Chan Lai Kuen

 

Chris Mansell

 FOXLINE      

 

There are two characters in this new collection from Flying Islands: the fox, and the farmer. They are opposed but share an existential problem. The more charismatic figure is the fox (female, only once owning 'vixen') who is trying to understand her environment, the role of the farmer, the singing fences, the farmer. The farmer is a solitary figure walking with a gun, trying to get things right. Each have their own good intentions; neither of them entirely comfortable where they are.

What came before

Somewhere between Daylesford and Castlemaine in Victoria, Australia, they have a fox problem. Australia in general has a 'fox problem'. Foxes are not indigenous to the continent, and they are predators of the kind that small marsupials were unaccustomed to resisting. Foxes, along with feral cats, and various other creatures which took up ecological niches, took a great toll on the wildlife. 

It is also thought, believed strongly, that foxes attack livestock, often taking only the most delectable parts of an animal. They are not beloved by farmers. There are three ways of expressing their relationship to foxes: traps, guns, poison (1080). Savage traps are not legal, cage traps are ok - except now you have a fox in a trap; 1080 is often used but seen as unnecessarily cruel by some; and then there is the direct honesty of a gun, though less efficient.

Nevertheless, they are beautiful, alien animals; independent, foxy. In the wild they live for about three years (in captivity, much more), and their social structure depends on the conditions encountered. In some conditions there is only one breeding pair, in others all the females breed. 

They are invaders, but have made the country their own. They know nothing else. The farmer of foreign heritage and the fox are not different in that respect.

Somewhere between Daylesford and Castlemaine there is the foxline: about 200 dead and scalped foxes hung from their heels on a fence by the roadway. So beautiful in the sun.

  

Read Magdalena Ball's review at Compulsive Reader and listen to her interview

Jean Kent did a great launch speech at Anna Couani's The Shop Gallery in February. As always, Kent is insightful and generous. You can read her words at Rochford St Review here 

 

 

Who and what

This year saw two publications that are especially important to me: Foxline from the invincible Flying Islands, and 101 Quads from a new conjunction of publishers Puncher & Wattmann and Thorny Devil Press.  

 

Among  a dozen or so previous books are  Spine Lingo (from Kardoorair) and a collection of short prose fiction, Schadenvale Road (from Interactive Press). Seven Stations was published by Wellsprung Productions. This is the text of a song cycle (music by Andrew Batt-Rawden) which premiered at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and subsequently released on CD by Hospital Hill.

 

I work  in a number of poetic forms, much of it experimental and in alternative, or in unusual physical forms.

 

Some other  titles include: Letters  and The View from a Beach , Love Poems , The Fickle Brat (text + audio CD), Day Easy Sunlight Fine  and Mortifications & Lies  and some smaller publications and non-fiction. I have also published a children's book, written a number of plays. I am publisher at PressPress and been a mentor to several Australian poets.

 

I won the Queensland Premier's Award for Poetry and have been short-listed for the National Book Council Award and the NSW Premier’s Award and won the Amelia Chapbook Award (USA) and  the Meanjin Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize.

 

There is more information on my site at www.chrismansell.com

 

 

Andres Ajens

 

Robert Edmonds

 

Hello there, Flying Islanders!

 

My first poetry collection – Gravity Doesn’t Always Work – got its soft launch at Kit’s Markwell Poet’s Picnic in December 2020 and is slated for launch in Sydney in February 2021.

 

I’ve been published hither and thither a little bit, and had a couple of nice moments – Jack’s Pack was long-listed for the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize) (not the world’s most lucrative international prize but the one with the longest title) and The Long Jetty Ghazals won Third Prize in the 2020 Newcastle Poetry Prize.

 

It’s great to have a book out, and it’s great to be in the company of other poets at the occasional launches and picnics, but also in spirit.

 

I live in Long Jetty on the Central Coast, and am in my late 50’s (well, I’m typing it, but I don’t believe it – still, if it gives you the impression that I’m a steady, wise old guy, then it’s worth admitting) (but I’m not).

 

 

I’m for anybody who’s got a creative commitment, be it poetry, prose, art, music or dance or whatever. Not just a hankering, but a regular commitment to turn up and possibly (or in my case likely) fail.

 

I love truth in poetry, and I love humour and ghost stories and love too. But I just write the poem that turns up.

 

Here’s Jack’s Pack:

 

Jack’s Pack

 

When you’re twelve and bored, and then life hands

you the chance to mess around with a ghost

along with a bunch of three or four friends,

you seize it. One long suburban summer,

Barclay, Dowd and I, in our endless search

for novelty, tried a séance. We knew no fear.

 

After school, at home, my only fear

was how to keep other hungry hands

out of the cupboards and let me search

for an empty glass to harness our ghost,

some scrabble letters to fend off summer,

and ways to make some Ouija fun, to keep my friends

 

alive, alert, and keen to be friends

with each other. I didn’t count, I fear,

on hosting another guest that summer.

We’re all left to deal with what our life hands

us, each to each, with not a blessed ghost

of an idea what it is for which we truly search.

 

“I am Jack,” the glass spelt out. “I search

for my buried body.” My shouting friends

and I believed we’d found a daylight ghost!

For whom the blazing sunlight held no fear!

“Wow!” yelled Dowd. “If this murdered dead guy hands

us fair dink clues, we could dig him up this summer!”

 

We met each day, and spent our summer

holidays in a circle séance search

for Jack’s latest clues, then to ride, all hands

on bikes, to yards neither I nor my friends

had any right to snoop around in. What fear

is prosecution when you’re not scared of a ghost?

 

We found boots on a back step the ghost

said were his killers. Jack’s one big summer

fling had gone wrong. I felt a strong fear

of death – the glass lurched, and took a slow search

Around the table passing all my friends

and then it spelt – “you’ll all die at her husband’s hands”.

 

“There’s no ghost!” I yelled. “Barclay’s moving the glass! Search

me how all summer long he’s pulled a con!” Then, friends,

we ran in fear when the glass rose up through our hands.

Jan Dean

 

Dael Allison

 Dael Allison: a poet, fiction writer, essayist and editor crawling towards the finish of a PhD in creative writing at the University of Newcastle. So, lying low until mid-year.  

Walleah Press, published my book Fairweather’s Raft in 2012, outcome of my Masters of Creative Arts, UTS, researching artist Ian Fairweather. Eleven of the poems were made into a soundscape on ABC’s Poetica in 2014. Picaro Press published two chapbooks of my work, Wabi Sabi in 2013 and Shock Aftershock in 2010. I’ve edited numerous poetry anthologies, including Brew, 30 years of Poetry at the Pub, Newcastle (2018) and To End All Wars, (Puncher & Wattmann, 2018), co-edited with Anna Couani, Kit Kelen and Les Wicks.

Awards include the Wildcare International Essay Prize, NT Literary Awards Charles Darwin University Prize for Essay, the Henry Kendall Poetry Award, Queensland Poetry Festival Phillip Bacon Ekphrasis Award and three stints at Varuna – a Retreat Fellowship, the Varuna LitLink/NRWC Award for an Unpublished Novel and the Varuna/ Picaro Press Chapbook residency.

After five years working on fiction, I’m looking forward to returning to poetry and poets.

Cui Yuwei