Jones was born in the mining town of Broken Hill in the far West of New South Wales. Although many of his poems and stories are concerned with urban experience, he always felt that desert landscapes were central to his language and perception. He wrote in colloquial language, which sometimes exploded in powerful narratives packed with ambiguous sexual and violent imagery, especially in his earlier poems and some of his novels. His original and bleak vision was frequently mediated by gusts of earthy humour and unexpected sensitivity and honesty.
He became a popular mayor of Ashfield, an inner Sydney Municipality, from 2004 to 2006, and during that period held together a broad coalition of Labor Party, Green and Independent representatives. He said that for him “poetry and politics are mutually contradictory, and he finds consolation from each in the arms of the other.”
Alex Skovron was born in Poland, lived briefly in Israel, and emigrated to Australia in 1958 aged nearly ten. His family settled in Sydney, where he grew up and completed his studies. From the early 1970s he worked as an editor for book publishers in Sydney and (after 1980) Melbourne. His poetry has appeared widely in Australia and overseas, and he has received a number of major awards for his work. The most recent of his six collections, Towards the Equator:New & Selected Poems (2014), was shortlisted in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. His collection of short stories The Man who Took to his Bed (2017), and his novella The Poet (2005, joint winner of the FAW Christina Stead Award for fiction), have been published in Czech translations; The Attic, a selection of his poetry translated into French, was published in 2013, and a Flying Island bilingual volume of Chinese translations, Water Music, in 2017. Some of his poetry has appeared in Dutch, Polish, Spanish, Macedonian and German, and he has collaborated with his Czech translator, Josef Tomáš, on English translations of the twentieth-century Czech poets Jiří Orten and Vladimír Holan. The numerous public readings he has given include appearances in China, Serbia, India, Ireland, Macedonia, Portugal, and on Norfolk Island. An 80-minute CD in which he reads from his work was published in 2019 under the title Towards the Equator. His next poetry collection, Letters from the Periphery, is due in 2021.
Concerns that have driven Alex’s poetry and fiction are many and various: history, language and music; the riddles of time and the allure of memory; philosophy, faith and the quest for self-knowledge; art and the creative impulse; fantasy, eros and the affections. His interest in speculative fiction has played a recurring role in his thinking and his work, as has a lifelong passion for music. As a poet, he enjoys both the disciplines and the aesthetics of formal design and the diverse challenges of freer structures. Integral to his project has been a focus on musicality and the primacy of rhythm. He likes probing the elasticities of syntax, and exploiting the ‘contrapuntal’ layerings available to imagery and meaning via compression, connotation, ambiguity.
Chen Fei, born and raised in Guizhou, is a story hunter, a traveler and a graphic designer. Resident in Macao for thirteen years, Fei is currently a Resident Tutor at Henry Fok Pearl Jubilee Residential College in the University of Macau, where he is currently completing a PhD degree in Literary Studies.
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the patio bench meiren kao – 18th April 2014
‘meiren kao, a man leaning on it will be more elegant, suave’
the restaurant manager said to me
meiren kao, a lookout for men
to monitor enemy movements
a belvedere for girls to wait for their beloved
and now I’m leaning here, waiting for my poetry ideas
downstairs Miao waitresses are welcoming guests with wine and song
on the street visitors are taking photos
some people are selling barbecued food
people sitting on the meiren kao of other houses are holding cameras, ready to capture any surprise
here on the meiren kao
I see the whole village
I see people come and go
people come, stay and start businesses here people grow up
people make money and leave
people grow old
sing songs
on such a pleasant afternoon as this I am sitting on the meiren kao
Judy Johnson has published five full length collections and several chapbooks. Her books have won the Victorian Premier’s Award and been shortlisted in both the NSW and WA Premier’s Awards. She’s been awarded the Wesley Michel Wright Prize 3 times. Her latest collection is ‘Dark Convicts'(UWA publishing, 2017) a poetic exploration of her African American First Fleet convict ancestors. Her Flying Islands publication is ‘Exhibit’, 2013.
Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a poet and painter, resident in the Myall Lakes of NSW. Published widely since the seventies, he has a dozen full length collections in English as well as translated books of poetry in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Swedish, Norwegian and Filipino. His latest volume of poetry in English is Poor Man’s Coat – Hardanger Poems, published by UWAP in 2018. In 2017, Kit was shortlisted twice for the Montreal Poetry Prize and won the Local Award in the Newcastle Poetry Prize. In 2019 and 2020 Kit won the Hunter Writers’ Centre award in the NPP. He was also shortlisted for the ACU prize in 2020. Kit’s Book of Mother is forthcoming from Puncher & Wattmann in 2021. Emeritus Professor at the University of Macau, where he taught for many years, Kit Kelen is also a Conjoint Professor at the University of Newcastle. In 2017, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Malmo, in Sweden. Literary editor for Postcolonial Text and Series Editor for Flying Islands Pocket Poets Series, Kit has mentored many poets and translators from various parts of the world, and run a number of on-line communities of practice in poetry (most notably Project 366 [from 2016-2020]). Kit is a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW. You can follow Kit’s work-in-progress a the Daily Kit. Kit is the Co-ordinator of the THESE FLYING ISLANDS community blog.
