Newsblog

We know you all love hearing about the technical wizardry that keeps this Internet website thingo going but we’ve taken advantage of the brief lull between the close of submissions for Pastoral and the appearance of our special Robert Adamson tribute, Mulloway to carry out some much-needed maintenance on the Cordite site.

Most importantly, we’ve changed from a numerical system of permalinks (ie the URLs of individual posts) to a category-based permalink structure. We hope this makes navigating easier and don’t worry - if you’ve already linked to a post using the old numerical URL, it’ll still work!

In addition, we’re conscious of the need to make this site as accessible as possible for all users. We have tested the accessibility of the front page using WAVE v4.0. If you have any queries or comments about the overall accessibility of our site, please leave a comment below or send us a message via our contact page.

Thanks for your submissions to Cordite 29: Pastoral. We’ve now removed the auto-responder, which means that we’ve effectively closed submissions for the time being. Sorry to all of those who missed the deadline!

Pastoral will be our final issue for 2008, meaning that alongside #28: Secret Cities, content from this issue will be considered for next year’s Best Australian Poe(m)try anthologies.

Once we’ve anonymised the submisisons, we’ll be sending them off to our guest poetry editor for this issue, Stuart Cooke. You shouldn’t expect to hear back from us about your submission for at least four weeks (and probably more like six weeks) from today.

In the meantime, we’re preparing another of our mini-issues, a tribute to Robert Adamson in the form of 28.1: Mulloway. This special issue, guest edited by Greg McLaren, features a range of poems about fishing, birds and the Australian poetry menagerie.

Mulloway is due to hit your screens very soon - why not subscribe to our free email alerts to be informed of the exact date of the issue launch, as well as future submission dates and other special announcements?

We’re thrilled to inform all of our readers that joanne burns’ poem road, which appeared in our Experience issue, has been selected for inclusion in Black Inc.’s Best Australian Poems 2008, edited by Peter Rose.

Congratulations to joanne and to Terry Jaensch, our guest poetry editor for the issue!

It’s heartening to know that both major Australian anthologies have now recognised online magazines in this way, in the same year (see our separate news item on Peter O’Mara’s inclusion in the UQP anthology). It’s also rather conveniently serendipitous, given the duality of the Innocence & Experience themes.

Finally, this great news is even more encouragement (if any was needed!) to submit today to Cordite 29: Pastoral - submissions close in just over a week!

Please consider submitting to Cordite 29: Pastoral. The guest poetry editor for this issue is Stuart Cooke. Submissions will close 30 September. Full details on the submissions page - or else, join the Pastoral Facebook group.

LOL.

The decision by University of Queensland Press to consider poems published in online magazines such as Cordite for its ‘Best Australian Poetry’ series generated some comments on the site some months ago, not all of them related to the ‘Best of’ series but comments nevertheless.

While we don’t know anything about the rest of the contents of Best Australian Poetry 2008, we are very proud to inform our readers that Peter O’Mara’s, “Untitled I”, first published in Cordite 26: Innocence, has been chosen as one of this year’s forty best poems by the anthology’s editor, David Brooks.

The poem, along with its ’sister’ poem “Untitled I”, will also be published in How to do Words with Things, a forthcoming book by Peter O’Mara and Patrick Jones. The book will be launched at the Melbourne Writers Festival on August 31.

Congratulations to Peter, and to MTC Cronin, our guest poetry editor for 26: Innocence. And thanks to UQP for acknowledging the importance of online publication to the continuing health of Australian poetry!

So, you made of it what you would. We were all ears. In fact, sometimes we were all thumbs. We expected poems about Lego cities, imaginary cities, invisible cities, buried cities, nuclear cities in the former Soviet Union that no longer exist and pretend cities on pin-cushions. And that’s what we got. Not.

Welcome to Secret Cities!

We hope you enjoy the poetic treats on offer, and look forward to posting more Secret City-related content over the coming weeks.

While all the attention focuesses, naturally, on our current issue and its swag of poetic riches, some readers continue to find us by plugging terms into search engines and then clicking on the results. Here are the top search strings for June 2008. We’re just sorry that “les murray” tipped out “nude poet” this time round …

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When it comes to cool, Melbourne spoken word maven and part-time cowboy Sean M. Whelan is ice cold. Join him as we enter, once more, the realm of the inane interview question. Take it away, Sean.

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Like the drought, it continues. Over the fold, Paul Hardacre’s biting - nay, seething - responses to ten of the stupidest questions ever asked. Ouch.

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Apologies to all our readers for the unexpected (and overlong!) break in Cordite transmissions, due to a string of technical and other failures entirely beyond our control. The good news is that we’re back online, with a fresh batch of poems on its way. In the meantime, here’s what you’ve been searching for over the last month or so.

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