NEWS

We are pleased to publish the third preview from Jennifer Maiden's forthcoming book length work The Laps of the Gods: Power, Sexuality, Publishing and Literature: an exploratory essay.
This excerpt includes a discussion of Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackvillle-West, Leonard Woolf and their politics and sexuality, and the politics of Hogarth Press. The new preview can be read by clicking on the cover image on the Forthcoming page.
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In honour of Bisclavret (werewolf) by Marie de France, one of Quemar's forthcoming titles, we captured this week's 'wolf moon' - the name given to the first full moon of the year - just before daybreak (18th January, 2022) in Penrith, New South Wales. It had a particularly beautiful soft halo. Photos are courtesy of Quemar's founding publisher and photographer, Katharine Margot Toohey.
Our preview of Bisclavret continues with a new part on the Forthcoming page. Bisclavret is Marie de France's re-imagining of werewolf legends, in translation to Modern English from 12th-century Anglo-Norman French.
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Enjoying releasing our latest paperback, Ox in Metal - new poems by Quemar's Jennifer Maiden, we're pleased to share an author-reading of one of the poems. Tritium the Mascot follows the recent decision by the Japanese government to scrap an anime mascot designed to promote Japan's release of wastewater from Fukushima into the ocean. Click on the title below to listen to the poem reading:

Tritium the Mascot

The text of this poem can be read in the Sampler for Ox in Metal on the Books for Purchase page.

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We are pleased to publish a second preview from Jennifer Maiden's forthcoming book length work The Laps of the Gods: Power, Sexuality, Publishing and Literature: an exploratory essay.
Amongst other exciting wide-ranging topics, this excerpt includes a discussion of Marquez, Nabokov, Ghislaine Maxwell, Red Sparrows and Honeytraps, HarperCollins, the Carlisle Group, the Bertelsmann conglomerate, the Assange accusers and Virginia Woolf. Of her previous long Quemar essay, The Cuckold and the Vampires, the late brilliant poet Tim Thorne said 'a tour de force in its own right. Congratulations'. The new preview from The Laps of the Gods can be read by clicking the cover image on the Forthcoming page.
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With our official release of Ox in Metal - a collection of magnificent new poems by Quemar's Jennifer Maiden, we're happy to share an author-reading of the poem Death-Wish Moths. Click on the title below to listen:

Death-Wish Moths

The poem's text can be read in our sampler for Ox in Metal on the Books for Purchase page.

Recently, the poem was also mentioned in the preview of her upcoming exploratory essay, The Laps of the Gods, on our Forthcoming page.

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Having looked at Korea, China, Japan and India, the 17th preview of Shining Moon (a work with translations of some medieval women's literature) turns now to Vietnam and translates a poem by Nguyễn Thị Duệ (1574-1654), who also acted as a spiritual and educational guide for women. In the guise of a man, she sat for exams and achieved the highest place, becoming the first woman doctoral laureate in Vietnam’s history.
The preview can be read on the Forthcoming page.

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Vera Rudner with her daughter Ava and granddaughter Talya

One of Australia's first and finest Surrealists - Vera Rudner celebrated her 99th birthday recently with her daughter and granddaughter. Vera's recovering well from an earlier fracture. We send her our love. Vera and her unforgettable Post-War paintings are the focus of our paperback, Vera Rudner: A Study. More information about her work and about the paperback can be found on the Books for Purchase page.

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Safety and Happiness for the New Year
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Quemar Press' new paperback, Ox in Metal - a collection of magnificent new poems by Jennifer Maiden - is officially released now.

At the start of this New Year, we're proud to have created 15 paperbacks, 19 electronic titles and 5 previews, following our goal of making inextinguishable work more accessible to modern audiences. Warmth and encouragement from our readers stays with us, as ever, and we send the best of wishes back.
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We're pleased to start work on a new title: The Laps of the Gods: Power, Sexuality, Publishing and Literature: an exploratory essay by Quemar's Jennifer Maiden.

The late, brilliant poet Tim Thorne wrote of her earlier book-length essay from Quemar Press:
'insightful essay. I am glad you weren't afraid to include your own work among the references that buttress your arguments. Too many essayists err on the side of being coldly impersonal. It is wonderful to have so many aspects of our culture and so many of those individuals who have contributed to it put in a meaningful political context. Well done! For example, I had never thought of the 'Poetry Wars' as anything more than a mild joke dreamed up..., but of course, as you point out, the concept was used to stifle or ignore real poetic/political and potentially creative conflict... This work stands as not only a slightly removed commentary on and adjunct to your recent poetry but, much more than that, a tour de force in its own right. Congratulations'

A first preview of The Laps of the Gods can be read by clicking on the cover image on the Forthcoming page.

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Our next collection, Ox in Metal, features a powerful new poem by Jennifer Maiden about her adventure hero Carina, who was created by the inhabitants of the Carina Galaxy (who were inspired by the Andromeda Galaxy's creation of Fred Hoyle's Andromeda), and this has prompted some readers to request Maiden read her previous wonderful Carina poem, Carina in the Andes, from Biological Necessity. We have therefore included a new audio of Maiden reading that poem. The poem discusses exciting political situations, including South America, and is framed around Carina's rescue of some Andean mountain cats. Click on the title below to hear the author reading the poem:

Carina in the Andes

The text of the poem is now in the Biological Necessity sampler on our Books for Purchase page.
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The Small Press Network has released its 2021 Christmas Catalogue, featuring two of Quemar’s titles: ‘Biological Necessity’, a magnificent collection of new poems by Jennifer Maiden, and ‘Meeting Each Other Alive’ - Modern English translations of love letters exchanged between two people whose passion freed a continent - Manuela Saenz and Simon Bolivar, leaders of the 19th-century South American revolution.

https://smallpressnetwork.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Web_SPN_Catalogue_2021-1.pdf
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At a time when publishing, whistle-blowing, and journalism are under threat with the British Court's new decision to extradite war-crimes exposer Julian Assange, we're pleased to be able to share an audio performance of the poem 'The peace prize - from our latest paperback Ox in Metal: New Poems' by the internationally-acclaimed author Jennifer Maiden. The poem awaits such a verdict, imagining the seasoned pessimism and idealism of Gore Vidal - the late author whose book History of The National Security State Assange carried as he was forced from the Ecuadorian Embassy. In the poem, Vidal is loyal to Assange, and realises he is willing to accompany him, displaying the steadfastness and patience necessary to overcome the evil in the Empire.
The audio of the author performing this poem can be heard by clicking on the title below:

The peace prize

The text is included in the sampler for Ox in Metal on our Books for Purchase page

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The third and final book of Bernat Metge's Lo Sompni - the 15th-century Catalan work constructed by a falsely accused prisoner to prove his innocence - is being translated now by Quemar Press. A new part of Lo Sompni's preview can be read on Quemar's Forthcoming page.
Book Two concluded as Metge was introduced to to the mysterious men who accompany the King: the old man, Tiresias, and the young man, Orpheus. At the beginning of the Third and final Book, Orpheus tells his story to Metge, describing his loss but then his lesser known reunion with Eurydice and his continuing existence with her - resolving the traditionally tragic narrative of Orpheus and Eurydice. This is in keeping with Quemar's tradition of positive Holiday Season ghost stories.

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Early copies of Ox in Metal: New Poems by Jennifer Maiden are available now for purchase on the Books for Purchase page

A 7 poem sampler (including the title poem) from these 28 poems can also be read by clicking on the cover on the Books for Purchase page..

From Quemar's Press Release:

I woke up and an ox was at the window, gold and silver
like the dawn's dapple around it, and I asked it:
'Are you the ox of this Lunar New Year, whose element
is metal?'

Intrinsic to this collection is the image of an ox with metal as flesh or metal as armour, alive, on watch and casting light on perilous situations, signifying the importance of veracity, labour, perseverance, tactics and endurance. Here, in superb experiment, the poet inhabits this essence and examines it, combining personal poetic themes and continuing her tireless exploration of political guises and the nature of passion and power...
Here an ox-like steadiness is intrinsic to creative process, whether it is the construction of galaxies or someone emerging from a traumatised purgatory. One of Maiden's characters, Carina (created by inhabitants of the Carina Galaxy) explains to a lapful of rescued minks:

'There is a softness needed when things are created,
a peace and proportion, a steadiness like that here
from the coolness in the twilight-mingled air.
The furrows balance in the earth like geometry,
muddy enough for the plough to enter,
and they balance like that in the sky.'
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We send much love to the remarkable Surrealist painter Vera Rudner - who is recovering from a fracture - before she celebrates her 99th birthday in December, 2021. This recent picture of Vera is a still from a new video just supplied to Quemar Press by Vera's daughter, Ava. Quemar's paperback study of Vera's superb work is listed, with a sampler, on the Books for Purchase page.

