wednesday newstrip

Western Australia man diagnosed with scurvy · at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers now inside Russia on the way to Ukraine, US says · DoNuts T.®ump prefers the "dictator approach" to running a country, & openly wished he had "Hitler's generals" when he was US president, his former White House chief of staff says · Türkiye's interior minister says five people have been killed & 22 others injured in what he describes as a "terrorist attack" in central Türkiye · Iran recruiting Israeli citizens to spy against their government, with social media the key to luring them in · gas industry in damage control as landmark study finds LNG 'worse than coal' for the climate · New Zealand still complicit in global shark fin trade.

wednesday newstrip

Republican nominee DoNuts T.®ump has requested a military plane to use during the final weeks of the campaign, citing concerns that Iran is trying to kill him · a 65-year-old female sergeant is under investigation by Victoria Police, following allegations she performed a Nazi salute in front of police recruits · British woman who killed her parents & lived with their bodies for four years is sentenced to life · Sydney’s Coogee beach closed after mysterious black 'tar balls' wash ashore · Northern Territory's new conservative government passes legislation to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10, in first week of parliament · Police say babies in Indonesia are being sold for as little as $AU1,450 · man falls into sewage tank in rural Ōtaki: 20 minutes later, Vivian St in Wellington flooded.

wednesday newstrip

Australian Opposition leader Putrid Dustbin attacks Prime Minister for including calls for ceasefire & de-escalation in motion reflecting on 7 October · Bunnings Australia shoppers go wild over $15 item for transforming dirty grout: 'Holy grail' · T.®ump spoke with Putain at least seven times since leaving White House, Bob Woodward reports · McDonald's Australia brings back beloved $2.50 menu item after three years · Evangelicals for Harris claim Franklin Graham is threatening to sue them · classic Aussie phrase — 'mate' — offending people in 2024 · Notjustanyahoo says Israel has killed late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's successors · T.®ump stuns social media as he dances along to YMCA at the end of speech about October 7 attacks.

A couple of new books

Mark Young
The Magritte Poems
Sandy Press
ISBN: 979-8-9898666-3-2
Amazon URL: https://a.co/d/65ZzzPr
648 pages
Paperback: $US24.99
Kindle: $US12.00

This is a book 21 years in the making. The first Series Magritte poem — three words, three lines — was composed on the front step of a motel room at Yarra Glen, about 50 kilometers from Melbourne. It appeared on the As/Is blog in — I think — November 2003, was followed by another twenty or so at the same blog, & then, in March 2024, the following post appeared at my then main blog, Pelican Dreaming:

I have decided to start a blog for my Series Magritte poems. The URL is https://seriesmagritte.blogspot.com.

As I write this, there are 547 poems up at Series Magritte. I have included all of them in this book. Interspersed among them are a number of other poems — the Florence Foucault centos, composed of extracts from Michel Foucault's book on Magritte, This Is Not a Pipe, & the 1860 The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, by Florence Hartley, some of which actually appeared under the pseudonym of Florence Foucault, & also included are other of my poems that reference Magritte, including one that dates back to 1974. My admiration for René Magritte goes back a long way!

This is a collected, not a selected, so it may be uneven in quality. I would also have liked to include some of the Magritte paintings that inspired the poems, but that would undoubtedly have raised copyright issues as well as ending up as a seriously expensive tome. I have no intention of stopping writing Magritte poems, but I've decided to bring a dotted line to the venture so that I can see what it looks & feels like in book form. For those that don’t like the heft of such things, there is also a Kindle edition which Amazon warns may take a while to download.

I want to thank Javant Biarujia for his introduction, which is up at Sandy Press, & Sheila E. Murphy for her blurb which can be found on the Amazon page. Their words are more than I deserve.

I also want to thank Bill Allegrezza & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen for publishing earlier selections of my Magritte poems. I want to thank harry k stammer for publishing this collection & for doing the covers of some of the aforementioned smaller books. Lastly, I'd like to pay tribute to René Magritte for making the invisible visible.

There's also a recently published collection of my non-Magritte poems.

Alkaline Pageantry
Serious Publications
Lulu URL: https://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-young/alkaline-pageantry/paperback/product-rmenkpq.html?page=1&pageSize=4
76 pages
$US4.82

Alkaline Pageantry is the latest collection of poems by Mark Young that reflect — like much of his previous work — the insanity & inanity of the modern world. 'Give me a seagull with a / positronic brain & I'll / give you the next leader / of the modern world.' The poems come from the last six years, before, during, & after Covid; touch on the duplicity of world leaders; use search engines as a creative tool; deploy humor as a weapon to lay waste to civilization as it’s currently presented. 'Sorry, / nothing / matched your / search terms. Please / try / again with / a different fish.'

Today the post
woman brought
me a trans-
Atlantic passenger
liner. I tried to

sail it in the lagoon
at the bottom of the
street but when I got
it in there it wouldn't
budge, something to

do with Newton's
unpublished fourth
law of motion which,
in précis, posits big
fish / big pool. I've

decided to leave the
liner where it is,
open it up as
an hotel. The
pelicans are pissed.
  

wednesday newstrip

DoNuts T.®ump encourages Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear sites · the NSW Education Standards Authority has announced that teaching of the Aboriginal past prior to European arrival will be excluded from the Year 7–10 syllabus as of 2027 · A-list star ‘horrified’ as alleged Diddy sex tape gets pushed to media outlets: ‘he feels like he was victimized years ago’ · Sydney woman allegedly killed & dismembered husband in ‘bizarre’ murder case, police say · a scorned Canadian wife has opened up about how she ate her dead husband’s ashes after finding out about his string of affairs · a year into the Israel-Gaza war, the Middle East is on the verge of chaos. How does it end?

While opening the gate

I sometimes wonder
what birds did

before powerlines
were invented.

wednesday newstrip

T.®ump praises Russia's military record in argument to stop funding Ukraine's fight · Murk Suckerbug says Meta AI has nearly 500 million users · fatal stabbing of Japanese schoolboy in China sparks debate on the country's patriotic education · Israeli politicians across spectrum praise assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah · Just Stop Oil protestors arrested after Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers splashed with soup · Australian Broadcasting Corporation crew becomes subject of Russian criminal investigation for crossing border from Ukraine · thousands attended Auckland's Eden Park in an attempt to reclaim the Guinness World Record for the largest haka. The attempt was successful, decisively beating the previous official record of 4028, inexplicably held by France since 2014.