No Wave (part 2)

Vision Australia ID 0:02

This is a Vision Australia Radio Podcast.

Kate Cooper 0:04

On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations with emerging and experienced, creative voices in our community - on air now and also available on Vision Australia Radio podcasts. I'm Kate Cooper, and this week, we're continuing with part 2 of our recording of the April No Wave evening, curated by award-winning writer and communications professional Olivia de Zilva. We'll hear readings in this program by Olivia and also by Steve Brock and Jelena Dinic. Here is Olivia de Zilva.

Olivia de Zilva 0:58

The next one is Abstractions, and I'd like to start it with a few lines from Jill Jones's poem and address, To the Shadow that Follows Me... 

Let me tell you, there are places where even you cannot follow me, where I can no longer go after a year in the grave. Do you remember the airport, the curbside of dust and possibility, check baggage and chewing gum. Plains blocked in the rear view. It was supposed to be an oath, the Endless Summer of palm trees, the pagoda swaying in the casual breeze home paved towards the bowing Hill, a soccer pitch flooded in primordial grass and dew softened the concrete while traveling. Birds returned to leer, and it seemed the world was jeweled in some Shining Hope where time didn't choke in the wind or your metallic alarm. 

It was never hurried enough to mark the last few months of Sunday so casually cruel, leaving the paint cloth to seizure in ammonia fumes the bathroom sink clogged with inside voices in porcelain marrow or the stroke of footsteps on unfriendly tile. Now, if I marked it with some purpose by wading under the braided metal tower swooped by the red and blue lights of freedom, brotherhood and equality in the bitumen maze, unpoetically named after Paradise Lost. Would it have mattered in the predetermined destiny of the globe spinning in your room, fingers landing in the ocean, if I said like a serious fool that it all lives, folded in warm abstractions, cindered with sweet ash in fragments, shards of a sonnet. 

Bare memory burns me in breathtaking pain as sacred honesty bites the flesh prickled in your likeness. Would it matter that I kept it all packed in boxes of ego and hopeful delusion, that it would be the same as it was, unpolluted, like Eden, the first sky lashed in flames and blood. Is it better to speak or to die when I call you by my name, that despite popular opinion or unhelpful conjecture that stains the walls we painted in dove white and skin flush, that it still breathes freely in the lungs of yesterday gone as the shared sea delivers the loving morning untainted or a gleaming Pearl only birth under times brutal whims... 

The next one is called Fragments of Grief... 

The song Dancing Queen is a soliloquy of wasted time, a plastic diorama of the years that have passed us by. Disco doesn't make aging any easier when you look back and remember the last time you could smile. Abba has Stockholm Syndrome with the past that means, when you identify with your captor, a city of what you will become sluiced by archipelagos. Sadness is wrapped in black utilitarian scarf and a bread roll tastes like winter. Follow the sea, which leads to Gothenburg, where Abbot isn't as cool, slow nights in court the dollar behind a potato chip distributor, where you wrote in your sticky traveling journal that the linden trees were still in blossom, splintered in Twilight. 

The last time you were inside your own body, a man approached you speaking Catalan in the middle of Barcelona, where life was transitory, tying crept through a train carriage, where overnight you slept, listening to something like Abba, but not Abba, actually, equally saccharine, like the man who approached you and said he loved his mother who told him, most hideously tender, that it's okay to cry really in small doses, where coffee tastes really good or the cinnamon is sweetened with refracted light for. Of the faithful window where everything makes sense just for two minutes, because loneliness is masked by an almond croissant your parents eat curry separately. 

Tamarind stains the pillows, the outside vomits through the vents, enveloping skin and licking the cool gray carpet fogging the black windows with the cave lying chest down in the grass like a carpet. Africa by Toto comes on shuffle mode. God. Is life really so profound as the Serengeti? Will you find meaning in the horizon, or was this moment all for nothing? The Greatest Love of All is buried on a hill top, beckoning for you to remember. Burn with it. Don't forget that you were there in a pile of magazines and an old yellow house which shackles with the weight of your latest poetic intentions. 

