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Michael Farrell

Michael Farrell is an Australian poet living in Melbourne. His publications include open sesame (Giramondo) and the thorn with the boy in its side (Oystercatcher). He is a co-editor, with Jill Jones, of Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets (Puncher and Wattmann); the anthology was launched at Books Actually in Singapore. He has had residencies in Japan, Slovenia, and, most recently, Italy. His poems have been translated into German, Italian, Slovene, French, and Japanese.



 

Tabaret Superstars



Challenging notions of the poetry workshop as a space of feminist subversion, and the unmasking of ideological reaction, the group met below an enlarged black and white photocopy of William Carlos Williams. Williams had died of AIDS [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,

acronyms ed.] in a hospital in Havana in 1983 [fact check? ed.], railing against Cuba, and its provincialism, its ugly nurses, in between distinguished visitors: Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Roberto Bolaño. All QWOKs he quipped (Queers without kids). That would be considered an expression of hatred now, but WCW had been around, he loved plenty of QWOKs. Dying can wreck your mood, I suppose. Javier Marias, who also died recently, left plenty of creditors behind, I’m told (‘Tomorrow in the Tabaret think on me’). But what about Max Frisch, and Ingeborg Bachmann, and her foursome with an Austrian, and two Egyptians (all men – just as Max had suspected all along, prophetically, or productively). Something I might have wanted once, but really one young prince – metaphorical or otherwise – would do me now.

Melbourne is mad for infrastructure, as a Canberra friend noticed. I like having an umbrella

basin when I go to pay, in a café; and a bookstand when I use a bubbler in the park. Regardless,

no one from the workshop was murdered, or even suffered food poisoning after a gathering.

Writing in the rain is such a pleasure, for me who always writes at home on a silent typewriter,

I almost wrote tripe-writer. My screen has glorious vertical rainbow stripes at present, which I should probably get fixed. Chastised, we continue our remembered amours. Huddled under the sand until the nausea gets to us, then we are grateful for our pills, and espressos, our plastic ice packs, none of which the Pharaohs had. I think of Tutankhamen (‘Superstars don’t belong in nets’) and his circle trying to express their grief for the deaths of their infant children, in symbols (in his case, two girls, 317a and 317b): as descriptions of camel rides and sandstorms. In a final scene, von Trotta’s star-crossed lovers play chess; vow to remain childless.




 

Literary Spain



He had a lot of desires and opinions while he was alive. When he was alive, yes. ‘I decide what’s

fashion.’ ‘I decide what’s fashion’, yes. Not an opinion, though. I thought it was odd, the way that

he always referred to his son as ‘the child’, instead of by name. His diction had a lot of aberrations – was almost constituted by aberration. He said ‘the child’, like it was an opinion. Gravitas on legs, he was. Native to Madrid, too. In your opinion. Yes, that’s right, haha. Likening doves to missiles, one of his perverse opinions. Rhetoric as opinion, or opinion as rhetoric. Funny.

Funny now. Do you think his funeral is tomorrow? Yes, I do. In my opinion, I will be there, and will probably enjoy it. Have a light dinner. Good thought. Nothing gassy. ‘You think your name’s Slim Shady. You think it’s the real Slim Shady’. To call The Godfather a good movie, he would think crass. Movies were subjective expressions: opinions. He thought of writing a book, Henry’s Heritage Listed Opinions, a kind of list novel. The thought of the reviews was enough to stall him. Ulysses, an opinion. Yes, but he would not accept the Bible in the same terms. The Queen has been crowned, an opinion. WWII, not an opinion. The Holocaust, good question. I wonder what ‘the child’ is doing now. Political science, I think. I’m curious to see them, talk to them. America was an opinion, and so was Spain. Not literary Spain, though. That was his major discovery, he would say, in the firmest tones he could summon. That literary Spain was real. It cancelled out his other desires.




 

Versions Of La Gloire


‘Tomato Ass’ Jefferson wasn’t born yesterday. Bring on the Raymond Roussel biopic (before Johnny Depp gets too old), bring on the Simone Weil (before Cate B etc.)! When I was young, and had less pressure in my groin, or anywhere, film critics – outside Italy – had literary backgrounds. I wanted to be a doyen. I saw moral schematism everywhere. Leni Riefenstahl was referred to as ‘he’. Only this morning, my great desire was to see Stephen Cummings play Baron von Trapp in a stage version of The Sound of Music. Byron had more children with men than he did with women. Flavours included tobacco, objecthood, Mersey Valley, triumphal, hectic, jester, Tori Amos. Where were you when I was falling in love? Probably better that someone French play Roussel, someone queer, better someone Jewish, play Weil. In Spain Hitler strayed into a bullfight. The king of Australian poetry was dead. The queen was, officially, still a virgin in 1946. Fading into the background, as the shoots took place. Fretting got us fretful, and greed hungry. We dominated the circus, we broke into a zoo, life took its turns, like a bus to Bondi, but less leisurely. We aged on the bus; we waved, mentally, to Woolloomooloo. Flesh for Frankenstein was on. The National were coming. Chestnuts fell under the hooves of the police

horses and were crushed. We were in the New Hebrides learning French, like we had no sense

of Australian bellicosity. The more pansies us. You sent Neil Tennant an AI chihuahua as a fan

gesture, and we found ourselves in quite posh company, not having much experience, outside

of books, except that time in Slovenia, where the Dutch royal family came through the museum

restaurant, with their wallets out. Later, they were sitting on a railing, watching horses (either being typical royals, or trying to be), munching on their baguettes. The Pet Shop Boys scene was like that party in Time Regained, where everyone is famous and forgotten, which suited me, I read the NME all the time, in the previous century, my groin really only responded to the right tone of record review, these days.




 

Mobility And Insubstantiality Of Sodom And Gomorrah



Winter made it easier to cross the road, from that point of view (it was only a two-three coat day).

If you would take a photo of two shoes, their undeniable pathos, do it in one shot (Jean-Paul Sartre, for one would deny it I think). Two others. Sodom and Gomorrah in England, James Cook

as Lot. ‘Lot was good for salt’ for a long time. Nancy Mitford, who counted a number of renowned morons [and meanies, biographies ed.] among her friends, accepted Stevie Nicks’

song-writing ability, and confessed to Evelyn Waugh that she wished she had written ‘Edge of

Seventeen’, and quoted ‘Leather and Lace’ in many opening paragraphs without acknowledgment, thinking it might undermine her point, regarding her so-called fragility. Jack Harlow is clever but no one wishes they had his tone, precisely. Thinking is for trees, as Evelyn would say. Shrimp dried on the lunch bread. But they were a microscopic sample of shrimp, many of whom had no concept of humans. It is said that no homosexual love could flourish in the suburbs of Paris, but opera reigned, in Auteuil, especially. Sodom and Gomorrah in Spain, Turkey, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, France. Foucault argued that homosexuality was the scapegoat, broadly speaking, for the terrorising acts of colonialism: referring to the hermeneutics of divine disaster, rather than the disasters themselves. We could chart which philosophers and political theorists were more progressive, less ‘hateful’, in these terms, and make some observations on nationality, with perhaps unexpected results. But Freudians would come up smelling like babies, I predicted. Homosexuality and shrimp as a topic produced a not insubstantial amount of online commentary. The mating, or marital life of shrimp is exceedingly cosy, or carceral: as they age they become too large to leave their home, which is a sponge.




 






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