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Quemar is pleased to be able to share an audio performance of the final preview poem from Ox in Metal, the soon-to-be-released Quemar Press collection by Jennifer Maiden. The poem George Jeffreys Woke Up Skyping with Joe Biden, which readers have already praised for its extraordinary relevance, insight and compassion, can be heard by clicking on the title below:

George Jeffreys Woke Up Skyping with Joe Biden

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Soon after the recent death of the brilliant Tasmanian poet Tim Thorne, his partner Stephanie Thorne has died from a cardiac illness. We mourn both Stephanie and Tim, and send deep sympathy and love to their wonderful daughters Clare and Lucie, and grandchildren. Poetry lovers will remember Stephanie’s charm, energy and encouragement at the Tasmanian Poetry Festivals organised by Tim for many years. Quemar Press’ poet Jennifer Maiden also remembers that as well as Tim’s decades of vibrant, shrewd, unique work and his steadfast encouragement of Maiden’s own work and that of others, Stephanie herself was also a discerning literary enthusiast. When Maiden wrote Getting Anne Back about L.M. Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables almost a decade ago, Stephanie let Maiden know how much she appreciated the poem. Stephanie and Tim had just attended a conference for Montgomery admirers in Canada. In light of this, Quemar has now included Getting Anne Back in the sampler for Maiden’s Selected Poems 1967-2018. It can be read on our Books for Purchase page.

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Bisclavret, a re-imagining by Marie de France of werewolf legends, is a new forthcoming title from Quemar Press.This is a work where hierarchy between animals and humans can be demolished, and affection for an individual being (be it in an animal or human state) can be clear and unwavering. The first preview of Quemar’s new Modern English translation of the 12th Century Anglo-Norman classic lai is now on our Forthcoming page.
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We're glad to be able to add audio of Pandora and her Sisters - a new preview poem from Ox in Metal, our forthcoming collection by Jennifer Maiden. In this poem, she examines the Empire's recent possible leak of the Pandora papers and their purpose in the context of previous leaks such as Panama and Paradise, and widens the context to historical and artistic concepts of Pandora (the 'dangerous' lady opening a container of chaos), including Hesiod and Louise Brooks. The poem's title comes from its concept of a romcom about sibling witches called Pandora, Panama and Paradise. The text can be read in the Ox in Metal preview on our Forthcoming page. Click on the title below to listen to the poem performed by the author:

Pandora and her Sisters

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Having translated and explored some work by medieval women writers from Korea, China and Japan, the preview of Shining Moon now turns to India and translates a vachana (spontaneous, spiritual and free form) poem by Akka Mahadevi (c. 1130-1160) from the Kannada language, in which the poet addresses Shiva, logically balancing images of intimate opposites. The preview can be read on our Forthcoming page.
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We're happy to add the video performance of Diary Poem: Uses of Iron Ladies. This poem is from Ox in Metal, Quemar Press' forthcoming collection by Jennifer Maiden. The poem was also featured in the new transnational Feminist anthology Borderless (Recent Work Press), and the performance was part of its launching. You can watch the video of this poem performance by the author below:

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We grieve the death of the profound, irreverent and politically impassioned master poet Tim Thorne. He was an energetic and articulate supporter of Quemar Press. His last book, Little Pataphysics (PressPress, 2021) was as witty, technically deft and brilliantly insightful as always. In the copy he gave to our author Jennifer Maiden, he wrote: 'for Jenny, for the decades, for the poetry'.
We thank him - for the decades, for the poetry.

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Quemar Press' new English translation of Marie de France's twelfth-century Anglo-Norman French Romance, Chevrefoil -Honeysuckle - is now a complete book with a Preface and an ISBN, and is available as a free download on our Books page.

From the Preface:
[This work] seems to re-imagine the traditional tragic Romance of Iseult and Tristan, in a chosen catalytic space - deep in a forest where the heroes interlink in communication and affection: just as, Marie writes, the honeysuckle vine of the title entwines with hazel.

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We're happy to be able to add audio from our anticipated 'Ox in Metal' - Quemar's forthcoming collection by the author Jennifer Maiden.

The poem, 'Panic', focuses on the recent massacre at Kabul Airport, in which it has been stated that most of the many casualties died because shot by inexperienced American marines who panicked after the suicide bombing. Clare and George (Maiden's established characters - the female and male voices in the poem) discuss this, and in this powerful, atmospheric short poem, relate the situation to Game Theory when the rules no longer apply - when it is realised that the game is about to end. Click on the title below to listen to the work (performed by the author):

Panic

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We're happy to announce one of our forthcoming titles: My Existence - from Autobiographical Works by Louise Michel. This work will bring together some her memoirs and her poetry in a new translation, to convey the insight and freshness of her voice. The first preview of the book can be read by clicking on the cover picture on the Forthcoming page.

Louise Michel's goals were all connected and inter-woven. She was revolutionary in all senses - as a Feminist, Writer, Teacher and Anarchist.
A square in Montmartre is now named after her, and a metro station. As a teacher, She founded schools for the Paris working class, saying In her Mémoires (1886) 'the role of schoolteachers [...] is to give people the intellectual means to rebel'. Her free schools sang the banned La Marseillaise and did not pledge allegiance to Emperor Napoleon III.
When France surrendered to Prussia in 1870, she joined workers opposing the pro-monarchist government. As part of the 61st battallion of Montmartre, she had a major role in the Paris Commune, driving ambulances and rallying workers to take up arms. The writer Victor Hugo called her 'Viro Major'- greater than a man.
In 'Bloody Week' (21 to 28 May) at least 20,000 Communards died on the barricades, or by firing squads. She survived but surrendered for her mother's release. The war council found her guilty of trying to overthrow the government. Exiled to a penal colony in New Caledonia for seven years, she continued activism, supporting the 1878 Kanak rebellion and teaching.
After Communards were offered a general amnesty, she returned to France and began defending Anarchism until her death in 1905, when more than 100,000 attended her funeral.
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We're pleased to add audio of The Metal Ox and Proof of Life - a poem from Ox in Metal, a forthcoming collection from Quemar Press of new work by the author Jennifer Maiden.

The poem addresses this year's sympathetic Chinese new year totem, the metal ox, to speak of mRNA vaccines, the origins of Covid and the patterns of DNA.

Click on the title below to listen to the poem, performed by the author:

The Metal Ox and Proof of Life

The poem's text is available in the book's preview on the Forthcoming page.

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An event to launch the superb new Feminist Anthology, Borderless (Recent Work Press) can be watched on the anthology's Facebook page now. It features talks from the work's editors and expert verse from its contributors, including Quemar's author Jennifer Maiden, who reads her poem Diary Poem: Uses of Iron Ladies from Ox in Metal, Quemar's forthcoming collection of her work.

https://fb.watch/7w7uZ_l1_x/

https://recentworkpress.com/product/borderless/
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Quemar's proud to welcome its fifth anniversary this week, and to have created 14 paperbacks, 18 electronic editions and 4 current previews.
As ever, we thank our readers for their encouragement and warm wishes, which accompany and inspire us always.

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Launch of Borderless,
the very valuable new Feminist anthology (Recent Work Press) will be broadcast live on Facebook at 8PM on Friday, 20th August, AEST.
The work includes Jennifer Maiden's 'Uses of Iron Ladies' from her forthcoming Quemar Press collection, 'Ox in Metal'.
https://www.facebook.com/BorderlessAnthology/

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Devoted to leading a revolution, devoted to each other. Their passion freed a continent.

Meeting Each Other Alive - Quemar's new translations from the letters between Manuela Sáenz and Simón Bolívar, great leaders of the nineteenth-century South American Revolution - is available now. More information and a new Sampler are on the Books for Purchase page.

From Quemar's Press Release:
Throughout their letters, whether in spontaneous affection, finding solutions to slander and untruths, or defining facets of revolution, their voices never sound disillusioned. Neither of them died in disillusionment. Making plans to travel with Sáenz, Bolívar died in 1830. After Bolívar's death, Sáenz survived exile and went to the North of Peru, where she decided to live in Paita, on the coast. She gave her correspondence with Bolívar to one of his generals, O'Leary, who was writing a biography.
With her long career as his archivist, Captain of Hussars and, ultimately, Colonel, she knew the importance of word and action. As a revolutionary, she knew the importance of incorruptible voices in history.
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In light of Quemar's goal to make vibrant work easily accessible to Modern Audiences, and continuing our translations of the earliest female French poet, Marie de France, we're happy to be publishing her Lai Honeysuckle (Chevrefoil). This 12th-century Anglo-Norman work is based on the traditional romance between Tristan and Isolde, but Marie creates a new interlude and an alternative intertextual approach to its tragic narrative. The first preview can be read on the Forthcoming page.
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Quemar is happy to release audio of Pegasus, a preview poem from Ox in Metal, an upcoming 2022 Quemar Press paperback collection of new poems by the author Jennifer Maiden.
The poem is an intense metaphorical lyric about the Pegasus hacking software - spyware - marketed and licensed to governments around the world. Click on the title below to listen to the recording (performed by the author):

Pegasus

The text of the poem can be read in the Preview for Ox in Metal on our Forthcoming page.

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Our next paperback is set to be released in September, 2021:
Meeting Each Other Alive
- Quemar Press' Modern English translations of letters exchanged between Manuela Sáenz and Simón Bolívar - devoted to leading the nineteenth-century South American Revolution and devoted to each other with the same intensity.
A new sampler from the book's introduction, one of his early letters, and from her description of the night she saved his life from assassins can be read below.