Yes, you sometimes forget people die because it's been 10 years and you're not equipped with handling such concepts when you want to understand jazz music or forbidden secrets from Venus walking through fortitude Valley and you swear you see a ghost at the old servo, which reminds you to hold on to the last moment where your life was as simple as still water, plastic flowers, quiet supermarket, Christmas cards, a picnic with salmon roe and light teasing a dog coiled in dreams, the television playing through the house where you first heard dancing queen, the most joyful hymn of sadness that flashed before your eyes as lightning premonition. So swallow it please, the unfurling of youth as it passes us by, jubilant as fleeting as a mayfly who only experiences life in five minutes... 

This is the last one, and it's about Adelaide: Not an Ode, but an Observation About Angels.... 

Lately, I've been thinking about angels and how they traverse North Terrace, where the silent Bell Tolls Emmanuel waiting for death as Gabriel cradles bronze soldiers close to his hollow chest, their bodies unencumbered by wasted youth, weightless as the abandoned styrofoam coffee cup summoned to flight, their shadows are welcomed by God in the soles of my feet, the sharp shard of sun a possum in rigor mortis and a sudden left turn. This isn't an ODE or mediation, merely an observation about angels singing through the old Sanyo radio in my cold room where plastic stars blink away loneliness, I wonder if the soldiers saw them too. 

Our holy Christmas topper, made of aluminum, has become a moth bitten monster, very deep in the earth with beloved pets and memories too heartbroken to exercise, the rusted skeleton of the city slithers under floorboards, weeps through a burst water pipe on Bucha street, a courier bicyclist in neon makes haste towards nowhere. Adelaide is a victim of its time. So cringe, so four par, so five minutes ago, there was a club called heaven on West Terrace, where all the beautiful angels came to weep and a coastline that spews paint pots, sludge, tangles of seaweed, discarded nylon swimmers, reaches for nirvana. 

We had our very own volcano once, like Vesuvius, but with roller coaster, mini golf and ornamental wonder coins, unfortunately, it was fossilized by good taste chlorinated a progress Athlete's Foot a water slide and the smack of concrete, the girls watch on with dead eyed Glee, circling the drain for a sign, their salty beaks crusted by time and chip shop fodder. But The Upper Echelon of Angels is a song by Guy Sebastian - that's according to Wikipedia. Anyway, he won Adelaide first big contest before that, we only had tidy town competitions, Rotary Club raffles, take home meat trays, tender as Adam's spare rib. 

So we are famous for guy Sebastian's Angels, allegedly eventing the clothesline, potentially sunscreen the pouring rain. Only here would a stolen python make six o'clock news, the Southern Express swag it closes exclusively for an elephant and the last captive flamingo genuflects behind security glass and angels, definitely angels hoisted on a spire overlooking misty dawn, hiding amongst threadbare clouds, slouching onto jacarandas, soiling the ground with lilac kisses in the reflection of the Sarsparilla River, you can't see yourself being suckled up by tradition. Or stubbornness. 

The same flock of swans swim towards the sunset in God's loading dock. There's no cure for impatience or inertia of eternity, just angels and the slack jaw of an indifferent afternoon closing at five, a traveling girl lands on the jetty. Buildings inch closer to the sun, the silent Bell Tolls, Emmanuel.

Kate Cooper 10:24

You've been listening to readings by Olivia de Zilva. On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to Emerging Writers. Next we hear from poet Steve Brock.

Steve Brock 10:42

In November, I took a trip to Argentina where I did a student exchange as a teenager. I hadn't been there for about thirty years. The next couple of poems are about that experience of going back. It's bit like going back in time, in a way, reconnecting with my youth, and this poem is dedicated to my host mother in Argentina. Maria Guadalupe Alasia was a well published poet and writer in Argentina, so an important figure for me at that time, as a teenager writing poetry. She died a few years ago, so I was unable to see her again. It's called In Search of Lost Time.... 

