A selection of poetry readings
Feel free to add your thoughts and responses
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BOOKS
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The Luminous Earth
$8.00
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Excitations of Entanglement
$25.00
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Eschatology
$8.00
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Awake At 3AM
$25.00
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Songs Of The Godforsaken
$8.00
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The Arms Of Men
$15.00
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Jack Ferryman - Reluctant Private Investigator (eBook)
$6.00
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A Tiny and Brilliant Light (eBook)
$6.00
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Estuary (eBook)
$6.00
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Towards A Distant Sea (eBook)
$6.00
‘Await the songs of magpies still to be composed’
Such a magnificent sentence.
Thank you John 🙏
I needed to hear these inspirational words.
A painting is brewing 😊
Thank you John,
I have just listened to your first podcast. I enjoyed both poems – as you say there is a great divergence here which is refreshing.
I hope to get back and perhaps read your books.
Thank you for this podcast John. I am deep into your chapbook. As you say, so many connections, memories and discoveries. Yvonne
thanks john Very interesting poems, The first one very strong. I enjoy your podcasts.
thanks john Another great podcast. Nice to hear michael reading.
somehow three weeks have gone by…I seem to have lost all sense of time…so I got to ‘binge’ on the last three podcasts – particularly enjoy he nature/eco-poetry discussion and sharing…and thank you Helen Modra for reference to Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek which I have ordered and very much look forward to reading…I’m currently savouring Nan Shepherd’s nature memoir Living Mountain and LOVE all of Mary Oliver’s writings…..and John I do enjoy listening to you read your own poetry – such a treat these podcasts are – thank you so much for the time and effort entailed in these offerings….
John, A Year of Masks is a great poem. Many thanks for your podcasts. Yvonne
Took a while, but here’s a comment on nature/eco poetry.
As regards the nature poetry/ecopoetry dichotomy, I agree with you that these things cannot really be clearly distinguished. Some of the poems of Mary Oliver, to take just one example, are surely a rather loud wake-up call! (If we have ears to hear…)
And that very large and still ‘foundational’ anthology, The Ecopoetry Anthology ( eds Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura Gray Street, Trinity Univ Pr 2013), contains very many poets I’d call nature poets as well as very many I’d never heard of before I bought the book.
Btw have you read Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? A superb nonfiction exploration and celebration of living in a valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Someone put me on to this about thirty years ago and it quickly became one of the books of my heart.
Nature writing. I wonder. Perhaps eco-poetry is a part of nature writing!
Doubtless I shall ponder these things for some time…
Regards
Helen Modra
Great podcast. Three beguiling poems from each of the participants. Thank-you.
Nettie, you have really got a discussion going now!
I’ll have to get the dictionary out to check some of those terms.
I should have posted the whole of the interview between Anne Elvey and Philip hall.Here it is:
https://verityla.com/2017/03/03/verity-la-poetry-podcast-episode-5-anne-elvey-and-phillip-hall-on-ecopoetry/ on the Verity La podcast site
Is a tree still a tree is nobody sees it?
That could be a first line of a poem.
Hey John particularly enjoyed your discussion of eco-poetry vs nature poetry – the concept of wilderness being a racist one is a new thought for me…seems a harsh somehow when discussing poetry – but I can see how thinking of wilderness as ‘pristine’ i.e. untouched by human hand negates Aboriginal people’s presence and engagement with Country…but then both thoughts are human centric ….is a tree still a tree if no human sees it???….lots of thinking room there for me so thanks for the stimulation!
how’s this for a quote: ” the wilderness idea is “alleged to be ethnocentric, androcentric, phallogocentric, unscientific, unphilosophic, impolitic, outmoded, even genocidal” (Callicott, J. B. and M. P. Nelson, 1998. The great new wilderness debate. University of Georgia Press, Athens.) I’m off to read this now…..looking forward to next week’s podcast!
And from me also, John – thank you for your poetry readings – of your own, and selected from other poets as fitted the theme. I listened to the six podcasts as the animals entered the ark. I feel more connection with the eco-poetry, probably because I have been both intrigued and captivated by the natural world, both effects initially developed during my childhood in the volcanic Western District, living only 5 miles from what was then known as Mt Eccles, now by the Gunditjmara term, Budj Bim. The other connect for me is your ever-present spirituality, I think more expansively, certainly more broadly, expressed than during your Philippines period. Your current expression of spirituality is very alive, loving of life, and absolutely real.
On Covid-19, only two words – stay well.
Ian
Thanks John for your comments. It’s good to know a poem connects. Have you seen this podcast interview with your relative ?
https://thegarretpodcast.com/ali-cobby-eckermann-ruby-moonlight/
Dear John I have been a late starter and have just listened to your first podcast and thank you very much for readings. At the launch of The Arms of Men in Geelong you did not read Wetlands, I read it from my copy just before I drove home to Breamlea and cried a flood of tears as I made that journey, home, having lost my precious Liz months earlier. It is a beautiful and powerful poem, it anchors me in the place where I lived most of my life with her and deeply evokes my feelings of grief and loss. Thank you for it. I look forward to listening to the rest of your podcasts.
Hello John
Finally listened to your podcast. Indeed all 5 in one sitting.
Love your Covid poem and the poems of your friend Ken Taylor
Dear John
Thanks for this podcast. It’s just great that you have the inner resources to keep on producing wonderful stuff for others to enjoy and ponder. I liked your thoughtful new poem very much. The theme (sub-theme?) of nature’s , well, indifference was what I was going to write, but perhaps constancy, though that’s not quite right either… The thought you are expressing here reminds me of Hopkins in “God’s Grandeur” ‘….And for all this, nature is never spent/There lives the dearest freshness deep down things….’
Whatever, I like how your characteristic attentiveness brings all that activity into focus. And how wonderful that you have your Breamlea dawn chorus.
thanks john for your podcastsd. the latest uplifting, your poems and chosen poems , good ones.
Scones look deeeelishus! It’s certainly a weird weird time for us all but I’m hoping with time I’ll gain my motivation again, write to my grandchildren, read a book, trying to do a daily session of Yoga (Barbara will be impressed!), praps even clean a window or 2 or 10!!!!!!!!! I’m certainly enjoying your podcasts & I admire your motivation! I’m sad that you had to feed hot x buns to the birds – praps 2021 will see you have another cookup – keep up the podcasts – very much appreciated!
Thank you John for sharing your beautiful poem of hope through connection with nature during these troubling times…also a time as you suggest to take pause and perhaps imagine a different/better way to live…also enjoyed the other poems you read and the introduction to them – much appreciated and keep up the great work!
Dear John
Have just listened to Podcast 1. Thank you. I Would like to live beside the Estuary.
Looking forward to the time we will all be together.
Gloria
Just listened to the first podcast John. Lovely to hear your voice, thoughts and poetry.