1, No. 2 (2004), 133.

Awarded Best Poem read at the Southern meeting in 2009.  Award presented at FSP March meeting 2010.

TUESDAY MARCH 2nd  2010.

Poets from all over the world, interstate and in South Australia are all invited to attend the March poetry reading of Friendly Street Poets. We are the longest running poetry reading group in the entire southern hemisphere. We are in our 35th year of operation. We invite you to come and read your poetry, or listen to other poets read and perform a broad range of poetry. If you read you will have 3 mins at an open mic. Open to everybody with no censorship.

Any poem read at our meeting is eligible for selection by our editors, Tracey Korsten and John Pfitzner, for possible publication in our 2011 anthology FSP35. Please bring two copies of your poem with you and place them in the reading box next to the microphone.

We have Robyn Cadwallader, our most recently published poet in the Single Poet series, as Guest Reader. She will be reading from her book ‘ i painted unafraid’. We also have two book promotional spots by poets Glen Murdoch and Erica Jolly.

It costs  $5 waged / $4 unwaged for a great night of entertainment. Refreshments free inside.

Please book in to read at 6.30pm, for a 7pm start.

The meeting is at the Malcolm Reid Building in East Rundle Street. Please walk eastwards on the southern pavement, down from Hungry Jacks Corner. When you reach Caffe Brunelli please walk to the back of the store and go through the only door on your left. Catch the lift to the 2nd Floor Atrium. You will find plenty of delicious dining opportunities in East Rundle Street. Caffe Brunelli has excellent Italian bistro food, gourmet pizzas and fine coffee.

Inside you’ll also find an information table, a book sales table (with all our latest books) and lots of friendly poets from our community wanting to welcome you to the Adelaide Festival of Arts and our meeting.

Thanks to Wakefield Press for continuing to support quality poetry  publishing in South Australia.

Thanks to the South Australian Government, through Arts SA, for their continued support of the Arts in this state and, in particular ,Friendly Street Poets and their publishing program.

Every year, Friendly Street Poets ask previously unpublished poets to submit 26 page manuscripts into our New Poets publishing competition. The manuscripts are judged anonymously by an independent judge who is asked to select the three best manuscripts for publication. Jill Jones, Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide and nationally acclaimed poet selected manuscripts by poets Louise McKenna, Lynette Arden and Sher’ee Furtak Ellis. FSP Publishing Officer Thom Sullivan edited the book and created New Poets 15.

This latest edition in our famous New Poets series will be offically launched at Writers Week on Sunday 28th February at 5.15pm, in the WEST TENT at the Pioneer women’s Memorial Gardens as part of the Adelaide Festival of Arts.

Thanks to Wakefield Press for continuing to publish quality poetry books in this state.

Thanks to the Government of  South Australia, through Arts SA for continuing to support our publishing program.

In alternate years, Friendly Street Poets has a publishing competition where previously unpublished poets are asked to submit an 86 page manuscript. These are judged anonymously by an independent judge. Stephen Lawrence judged our Single Poet competition and selected Robyn Cadwallader’s manuscript ‘i painted unafraid’. Courtney Black edited the book and it is going to be launched at Writers’ Week on Sunday February 28th at the WEST TENT, Pioneer Women’s Memorial Gardens at 5.15pm. (as part of the Adelaide Festival of Art) . Please come along and hear Stephen Lawrence introduce the book and listen to the poet Robyn Cadwallader read from her first book.

Thanks to Wakefield Press for continuing to publish quality poetry books in this state.

Thanks to the Government of South Australia, through Arts SA for continuing to support our publishing program.

At the Adelaide Festival of Arts, Writers’ Week on Sunday 28th February, Friendly Street Poets will launch our latest annual anthology.

Please come to the WEST TENT, Pioneer Women’s Memorial Gardens at 5.15pm.  The editors Janine Baker and Alice Sladdin will present the book to the public for the first time.

There will be a later more detailed launch at the FSPoets meeting on Tuesday April 6th, where published poets will be reading from the book. The editors will be running the first half of the meeting and will announce the NOVA prize winner. Contributing poets are also encouraged to read a new poem on the night. Bring two copies of you work because it becomes eligible for selection and possible publication by our new editors for 2010, Tracey Korsten and John Pfitzner.

Thanks to Wakefield Press for continuing to publish quality poetry books in this state.

Thanks to the Government of South Australia, through Arts SA for continuing to support our publishing program.

