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Here, for your edification and ours, some reviews and comment about Going Down Swinging...Ghostboy (on #25): "The cover is special in a kind of classy masturbating behind your nan's pianola sort of way...thank you again for digging "Kites" and hope the launch explodes like me masturbating behind your nan's pianola."
(It did.) (And you can dig "Kites" too, on the Australian disc...)+++
About.com's Poetry Picks: The Best CDs of 2007
Selected by Bob Holman"Well, here’s the extraordinary 25th compilation of Australia’s classic aural lit zine, still championing the underdog. So far in the US: Goose Egg.
Going Down Swinging this time is a double disc: “New Australian Spoken Word” is a glorious introduction to a varied scene; the generous disc two, “New International Spoken Word,” is the closest we’ve got to a global poetry CD sampler.
Prime Hits include Jayne Fenton Keane, David Thrussell, Libby Angel, Sean Whalen + the Mime Set, Brad Armstrong, Alicia Sometimes on the Aussie disc, and Taylor Mali, Victoria Stanton, Edwin Torres, Fortner Anderson, Ian Ferrier on the Global disc."
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theprogram.net.au 10.12.2007
SPOKEN WORD :: Going Down Swinging #25: Aural Adventures From Around The Globe
By Adrian Robinson
In a short review like this it is really impossible to pick out individual tracks which work better than others (which of course, is true about all collections or anthologies), and because reviewing is a completely subjective thing anyway, it is best to talk about the latest edition of "GDS" in general terms rather than specifics.
I have my favourites and there are some tracks here that do nothing for me at all. But hey, what one person loves another loathes with a passion.
What I can say is that on this Special 25th Edition of Going Down Swinging you get forty-five tracks of spoken word/performance poetry from Throbbing Gristle-like electronic manipulations to rootsy alt-country meanderings. The first CD is an all Australian line-up and the second CD features international artists. Those readers familiar with the current spoken word scene will no doubt, know many of the names. For those of us new to Spoken Word, this CD is an excellent introduction to the art.
Some of the tracks are essentially songs with talking instead of singing. You can easily imagine hearing these tracks on late night radio with the lights turned down, or in a sweaty pub, beer in hand, the audience heckling the performers. Some go for art, others for atmosphere.
For all their talk about the Bardic tradition, most contemporary poets write for and publish their work in books and journals. Performance poetry, however, is written for the stage, to be recited rather than read. The DIY manifesto of punk has clearly influenced some of the work on these CDs, as has the work of The Beats and Allen Ginsberg. The tracks that work best are the ones which explore the relationship between music or sound and voice so that the final track is more than just the sum total of words with background music added for effect.
In some instances if we strip away the music we are left with some fairly ordinary poetry that perhaps would not make it past first muster. But is it fair to judge spoken word against the same criteria we would use for conventional 'mainstream' poetry?
My preferred way of listening is to put the CD on 'shuffle' and then get on with whatever you are doing. Occasionally your attention will come back to the words and sounds that make an impression for whatever reason. At other times you can let the work become part of the background noise of everyday living, what John Cage called the 'illegal harmony' of urban life, so that the pieces become part of your listening environment along with the neighbour's dog, police sirens and daytime TV.+++
Monica Massoud, THE PROGRAM (www.theprogram.net.au), 8 January 2007:
"Going Down Swinging #24 is full of variety and packed with surprises. As you turn its pages, you never know what will greet you next.
This literary magazine contains a variety of comics, poetry, prose and short stories which explore and probe the big issues of life - for instance, loneliness, the meaning of our existence, prejudice and the commercialism of our society.
Stand-out pieces of writing include Irma Gold's short story, A Place of Refuge which shows the difficulty of remaining objective and detached among the desperation and pain experienced by refugees.
Oslo's comic Self Stalker: On the Trail of Me is a humourous look at how frustrating it can be to not be able to find oneself - literally. Trolley pusher, a cartoon by Daniel Reed, also explores the topic of self-identity as the main character, a boy in his early twenties, pushes trolleys because he is unsure what to do with his life.
