Sadly, goodbye to Clarence Clemons, for me the greatest saxophone player in the world of rock and roll, who died on the weekend. All of my adult life I have been going to see Bruce Springateen and the E Street Band with world halting solos by Clarence. It will not be the same without him.

COLD MOUNTAIN

Many  thanks to Anne Gleeson and Steve Lamb for opening their home in Daylesford for a wonderful reading of Han Shan poetry by Richard Perry Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts at York University, Toronto, who has also taught Zen Buddhist painting and poetry at the Victorian College of Arts. It was incredibly enriching to hear Richard read these poems so beautifully and to enhance the reading with his knowledge of both Zen and poetry. Our questions were at times naive and at times raising the unanswerable paradox of translation by poets and academics.

Thank you also to Ross Gillett for organising the reading and inviting a broad cross section of contemporary poets from the local region and from Melbourne.

The path to Han-Shan’s place is laughable,

A path, but no sign of cart or horse.
Converging gorges - hard to trace their twists
Jumbled cliffs - unbelievably rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I've lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?        (Translation by Gary Snyder).

I hold to the principle of the Buddha-mind. It is fortunate to meet with men and women of Tao, so I have made this eulogy.

Libby Hart,  “THIS FLOATING WORLD” Book Launch...

   

Warm and lovely launch of the new Libby Hart poetry book "This Floating World" from Five Island's Press at Kris Hemensley's COLLECTED WORKS today. Warm and delightful Irish music setting the feeling and tone. Warm and engaged and engaging conversation between Kris and Libby with reading of specific poems from Libby to launch her loving poetry with a dual passport from Australia and Ireland. Recommended buying and reading. I am now doing both....