Here is a little selection of poems from Kit’s book a pocket Kit 2, interspersed with some paintings and drawings:
let everything grow wild today
embrace the poem
squander the soul
sleep to dream and wake to play
let everything go wild today
let the spirits call our names
let us requite
only the words
to bear
from my door
nowhere but the way
everything green is reaching for heaven
for light and for love
squander the paint
set afloat in a poem
only words
to be borne
to bear on
let everything go wild today
wake to play and sleeping dream
so we may work the miracle
set God and godly things
all free
today
let everything grow wild
A Sociology of Paradise
First I came through a hoop of flesh.
I didn’t jump, I swam. There was an endless
mud plain and another storm coming.
Rain beat the rice shoots green from the soil.
Millions were huddled round the still ether.
The century dragged on. I missed the boat
swam out to the island. And the air was still
in the sun’s quarter and the half a sky where
waves could have been. The moon washed
up where the tide rusted into the sand.
Cars came out of the twentieth century.
Coca Cola came ashore, lapped on
the hard live shell of paradise. A coconut
fell out of nowhere onto my child’s head.
I didn’t stumble. There were stars and bars
everywhere. I could hear the West
crackling through looming shadows of bliss.
Back country, hills were dense with trees,
Dissidence, notches for climbing up.
And curled into a noose of straw
the disappeared hung, swaying – invisible
burden of paradise. I jumped through a hoop
of gold. I had the ring of confidence then
and a flag colour of mud.
Helicopters filled up the sky. When the noise
came, birds shifted in a line, black, palm to palm,
fifty metres. Then when they came back
there was nothing the wind could move.
Trees clung to a rock in the sea.
On dry land a had a good steady job
in the fly-spray factory. They paid me in cigarettes
so naturally I took up smoking. The mist
from the nozzle formed up a halo to martyr
the very air. You couldn’t call it a leak.
It was more like missile testing.
Each day here proud of the fallen, brainless
slaughters to glory in. The earth makes up
a place for each. The new rice sings from the earth.
The colour of the mud in our veins is a flag
billowing over a hoop of bright gunmetal:
the welcome mat. I didn’t jump, I swam.
the priming of a painter’s canvas
like night come
colour no matter
skins are under skin
and skies too
shade patches, dapples take the tune
soaks pigment where the eye was caught
canvas is linen really
like a tent clouds abide in
there are rats have your pants
vultures all sorts
one lies down in it all
till the rags make ladders
next beanstalk’s got your name on it
next stop is the stars
Views from Pinchgut
Picture a track, not one of ours
but lower, maybe inches only off the scrub
and winding from that height
into a tangle water fits to a gully.
The mind's untroubled there.
It's all green. It works, birds feed
off it. Trees stand up for themselves.
Even the sky's got a look in.
Roll that gaze out onto a coin
poisoned with flour and blankets.
(The sun smiles over my gumboots and I
driven on by greed and luck. For the sake
of a good feed we murder our way across borders
unseen.) It's dirt cheap so we buy a big block,
sea on three sides, sit in a corner
count up the tides. Flog some sense
into the trees and ringbarking’s a miracle
of endurance but we go at it like there's
no tomorrow. Thumbs hammered flat chat
to the milking pastures. Wattle
and daub, brickwork entangles me.
Rains come and go, mares eat oats
where the dam rots down and does eat oats.
Water loafs around all day and little lambs
eat ivy. Prosecute those who trespass against us
as we forget our great wronging of them.
Why bother crops out of the ground
when the hill sits still against geology's
dull blade? That's how we live now
– frontier alchemists making money
of the dirt. It's lonely here so we stretch
a thin wire out over the desert, build
a million miles of rabbity fence.
Out of nowhere the radio speaks to us
and the air vibrates into atoms.
Let's tote all up. Boundless pasture,
our coal will burn for a thousand years,
this sun blots reason out. A nation now,
we speak with one forked tongue.
Three anthems but no lyrics we remember.
No flag but hoist the washing. Nostalgia
overwhelms me. Transport me over a farcical sea.
Feed me salt biscuits, flat booze that gets me drunk.
Chain me in old fetishes, punish me
with ocean views. I'll re-enact the lot.
I'll be a stripling on a small and weedy beast.
I'll send the flintstones flying. I'll go on
quiz shows in black and white. No test pattern
now to stump the wits. It's a one-day invasion.
The pitch shrinks. The flesh is stupid, the mind obeys
and crimes committed drunkenly dementia
soon forgets. Let's take a cake knife
at this hill, make out a white man's house.
Can't say fairer than that. So robber kings
cheer on, their harbour full of hobby canvas.
Give us each day our dusty cup,
temptation delivers from boredom.
Give us the hundred tracks to go down,
a freeway looming behind. The sun
built out, we vote for the greenhouse.
Time slips its old noose over our necks.
Stars and stripes wave above. Just
show us the way to the next little dollar.
Oh don't ask why. Everybody's happy.