From the introduction:

Manuela Sáenz and Simón Bolívar were, at once, distinguished leaders of the nineteenth-century South American Revolution, and devoted to each other with that same intensity in thought and action. They are subjects of legends and inventions. In reality, Manuela Sáenz was born in Quito in 1797. She would join the covert political operations against Peru's Viceroy, becoming acquainted with Bolívar as he officially took over Peru's liberation. He eventually became President of the South American states of Grand Colombia.
Sáenz and Bolívar met often as the revolutionary campaigns travelled South America. They would also correspond, exchange love letters, practical military advice, and advice about practical survival. In 1823, in his role as General, he wished her to be part of his military staff. She agreed and became his archivist and Captain of Hussars, journeying with him and the armies.
This selection extends over the love letters they exchanged and letters they wrote for others about their attachment.
Quemar's creative Modern English translations attempt to represent and reflect their writing's flow, intricacy and vividness. Her voice and his echo back and forth to each other their hope to reunite. The goal of this work is to offer a new authentic access to their voices..
The title, Meeting Each Other Alive, springs from a line in a letter Bolívar wrote to Sáenz: 'Qué debo brindarte: ¿un encuentro vivo acaso?' Because 'brindar' signifies 'to offer' and 'to toast', these words are open to levels of interpretation: 'What should I offer to you: the ability to meet each other alive?', 'What is it that I must give to you: maybe, a meeting where we continue living?', 'What should I bring to you: a vibrant encounter, perhaps?' or finally: 'I should drink to you: to meeting each other alive, perhaps?'
Throughout their letters, whether in spontaneous affection, finding solutions to slander and untruths, or defining facets of revolution, their voices never sound disillusioned…

One of his early letters:

General's Quarters in Guaranda, 3rd July, 1822
To the distinguished lady, Señora Manuela Sáenz

Esteemed Manuelita:
I want, loveliest Manuela, to answer your requirements of love, which are very sound. But I have to be honest for someone - like you, she gave me everything. Before, there was no illusion, Manuela - it's not that I won't love you, it's just that it's time you know about how I loved someone else before - with an unusual passion in my youth - someone I never name out of respect.
I'm not avoiding your appeals, that are dear to my desires and my passion. I'm just thinking and giving you some time to yourself. Because your words make me return to you. Because I know I have this time to love you, for us to love each other mutually.
I only want time to become used to this, since military life isn't easy, nor retreat. I've made a fool of death a lot. And that stalks me deliriously with every step I take.
I should drink to you: to meeting each other alive, perhaps? Let me be sure of myself, sure of you, beloved friend - you'll see who the Bolívar you admire really is. He couldn't lie to you.
I never lie! My passion is mad for you, as you know.
Give me time.
Bolívar

From her description of the night she saved his life from assassins:

...He bid me read to him during the bath. Once he had gone to bed, he fell deeply asleep, without more precaution than his sword and his pistols, without more guard than the usual, without forewarning either the Officer of the Watch or anyone, content with what the Chief of General Staff or I do not know what it was, had said to him: he should not be careful - that was what he answered. (This was the Colonel Guerra, the same that they say gave for that night the watchword and password, and, what is more, the next day he would go around inciting everyone until I do not know who denounced him).
It might have been twelve o'clock at night when the Liberator's two dogs barked a lot, and also a strange sound was heard that must have been a clash with the guards, but without firearms, to avoid any noise.
I woke up the Liberator, and the first thing he did was to take his sword and a pistol and try to open the door. I restrained him and I made him get dressed, something which he affirmed with much serenity and promptness. He said to me: 'Good, go on, since I am dressed now; and now what do we do? To make ourselves strong?'
He went back to wanting to open the door and I stopped him.
Then I was struck by what I had heard the same general say once: 'Didn't you say to Pepe París that this window was very good for launching from these rooms?' 'You say right', he said to me, and went to the window. I prevented him from throwing himself over, because people were walking past; but he checked when there was no one, and because they were forcing the door now. I went to meet with them to give him time to leave; but I had no time to see him jump, or close the window.
When they saw me, they took hold of me and asked: 'Where is Bolívar?' I told them that he was at the Council, which was the first thing that occurred to me; they searched the first room tenaciously; passed to the second, and seeing the window open, they exclaimed: 'He escaped; he saved himself!' I said to them: 'No, gentlemen, he has not escaped; he is at the Council.' 'And why is that window open?' 'I just opened it, because I wanted to know what the noise was.'
Some believed me, others not...
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May Holman

With the celebrations for the centenary of the first woman Australian Parliamentarian, a reader asked if Jennifer Maiden could read her poem about the first Labor woman Parliamentarian, May Holman, published in our first paperback - Appalachian Fall. Click on the title below to listen to the author performing the poem:

May Holman

The text can now be read in the sampler for Appalachian Fall on our Books for Purchase page.

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After requests, we have uploaded audio of Fifty Years Gone - a new preview poem from Ox in Metal, a forthcoming collection by Jennifer Maiden (Quemar, 2022). This poem is about Julian Assange's current 50th birthday, and continues the perspective she has written in the persona of the late author Gore Vidal, including his memories of Ellsberg and Mailer.
A popular line in the work, 'Smiles, decided Vidal, are always an act of remembering' was created by Maiden as an observation she felt the real Vidal would find interesting.
The poem is even more relevant - the Informant against Assange for the latest American Appeal has revealed his evidence against Assange was invented.
Click on the title below to hear the poem (performed by the author):

Fifty Years Gone

The text of the poem can be read in the Ox in Metal preview on the Forthcoming page.
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We are pleased to release a new preview of Shining Moon (a work with translations of some medieval Asian Women's Literature, including Japan, China, Korea and India).

Now turning to Japan, this section casts light on the changing and fluid hierarchical roles of Chinese literature in the Heian period of Japan, and focuses on the work of the renowned writer Murasaki (c. 973 or 978 - c.1014 or 1031) and her Tale of Genji.

It can be read in the work's preview on the Forthcoming page.
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Meanjin, the quarterly journal of fine literature and commentary, features Ox in Metal in their new volume (Winter 2021) - the title poem from a forthcoming collection by the author Jennifer Maiden, to be published by Quemar in 2022. We're glad to add audio of the poem here (read by the poet). Click on the title below to listen.

Ox in Metal

More information about Meanjin is available on their website:

https://meanjin.com.au/

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Quemar readers will be saddened to know that Helen Boris, our beloved friend, workshop participant, fine poet and the superb translator of much great Russian poetry, including Yevtushenko, has died at the age of 101. Helen retained her usual lively and loving nature and intellect and continued to send new poetry and letters to her old friend and workshop tutor Jennifer Maiden, and to Jennifer's daughter, Quemar's publisher, Katharine Margot Toohey. Helen had a special bond with Katharine, as both were passionate translators. Helen was teaching Katharine Russian (Helen's early language in the Ukraine) and always affectionately addressed her as 'Katya'.

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The recent Constitutional Convention election in Chile resulted in an effective majority for Leftist and Independent candidates, making it possible for the conservative constitution inherited from the Pinochet years to be altered at last.

Our paperback, The Cuckold and the Vampires: an essay on some aspects of conservative political manipulation of art and literature, including the experimental, and the conservatives' creation of conflict, by Jennifer Maiden, explores as one of its themes the history of Chilean politics and their effect on the novelist Marquez. We are happy to add the beginning of the essay here, performed in audio by the author. Click on the title below to listen.

The Cuckold and the Vampires beginning

An electronic version of the work is available on the Books page. The paperback version can be purchased from our Books for Purchase page.

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We are happy that the final preview for Meeting Each Other Alive, our new English translation of the love letters exchanged between Manuela Sáenz and Simón Bolívar - two great leaders of the nineteenth-century South American Revolution - is available on the Forthcoming page.

The excerpts in the concluded preview are from dated letters between Sáenz and Bolívar, and at the last from Sáenz’s diaries.

Quemar’s forthcoming paperback will include these with further excerpts from Sáenz’s diaries, from Sáenz’s other letters and from undated letters between Sáenz and Bolívar.

Excerpt from the final preview:

'I had very powerful reasons to unite myself with him: conviction of a patriot, together, at the cost of everything.'

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As it is the Easter period in Russia, we're pleased to add a recording of a chapter, 'Kulich and Kutuzov' from our paperback, the last novel in the Play With Knives Quintet - The Malachite and the Diamonds. Chapter 21 discusses succulent Russian Easter cakes, power, politics, war strategy, and the influences of hunger. Click on the title below to hear the recording (performed by the author, Jennifer Maiden):

Play With Knives: 5: The Malachite and the Diamonds: Chapter 21: Kulich and Kutuzov

The text of this chapter can be read in the book's sampler, on our Books for Purchase page.

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Quemar Press' new English translation of Marie de France's twelfth-century Anglo-Norman French Romance, Le Fresne - The Ash Tree - is now a complete book with a Preface and an ISBN, and is available as a free download on our Books page.

