Poetry

Meet: Zenobia Frost

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Tash D. of the Factory Diaries interviewed (and filmed!) me last week. Here are the results!

Factory Diaries's avatarFactory Diaries

Tash D met up with local poet and writer, Zenobia Frost for a lovely chat about Brisbane’ macabre history, happy acorn socks and poetry.

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Photo by Tash D

Firstly, why don’t you introduce yourself to our readers:

I’m Zenobia Frost. I’m a local poet and editor of things. I guess those are my two primary hats. I also sometimes run events and, what else do I do? What else do I do Tash?

Be Awesome?

I do lots of things. I have happy acorn socks, perform stuff. I promised to be eloquent and now I’ve lied to you!

What kind of style would you describe your poetry as being?

It’s always a tricky question. I remember one of the first people that asked me that and I really had to think about it was as an interviewer at Subway. It’s like how do you describe poetry to someone who’s going…

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Moving

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In January, we made the big move over the hill from, er, Toowong to Bardon. Our home had been a huge sharehouse we established with friends; three years later, it was a mould mansion we were ready to leave. Still, the day the real estate put up the sign, we felt a bit like our house had turned around and told us she was planning to dump us anyway. Fair enough, I suppose.

Today I set up a facebook page to divide up my public poeting and private grumpy-cat-posting (in so far as those two things can be separated). Now I’ve cross-posted that news everywhere, I’ll shut up about it. Exciting chapbook news coming soon. Thank you for following. :)

Moving

In the end,
it’s like clearing a hotel room:

the twice-over sweep of bare cupboards,
claiming the shower’s last piece of soap
and counting keys, you drive
away with your last look.

You will line up
your toothbrushes
in the habit of a new bathroom.

But when your nose follows
its old tricks, driving you back,
and you see the sign gone
from the fence post, you realise
you scrubbed yourself out
of that ghosting house.

And it just moved on without you.

Alchemy and Chemistry

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Alchemy has procured some collaborative-arts gold for its May show this Friday: Scrambled Legs, circus duo Claire Ogden and Shane Smith; Tari Hujan, a five-piece band who transmute genres; and that poet who likes graveyards and cats and stuff, Zenobia Frost, occasionally accompanied by charismatic cellist, Wayne Jennings (the Ragtag Band).

 

Frankie Vandellous hosts this splendid, free monthly event. Come along and support Brisbane arts!

Alchemy: A Little May Magic
5.30pm, Friday, 17 May
Brisbane Square Library

Thing[s]!

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Voiceworks Magazine #92 — Thing is out now. It contains one of my favourite ever VW poems: “Matisse Blue Nude II” by Jake Dennis. And I have a poem in there too: “Graveyard Haibun”. I’ve been working on this one for some years now, and I’m delighted it has found a home. It was the very first Toowong Cemetery poem!

Here’s the Thing:

Inside Voiceworks #92 you’ll find stories about two little fishes, a father wrapped in wool and musings about flies. Poetry of silhouettes becoming blueprint, detectives contemplating marriage and graveyards (but like, good poetry about graveyards). Nonfiction exploring gender, mysterious red chillies and what it’s like to be a white guy who really wants to ‘get’ hip-hop. Visual art and comics that will melt your brain in a way you know you want it to.

It only costs 10 monies and you can buy it at Avid Reader (if you’re in Brisbane), order it online, or buy an e-copy for five bucks. Voiceworks supports young Australian writers and also the whole committee is smokin’ hot.

Today’s second piece of news is that my review of Paul Summers‘ latest collection, Unity, is up on the Queensland Poetry Festival Blog — just in time for his reading at Riverbend Books next week. These events are always something special, and I’m really sorry I can’t make this one — so make sure you get along for me.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing Summers perform, you’ll read these poems in his low, lyrical Northumbrian voice. His accent permeates the metre; form or not, each poem writes its own rules of rhythm. They chant, rather than sing. Thus Summers weaves a spell of the senses.

Riverbend Poetry Series II is at 6pm, 23 April 2013. Tickets cost $10.

It Never Rains — It Purrs

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1.

the sky conjures
luminous catastrophe
never delivers

poinciana lit up
like a cabaret stage

the spitting rain comes and goes
doesn’t even bother the cat

raindrops waver in clouds
lips inches from first kiss

2.

The storm plays with us,
rain falling and falling back
into the safety of clouds.

Wind bats at windows
we forgot to close. Hung-up
washing tries to flee.

Lightning eyes glint
and narrow, and unhurried
thunder purrs after, grey clouds

all puffed up, just watching
with one eye half-open,
not stirring, not yet.

auf wiedersehen spiegeltent

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auf wiedersehen spiegeltent

1.

the circus is gone
big top
stripped to bone

wide-load giraffe
skeleton canters

in smoke and hammers
collapses collapses
ghosts of their shimmering
crushed into clay

at first light we steal glances
carnies disguised as men
unravel canvas

for one last act
The Great Vanishment

2.

we return
to one-hearted one-steps

preacher calls to his lambs
bowler tumbling downarm
and we come

their suicides unwind
from sky-held ribbons

our strongest men
are not strong enough
our women cannot fly

that man is a tin soldier
he is all moving parts
that woman hovers
en pointe en tightrope
their drunken limbs forget
the ways they should not bend

we swallow whole words

and the lion obeys
with a wink in the glint of its fang

we cannot contort
our mouths
back into grins

they fold back into boxes
like costumes like paper
with string and bells secured to their toes

Zenobia Frost
“auf wiedersehen spiegeltent” — a paean to Brisbane Festival‘s Spiegeltent and Strut & Fret’s Cantina — received 3rd prize in the 2011 John Marsden Awards.