The comic Toys by Skimmo is a touching depiction of how we feel when our loved ones move away and sometimes never come back. Kieran Carroll's short story Retreat follows on this theme of loneliness, as he describes the difficulty of fitting into a new place and making new friends whilst trying to forget one's old life and its painful memories.
Miranda Burton and Nicki Greenberg attack the commercialism of our society in their comics. Burton's Exquisite Corks shows how employees can be exploited in large corporations and Greenberg's Saved: A Zombie Comic illustrates how even religion and spirituality have not been untouched by commercialism. Both comics provide the positive message that one is able to escape the clutches of commercialism by believing in yourself and pursuing your own path in life.
Finally, Paul Morgan's short story, The Emperor's Birthday, shows the sad fact that no matter how progressive and open-minded we think we are as a society, racism and prejudice still exist.
Going Down Swinging #24 contains striking pieces of writing and cartoons that will challenge readers to view things from a different angle. Although not all the pieces of writing in the magazine may strike a chord with readers, the magazine is definitely worth reading due to some excellent pieces, some of which have been outlined above.
I would therefore encourage all of you to go down swinging to your local bookshop to purchase and read this magazine; its variety and substance will keep you intellectually entertained for hours. "
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"Shards glisten
Enigmatic,
Seeking out paths of precognition,
Pondered.
Is it the reader or the read
That seeks evasion/enlightenment?
No matter, the journey's the thing.
That, in a curious sort of nutshell, is something of the essence of Going Down Swinging, a feisty indie literary anthology that has been breaking the rules and annually presenting the cutting edge of Australia's prose and poetry (and the odd illustration) without fear or favour since 1980. As such what you get [is] everything from subtly unnerving naturalism of short stories by Michael Hartford (The Tune Collector), Amanda le Bas de Plumelot (Tomatoes) and Fleur Lewis (Bicycle) to the demanding obscurantism of Toby Davidson (Portal, Portal), Michael Farrell (poem like a photocopy) and Charles D'Anastasi (in a silent way). There's even a dash of rock'n'roll nostalgia in The Ballad of Brad (circa 1977-80) by Don McAloon, determined to perpetuate the legend of Birdman and the Fun House, X, Mental As Anything and the Mangrove Boogie Kings, while Elvis and Mariah Carey are name-checked elsewhere.
Accompanying the text is a spoken-word CD compilation that gives another series of perspectives of the possibilities of language, each "reading" accompanied by a soundscape of varying and determined curiosity. It also allows an insight into an alternative though just as hypnotic Steve Kilbey of The Church, for those who never heard his own spoken-word releases of the late '80s, or the "Bard of Bondi", Adam Gibson, with the band Modern Giant. As with the journal, the aural journey is the thing."
Michael Smith, Drum Media (Sydney) #818, 22 August 2006, reviewing Issue #23+++
"Literary journals come and go but after 20 years, Going Down Swinging — with its combination of short stories, poetry, and comics — keeps on swinging with the best of them.
The accompanying spoken word CD is a bonus. Adam Gibson’s The Band’s Broken Up conjures up pub bands and arriving home to sleep in clothes that smell of cigarette smoke, and The Bedroom Philosopher’s Folkstar is a highlight with lines like “I put the funk in Simon and Garfunkel” spoken/sung with only a hint of irony.
In print, Phil Norton’s poem, Lessons from Henry, brilliantly captures the joys and frustrations of parenting, while Charles d’Anastasi takes on the pantoum, a notoriously difficult poetry form. d’Anastasi’s In Agnes Varda’s film “The Gleaners and I…” successfully evokes the atmosphere of Varda’s acclaimed non-fiction film, a documentary on gleaning, the practice of taking up and making one's own what others leave behind: “Agnes Varda chuckles her admiration for an armless clock”.
Leanne Hall’s the decks details the varying reactions of bank customers during a hold-up by a man with a gun hidden inside a banana: “mary of thirteen clover court found two dollars / behind a plastic potplant and planned to blow it / on the pokies should she survive. / sally simpson / (the gun, the banana) / checked out the robber’s rear view and / wondered if she might not save him.”