From Quemar's Preface:
In this lai, spontaneous affection overcomes conceptual rejection. Here, the female hero does not wish suffering or punishment for a woman who abandoned her. Instead, the situation comes to a solution when both women realise the existence of the other - the ultimate remedy for them is the reality of each other. In this text, in a darkened room by night, the hero's mother can exclaim in new levels of clarity, away from all secrets: 'Beautiful friend, you are my daughter!'
Marie de France's text, in 12-century Anglo-Norman French, was based on traditional Breton Lais. Quemar's Modern English translation is juxtaposed with the original. The translation strives to maintain the original's vitality, cadence, four stresses and the effect of the rhymed final syllables. The work's illustrations are inspired by medieval artwork.
This Romance is named after the female hero, Fresne - the lady given the name of the Ash Tree, as she was resting in its branches when she was found, wrapped in a fine cloth - a cloth which would let her mother recognise her again by chance or serendipity. Her mother had given birth to her and her twin sister but feared for her own public reputation. She had slandered her neighbour's twins and fidelity by suggesting that it was not possible to give birth to twins without being promiscuous. Her mother had Fresne left at a minster, where her gentlewoman prayed and chose the Ash Tree to leave her.
'she turned and looked behind
to see an ash wide and branching
and very thick with its branches spreading,
the branches growing as four quarters.
It was planted here for shelter.
In her arms, she took the baby
and she ran to the ash tree,
set her there and left her there'

...This is a story where the woman's individuality, reality and being are powerful catalysts driving the plot, and remorse is far out-weighed by joy at having found at last the woman lost. There is a line 'What you please is forgiven'.
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We are pleased to add a new audio recording of an early preview poem from a forthcoming poetry collection Ox in Metal by Jennifer Maiden (to be published by Quemar in 2022). The poem, It can't be easy, being Tabaqui, is haunting and powerful. It begins with a quote from Putin about the jackal in Kipling's Jungle Book, then examines the political context and symbolism of the jackal's plight, its connotation of being cowered and its dangers. Click on the title below to listen to the poem performed by the author.

It can't be easy, being Tabaqui

The text of the poem can be read in the Ox in Metal preview at the bottom of the Forthcoming page.
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We were deeply grieved to learn of the recent death of Loretta (Retta) Hemensley. Retta was the partner of the distinguished Melbourne writer and bookseller Kris Hemensley, and for many decades she was a sparkling and steadfast force in numerous fine literary projects, including the Collected Works Bookshop and Kris' writing and editing. Retta was always an intrinsic factor in Kris' powerful and formative influence on contemporary Australian literature, and in herself exemplified all that was best and warmest in Melbourne artistic spirit.

Loretta and Kris Hemensley photographed by Alex Skovron

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The fifteenth preview, concluding Quemar Press' Modern English translation of Marie de France's 12th-century Anglo-Norman French Romance, Le Fresne (The Ash Tree) can be read on the forthcoming page by clicking on the cover picture there. This part completes the full text and finishes the story. In this lai, spontaneous affection overcomes conceptual rejection.
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The full biographical section from Quemar's paperback on the exceptional post-war surrealist artist Vera Rudner - Vera Rudner: A Study - can now be read in the book's sampler on the Books for Purchase page. The biography spans Rudner's childhood as a silent film actor, her escape from Nazi Germany as an adolescent with her family and her life as a surrealist painter in Australia.
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The April issue of Australian Book Review features a new poem, Clare and Kiribati, by one of Quemar's authors, Jennifer Maiden (from a forthcoming collection to be published by us in 2022). You can listen to a new recording of the poet performing the poem by clicking on the title below:
Clare and Kiribati
The poem itself is not behind a paywall, and can be read on the Australian Book Review website at:
'Clare and Kiribati', a new poem by Jennifer Maiden (australianbookreview.com.au)
The same Australian Book Review issue includes an enthusiastic review of Biological Necessity - Maiden's latest paperback from Quemar Press. The review was written by Rose Lucas, and is behind a paywall, but excerpts include: 'a prolific and successful poet...a distinctive... informed.. voice...This is a collection immersed in the structures of the world.'
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 Warm Holiday Wishes from Quemar

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The April 2021 issue of Australian Book Review features a poem from a forthcoming poetry collection by Jennifer Maiden (the collection will be published by Quemar Press in 2022). The poem, entitled 'Clare and Kiribati' is a vivid narrative about current political conflicts in the Pacific. It can be read now on the Australian Book Review website at:
https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/current-issue/962-april-2021-no-430/7609-clare-and-kiribati-a-new-poem-by-jennifer-maiden

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With the release of Quemar's latest paperback, Biological Necessity - a collection of new poems by the poet and novelist Jennifer Maiden, we upload audio of a witty and profound poem from it, Clare Collins Woke Up in Mt Druitt, performed by the author. Click on the title below to listen:

Clare Collins Woke Up in Mt Druitt

There will also be an exciting new poem by Jennifer Maiden featuring Clare entitled Clare and Kiribati in the forthcoming April 2021 issue of the journal Australian Book Review.

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Quemar is happy to release an early preview poem from an upcoming Quemar Press 2022 collection of new poems by the author Jennifer Maiden.

Whilst this poem, Murder, He Worried, is not graphic about violence, it refers to the hero Malcolm Turnbull's public doubts about the death of a possible assault victim, and his imagined discussion of this with his relative Angela Lansbury, shown as playing one of her famous roles: a woman detective and mystery writer. We therefore give a trigger warning for this poem.
Click on the author photograph to the right at the bottom of the Forthcoming page to read the poem.

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With the recent release of Quemar's newest paperback, Biological Necessity (a new poetry collection by the author Jennifer Maiden), we're pleased to place here an audio recording of one of its poems. The exciting poem is called La Nina, and you can listen to the author performing it by clicking on the title below:

La Nina

The text of the poem can be read in the sampler for Biological Necessity on the Books for Purchase page.

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We continue welcoming the lunar year of the Ox.

There is a new recording of a middle section from the poem The Year of the Ox (written in 2009 and featured in Selected Poems 1967-2018 - Quemar's Selected of work by the author Jennifer Maiden). Listen to this section (read by the poet) by clicking on the title below:

The Year of the Ox (excerpt from the middle)

The full text of the poem can be read on the Books for Purchase page in the Selected Poems sampler.
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The latest previews of Meeting Each Other Alive (Quemar's new Modern English translation of love letters exchanged between Manuela Saenz and Simon Bolivar - legendary partners and great leaders of the nineteenth-century South American Revolution) can be read now on our Forthcoming page.

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We were deeply saddened by the death of A.N. (Tony) Maiden on the 14th of February, 2021. He was an exceptional journalist and a former editor of The Financial Review, and had been a great supporter of Quemar Press, purchasing our titles and encouraging the sale of our books. He was a first cousin of our author, Jennifer Maiden (mother of Quemar Press' publisher, Katharine Margot Toohey).

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Wishing the best for the start of the Lunar Year of the Ox.

A poem The Year of the Ox written for the last Year of the Ox (in 2009) is included in Selected Poems 1967-2018 - Quemar's Selected of Jennifer Maiden's work. Click on the title below to listen to a just-recorded extract of her reading the beginning of the poem:

The Year of the Ox (beginning)

The full text of the poem can be read on the Books for Purchase page in the Selected Poems sampler.

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Last week, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and other Fairfax (now Nine) media featured a review by Geoff Page of Biological Necessity: New Poems - Jennifer Maiden's newly-released paperback from Quemar Press.
From the review:
'distinctive... discursive and lyrical collection... remarkable for... [its] sustained moral complexity.'
'The book’s title comes from Aneurin Bevan’s ‘‘Socialism is a biological necessity’’ but that doesn’t mean that Maiden is going to let its more notable (and perhaps notional) exemplars off easily. She, forgivably, judges them by their own rhetoric – and finds them wanting. Importantly, however, the poet never loses touch with her subjects’ ultimate humanity. '
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/poems-from-the-enduring-sonnet-to-the-lyrical-and-the-contemporary-20210119-p56vbr.html
The review also discusses one of the collection's poems, Molten Opals:
'Molten Opals, about the dubious American military company Blackwater, is a good example of her lyric and discursive dualism. Passages such as ‘‘Black waters / are mysterious. / They are still as a black stallion / the moon glints on, linear as gunbarrels’’ alternate with others such as: ‘‘Last heard the mercenaries / were vacating Syria, heading for Libya, / quick sanding in Yemen, / and pointed at South America again.’’'
A recording of Jennifer Maiden performing this poem can now be heard by clicking on the title below:

Molten Opals

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One of Quemar's goals is to help make vibrant and vital literature accessible, and with that in mind, we are grateful for the enthusiasm for Quemar's Modern English translations. We can confirm that we will continue translating the work of Marie de France, Bernat Metge, Manuela Saenz and Simon Bolivar.

We are also pleased to have begun creating 'Shining Moon' - a book-length work combining a subjective essay with translations of some medieval Asian Women's Literature, including Japan, China, Korea and India.

The 1st preview of the work can be read on the Forthcoming page.