I stroll along the broken, tiled verdads of this small city and lose myself in the undefined afternoons, scoop ice into my wine like locals to escape the oppressive heat, retrace the steps of a lost youth, greet old friends in Proustian guys who asked me if the city has changed these past 30 years. But I'm only in search of the perennial, the ubiquitous girvamati thermos under arm, the dense city on saunas build up on the sidewalk of narrow streets where one must choose to walk in shade or sunshine. 

Le cajet corientes is San Martin La Plaza nueva de Majo mapping out the grid of another colonial city where men on horseback in every park look vaguely familiar, as do strangers in the street you almost recognize, betrayed by gait or a gesture, the stoop or weight of a body, impossible faces in the crowd, rendered absurd by time and distance, beggars who approach in the street or coffee shop selling socks or tissues or a story you cannot refuse to a young boy with the face of a man a hand a couple of 1000 pesos, like closing a business deal. 

Men and women who work imaginary car loss, making a show of directing you in or out, lifting and lowering your wipers like makeshift boom gates in exchange, a handful of bills, men who juggle at traffic lights or place cardboard signs on windshields or scratch out a living on a tuneless violin. Others at the edges of exchange, houses who croak in deep voices, cambio, cambio, cambio, while a mother begs on the steps of El Banco de La Nacion Argentina. A man on the street scrapes the pan as he prepares to roast red candied peanuts. 

An old gaucho on a bicycle sells ham and cheese sandwiches to the crowd and the Ferrier a cerveza Santa Fe scene ordered by the Lisa Pinter or chop la Rubia, la Rocha or le negra serve, served with a small basket of popcorn or peanuts in the shell to keep the solitary drinker occupied. Each greeting and departure sealed with an embrace or kiss on the cheap, this eternal argument between the port tenure and the provinces, one must turn to Sarmiento to understand and the quiet odor of bookshops that smell like bookshops anywhere the irrefutable number of the old apartment cache corientes, 2677, but it that adorns the letters and postcards from another time.

The clang of the metal door in the intimate lift that takes me to 5G where the cries and shouts of the streets, an endless drone of traffic find their way to my apartment window as I succumb to the siesta, and that book on my bedside table, bought hers collected 1975 to 85, a first edition from 1989 I bought Maria for her 46th birthday when I was 17 years old, asking in my broken Spanish for something by an Argentine writer. I still remember the bookshop owner's face as he handed me the glossy, hard back board heads, he said, with a smile, a photo of the old man on the cover. No, I didn't know him. 

Now the jacket is lost, the spine taped up with masking tape, the well-thumbed pages stained with mildew. My dedication at the front dated 15/10/1989, pages marked in her hand, passages underlined, some titles listed with page numbers on the inside cover. I moved back and forth through the volume, picking up on our old poetic dialog when she encouraged my first poems, and we continued our conversation into the small hours on my first evening back in Santa Fe as I knew one day we would I sip Amarti and write these lines, dreaming of board, his numbers, his clouds, his Libra de Rena, book of sand in my hands like an answer to Eternity. These are the things I remember.... 

I spent a couple of weeks in Buenos Aires, which is great. Following the footsteps of some of my favourite writers, I stayed in an old part of the city, San Telmo. This is called San Telmo Market.... 

I order a cafe cortado in harito in the San Telmo market. The bustle of the crowd lifts my spirits. I order another cafe, te gusta, si me gusta. I walk out around the corner along the casual defense where the San Telmo Fair is now in full swing. Some earrings shaped as a fish catch my attention. I chat to the jewel room who spent his early years pulling nets in Mariel Plata, yes, I know Mariel Plata. I remember the boats and fish from another time. You know Garcia Marquez. He asked me with a smile revealing a lifetime of damaged teeth, a small piece of wood jammed in his left lobe. 

