Best Australian Poems (…)
Astute readers of the most recent edition of UQP’s Best Australian Poems (2007) would have noticed the following lines in Bronwyn Lea and Martin Duwell’s Foreword:
Taking off in the late 1990s, online poetry journals have offered a new world of opportunity for editors not wanting (or unable) to finance expensive print journal. Tranter’s Jacket, launched in 1997, was one of teh earliest … [a] shortlist of other Australian-based, online poetry magazines that have steadily grown in profile might include Cordite, Divan, Retort, Stylus Poetry Journal, hutt and foam:e. Since we monitor each year the ground rules for our anthology, we have updated our initial decision to avoid taking poems from electronic journals. In coming anthologies, we intend to add the best of these sites to our list of literary magazines from which we source the year’s best poems.
We are of course thrilled and flattered to be mentioned in such a list, although as far as we can tell Retort is more of a general culture magazine and Divan is currently dormant, and the N.K.O.T.B. poetry journals such as Snorkel aren’t mentioned.
Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to be considered alongside other ‘proper’ (i.e. print) literary journals, after ten years of trying to figure out just how to produce a poetry journal in Australian literary terms.
It’s also an extra encouragement for our contributors, who deserve all the exposure they can get. Now you can not only receive the praise and adulation of your peers when your poem appears in Cordite - you could also be included in at least one of Australia’s two “Best …” poetry anthologies.
For Australian contributors to Cordite 26 Innocence, this means that your poems are in the running for next year’s anthology. For contributors to our current issue (27 Experience) and any other issues published in 2008, this means that you might be in the running for the ultimate accolade in 2009.
And while that may seem like a long way off, try spending ten years in the Australian literary wilderness. Then again, you probably already have.
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February 21st, 2008 at 8:29 pm
You guys have obviously never heard of AustralianReader.com - New Release Literature Online.
No pretense, no agenda, just send your work to the Editor and see what happens.
Numbat in W.A. is another one.
Not saying you actively encourage pretense and an agenda but by crikey it seems like it’s a hidey hole for luvvies.
Government funding not withstanding, why isn’t there an extant forum for discussion and feedback, feedback real-time not through a feed like this.
Which of cause is a case in point.
8 days and this is the first comment here.
After sending this link to several Poetry web sites and individuals, they were to a site and to a person noticeably underwhelmed by the whole experience.
There is some great poetry here but the only problem is finding it, you really do have to wade through an interface that would do the Dept of Immigration proud.
Get rid of the extremely clunky interface you have running here and perhaps think outside your comfort zone.
Which of course leads to the question: What exactly is your comfort zone and where exactly does it lead?
Not in any clearly discernible path or direction.
Let some 16 year old year 10 students through this while they go about their free time in an elective Lit class and they’d just use it as a mouse click on their way to Youtube or sNotr or KAA[Kick Ass Anime, full of anime based Haiku and of course Anime] none of them of course carry a huge amount of OZ Poesy. They do carry some great(sorry) some gr8 Slam poetry and visual stuff but as I said, anything Australian is very, very thin on the ground and encouragement via Aussie sites even less so.
OK. Soapbox dumped and not holding breath for reply…
Cheers.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:04 am
Hi Matt,
I appreciate your comments, but you must also realise that we can’t be all things to all people.
And neither can any one site on the web. Isn’t that the real point? If you don’t like this site, there’s a million more to go to.
I’m not sure who you’re referring to when you say “luvvies” but I’m guessing it’s an insult, and a pretty lame one at that.
Personally, I find a lot of forums for discussion about poetry online fairly pointless - we did try to encourage more discussion on this site several years ago, with little success. Perhaps the people who come to our site are simply interested in reading poetry.
I agree with your comments re the site design. As you probably realise, it’s a simple re-jig of an existing Wordpress template, and you’re right, it does take a while to get through to the poetry. If I had more time to spare, I might get a chance to improve it.
But AustralianReader.com? So your idea of interaction is rating a poem, and a smiley face? Come on. And why should we design our site based on what some Year 10 students do online? As I said before, we can’t satisfy everyone.
What’s that expression - shooting fish in a bucket?
David Prater
Ed.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I think Matt raised some valid points.
There’s no doubt this site is lacking in energy and he’s not the only one to sense “a bit of a love in”.
There also appears to be a conservative bent to much of the writing published here.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Hi Hmm,
Yes, some of those points are valid, especially with regards the site design, of which I’m all too aware! I reject any sense of a love in, however - all poems published here (well, for the last four issues anyway) have been submitted anonymously, and judged accordingly. I have no idea how to respond to your last point. Conservative compared to what? Hmm?
