geographies: Winton Creek

This is

the year of the snake.

I was born in a year of the snake many years ago.

Kinda ironic, since, after my experiences up here, I'm now paranoid about them.

This flood,

unlike the others we've seen
over the past five years

Photo: Chris Ison / The (Rockhampton) Morning Bulletin
was full of dead fish.

"Queensland's Environment Minister says the deaths of thousands of fish in the flooded Fitzroy River in central Queensland were due to natural causes . . .water releases from coal mines are not responsible for the deaths."

Photo: Alice Roberts, ABC News
One word:

bullshit.

Out from Otoliths—Martin Edmond's Eternities

Now out from Otoliths.

Eternities
Martin Edmond
6" x 9"
64 pages, illustrated
Otoliths, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9872010-7-2
$14.45 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/shop/martin-edmond/eternities/paperback/product-20612650.html

Martin Edmond's Eternities is at once memoir, belle lettrist in a kind of Modernist French tradition, lyric prose poetry, literary criticism. He is a chronicler of lost and discarded sacred things, people, places—Tempe Velodrome, the Manzil Room, the Wet Taxis playing at the Britannia Hotel. The writing frequently builds a pathos that often leads to grieving, grieving for lost youth and ruined possibilities. The paradox is that the romantic desire for the ideal can be realized in dreaming. Edmond is so authentic you can believe every anecdote he tells, partly because he puts himself and the reader at the scene of real crimes and with novelist’s skills re-enacts their immediate horror. Meticulous research underpins the mythic dreaming and the constant resurgence (via mechanisms of memory, portents-reading, and hallucination) of the uncanny, seeping, if you like, out to the detritus of past time. The intertextual transcends the dull mechanics of postmodern technique, emerging epically as the Koran, the Tora, Aztec lore and old Testament parable populated with hitherto uncelebrated gypsies, thieves, dream-chasing hippies, and murderers. The book rolls with humanity, a secularized laughter and magic. Not theological at all, but as powerful as re-incarnation and pagan idol worship; such profound depth to even the most innocuous recollections. Perhaps it is Edmond’s expat origins, a New Zealander who has made Sydney crueler, kinder, more exotic and more magical than it ever could be on its own: . . . in those moments some ineffable translation happens, some occult adjustment of soul, some realignment of possibilities, after which he is profoundly changed. And all else too. It is as the book says—the redeemed world will be the same but not as this is. It’s theology without god. It’s nothing. Everything. —Adam Aitken

Martin Edmond’s bohemian travels documented within these prose pieces are eternities made manifest in run-down flats, movie sets and, along with other jobs, toiling on the night shift at the post office among fellow poets, painters, musicians and other variously assembled creatures of the night. Here is a writer with abundant gifts. With a novelist’s eye for detail and a poet’s perfect pitch Martin Edmond lives the life of the writer who takes ecstatic possession of every living moment. Within these pages the writer asks, ‘can music banish a curse?’ You bet it can. —Richard Lopez

geographies: Charlevue

What's wrong with this sentence?

Crocodiles have been spotted swimming through the streets of Rockhampton as floodwaters continue to rise in the Queensland beef capital.

Otoliths #28 is now live

There is blue sky, it's very warm, but the river is due to peak later on today at major flood levels. The highways to the west & southwest are both cut, & the main highway south has only just reopened & is only passable with "extreme caution." There are minimal fruit & vegetables available apart from some local pineapples, fresh bread & milk are rationed to one loaf / container per customer at the local supermarket, eggs & meat are scarce, & bottled water & longlife milk are gone almost immediately they arrive. The fiber-optic cable & its backup connecting this part of the world with the southern parts of the continent were both washed away over the weekend which meant no internet or cell phone connectivity for several days, though they've now been restored.

But the USPS insists that the journal must go through. So, with no further fanfare, the summer, 2013 issue of Otoliths—#28—has just gone live, with work from Alexander Jorgensen, Paul Dickey, Felino A. Soriano, Alexandra Yurkovsky, Jim Meirose, Simon Perchik, nick-e melville, Tim Suermondt, Mark Melnicove, Adam Aitken, bruno neiva, Philip Byron Oakes, Dane Karnick, Howie Good, Walter Ruhlmann, John Crouse, M. Pfaff, John M. Bennett, William Garvin, Michael Farrell, Willie Smith, Jack Galmitz, Craig Scott, Raymond Farr, Carlyle Baker, Patrick James Dunagan, Sheila E. Murphy, Reed Altemus, Micah Cavaleri, Tom Beckett, Tony Brinkley, Bobbi Lurie, Tom Pescatore, Cecelia Chapman, Tony Beyer, Lakey Comess, George McKim, Steven D. Stark, Orchid Tierney, David Dick, Colin Herd, Michael Caylo-Baradi, Lee Slonimsky, Chris D'Errico, Susan Gangel & Terry Turrentine, Catherine Vidler, John Pursch, Stephen Nelson, Leigh Herrick, Jeff Harrison, Volodymyr Bilyk, Charles Freeland & Rosaire Appel, Márton Koppány, Alyson Miller, sean burn, Donna Fleischer, Bogdan Puslenghea, Paul Pfleuger, Jr., Joel Chace, Bob Heman, Scott Metz, Ed Baker, J. D. Nelson, Nicolette Wong, Michael Brandonisio, Lance Newman, Sam Moginie, Kit Kennedy, Samit Roy, Sam Langer, Aditya Bahl, Cherie Hunter Day, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, & Michael Gottlieb.

& never one to let the opportunity for a pun pass by, let's just say that this issue's come out under floodlit conditions.