The 1st preview includes modern English translation of an early Korean Sijo (a descriptive poem with theme and resolution) written by Hwang Jini - a poet and Kisaeng - with a description of the Sijo structure and translator's observations on the poem and the poet.

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With the new release of Biological Necessity - a 2021 collection of poems by Jennifer Maiden - Quemar adds audio recordings of the author performing from it.

She recorded the full poem, The Razorblade, which casts light on hope, incarceration and Julian Assange, and an excerpt from the poem George Jeffreys Woke Up Skyping with President Trump on Election Night 2020 - where Human Rights Observers, Clare Collins and George Jeffreys, are face to face with Trump on Election Night, watching the results and waiting for the aftermath. Click on the titles below to listen:

The Razorblade

George Jeffreys Woke Up Skyping with President Trump on Election Night 2020 (Excerpt)

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Quemar's 13th paperback, Biological Necessity - a 2021 collection of new poems by Jennifer Maiden - is officially released now and available for purchase on the Books for Purchase page.

Quemar has added a new poem to Biological Necessity's sampler on the Books for Purchase page. In the poem, 'Razorblade', Julian Assange speaks with a concerned Gore Vidal about current politics.

From Quemar's Press Release for Biological Necessity:
'This new collection of poems reflects Aneurin Bevan's observation that "Socialism is a biological necessity". Here, socialism branches out from being a necessity to being the human condition itself, or survival's impulse.
Here, biological necessity can be the re-appropriation of elegies; keeping the incarnation of the beloved close, never fearing or etherealising it; Elizabeth Macquarie speaking of abuses of power with President Trump's mother Mary Anne MacLeod as they watch fireworks over Sydney Harbour; Maiden and her daughter watching a meteor shower in Covid lockdown; the definiteness of peace; writing having a function similar to a new vaccine; Ghislaine Maxwell in safe paper clothes in prison; Gore Vidal watching over Julian Assange and deciding it was not automatic biology that his country desert him; the similarity between symbols of a pandemic and symbols of empire; Maiden's female protagonist, Clare, mirrored in a Darling Harbour hotel window, thinking of Syria, Kurds, oil and Russia with George her partner; Vidal watching Assange's trial and thinking of the testimony: that it is safer for an "informant to make a statement about someone who is a 'nobody', than someone who is genuinely dangerous"; Maiden's ancestor in India naming his new family after his first children and wife who died in a typhoon in the Bay of Bengal; maize offered to a deity instead of human sacrifice; the continuing glitter of a river freezing in a dream; the need for someone to be who they were pretending; Nasca Lines in Peru letting Carina - a hero created by the Carina Galaxy - rescue Andean mountain cats; the unfading impact of Abbie Hoffman; Donald Trump skyping with Clare and George as Human Rights observers on the 2020 U.S. election night; the phrase "black water" reinvented as a lyric, not a mercenary firm; Eleanor Roosevelt suspended in no place, unable to visit her earlier idea of her own Hillary Clinton; giving swans to the River Goddess of the Liffey, thankful for escape; or La Niña - pacific, lit by lanterns, and counteracting forests on fire.
In this space, biological necessity is not only something physical, psychological or spiritual - it is also something empathetic and practical, the elements of a discourse in lyricism and humanity between poet and reader.'

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We thank our readers for all their support. Quemar now has 13 paperbacks and 17 electronic editions all published with ISBNs, and 3 substantial online book-previews.

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Happy and Safe New Year from Quemar Press!

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Stay Safe and Warm Wishes for this holiday season from Quemar Press.

In the tradition of telling Christmas ghost stories, we asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record the hopeful and humane ghost story from her novel Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds (chapters 6 and 7). Click on the titles below to listen:

Play With Knives: Five, chapter 6 (part one)

Play With Knives: Five, chapter 6 (part two)

Play With Knives: Five, chapter 7 (part one)

Play With Knives: Five, chapter 7 (part two)

The text of these chapters can be read in the Play With Knives: Five sampler on the Books for Purchase page.

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Vera Rudner with her family on her 98th Birthday

Vera Rudner on her 98th Birthday with her daughter Ava and grand-daughter Talya

Vera Rudner on her 98th birthday with her family

The acclaimed post-war surrealist Artist Vera Rudner - the subject of Quemar Press' paperback Vera Rudner: A Study - celebrated her 98th Birthday recently, with her family. Quemar sends her best wishes for the coming year.
More information about her paintings and the paperback can be found on the Books for Purchase page.

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We are proud that The Espionage Act: New Poems by Jennifer Maiden (Quemar Press, 2020) has been named a best book of the year for 2020 in the newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and other Nine (Fairfax) publications on the 12/12/2020. The seminal poet and critic Robert Adamson wrote:
'Jennifer Maiden keeps adding to her growing international reputation, her new book cheered me up during a rather bleak winter – The Espionage Act (Quemar Press) is a mix of glowing lyrics and narratives honed razor-sharp, where indignation thrums against political deceptions with surreal edges.'

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/the-books-we-loved-to-read-in-a-year-of-living-precariously-20201203-p56k6a.html

In light of this, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record a poem from the collection. The poem, What if all the village were vampires? imagines Marquez speaking with an archetypical critic about conservative betrayal of art and artists. Click on the title below to listen:

What if all the village were vampires? Part One

What If all the village were vampires? Part Two

The poem's text can be read in The Espionage Act's sampler on the Books For Purchase page.

The poem also provides one of the elements that sets the tone for Maiden's The Cuckold and the Vampires: an essay on some aspects of conservative political manipulation of art and literature, including the experimental, and the conservatives' creation of conflict.
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We now have some advance copies of Biological Necessity - a 2021 collection of new poems by Jennifer Maiden - available for purchase on the Books for Purchase page

From Quemar's Press Release:
This new collection of poems reflects Aneurin Bevan's observation that 'Socialism is a biological necessity'. Here, socialism branches out from being a necessity to being the human condition itself, or survival's impulse.
Here, biological necessity can be the re-appropriation of elegies; keeping the incarnation of the beloved close, never fearing or etherealising it; Elizabeth Macquarie speaking of abuses of power with President Trump's mother Mary Anne MacLeod as they watch fireworks over Sydney Harbour; Maiden and her daughter watching a meteor shower in Covid lockdown; the definiteness of peace; writing having a function similar to a new vaccine; Ghislaine Maxwell in safe paper clothes in prison; Gore Vidal watching over Julian Assange and deciding it was not automatic biology that his country desert him; the similarity between symbols of a pandemic and symbols of empire; Maiden's female protagonist, Clare, mirrored in a Darling Harbour hotel window, thinking of Syria, Kurds, oil and Russia with George her partner; Vidal watching Assange's trial and thinking of the testimony: that it is safer for an 'informant to make a statement about someone who is a ''nobody'', than someone who is genuinely dangerous'; Maiden's ancestor in India naming his new family after his first children and wife who died in a typhoon in the Bay of Bengal; maize offered to a deity instead of human sacrifice; the continuing glitter of a river freezing in a dream...or La Niña - pacific, lit by lanterns, and counteracting forests on fire.
In this space, biological necessity is not only something physical, psychological or spiritual - it is also something empathetic and practical, the elements of a discourse in lyricism and humanity between poet and reader.

Jennifer Maiden opening Biological Necessity

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To celebrate the release of the impressive new issue of Australian Poetry Journal on the topic of 'Elegies', Quemar Press asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record a poem included in it, and in her forthcoming collection, Biological Necessity (Quemar Press, 2021), which is now at the printer.
The poem juxtaposes elegies in literature, watching a meteor shower and considers personal and current events. Click on the title below to listen:

Meteors

Information about the journal is available at:
https://www.australianpoetry.org/

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We wish the superb artist Vera Rudner best wishes for her 98th birthday on the 1st of December. Rudner - the Post War Surrealist painter - and her work are the subject of Quemar Press' paperback Vera Rudner: A Study. More information about her paintings and about the paperback can be read on our Books for Purchase page.

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Now that Biological Necessity - Jennifer Maiden's forthcoming poetry collection from Quemar Press - is at the printers' first proof stage, we're happy to release the concept cover art above, and an excerpt from the publisher's preface. The collection is 80 pages long, with 22 poems.

