Well, we promise we didn't spend all Friday on it

But we did come up with one more...

 

 

 

 

That one got quite dark, didn't it? Must be the autumn melancholy again. 

 

Maybe we should just do one more with LOLs. 

 

Or maybe we should just down tools and have a glass of wine instead...

 

Friday Stuff and Items

1) Darth Vader and Son by Jeffrey Brown

Just... yes.


2) Inspired by this Brain Pickings post, the good people of @Mostly_Books in South Australia have an excellent competition running: A free copy of Erebos  or The Ink Bridge  for the best book-spine poetry. Raid your book shelves, summon your inner poet, get your hashtag on: #bookspinepoetry.

We had a go. It's addictive. Maybe we'll just do this for the rest of Friday ...

 

3) The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Get on it. Herewith an interview with Creators and Executive Producers Hank Green and Bernie Su.

4) Autumn in Melbourne is so beautiful: clear, still, sunny days; crisp nights; the start of the footy season. But autumn's always a bit melancholy too. And today it's raining.  The Go-Betweens might have been writing about Brisbane, but this song resonates with the autumnal Melbourne soul.

Well would you look at that...

It appears that our ask has been answered; someone has written a poem about Gary Ablett's possible move to the Gold Coast.




*editor sidles from the room making no further comment*

O Delicious Ode [***UPDATED***]

She that asketh receiveth; she that seeketh findeth, and to her that knocketh it shall be opened.

No sooner had we expressed our longing for a poet-in-residence, than one stepped up to the plate.

We leave you over the break with the magnificence that is...

Ode on a Missing Pencil
by An Anonymous Writer (more versed in prose than verse)

O pencil with thy heart of lead
Sharpened to your sweetest point
Can it be that thou art dead?
Or lying greyly in some faint?
When I about the desk have made
A hunt for thee
Upon the ground?
What is this?
Oh mercy me!
Behind my ear I had you laid!
O pencil mine, at last you're found!

Happy Easter or Passover

or non-denominational holiday, everyone.
Rest up. Eat well. Drive safely.

***UPDATE***

The Mothership has just alerted us to the exciting fact that WE distribute several collections of Carol Ann Duffy's peoms, including this most gorgeous collection New and Collected Poems for Children. The cover is very lovely, and the wee bird seems somehow paschal - so here's this to enjoy over the break as well...


*Editor disappears to make sure her staff account isn't maxed out*

Sing Ho for an Australian Poet Laureate [^^UPDATED^^]

When Odysseus came,
with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield,
he followed him to the battlefield,
the crowd's roar,
and it was sport, not war,
his charmed foot on the ball ...
but then his heel, his heel, his heel ...

That is Britain's poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy^^, on David Beckham's probably career-ending, certainly World-Cup-hopes-dashing Achilles tendon injury. You can read the whole poem here.

Why doesn't Australia have a poet laureate?

Given that we borrow Queen Elizabeth's face for our coins, we're probably supposed to borrow her poet too. But that doesn't seem fair. Carol Ann Duffy - wonderful though she is - is never going to write about the fallout if Gary Ablett moves to the Gold Coast. (For instance.)

How good would it be to have an Australian poet writing about Australian stuff and items?

Penni Russon has the right idea. She has her own poet-in-residence.

If the House of Onion had its own poet-in-residence, her (or his) recent works might have included:

• Patricia Wrightson: an elegy
• The Western Bulldogs: a lament
• Ode on a missing pencil*
• To the editors, to make much of time
• Stopping by the bar on a Friday evening
• I wandered lonely as the only editor left on my floor because all the others were away**
• Of The Awefull Battle Of The Commas And The Semicolons Together With Some Account Of The Participation Of the Endash and the Emdash , And The Intervention Of The Full Stop
• The Ballad of the Typo ***
• Unconstant emayle mannagemynt systemmes and complaynt been but lyte asonder****

What would your poet-in-residence be writing about?

^^UPDATE^^
OOO look look at this beautiful thing. And that is only one of the many collections of Carol Ann Duffy that we that we distribute for your (and our!) buying needs. Thanks for the heads up, LB! Now, which to choose...

*Just as an aside, at least one Onion was puzzled for quite some time as to how the whole of Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' fitted on the Grecian urn.

** Alternative title: The Waste Land

*** Alternative title: Howl

****or, The IT Wrech's Lament