Adam Aitken

Hi, I'll be active in this community in the near future.

Adam Aitken is a poet and non-fiction writer born in London and now lives in Sydney. He spent his early childhood in Thailand and Malaysia, and has worked for extensive periods teaching English in Indonesia. He is the author of five full length collections of poetry and a PhD thesis on the Asian Imaginary in Australian literature. He was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Hawaii, and Poet in Residence at the Cité Internationale des Artes, Paris. He co-edited the Contemporary Asian Australian Poets anthology (Puncher & Wattmann) in 2013, with poetry and essays appearing in Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, Arc, Best Australian Poems, Transnational Literature, and Poetryinternational.org. His memoir One Hundred Letters Home (Vagabond Press) was published in 2016. Archipelago, his latest collection of poetry, was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Award and the Prime Minister’s Literature Prize in 2018.

 

Archipelago (Vagabond Press 2017) 

Contemporary Asian Australian Poets

MYRON LYSENKO

 

Myron Lysenko began writing haiku and senryu in the late 1990’s. He is the Victorian Representative for  the Australian Haiku Society. He has published seven books of poetry, the most recent two consisting of haiku. His latest, published by Flying Islands was released in January 2021 and is titled a ghost gum leans over.

Myron has run almost 50 public and private ginko since 2008. A ginko is a haiku outing in a scenic spot where a group people gather to write haiku, then share, discuss and revise them.

His poems have appeared over 600 times in journals and anthologies around the world.Myron has been writing, performing, publishing, editing and conducting poetry workshops since 1980. He was a founding editor (with Kevin Brophy) of the lively independent literary magazine Going Down Swinging from 1980 to 1994. They then passed the magazine on to new editors.

Myron is a poetry organiser; he was director of the Montsalvat National Poetry Festival, a convenor of La Mama Poetica, and currently runs the monthly reading in Woodend, Victoria Chamber Poets.

Myron teaches creative writing at the Woodend Neighbourhood House and is the leader of the poetry and music band Black Forest Smoke who have released a  CD It's Alright.

Books:

Coughing With Confidence          
Pets & Death & Indoor Plants      
I'm Ukrainian, Mate
Winning and Losing
Winning and Losing Again
a rosebush grabs my sleeve
a ghost gum leans over

You can see Myron reading his poetry or playing with his band here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC93MXBvIG9T53isfUOhO8yQ/featured





Here is the opening sequence from a ghost gum leans over:

sarcoma

(for Lucy Lysenko, diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma on Oct 2008)

winter chill
the GP can’t explain
the pain in her knee

compost heap –
she rings to say her knee
has been x-rayed

nectarine blossoms
the teenager diagnosed
with bone cancer

x-ray vision
a rare bone cancer
in her knee

Ewings Street
is just around the corner…
Ewings Sarcoma’s here

did the specialist say
she may not need surgery?
medical jargon

taxi to hospital
she tells me to stop
telling jokes

she sets up a tent
at the Falls Festival
new crutches

the surgeon
replaces  her knee...
late summer heat

ambulance to Peter Mac
to begin chemotherapy --
perfect beach weather

Bloom Haibun

The pale and bloated teenage girl is lying in a hospital bed. There are cards lined up on a shelf above her head. The smell of dinner spreading through the wards is a warning that visiting time will soon be over. There are three elderly patients and four televisions in this ward but none of them are switched on. The girl’s father is at the foot of the bed with a cryptic crossword and her mother is standing with her arms crossed at the window. The oncologist is coming through the door.

rose petals
she begins to lose
her hair

leaves falling
in the moonlight
her nightmares

a blackbird
flies towards the moon
cancer ward

winter wind
she cries on her way
to more chemo

chemo no. 9
after her constipation
diarrhoea

she flies to Sydney
to see her favourite band
infected PICC line

her port
malfunctions…
chemo postponed

on crutches at a party
she falls onto her knee
Oxycontin tablets

low platelets
her immune system
is zero

closed pink coffin
her bald teen friends
cry together

black orchids
the pain in her knee
is still there

her kneecap rubs
against her inner thigh bone
nectarine buds

last rounds
of chemotherapy
empty bed

remission
she books her tickets
for a holiday in Europe

end of chemo party
I perform a song with a sing along
cancer chorus

six years cancer free a day full of rain

her positive results
on the ten-year check...
a new tattoo

Black Forest Smoke