That pun was so awful I don’t think it even qualifies as a pun.

Anyhoo, the last Riverbend: Poetry on the Deck reading for the year happened last Tuesday, and it was a pretty groovy reading. One of the five poets (all of whom you’ll be able to see perform at the Qld Poetry Festival) was Jeffrey Harpeng, one of Australia’s leading writers of haiku, haibun, tanka and tanka prose. It was one of the best readings I’d heard from him, and it prompted me to tell you, gentle readers, to catch his poems in your nets—or catch him for a chat at the festival, because I’ve never heard him say anything not worth listening to.

Jeff found poems “on a pilgrimage to metaphysics,” when “the shallowness of the world just didn’t seem credible.” He makes words that make my brain pop.

“I was a small cloud of facts, a short story, barely begun.”

You can read some of his poetry online here, here or here. Catch an interview with him at Another Lost Shark.

On a totally different note, the other night at Miss Bertie’s cabaret  burlesque (The JOYnt, South Brisbane) I saw two talented chaps, Yorgi n Gørski, juggle hats, and my life was more or less complete. I must learn this most essential of skills: millinery manipulation malarky. Now.

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