EDITORIAL

National Poetry Week

Well, it's National Poetry Week again but we all know poetry is dead so who cares?

While we quietly sit and rot down here in our warm little Cordite graves, up in the real world poets are planting trees, boring their readers to death with readings that go on too long and biographies that never fail to mention the fact that their work "has been published in various journals".

Anyway, on to the real zombies. Discerning readers will not have failed to notice the serendipity of this issue, our fourteenth. During its brief incarnation (we'll be pulling the stakes out on September 30), we've previewed a host of Zombie poems, including SK Kelen's Buffy (itself a fitting obituary for the now-dead TV series), Paul Mitchell's Sarah Connor's Last Ride, Adam Ford's moving lament for Phar Lap's heart First Incision and plenty more.

We also secured an exclusive interview - well, rant - with Robert Merkin, author of Zombie Jamboree, a book that details just what it's like to be one of the living dead (ie a conscript in the Vietnam war). Robert's ruminations on voodoo, Thomas Pynchon and draft dodgers took us by surprise but it's a delight to feature them here.

Also on the zombie front, we've got Ed Burger's gory and bile-ridden Zombie Dog, a sound poem that'll make you think twice about putting off that tetanus shot.

But most excitingly, as we went live on July 15, rumours started to filter in about a new Australian zombie film, Undead. Throughout the issue we've been keeping tabs on the film and its twin directors, the brothers Spierig. So much so that we managed to secure an interview with them, shortly before the film's international theatrical release. I do not think I'm overstepping the mark by saying that no other Australian poetry magazine has managed to gain an audience with the Spierigs. This interview, therefore, is an exclusive (and if you still can't be tempted to see the film, read Kieran Mangan's review).

Did I mention the oodles of news about all things zombie featured on our rapidly evolving blog page, now with an official complement of eight contributors (most of whom are, undoubtedly, involved in a plethora of National Poetry Week activities as we speak)? No? Well get to it. New content is added regularly, so check the top right hand corner of our index page the next time you visit.

The theme for Issue 15 is Glitter. We'll be applying the make-up come October 1. We'll also be making announcements soon with regards themes for 2004, a special search poetry issue and a new Cordite print initiative. In the meantime, if you'd like to be alerted whenever a new issue of Cordite appears online, why not subscribe? It's free, of course.

Thanks to all the readers who've made comments and sent us suggestions for improving the site (your feedback is always welcome). Now that we've got access to some high-falutin' site-statistics generators, we know you're out there: we're just not sure who you all are. Nevertheless, the stats tell us that while our readership remains miniscule compared with, say, the average audience at a Melbourne poetry reading, it is growing at an exponential rate. Which means that by the time we reach Issue #100 (in about 20 years' time), more people will be reading Cordite than Hansard.

And for a magazine about a dead form, that's not bad at all.

Carpe Diem