Excerpt from the preface:

'This new collection of poems reflects Aneurin Bevan's observation that 'Socialism is a biological necessity'. Here, socialism branches out from being a necessity to being the human condition itself, or survival's impulse.
Here, biological necessity can be footsteps in trauma along a catwalk; the re-appropriation of elegies; keeping the incarnation of the beloved close, never fearing or etherealising it; Elizabeth Macquarie speaking of abuses of power with President Trump's mother Mary Anne MacLeod as they watch fireworks over Sydney Harbour; Maiden and her daughter watching a meteor shower in Covid lockdown; the definiteness of peace 'when it means not dying or losing biology'; writing having a function similar to a new vaccine; Ghislaine Maxwell in safe paper clothes in prison; Gore Vidal watching over Julian Assange and deciding it was not automatic biology that his country desert him; the similarity between symbols of a pandemic and symbols of empire; Maiden's female protagonist, Clare, mirrored in a Darling Harbour hotel window, thinking of Syria, Kurds, oil and Russia with George her partner; Gore Vidal watching Assange's trial and thinking of the testimony: that it is safer for an 'informant to make a statement about someone who is a ''nobody'', than someone who is genuinely dangerous'; Maiden's ancestor in India naming his new family after his first children and wife who died in a typhoon in the Bay of Bengal as he guards her hair incarnate in a watchchain, depression and vitality coexisting; maize offered to a deity instead of human sacrifice; the continuing glitter of a river freezing in a dream; the need for someone to be who they were pretending; Nasca Lines in Peru letting Carina - a shrewd hero created by the Carina Galaxy - rescue Andean mountain cats; the unfading impact of Abbie Hoffman; Donald Trump skyping with Clare and George as Human Rights observers on the 2020 U.S. election night by D.C. palm trees and chandeliers; the phrase 'black water' reinvented as a lyric, not a mercenary firm; Eleanor Roosevelt suspended in no place, unable to visit her earlier idea of her own Hillary Clinton; giving swans to the River Goddess of the Liffey, thankful for escape; or... La Niña - pacific, lit by lanterns, and counteracting forests on fire...

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4th November, 2020 (Sydney time):
Jennifer Maiden's U.S. Election Night poem is completed now and can be read below:

George Jeffreys:29:
George Jeffreys Woke Up in Mt Druitt
          Skyping with President Trump on Election Night, 2020

George Jeffreys woke up in Mt Druitt skyping with President Trump
on Election Night, 2020. Trump was in the Trump International Hotel
in Washington, where the Republicans were holding their election
party. The Building had once been the 1892 Richardson Romanesque
Old Post Office, and Trump seemed more preoccupied at first
with the odd building than he was with holding office:
                   'George, I tried to sell the government's lease
on this thing last year, but I couldn't because of Covid: Marie Celeste
time for hotels, although I don't like to mention ghosts. Sometimes
the clocktower peals by itself, and the elevator opens on an
unpushed floor, but Mother tells me that it isn't haunted. I get
her to check that stuff out. But it's an interesting place, isn't it?'
Clare was crouched behind George in the koala position.
She had been more insecure since the ghastly ghostly British Labour
Party suspended Jeremy Corbyn, and more demonstrative and sad
with their own child Corbyn, as if all discerning and gentle Corbyns
were in peril - some sort of open season. The hotel was interesting
indeed. Clare had observed that it had been designed like
a hotel and that Trump had turned it into something that looked
like a Post Office, but George found the decor touching.
He said, 'I can see you didn't have the heart to change it much.
There are some Trump labels and some ornate decorations
in the bedrooms, on the wine, and there are palm trees on
the roof and more chandeliers, though.' Trump nodded, all
his gestures emphatic as if skype were a rally or a mime show:
'I like a lot of light. But you're right: for the last four years
I've kowtowed too much to tradition. If I can't sell the lease,
I'm going to be a bit more creative. You can't turn Washington
into Florida by just planting a few palms.' Clare said, 'Tell him
your quote from Nye Bevan that the Labour Party has too
much reverence, and ask him if the results from Florida
are in. His scrutineers must have something there by now.'
Trump smiled his innocent woman-smile to somewhere
above George's left shoulder and said, 'I can hear you
myself, Ms. Collins. Yes, I should have done more to help
General Flynn when they set him up for opposing the Syrian
destabilisation by their Jihadis, but he can look after himself
that guy. I've been too worried about them, though. Your Corbyn
should have known that, too - don't sacrifice your generals.
I stopped that while there were still a few of them left
around to defend me. The only ones at the end I sacrificed
were maniacs like Bolton who opposed me. But I know
you don't like me comparing it to chess, George. No,
young lady' - few woman could resist that - 'I haven't heard
about Florida yet. And keep your eye on Pennsylvania. Pretty place
like a golf course. Or Michigan yet. Don't write off Michigan.
We got a great vibe there in the rallies. And no one minded
my post-Covid complexion. Everyone there is kind of red
also, and puffy.' 'Your eyes still look feverish', said George,
with an assumed sympathy that made him feel as if
he was back in Probation, conducting interrogations. One
treated Trump like an old crim, needing rationed respect after
a lifetime of male institutions. But there was still a New York
uptown unexpectedness about him. George said, as the glow
from a chandelier like Niagara blurred Trump to safe proportions,
'I think they've just brought Florida to show you.'
Trump conferred with two anxious apparatchiks, who
looked hopeful but perhaps were frightened not to.
Clare said, 'I thought they were going to move the party
To the White house because of the Mayor's Corona law?'
'I think Trump is making a point', said George, 'he'll go
To the East Room later, but his soul is here with a few
well-spaced loyalists in luxury. He's definitely now
left those urgent campaign headquarters in Virginia.'
Trump said, 'Florida is fine, George. I'd already
won the Early Voting and the Panhandle should stay
with me - they have, ever since they left Obama
rather than vote for Clinton. They still won't want her
to sneak into the White House under skirts of a Kamala.'
Clare said, 'The Panhandle is aptly named. They
are close in poverty to Tennessee and West Virginia.
They depend on the Army for money, but are in terror
of their kids being sent away to war. They knew you
would start less wars than Clinton. Maybe it's still true?'
He seemed sensitive in a childlike hesitation.
His default, thought George, was oddly deferential: maybe
again the product of male institutions, or his concern
for his Hebridean mother. 'I haven't started any wars,
certainly not with Russia over Hillary's No Fly Zone
in Syria. And Obama was the drone attack champion.
I've only just got rid of the release of civilian
casualty figures, but no one was admitting anyway
to many of them, Ms. Collins. George, I'll have to go
over to the East Room, but the skype's still okay there.
I'll snack here first: I like the cuisine better.
But I admit the East Room chandeliers look bigger.
When I leave, I'll show you the statue of Ben
Franklin outside the hotel here. You know, the one
who said there was never a bad peace, nor good war.
Before you say again my Israel Peace Deal is entirely
designed to milk Adelson for campaign funds, you
should think about who gets water rights on the Jordan.'
And he was gone, accepting some silver platter
of well-groomed sandwiches, thick-wigged little cakes,
and poignant flower petals. He did in fact reappear
half an hour later beside the Franklin statue.
It gazed down at him primly over its paunch.
Behind them the hotel shone, a grey pearl chandelier.
Trump said, 'The clocktower's like something out of Poe,'
but proudly, as if that gave it pedigree.
There were still car lights on Pennsylvania Avenue
as grim Secret Service shepherded him away.
The effulgence all had a quality of importance:
as if Washington wore its ghosts for the election,
thought George. 'So we wait for the East Room',
Clare shrugged. They lay together in the post-skype forenoon.
Corbyn still watched something pirated by his grandmother
outside in the loungeroom, and the sounds of easy laughter
mixed with the formal voice of birds outside the window.
Clare was considering the sexuality of hotels, the fact
That the ambience from the International could still linger
in the bedroom like overbred expensive flowers.
She said, 'Women like hotels because they can disincarnate
in them, be anonymous. It isn't about housework, although
housework annihilates, even though - and also because
- it soothes.
It's about the perfunctory being enough for glamour,
about reassuring that every lover is a stranger.' Trump
had an unusual ability to terminate his presence
from a conversation, there was no impingement after.
But the hotel itself stayed enough for their sex
in this election interstice to have an exotic
formality about it. The element of ballet won,
the movements lengthening, stretching out
as if two actors in a foreign room had come,
and the sounds had a wild bird's ritual harshness.
Then Clare squirmed crosslegged on the bed, her fist
under her cheek, watching George begin to watch
the laptop, first results for Florida. Earlier
the papers were pointed with quotes from Trump that
it was easy to win, hard to lose, especially for him,
but she said,
'From your accounts of him, it was just as hard to win.
He doesn't seem to be a man at home in danger.
He swam for shore, fed the sharks poor General Flynn.
Something as ludicrous as Russiagate was adequate
to prevent dialogue with Russia. How will he be later?'
'Tonight?' asked George. Despite their own dry daylight,
The timeframe seemed to be American. He awaited
more skype, the even bigger chandelier.
He said, 'I expect him to be honest', but he braced
as if Trump thinned to honesty might need pity.
All day the results bounced back and forth like tennis,
the Florida palmtrees swaying, then they rested
with Trump, as did angry Iowa, Ohio, Texas. 'It is
the Panhandlers', said Clare, 'not exiles for Cuba.
Although he may feel obligated to invade
anything now a little bit Latina.' 'He hasn't made
the final numbers yet,' said George, 'They've set
him up by allowing unmarked postals in Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia is pure Tammany. He'll jump it and declare
early. You're right, my love: he doesn't hold his nerve.'
On cue, the skype on his lap chandeliered alive.
The East Room looked like a billiard hall: long
tables, lozenge windows. George said:
'You were wrong.
Your chandeliers looked bigger. Don't declare.
They'll destroy the Middle East, arm Nato
under Germany. It won't just be murdering one man.'
Trump said, 'I won't declare. I'll just call it my
opinion. But if I don't make that speech I will be done.
They buy you off with a bullet in Washington.'
Clare said, 'Tell him to wait for Michigan and Georgia.'
But the flags were already being layered up behind him.
When he spoke his tone was understated, nervous,
with the underlying bitterness of a victor:
'I want to thank the American people…' and then
'We won't stand for it…' He had not turned off the skype.
George waited but there was no more conversation:
just the flags. Clare gripped and kissed his fingers: 'Gene
Sharp may get his homebaked colour revolution.'
And George shut the laptop finally
as if it were a door.
              ______________________