The short fiction — of which there are many fine pieces — ranges from Greg Bogaerts’ evocative Parisian episode Montmartre Path with Sunflowers, to the intensity of Gerald Roche’s The Harried and Erratic Life of Ala-ud-in, the story of Taliban trainee.
Going Down Swinging has always brought together a wide-range of styles and themes and the yet again, the latest issue hits the mark."
Patrick Cullen , The Program, November 21, 2005, on issue #22+++
GDS gets a mention in a review of our fellow print-meisters Sleepers. Read on at www.sleeperspublishing.com+++
"Going Down Swinging showcases the year in new Australian written and spoken word work - with the occasional o/s guest thrown in. A mixture of experimental and traditional-styled poetry, short story and whacky poetical bloodletting fill the book. It's an entertaining and often inspiring bit of public transport reading. In this the 21st issue, Natasha Cho elicits confusion and giggles with her uncle's dinnertime system crash. There is gonzo poetry from Miles Vertigan, a story by Anna Krien that promises absorbing longer works from her, and a couple of examples of the kind of kooky comic strip that delights at the same time as it annoys...A little over CD-sized, compact, sturdy, and emminently readable in the sense of physically holding the thing and reading it. It also has the most consistently sexy covers (by artist Peter Savieri) of any literary journal possibly in the world. If GDS gets any sexier, poets might actually start getting laid.For me, in this [CD] compilation it's the veterans (would they like me calling them veterans I wonder?) who stand out with their individual voices, unafraid to speak as they sound, unrequiring of too many tricky vocal effects. jeltje with her voice of honey and silver, sliding in and out and all over Harry Williamson's piano, in "I Make These Overtures." And The Still Company approaching something like the resonance of the work of MC 900 Foot Jesus, with the moody "Dawn." GDS 21 is notable for the experience of Pi0 getting funky in "The Lesson", which opens the CD - the Greek groover growling over guitar and drums with a deviously foresighted stream of consciousness - or should that be stream of conscience? "Now finish this sentence... I came to Australia...for the weather...the mountains....a million pounds...is a lot of money!...." Benito Di Fonzo might just be our child of the Beats, tripping the light "Financial Blues" with John Maddox on the bass. Elsewhere on the CD there are interesting experiments and fascinating excursions into worlds created through thought, sound, music and voice. It's a bumpy ride, but a very worthwhile one. The highlight of the CD for me has to be one of the last tracks, from Fiona Roake and Jo Davidson who, as usual, just absolutely shine."
Lisa Greenaway, The Program, January 28 2004, on issue #21+++
"The theme of the evening was thirty-something (or older) smutty sex. From a game-show style confessional to a sex-poem showdown the theme was relentless sex (in a Benny Hill sort of style). The room was packed with all the ubiquitous Fitzroy '70s couches; propping up the slouching illuminatis. Poems such as 'And on the third day, they got out of bed' seemed appropriate for this crowd who were still on the third day. "
Craig Bellamy, Humanist 2.1, December 12 2003, on launch of issue #21+++
"Going Down Swinging has been around since 1980, but the CD is relatively new and adds a certain flamboyance to the package, with peces such as Gaby Bila-Gunther's upbeat instructions for womanhood, Eddie Patterson on tourism in New York and Steve "Dezert Fish" Hodder's intelligent antiphonal rap on Aboriginality. Justin Treyvaud's Jud and Dave Are Working the Public Bar is breathtaking and funny, neither comic routine nor poem but cunning theatre, and Danna Stevenson's Angst gets to the heart of being "aged twenty-five -and-three-quarters". A number of pieces are stronger for their musical arrangements than their lyrics, but the mix works.The book is bursting with talent, writing that heads cheerfully towards places you would not normally find in Australian literary journals. Take Andrew Morgan on his witty toilet adventures or Anna Daly on her delicate hallucinatory impressions of friendship between girls. Nutty Edward Burger writes on yelling and berry-picking. And Gregory Mackay's comic-strip seems to speak for the GDS demographic: "The 1970s/For the most part/You weren't even born...You like to think of it as the recent past/Or rather, you like to escape the present."