A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't
you bet your life we are.
my flag
is a beach towel, heavy with sand
whole tribes tangled in it
involuntary sky – heart’s refuge
in the true of dark
mind’s refuge in the heart
the flag
must be all things to all
a mirror aloft, reflection unfurling
that should make everyone happy
in a room with queen you’d see the queen
and she’d see you, her subject
one among the many flags
in the bush would be magpies to fly in and tangle
catch them like that when they get territorial
on the front of the big boss’s car
more of chrome, dark tarmac
in the night you’d choose the stars
bright pinpricks from another sky
in which the true flag must fly
be windblown, limp
from the accustomed pole
a square cut of heaven
and so strings attached
a calling
the same words
summon me often
because – to put it simply –
they know what I mean
the bush
1
which is the wild out-of-order
snakes hunting under tin left lie
garden too thick for weeds this un-naming
it chorus birds commonly bright
2
minds its business we make ours
yields to spirit its sustaining
best model from democracy
dark wordless turn, self tending, ruthless
absent of law it breathes to burn
this one tree left cut down to size
so when it’s mine it is no longer
flimsy instinct joins logic to one wish
the guiltless having of all this
3
another sun spun, a next dicey sky
of maverick opinion, told you
inscrutable polysemy
song between the cityfolds
come clumsy in its own confiding
all unfinished business
all neighbouring and all horizon
the bush is a trap sets camouflage
falls in and all it catches bush
4
blade hailing the forest legend made failing
memorabilia: smug of stockwhip, blanket
gathers as a blowfly to what was once meat
takes no convincing – its job to go nowhere
team of madmen tied to one tune
a tidemark shows where we retreat
5
midst of limits, most natural of histories
gospel uncut in the wood
a waste of pages cash scrawls down
the bush beside my means as such
pack up but where you come from’s
as gone as what was here
so we among all animals are party to
take down each sky made out in ribs
a cross hangs bright above
6
one species relieving the others of hope
barks at the edge of night a dog burning
the hinge of sentience it mourns
much admired the passage of rites
because once you were my besotted
a frightened face to rouse such love
leaves tracks to run a course paws take
this shallowest of burials
the bush is an animal gathering home
and our great Ark unmeaning
Blokes
Blokes are always coming over, in their droves
or in their ones. Wear thongs in summer, boots
for weather. No one says mind my clean floor love.
Arriving in their utes and vans, they’re always
round here, day and night, courting our Penelope.
They know what’s next, what’s what, when, why.
Blokes know what to do and what you need
and even if you can’t decide. Blokes’ll sort your
trouble out. If it aint broke it’s easy fixed. Take
care but not responsible. They’re always late
and rude and wet. Blokes like to be outside
the best. They dare the ozone at their backs.
Sleep with someone else. They say things you
wouldn’t. Feel less, do more. You’ve got to love
them though. Hide in their frothy beards to weep.
You feel for them, the camera shies. They won’t
be tied, won’t be predicted. But cuddle them
and know they’re bad. Take them all for granted.
Blokes won’t take hints. Needn’t tell them.
They slink away to shed when glum. Grow darker
in the moody scrub and shed their lacks among
the fauna. They won’t be caught, they get away.
Get down to pub and dob and dob, until they’re
almost in the clink. They tell their temporary
comrades. Blokes tell the truth and when they
don’t they’ve got the story all worked out.
They know the pecking order. How to fit, not rock
the boat. Blokes make a play for the affections.
Trust the passing moment, loathe permanence
of plans. Blokes are slaves of circumstance. They
can’t help being rough with stuff, have to give it
all a test. See if it’s well made or not. It’s not
their fault the way they are, was done
to them as blokelings.
Blokes are mates or so they say. Won’t let
a bastard down. The blokiest are your best mates.
Your mates are blokes if you’re a bloke. Women
can be mates or ladies. Can’t be blokes. Mate
with them to make new playmates. Blokes or no.
If you’re a bloke you mustn’t mate with other
blokes. It doesn’t work. Dreadful thing.
Unblokemanlike. Besides, how could
you tell your mates?
Some things are better left unsaid. And out of
earshot of the nagging blokes won’t need
your looking after. Dinners tabled, washing done.
Blokes go lean in filth and glue their rotting jeans
together. They know it’s bad luck to speak
when gesturing would do the trick.
As insects lead the faster life, they’ve lost a leg
before you’ve finished telling the precautions.
They’re enemies of labour saving, scoff at
ingenuity. Do a thing the hardest way. Clog noses
and their ears fall off, eyes are full of filings.
Drown in beer to build a gut. It shows what
blokey blokes they are. They suffer beef to have
the dripping. Sneak from the ward at last
for fags, and curse their curtailed freedom.
That’s with a final breath.
Bloody this and bloody that is what your bloke
ghost says at last. And when the dirt’s all spread,
well sifted – where are those blokey souls all fled?
They’ve gone to blokeland – hellish spot. The
Shed Celestial. Dim or Bright to their deservings.
Still, there’s more. Never was a drought of blokes.
Not since the war. No – blokelings grow to
blokehood’s full bloom. Bloke’s abound and pull
their weight. Show some leg, offer beer.
Call for blokes – they will appear.
When all else fails no need to fear.
Just stir him up. Your bloke is here.