Monday, February 28, 2005


malleable jangle online now Posted by Hello

thank you

A big thank you to all malleable jangle's contributors

malleable jangle issue4 march online now

malleable jangle
www.malleablejangle.netfirms.com


Malleable Jangle Issue 4 is now online.

The March 2005 issue features new poetry from:

Louis Armand, Iain Britton, Angela Costi, Christophe Cassamassima, JUS!in KATko, Donna Kuhn, Michael Leddy, Rupert M Loydell, Paul Mitchell, Sarah Pearlstein, Francis Raven, and John West

Articles and reviews by:

Richard Hillman, and Francis Raven

I would like to especially thank Richard and Francis for their contributions, as they were the first contributors who answered the call for articles and reviews.

The Australian bowls legend R.T. Harrison has some words of wisdom. I would also like to thank the Henselite company for their generous permission to reprint images from R.T. Harrison’s seminal work: How to Become a Champion at Bowls.

Issue 4 March
www.malleablejangle.netfirms.com

All the best, Robert Lane.

p.s. Malleable Jangle is calling for submissions for Issue 5 April

Sunday, February 27, 2005

interesting competition

A poetry competition on Dee Rimbaud's website looks like fun. Click on the link and you'll find the questions. http://www.thunderburst.co.uk/ i love the tiebreaker question.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Christie Malrey's Own Double Entry by B.S. Johnson

B.S. Johnson
Christie Malrey's Own Double Entry
Picador, 2001
ISBN 0 330 48482 6

"A most gifted writer" Samuel Beckett.
I have just fininshed Christie Malry's own Double Entry by B.S. Johnson. I know the title sounds rude but it's not what you think, if indeed you even think that, i don't know, i'm not here to accuse anyone of having a dirty mind. Anyway the "double entry" refers to the standard accounting system devised by Florentine merchants and first recorded in book form by the Benedictine Monk, Fra Luca Bartolomeo. This system is pretty basic, just a ledger system really; debits on one side, credits on the other. Christie Malrey applies this system to his life. The ledger must balance so when Christie's superviser at work calls him by the wrong name he decides to score a scratch along the side of the bank building he works in. As we progress through the novel the credits become more brazen, cynanide poiosoning, bomb threats, and general mayham is created by Christie in his attempts at balancing the books.

"Christie himself wondered: am i not overdrawn? What wrong has society done me that i can offset more that twenty thousand deaths against it? Everything,
he decided after a pause, everything."

Christie Malry's own Double Entry is a novel that self references to the extreme. B.S. Johnson is continually letting the reader know that he is creating the novel, and that it is just a novel, an invention, and that he will take it where he wants, not where you want it to go. It just so happens that i'm pretty pleased with how, and where he takes it; i like the way this novel is produced. The reader is given a hint about the novel with the book cover. It is the title of the novel but the letters are on the keys of an old typewriter. Cristie's life is spead on the keys. On other keys there is: a skull and crossbone, a beaker of liquid, a letter, a phone symbol; a really clever cover for a clever funny book. Oh, and if you are after the correct way to make the perfect Molotov Cocktail, this book provides the recipe. Politically and literary, Christie Malry's own Double Entry is a subversive and revolutionary book.

First published in 1973.


Sunday, February 20, 2005

anyone got a pen?

i go walking without pen
the ideas appear then
i take one for the ride
then they go and hide

Yes its true.
Why do ideas appear when you forget to take your pen for a walk?

All i remember from my walk is a few details:

Wild apples tasting sweet and tarte
fermenting cider from the fallen
a Blackwood tree humming
with so many Minors chirping
Fennel by the track,
clouds hovering above Mt Donna Buang
At first it was a exile of sorts
now i cannot leave this place

poor snake

Ran over a huge Tiger snake today before it was too late to avoid we looked back to see it wobbling off the road. Felt sorry for it, all it was doing was a spot of sunbathing. It was over a metre long and pretty thick.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

gaps in the links, malleable jangle, mowers and billycarts

as you can probably see i'm having problems with my links. The html code is exactly the same for all of them yet there seems to be gaps toward the end of the links list. i haven't a clue why this is happening. if someone knows why? let me know, please.
been working on the Malleable Jangle website today, it's looking good.
also went and visited Jamie McTainsh, who is featured in Malleable Jangle issue 1. He showed us how to mow the lawn with the hand pusher cylinder type of lawn mower. Interesting stuff. Tested out the new Flymo i think it was, nice to handle and so light. There was another model which i mowed around a little with called a "ginge" it was an orange model, looked nice, but for me, handled a bit sloppy, and a little heavy. At one point we had all five out and various bit of lawn were getting a good mow. Jamie demonstrated how you must mow it one way, then the other, then mow it and mow it and mow it again, and then go the other way a couple of times. well what a delightful patch of lawn it produced. last time i went round there he was on a billy cart in the middle of the road with an old garden blower vac in his hands pointing it at the road trying to get some jet propulsion to that cart; i gave him a push.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