Catherine Ford, The Age, May 2 2003, on issue #20+++
"GDS is conducting an experiment that involves welcoming sequential art into its literary biosphere. Hoping to avoid contamination, yet simultaneously to promote germination of this much-maligned form. The fluent adaptation of an Andrew Marvell poem by Nicki Greenberg and the biting kitsch of the Pox girls' Foreigners sit well as illustration in these all-word environs. There also blooms a poetically fragmented, trademarked nostalgia from gregory mackay, and all the eloquence of Jo Waite's unrequited love sonnet is contained in the pictures... would a rose in any other medium smell as sweet?"
Peter Savieri, Cordite, April 14 2003, on issue #20+++
"Whenever I get my installment of GDS - I'm always a little happier, a little more enlightened and generally pretty chuffed. GDS consistently publishes engaging, provoking and entertaining writing, as well as sampling Australia's most intriguing spoken word artists. yeah... it makes me a happy lady to swing my way into the next dimension of GDS."
Fenella Kernebone, JJJ/Artery, about GDS #20+++
"From its opening salvos to its index (which is itself a work of art), this issue bristles with surprises, and grabs with its intensities - it won't put you down until it's ready, and when it does - you're swinging!"
Ivor Indyk, HEAT , about GDS #20+++
"The entertainment began with a sort of wrestling match between 'Crazy' Crazy Elf & 'Death Blow' Pepito, which married poetry, world events, and two men belting each other with cardboard boxes. Mayhem was born, & the crowd passed the 100 head mark & just kept growing.
" Second off the blocks was the poetry of Jeff Payton mixed with the stylish guitar playing of Rod Collins. Jeff gave us a slice of New York, including an imagined conversation with Andy Warhol, further cementing his reputation as a poet to watch. And once again the combination of poetry and music was a definite winner. They were followed by Jo Davidson...I hadn't seen her for a while so this was a pleasant surprise. Jo is a talented writer, an engaging performer, & has the cutest voice in recorded history; here's hoping to see more of her around the place & soon.
" And then there was the main event of the evening, a veritable clash of the titans, Susan Peterson facing off against her "arch nemesis" Sean Whelan...Soon after each poet had read a brief set, the insults began to fly. "Your poetry's childish!" "You're just crap!" "You wanna make something of it, huh!". And so once more into the breach stepped the MC, baiting and cajoling the two poets...until they headed backstage to change into their wrestling attire."When they returned (looking suspicously like Crazy Elf and Pepito in stupid masks), the bout began, more insults were traded, and some very stylish wrestling moves were pulled off...All in all it was a fantastic night. Kick arse? Yes, yes it was. The poets were all class, the MC was fantastic, and it was entertaining and a lot of fun from start to finish (that's an important point too, it really is). And might I say...the current editors - Adam Ford, Alicia Sometimes and Steve Grimwade - should be proud. Once again they have put together a book and a CD that screams quality, value and "Hot Hot Hot!" from the rafters. "
Steve Smart, Deadline, Summer 2002, on GDS #20 launch+++
"Open this box at your own risk, it's literature like you've never read before, a time capsule of Now. Slide the CD into the slot in your head shred the text and slither it into your ear kind of thing. Here's writing that comes complete with backup singers and dance moves, escape plans from life itself, and (finally!) An Index. No longer need you languidly alphabetise the junior fiction (38), puppetty puppetty (84). Instead, find out the true dirt of the Fonz and Joanie (and Chachi) (13) and let the cats tell the time for you (the/chicken legs/still say/three o'clock) (95) haiku. Range and roles, humour and anatomy, chill and sweat. Perhaps it's true, this myth about Australia, that you've wrenched language like a machine, and now spend time flooding it with real blood. At least that's what the magic box Going Down Swinging 18 reads like. Read with ears. Hear with eyes. Sure, it's a composite of the last millenium, but it's much more gung ho on launching this new one. You've got the text that rocks from experiment to story-telling, concrete poetry to pop. The CD is no translation, but its equivalent. From a snowman slowly getting drunk accompanied by a folk guitar to multi-voiced earbombs and balalaika vampires. You can talk back to your radio. Jackie-o still rhymes with Castro. GDS18 is the New Book. Reminds me of a volcano with a stopwatch, ready to bust down walls, laws, and definitions til you can see clearly a Future laid out for you. Natural as dancing to a heart-beat. Urgent as a dictionary searching for its alphabet."