Yes, I know Marquez. Then you know Jose Arcadio von deer the fish is a symbol of abundance. You like to read? I don't have time to read. He laughs. I take the bait and purchase the earrings, feeling a little less alone as I make my way past the tango dances to Avenida Independencia, turn right down to Chaka Bucha, stop at my hotel for a rest. Some of the abundance of Bucha is seemingly in hand. 

In the city where I lived on student exchange - it's about five hours north of Bonacide city, half the size of Adelaide, but it's surrounded by rivers, so everything's just totally green with all the water. So quite a contrast to South Australia. This poem refers to a Camelot, which is like a water crescent - floats down the river leisures. 

After sundown, we cross the autopista and walk down white sand roads to the river bank, a subsidiary of the Rior paterna. It's a clear evening, and from afar, the water appears still, but here on the grassy bank, the water flows at a fast pace, carrying with it a solitary Camelot.My friend tells a story about how they travel downstream and bump into other. Camelot is until they clump together. I contemplate again. Done sermon, no man is an island. Rather, we are camelots floating down the river on our hopeful journeys.

Kate Cooper 19:16

You've been listening to readings by Steve Brock at April No Wave. To hear more of Steve Brock's poetry and listen to our conversation with him, go to the Vision Australia Radio podcast site, scroll down to our Emerging Writers page, and you'll find the recording of our interview with Steve Brock in March 2024. Next we'll hear from poet Jelena Dinic.

Jelena Dinic 19:45

I wish to briefly acknowledge the events that are currently happening in Serbia. It is poorly represented in the world, but we are seeing a massive upheaval against corruption, and in a recent speech, the President has promised to destroy not only the protesters, but all its supporters in Serbia and around the world, which is really we're used to that it's not a big news, really at all. But then he threatened to write a book, and that's when a best seller to describe how he did it. So no poems about Serbian president tonight, but here is one called Displacement.... 

When I followed your voice in the moment, mine was lost, thinking how, after all this rain, I have no umbrellas left. I accidentally left my last umbrella on the bus seat, half knowing I would forget it there, even though I didn't think I would, I accidentally gave the wrong destination to the bus driver who said, this is your stop. Even though it wasn't, it was easier to leave than to make him listen the language I didn't speak. I thought to ask how you were doing, but I didn't, because I knew you liked the rain. 

You weren't worried about umbrellas, where you went and why, and you spoke fluently to me in the voice that didn't meet me halfway, which made me feel quiet. I half knew you would make me feel like that. I hope to speak better and more clearly than the rain, which didn't make things easier, only amusing. When I lost all my umbrellas, it was raining, and I was running towards my next stop, only to find there was nothing left to say. So there is that Eastern European smoke that follows me on my writing journey, and I embrace things as they are. 

Sometimes not a rose is a rose or a French Penny. But this poem is called unannounced. I move through life, sometimes backwards, often softly against the breeze, towards a place where travel ends and they land in time to unpack. Today, the linden trees are sown from their roots. The sea skins look for new branches. Far away, a couple become a thought. I walk the streets between here and there, deep in moonlight, the silence Nobu the night turning back time I don't mind being lost or late home. The moon is behind me, behind the clouds that move across the street. 

Suddenly, hello in passing by any good to see you over the shoulder feel as warm like a small sigh in a summer dream. When I enter the house, I turn the lights on in every room, let the neighbors see the house come alive. I open the wardrobe, the photo album, try an old dress, rinse the wine glasses. I am 16 again. The mirror is grey. It stays distorted with each of my returns in the dark. The lamp shines a light on new rules. Both of us try to play nicely. Next to the mirror is an old umbrella. It opens like a heart to a friend. I hold it firmly to my ribs and walk under its blackness, careful not to fall deep into myself, into the memories, volumeness and shaky avoiding the red holes they sucked in the years, yearning for the joy that slipped through my fingers and to protect what's left. 