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Click on a poet’s name and the poem appears, right? I personally don’t find this particularly time consuming but then I don’t have a magic wand either …
And ‘conservative’ ? In style? Subject matter? Joanne Burns, Ouyang yu, Michael Farrell, Derek Motion, Nathan Sheperdson, Sebastian Gurciullo … really?
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Perhaps luvvies was a bit of a swipe in the nether regions but I think my point regarding year 10 kids stands.
It is very difficult to find Australian sites that explain Australian poetry in words and expressions that are going to be accessible to students of this age and social orientation. Click on a name and there is a poem: Fine, explain it if you will, or just use your own powers of deduction and understanding to work it out.
Again this is fine if your well versed in Aussie poetry and the various schools therein like the folk over at Quadrant and all the little wars that seem to go on (Kinsella et al) But most folk aren’t and it would be great if there was some clear background reading to enable people to get a bit of an insight into where and what all this interesting too’ing and fro’ing means.
I think your site as I’ve said leaves plenty to be desired and as you acknowledge…let’s be honest, in the age of Web 2.0 this site creaks and groans and just doesn’t brush up or stack up against others scattered all over the web with sometimes less funding.
“But AustralianReader.com? So your idea of interaction is rating a poem, and a smiley face? Come on.”
No it’s not, (do they have a emoticon facility there?) I should of said that I find it accessible in a simple way and you can read a lot of stuff that I’d imagine a site like this would just look down upon and dismiss as urban doggerel or poor bush yarns or just plain amateurish scribble.
some of it is but there is some gems in there and you can always encourage a budding tyro with words like: ” Look, this stuff is written by John and Joan Citizen and perhaps it should of stayed in their notebook but if you read this and then read some acknowledged Aussie poet or an up and coming one, then you will see differences and we all need to be able to do that.”
I don’t expect you to design your site for year 10 kids and perhaps you might explain exactly who you have designed it for and what demographic you set out too satisfy in the sites original purpose?
I’ll continue to keep Cordite in my Bookmarks and read the content that appeals to me and also read some of the tosh that is published here as well, we all need to see both sides a bit like reading Fairfax press and Murdoch press.
I wish I could articulate to you the sense that I feel when I bring this site up. If I had to explain to someone sitting next to me while we wait for it to load( alas I live in the forgotten country which of course is all of Australia outside the major cities) then I would probably say something like this…”This is an Aussie site that’s mainstream and you won’t find too many budding poets or poets with p plates on here but you will get ones who inhabit the Oz lit scene and as such are usually quite proficient in their art and acceptable for this type of a site.”
If you had more time you might improve it you say(the site), well can’t it be delegated to some willing soul amongst the legion of contributors and friends that I’m sure abound? Web design and hosting sites are not exactly thin on the ground these days and the excuse is a bit lame don’t you reckon?
I agree that forums quite often get bogged down and they do tend to attract a certain type of individual who sometimes just likes seeing his/her words in type…(I am of course not one of those…surely not?)
Perhaps an occasional column by some knowledgeable poetry nut explaining the various schools, styles that Australian poets work represent and where they fit in to all this. Not everyone understands the internecine world of Australian poetry and I’d love to be able to show people something like this occasionally.
I realise that if you really want to find out you can wade through various sites attached to faculties here an there but it would be nice to come to a place like this and find the information or at least part of it.
If your in the ‘know’ then that’s fine at a place like this, if your not it’s a bit daunting.
Took way too long to say that and I apologise for the length and the rambling nature.
Fish in a barrel? I hope not and I do understand you can’t be all things to all men only Kevin 07/08 can do that at the moment, perhaps in the future…
Cheers
February 27th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Hi again Matt,
Thanks for your comments - it is refreshing to actually receive some! I’ll bear them in mind when it comes time to re-design and improve the site. I’ll also have a think about your suggestion for occasional columns.
Best wishes
David
February 29th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
in the spirit of more comments here’s one.
thoroughly enjoying cordite #27.
& best aus poem poems (was that the original topic?): i actually used to think the editors would read cordite. i was surprised they didn’t.
i actually read through all of matt’s comments. you are truly democratic david, a model editor.
March 20th, 2008 at 1:57 am
Thanks Derek, although I think we can do more to generate discussion on the site. For a start, I could re-set the post so that the comments field doesn’t time out! D’oh! If anyone has any comments or suggestions on site design, we’ve set up a new post - go for your life. Or just leave a comment here, if it pertains to BAP 2007.
Or just look busy …
D