Bob Holman, The United States of Poetry, about GDS #19+++
'Spoken word and poetry is still very alive and vibrant,' reads the GDS editorial. This CD proves that. It's a hope machine."
Sarah Fillery Coles, Voiceworks #45, Winter 2001, on GDS #19
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"On stage, Ed Burger and Emilie Zoey Baker had just donned shorts and boxing gloves for a verse-off. That was where Ed said a few lines of poetry and Emilie Zoey took them on the chin, then she said a few lines of poetry and Ed took them on the chin. This went back and forth until Emilie Zoey beat Ed, because most of her bits had the word wet in them, and she was boxing about all the different ways of being wet and it was very sexy. So she deserved to win."
Alison Arnold, Cordite, reviews the launch of GDS #19+++
"BEST EVOLUTION OF A LIT MAG awarded to Going Down Swinging. What started out 20-some-odd years ago as a simple magazine for emerging voices has evolved into a new millennial lit mag, complete with spoken word CD. Short pieces of fiction, personal manifestos and funny rants are all par for the course in Going Down Swinging, and CD poems that are live, with music and just the words and voice. "
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, About, referring to GDS #19+++
"GDS is more than a literary journal, it's an engagement with cultural dissent... It is not your regular literary journal that seeks to represent contemporary literary culture or cultures, but one that almost treats expectation and the programmatic with disdain. I always wait for the annual issue of GDS to give me an insight into what's happening on the edges of the mainstream, not in a 'fringe festival' repackaging-of-the-mainstream kind of way, but in the genuine sense of challenging the norm. GDS is a natural stimulant."
John Kinsella, about GDS #19
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"Going Down Swinging introduces a wide range of new Australian work and suggests that the combination of poetry and recording technologies is a fruitful area that remains largely unexploited. "
David Kennedy, The Cortland Review, about GDS #18+++
"What exactly is 'spoken word'? GDS 18 rounds up the outstanding writers and performers in this difficult to define genre and lets the artists' work do the talking. And what talk! Now looking down the barrel of its third decade, Going Down Swinging has just been given a timely facelift."
Michelle Griffin, The Sunday Age, January 14 2001, on GDS #18+++
And you must be from that parallel world, man, where everything is inverted...
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"There is rarely any licence given to poets, writers or artists who wish to explore metaphysical matters - again, I contend, because of the silent and stealthily invisible PC lurking forcefully within the public service, academic, literary and arts funding bodies.
In the literary magazine Going Down Swinging, funded by Arts Victoria, Richard Watts published an article titled "My Father's Cock", in which Watts describes his obsession with his father's penis, and his coming out. The piece was insulting to men and fathers, poorly written, with nothing more than a mild pornographic shock value that may, perhaps, appeal to some of the more naïve members of the gay community.
The same author was included on the Going Down Swinging CD edited by Alicia Sometimes, Melbourne poetry personality and presenter of 3RRR's Aural Text program. This time it was a poem titled I Want to F--- Henry Rollins - equally adolescent. Any decent editor would have advised this poet not to publish these pieces in what is supposed to be a serious literary magazine.
However, they were published, no doubt because the editors felt they needed a gay contributor. The politically correct mind-set and comfort zone that cannot be denied once again demanded equity over excellence. At least four other poets of some significance had their work rejected by that edition of Going Down Swinging in favour of this PC pap."
Patrick McCauley, The Australian, 25 January 2003. "Winners are Losers in poets' war". Article refers to GDS #19.
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