I'm repeating the words, stay away from my rain without making a sound. I fall on my bed with the heaviness of a beast that has lost a few lives, and end the play fight with a long howl into the night. There's a small bridge across the torrents around the corner where I work, and it's become a lunch spot, a happy place where you can go and quietly peer into yourself or contemplate your life, watch the world go by. And it's slightly inspired by Giuseppe. I'm glad it's fine, nostalgia, Bridge of Sighs number one. 

Once upon a time, there was a small footbridge across the torrents, snuggled in a time worn catchment of green canopies and cloud bursts. I found my way there and lost it on the best of days, it was a narrow crossing to the other side, almost reckless, a feeling of lightness in the wind blowing in both directions, as if winter was still yearning for a choice it never made. To today, the new spring ravishes the scenery with sweetness. It's a gift of bliss. Gum silky sway in the air the hair on arms shivers like feathers as birds take flight and urge to look up to know there is a lifetime between us, sometimes nothing. The years we let loose are invisible to the naked eye. 

I tell myself a story about Mediterranean you try to wrap your head around it, two pigeons fall from the trees, entangled in desire. The dance sets the bridge alight. They fly away. You smile. If I blinked, I would have missed it. In the river on a long dead log, a comrade stands as still as a portrait, as thrilling as bad luck that might swallow us any moment. Everything around us is muted green, a paradise into which we dive as if it were true. Now and then, coming up for air thrills to be alive, calling it love, my breath quickens. I try not to tear apart this ordinary spring day out of fear of who I am, a grand illusion, a body half present, a mind half eaten by doubt. 

The river is cold and thin, crowd pleasing in its slow, soft flow, all my faces disappear like soldiers wary of fighting. I dig through my fingers to find the fraction of the world that lifts me gently lets me down. The pulse of spring above the river moves me swiftly and slowly. A leaf is dancing with a breeze, surrendering completely. A turtle basks still up on a log. A cat moves like a snake in the grass, through the lush green I only see parts of it, believe all of it. There is no river that leads to forever, but everything is sliding towards it, just the same.Brown ducks dive and hide that COVID feathers like the crown jewels of fallen royalty, the catfish never thinking about being caught in the net. The underwater love play leaves me gasping for air. 

A couple stands within a touch. He leans over her. She tiptoes closer, as if the sun had placed a guiding hand of warmth on each back at these drilling heights, it's best to cross quietly or go back quickly, but here they remain on the bridge, halfway falling, halfway flying. They hold each other tight, endlessly. Kiss, kiss, kiss, I and the final one tonight, gumnut, my birthday comes in autumn. Now in the golden weather, the sun has come out of hiding, and I lie happy under eucalypt tree. The leaves are glowing flammable between the naked double edged blades the gumnuts sway like unwrapped gifts or wooden bells, empty headed open to the light. 

They appeared suddenly in small bursts of tenderness, birthday kisses falling through the branches onto my hair, my face scraping down my neck, seeking a perfect spot to hang. I wore one as mighty tree, a birthmark, a lucky pendant. The future seemed shinier than a flowering bullet. I felt tree roots untangling my wishes, the red earth slips sucking my life softly, and I knew that I would lie here a bit longer widespread amongst the leafy blades with me, eucalypt green eyes taking all in fallen gumnuts, the empty eye sockets that have seen everything and nothing since the first wildfire.

Kate Cooper 28:55

You've been listening to readings by Jelena Dinic - and to hear more readings by Jelena, go to Vision Australia Radio podcasts and go to the 23rd of September, 2023 Emerging Writers program. You've been listening to part 2 of our recording of the No Wave readings for April 2025. Our Emerging Writers program is produced in our Adelaide studios, and can be heard at the same time each week here on Vision Australia Radio, VA radio, on digital online at varadio.org and also on Vision Australia Radio podcasts, where you can catch up on earlier episodes.

Vision Australia ID 29:56

Thanks for listening to this Vision Australia Radio podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Visit varadio.org, for more. Vision Australia Radio - blindness, low vision, opportunity.