Sonnet: After Cassandra

Yet on we strove unmindful, deaf and blind,
To place the monster on our blessed height.
(The Aeneid: Virgil 2.234-)9

The gods have granted us a special gift
in that we cannot tell what is to come.
For truth from error we can barely sift –
unlike Cassandra, grateful to be dumb,

unable to give warning to a friend,
for prescience might bring despair:
if cursed by seeing where their acts might tend,
such knowledge of the future we’d not bear.

So like the Trojans we bring monsters in;
we welcome those who lead to doom.
Unable to distinguish good from sin,
we fail to see the worm inside the bloom.

Incapable of knowing, see us smile and nod
and welcome in a devil whom we think a god.

©Valerie Volk

Competition judged by Dr Jacqueline Clarke,
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classics, Universiry of Adelaide

Too much Mary Jane

there can be too much meaning
I have trouble with the good green herb
because everything is so meaningful
red cars for example
or three objects in a triangle
words out of context from more than one book
also the CIA or the Queensland Police
who use that hoverfly to film me

but it is good, the green herb
taking a deep lungful of raspy heat
coughing and spluttering for the good cause
of another state of mind
a change of, increase of, consciousness
necessary
if we are to change the world anytime soon
I’ll get around to it
just after I have this little sit down
in the corner with Jack Horner and my knees

I have found that if you smoke it
all-day-every-day for two years
meaningfulness
becomes a little hard to work out
as if something —
I can’t quite remember
but if I could concentrate
and put all the clues together
I would understand

but right now I wonder
what those ants are carrying and why?
they know things

I would know things
if I didn’t keep missing
whatever it is

Belinda Broughton

Our first REBELSLAM! for 2010 will be on Tuesday 9th February at TUXEDO CAT,  Synagogue Place (NW corner), off East Rundle St, Adelaide. Just walk up the stairs until you reach the roof and can see the stars. Come to Adelaide’s only registered International Poetry Slam and strut your stuff. You get three minutes at the open microphone for any form of word performance. It can be rap, hip hop, poetry, spoken word anything uncensored. Make sure you bring at least two performances pieces for both rounds.

Book in at 7pm for a 7.30pm start.

Judges selected from the audience. If you don’t want to perform come and be a slam voyeur. You will have a great night out.

Special features: AVALANCHE with his industrial strength whipper snipper if you dare to breach the time limit and that brilliant MC divine the amazing TRACEY KORSTEN.

All performers can be filmed (with your permission) and placed on our You Tube Website.

Cost of entry: $5/ $4 free juices & nibbles included.

Bar open for all other alcholic beverages at reasonable prices.

A few special congratulations…

to Indigo for her 3rd placing in the Australian National Poetry Slam, the highest place ever achieved by a SA poet & to the other SA finalist, Kami (http://www.paroxysmpress.com/),  who came 7th on the night;

to Valerie Volk for winning the John Bray Roman Poetry Prize. Also to Valerie and Maeve Archilbald for winning special commendations in this competition;

to the mentored poets who all performed well as our December Guest Poets Kate Alder, Jill Gower, Suzanne Reece, Ros Schulz and Jenny Toune;

to Jacqui Merckenschlager for winning poem of the meeting at Murray Bridge;

to Carmel Williams for winning poem of the meeting at the Salisbury Festival;

and to Jeri Kroll for winning poem of the meeting at Port Noarlunga.

These winning poems will be posted throughout summer. We hope to create the Mentorship site with all mentored poets and their mentors being acknowledged and represented. We will also be updating the Gallery of Poets.

The Board of Management wants to thank the many members who have performed in such a variety of venues during 2009, taking Friendly Street out to a variety of community spaces, places and regional centres; even the first time at Royal Adelaide Show and our second show with SA Art Gallery. Thank you for your skills, abilities, creativity, time and energy. Friendly Street is only as good as its enthusiatic and generous volunteer community. Thank you to all the presenters of workshops and seminars, our guest readers (whether home grown, from interstate or overseas), our mentors, judges and our very hard working editors and ever-busy publishing team.

Seasonal best wishes to all our members, our creative partners in community organisations and all the creative visitors to our site. May 2010 be an exciting, challenging but inspirational year for you all. May your metaphors sing soprano and your similies leap to unexpected places.  May your rhythms rhumba and your metres march in whatever direction you desire. May your rhymes wriggle and writhe into place, never to detract or distract from meaning or space.

Kindest regards and best wishes for 2010!