31st October, 2020:
In the lead-up to next week's U.S. Elections, Quemar now releases here the first part of an up-to-the-minute preview poem George Jeffreys: 29: George Jeffreys Woke Up in Mt Druitt Skyping with Donald Trump on Election Night, 2020 from Jennifer Maiden's upcoming collection, Biological Necessity (2021). In the poem, on the night of the 2020 election, in a house in Sydney's western suburbs, her created characters, human rights observers Clare Collins and George Jeffreys watch as American results are reported. They continue skyping with Donald Trump as he awaits and then receives these results at an election party in his Washington Trump International Hotel. We hope to publish the concluding part of the poem here on this page during Wednesday night (Australian time) to coincide with the election results. The most recent Clare and George poems preceding this poem - George Jeffreys Woke Up in Isolation and Clare Collins Woke Up in Mt Druitt - can be read in the Biological Necessity preview on our Forthcoming page.

George Jeffreys:29:
George Jeffreys Woke Up in Mt Druitt
          Skyping with President Trump on Election Night, 2020

George Jeffreys woke up in Mt Druitt skyping with President Trump
on Election Night, 2020. Trump was in the Trump International Hotel
in Washington, where the Republicans were holding their election
party. The Building had once been the 1892 Richardson Romanesque
Old Post Office, and Trump seemed more preoccupied at first
with the odd building than he was with holding office:
                   'George, I tried to sell the government's lease
on this thing last year, but I couldn't because of Covid: Marie Celeste
time for hotels, although I don't like to mention ghosts. Sometimes
the clocktower peals by itself, and the elevator opens on an
unpushed floor, but Mother tells me that it isn't haunted. I get
her to check that stuff out. But it's an interesting place, isn't it?'
Clare was crouched behind George in the koala position.
She had been more insecure since the ghastly ghostly British Labour
Party suspended Jeremy Corbyn, and more demonstrative and sad
with their own child Corbyn, as if all discerning and gentle Corbyns
were in peril - some sort of open season. The hotel was interesting
indeed. Clare had observed that it had been designed like
a hotel and that Trump had turned it into something that looked
like a Post Office, but George found the decor touching.
He said, 'I can see you didn't have the heart to change it much.
There are some Trump labels and some ornate decorations
in the bedrooms, on the wine, and there are palm trees on
the roof and more chandeliers, though.' Trump nodded, all
his gestures emphatic as if skype were a rally or a mime show:
'I like a lot of light. But you're right: for the last four years
I've kowtowed too much to tradition. If I can't sell the lease,
I'm going to be a bit more creative. You can't turn Washington
into Florida by just planting a few palms.' Clare said, 'Tell him
your quote from Nye Bevan that the Labour Party has too
much reverence, and ask him if the results from Florida
are in. His scrutineers must have something there by now.'
Trump smiled his innocent woman-smile to somewhere
above George's left shoulder and said, 'I can hear you
myself, Ms. Collins. Yes, I should have done more to help
General Flynn when they set him up for opposing the Syrian
destabilisation by their Jihadis, but he can look after himself
that guy. I've been too worried about them, though. Your Corbyn
should have known that, too - don't sacrifice your generals.
I stopped that while there were still a few of them left
around to defend me. The only ones at the end I sacrificed
were maniacs like Bolton who opposed me. But I know
you don't like me comparing it to chess, George. No,
young lady' - few woman could resist that - 'I haven't heard
about Florida yet. And keep your eye on Pennsylvania. Pretty place
like a golf course. Or Michigan yet. Don't write off Michigan.
We got a great vibe there in the rallies. And no one minded
my post-Covid complexion. Everyone there is kind of red
also, and puffy.' 'Your eyes still look feverish', said George,
with an assumed sympathy that made him feel as if
he was back in Probation, conducting interrogations. One
treated Trump like an old crim, needing rationed respect after
a lifetime of male institutions. But there was still a New York
uptown unexpectedness about him. George said, as the glow
from a chandelier like Niagara blurred Trump to safe proportions,
'I think they've just brought Florida to show you.'

to be continued
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Three of Quemar Press' latest paperbacks - The Cuckold and the Vampires, All She Resolves to Rescue and The Espionage Act - are featured in the exciting new Small Press Network 2020 Christmas Catalogue.
It can be read at:

https://smallpressnetwork.com.au/2020-spn-christmas-catalogue/

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Following the launching of Martin Johnston's Beautiful Objects and separately to it, we asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record After the Volcano, a preview poem from her forthcoming collection, Biological Necessity. After the Volcano was inspired by Johnston's poem, Central American Football, which she read at the launching. Maiden's poem interconnects post-volcanic survival, survival from Pinochet and imperial power in Latin America, the Bolivian elections, and the Western Empire's aspects of self-destruction. Click on the title below to listen:

After the Volcano

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The video of the recent memorial for Martin Johnston and Gleebooks launch of Ligature's new anthology of his work, 'Beautiful Objects' can be seen at:
https://martinjohnstonpoet.com/news
The feature was created and presented by Nadia Wheatley and Vivienne Latham , and includes readings or discussion of Martin's work by Lex Marinos, Joanne Burns, Gig Ryan, Toby Fitch, Jennifer Maiden, Chris Edwards, Kate Lilley, Laurie Duggan, Anna Couani, Philip Mead, Mark Mahemoff and Pam Brown.
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On the 11th of October, 2020, at 3.30 PM (Sydney, Australia, AEDT), Gleebooks will host an online book launch and memorial for the poet Martin Johnston. Ligature's book, Beautiful Objects, is an anthology of his work in poetry and translation. The event will include readings or discussion of his work by Lex Marinos, Nadia Wheatley, Joanne Burns, Gig Ryan, Toby Fitch, Chris Edwards, Kate Lilley, Laurie Duggan, Anna Couani, Philip Mead, Mark Mahemoff, Pam Brown, and Vivienne Latham.
More details are available at:
https://www.gleebooks.com.au/event/martin-johnston-beautiful-objects/
Jennifer Maiden will also be among the readers of his work at the launch, and separately from the launch she has just written a poem, After the Volcano, inspired by the launch and Martin's poem, Central American Football. She will read Central American Football at the launch. Her poem After the Volcano can be read in the preview of her forthcoming 2021 Quemar collection, Biological Necessity on our Forthcoming page.

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The first preview of Quemar Press' Modern English translation of Marie de France's 12th-century Anglo-Norman French Romance, Le Fresne (The Ash Tree) can be read by clicking on the cover picture at the bottom of the Forthcoming page. In this lai, spontaneous affection overcomes conceptual rejection.
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To preview Jennifer Maiden's forthcoming collection Biological Necessity (Quemar Press, 2021) we asked her to audio record her recent diary poem Uses of Indigo. The poem begins by considering Maiden's ancestors in Bengal, a fatal typhoon, ancestral remarriage, observing that 'survival is a characteristic of depression', and then develops into a refutation of the Prosecution argument in the Assange hearing that his efficiency and current survival show that he is not severely depressed. Click on the link below to listen:

Diary Poem: Uses of Indigo
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Recently there was an excellent and deeply considered review by University of Athens scholar Nikoleta Zampaki in Plumwood Mountain of Quemar's Workbook Questions: Writing of Torture, Trauma Experience by Margaret Bennett and Jennifer Maiden.
From the review:
'This workbook is an empirical novel addition in the current research in relation to creative writing on trauma. The authors would like to heal or recover participants’ souls through the writing, expression and critical view. As the participants searched and analysed their traumas, they understood their experiences and became more familiar with them, enabling them to face them radically. The radical character of authors’ research is obvious by their organisation and decision to help the participants face to face with their own traumas or tortures... the purpose of this book is a double manifestation: to free from inner traumas in general and to form an individual narration about them in practice. The workbook offers new data over the disciplines of traumatic experiences and their practical recovery.'
Margaret Bennett was for ten years Director of the first torture and trauma service in Australia - STARTTS, NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors, and Jennifer Maiden was their Writer in Residence. Both have extensive experience with trauma survivors. The full review can be read at:

https://plumwoodmountain.com/nikoleta-zampaki-reviews-workbook-questions-writing-of-torture-trauma-experience-by-margaret-bennett-and-jennifer-maiden/

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Quemar Press will publish Jennifer Maiden's new poetry collection, Biological Necessity, in 2021. Seven preview poems, Diary Poem: Uses of Biological Necessity, On Re-Reading the Essay, Paper dolls in paper clothes, Gore Vidal Woke Again in Belmarsh Prison, Purgatory, George Jeffreys: 28: George Jeffreys Woke Up in Isolation, and A somewhat consistent rule (in which Gore Vidal wakes up at the Old Bailey Assange Hearing, 9/9/20) can be read by clicking on the cover image on the Forthcoming page. By request and because of the great relevance of the Syrian conflict and the current Assange Old Bailey Hearing, she has just audio recorded two of the poems. Click on the titles below to listen:

George Jeffreys Woke Up in Isolation

A somewhat consistent rule
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Jennifer Maiden opening The Cuckold and the Vampires paperback

Quemar Press' new paperback is now available, Jennifer Maiden's The Cuckold and the Vampires: an essay on some aspects of conservative political manipulation of art and literature, including the experimental, and the conservatives' creation of conflict. It can be purchased from the Books for Purchase page.