new design

An interesting time here, and at the moment in the Malleable Jangle office. There is a new layout and design being conceptualised right now this very minute as we speak. You have probably come to expect a different designs for each monthly issue of Malleable Jangle, however, this one is going to be really something special. The conceptal design team have been working overtime to create indivduality made with a capital I. Expect Australian heartland fused with European nostalgic avant garde, with a little bit of oxymoron thrown in just for the effect of the coloured lights. Just a primer and a hint to what you'll get to get you all excited enough to beget, i'm excited i can hardly contain myself, i'm spilling over to the next page. got to go. Robert Lane.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005


Here's Googy Legs Mel hanging a painting.  Posted by Hello

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Just watched "guide to having a baby" on Rove Live. Looks like i can skip the pre natal classes.

a poem on football poets

visit the football poets
http://www.footballpoets.org/

i have a poem published there called
A poem not about poetry

check out the poems by Shay Klee and Apollo Gees
and the other poets at the football poets
An Ode not about anodes
A Refrain not about the ref 'n rain
very funny stuff
here and throughout this website.


Monday, February 07, 2005

Phantasmagoria update

Yesterday's exhibition opening was a success, Mel sold five paintings, everyone had a good time, and we ate left over pizza for dinner, and we've still got lots of wine left. They will hang for three weeks now, hopefully they will be sold, although i want the painting of the four boobed woman and psycho puppies on acid.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Dynamics in poetry

I've been thinking about dynamics, and poetry, and how punk music succeeds in creating intensity regularily though often poetry doesn't. Punk music has a reputation as being pretty flat as far as dynamics go. No so, and i'm talking about the original punk music not the derivative pop that makes a poor pass for it now. When i think of New Order's Transmisson, a John Coltrane solo, the Buzzcock's Everybody's Happy Nowadays i think of a upward curve that only ends when the song ends. It builds, and it is this build that i've been searching for in my poetry and alas it has thus aluded me so far. Maxim Gorky wrote a short story about a prisoner which i think approaches this kind of intensity, but for the most i think poetry falls short. It maybe the problem of applying a musical discourse to a poetic one. Poets have come to expect bad poetry from songwriters so why haven't i resigned myself to a dynamic flatness and intensity to poetry? It can be done and it will be something that i will always have in my consiousness. We can rebuild poetry into a dynamic song.

Saturday, February 05, 2005


Phoenix detail Posted by Hello

All set for tomorrow

Well the big day of the exhibiton is tomorrow. I've been baking pizza all day, we got vego and salami one. I still need to work on the speech though. i was thinking about a baby metaphor. About the incubation and birth of ideas but i haven't really had time yet. mel's been in bed all day with the dreaded morning sickness. i ate a wild apple from one of the old trees along the Warburton trail and it didn't taste too bad, kind of a Granny Smith but a little more tarte. perfect for cooking or maybe cider. Took the dog for a walk. it all starts at 1:00pm tomorrow. I haven't watched a movie for ages. I'll see if i can post a picture of some of Mel's artwork, bye for now, Robby.

Friday, February 04, 2005

The rebirth of Phantasmagoria

Today we hung Mel's [my partner] paintings at the Warburton Arts Centre. The name of Mel's exhibiton is PHANTASMAGORIA.

Here's the Online Etymological Dictionary definition:

phantasmagoria:
1802, name of a "magic lantern" exhibition brought to London in 1802 by
Philipstal, the name an alteration of Fr. phantasmagorie, said to have been coined 1801 by Fr. dramatist Louis-Sébastien Mercier, from Gk. phantasma "image" + second element probably a Fr. form of Gk. agora "assembly" (but this may have been chosen more for the dramatic sound than any literal sense). Transf. meaning "shifting scene of many elements" is attested from 1822.


The Phantasmagoria exhibition reflects this context because Mel's work is an eclectic mix of the mythical, fantastical, earthy, and metaphysical subject matter.

Well now you know what it's all about. Mel is suffering from morning sickness at the moment so she spent most of the time lying on the floor directing me where to hang the paintings. They should call it 24hr sickness, rather that morning sickness because it seems to linger for the whole of the day and well into the night. It look like at the moment the only thing the can stop it is sleep. however one of the symptoms is [yes you guessed it] insomnia.

Anyway they're all hung now, so all we've got to do now is make the food for the opening, and then turn up on Sunday and have a good time. I'm in the middle of preparing a speech for the opening.