draft redraft

I very rarely post work in progress. I mean, I definitely post work here that is underdone and unplanned – lots of the posts are just playful excerpts from whatever is going on. Sometimes (mainly) I just write to keep the muscles moving. I write because if I don’t kind of make myself, I won’t write and eventually after a period of not writing, I’ll forget why I do it, what is so pleasurable about trying even if you’re not 100% succeeding. I’ll just wait until something “genius” occurs to me, which is just about never, and then I won’t write a damn thing.

So here is some half-finished work. Ideas that are swirling around, not because I want to use these particular poems, but because I’m interested in what they sound like, interested in working out how to record them, thinking about how things fit together or don’t, curious about love songs, wondering if love poetry is just horribly naff, or if it’s just horribly hard to do without feeling naff.

It’s also a bit of a call and answer to another poet, Betsy Turcot, with whom I’m hoping to collaborate for the Queensland Poetry Festival. No word yet, so maybe it’s a no… but maybe it’s a yes.