From Quemar's Press release:
Jennifer Maiden wrote this essay over six months, beginning at the start of 2020. She has stated that it was created to be discursive and explorative in order to help widen the perspective of both sides of the political spectrum. The work discusses some of the vast history of conservative influences and persuasions in art, from medieval Europe to contemporary America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The essay's warm, enjoyable, astute and witty tone humanises political forces, institutions and players. The tone can also be complex, whilst always lucid, and where she felt it necessary Maiden has included autobiographical elements to further humanise the discourse. This work is designed to be accessible and not exclusive to readers from any particular political viewpoint. One of its aims is to expand the Overton window of political acceptability to make conservative influence on art an explicit topic, including for conservatives... Maiden has observed: 'One purpose of the essay is to try to warn against microcosmic unwariness in a situation where overwhelming macrocosmic forces are at play… My focus is on the wider causes of damage and the nature of power in art… we will continue to try here to respect what Pinter considered mandatory… to smash the mirror of the microcosm'... In its wide scope and overview, this essay encompasses descriptions of how the microcosm can be experienced as a fragmented and conflicted artistic persona created by covert conservatism, an exploited addiction, or a confected conflict designed to undermine the status of art.
This essay acts as a platform to give an artistic overview, to deconstruct microcosmal, interpersonal powerplay and rejection. In spite of any labyrinth or lure, here neither art nor artist are lessened by the impact of political manipulation, and candid respect for art is at one with the artist's survival.
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Following reader focus on two preview poems from Jennifer Maiden's future 2021 collection, 'Biological Necessity', we asked her to audio record 'Paper dolls in paper clothes' and 'Gore Vidal Woke Again in Belmarsh Prison'. Maiden has commented that the former looks at someone who might have been charged with espionage but was not (Ghislaine Maxwell), and the second looks at someone falsely accused of espionage (Julian Assange). Click on the titles below to listen. The texts can be read by clicking the Biological Necessity cover image on the Forthcoming page. (The reading uses Maxwell's English pronunciation of the name 'Ghislaine'.)

Paper dolls in paper clothes

Gore Vidal Woke Again in Belmarsh Prison

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We are grateful for continuing warm comments about our latest paperback, All She Resolves to Rescue - a work presenting Marie de France's great medieval romances Lanval and Guildeluec and Guilliadon (known as Eliduc) in Quemar Press' new Modern English translation, with the original Anglo-Norman French, and a subjective essay on the translations.
The distinguished translator and poet Jan Owen wrote: 'Well you have rescued those Lais for the modern English reader. It is a lovely book, both text and illustrations, and the essay is a fine inclusion. You have certainly kept the tone and delicacy of feeling of the originals; also the swiftness and surprise. I’ve just reread Lanval with pleasure and dipped into Guildeluec and Guilliadon. It’s enjoyable puzzling out the Breton too... I’ll reward myself tonight by reading slowly, in sequence, time travelling to those medieval courts with your help. Congratulations!'
Quemar is also proud that this paperback inspired a new poem by the erudite, perceptive and much gifted poet Kris Hemensley. He wrote, too, that he admired Quemar's 'commitment to... writing, translating, publishing', and he commented about 'All She Resolves to Rescue': 'Touched and tickled and impressed!' 'First fast flick took me to that dear little town Totnes, enroute as it is for your travellers Exeter! And i popped that into one of my ramble scribblings.'
His poem begins with a quote from the book:

' "I will tell you this story. / I will tell you
honestly."....:
(.........) dear
bell of the heart ring like
Westgarth Church's did twenty years
ago (poemd already) [Beat's
essay continuing --present
in the moment collecting
ancient Chinese & Japanese in
very same crescent --
is what i'm ever about
& always meant'

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The subject of Quemar's paperback 'Vera Rudner: A Study', the accomplished 97-year-old post-war artist Vera Rudner, has just recorded a long interview about her life, art and escape from Nazi Germany for Annie Friedlander at the Jewish Museum. On the left is a picture of Vera's daughter Ava with the influential collectors of Surrealism, James Agapitos and Ray Wilson, in front of two of Vera's paintings, Sacrilege and Kaleidoscopia, which they had purchased and later donated to the National Gallery of Australia. On the right is a picture of the Quemar Press paperback: Vera Rudner: A Study, and a recent photo of Vera taken by Quemar.

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Recently, the excellent and insightful biographer and autobiographer Nadia Wheatley and Martin Johnston's talented step-daughter Vivienne created a website in remembrance of the striking 70s and 80s poet Johnston.
They included Jennifer Maiden's reminiscences of Martin and the socio-political context surrounding left-wing writers at the time, from Maiden's The Cuckold and the Vampires: an essay on some aspects of conservative political manipulation of art and literature, including the experimental, and the conservatives' creation of conflict - available online on our Books page and soon to be released as a paperback.
We asked Maiden to audio record from that section of the essay. Click on the title below to listen:

The Cuckold and the Vampires excerpt re Martin Johnston Part 1

The Cuckold and the Vampires excerpt re Martin Johnston Part 2

Below is a drawing and inscription Johnston created when signing a copy of his first collection, Shadowmass, for Maiden in the 70s. On the website for Johnston, it is written 'Jennifer Maiden is one of the poets from Martin’s own generation that he most respected.'

The website for Martin Johnston is:
https://www.martinjohnstonpoet.com/recollections

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All She Resolves to Rescue is now available - a paperback presenting Marie de France's medieval romances Lanval and Guildeluec and Guilliadon (known as Eliduc) in Quemar Press' new Modern English translation, with the original Anglo-Norman French, and a subjective essay on the translations.
The paperback can be purchased on the Books for Purchase page.

From Quemar's Press Release:

The title All She Resolves to Rescue has two senses. On one level, the female heroes in these texts discern all that needs to be rescued. On another level, the rescues affect all, connecting disparate worlds surrounding them. Here, a sprite-like Lady can tell the Knight Lanval that she could never appear visible before him again if he let anyone know of their affection, but when her existence and her actual presence are the only things that can rescue him from the Court's corruption, she rides openly through the city, having decided to speak unconcealed before Lanval and the Court. In a similar way, with similar emancipatory energy, Guildeluec - the wife of the titular Knight Eliduc - can decide to revive the Lady whom Eliduc loves, who was hidden to her until that day. This action reveals the two women to one another and links two societies and ontological universes that the Knight has keep closely compartmentalised. Within these works, the female hero, deliberation and rescue are catalysts that connect powerful worlds kept secret from each other - at once protecting all from harm and causing narrative truth to be uncovered.
Considered the earliest female French poet, Marie de France based her late 12th century Lais on traditional Breton Lais, and she recounts the romances speaking as a storyteller commenting within the text.
This volume presents both works in Quemar Press' new Modern English translation, juxtaposed with the original texts.
‘High quality publisher of specialist medieval works... love this small press... bringing great medieval literary treasures to modern readers... exquisite translation...’ Carmel Bendon.
‘Fine translation, modern yet fragrant with that other time and place... transporting me to that other world of courtly love with its sinister shadows...’ Jan Owen.
In these texts, rescue is something that happens counter to societal expectations. The ethereal Lady breaks the convention that a stated rule is true when she chooses to save Lanval, after telling him the edict that he may not see her any longer. In comparison, Guildeluec surpasses societal concepts such as roles in relationships and rivalry when she decides to revive Guilliadon - her husband's lover - in honest affection and grief for her.
In these works, the female hero's agency brings the narrative to benign resolution - one in which rescued can live with rescuer, and in which distant fragmented worlds connect by means of that same emancipatory energy.

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With Quemar's upcoming paperback publication of Jennifer Maiden's book-length The Cuckold and the Vampires: an essay on some aspects of conservative political manipulation of art and literature, including the experimental, and the conservatives' creation of conflict, we asked her to audio record a section that analyses the difference between the microcosm of conservative spy novels and the macrocosm of work such as Greene and Kipling.
Following new warm comments about Maiden's Play With Knives novels, we also asked her to record a part from the first Play With Knives. Australian Literature Professor Stephen Knight first asked her to read this section at a Literary festival in the 1990s. In the recording, Maiden reads the roles of both the protagonists: the young prisoner Clare Collins, and George Jeffreys - the narrator, Clare's probation officer and, later, her partner. Click on the titles below to listen:
Excerpt on Greene and Kipling from The Cuckold and the Vampires

Part One of Excerpt from George and Clare dialogue in Play with Knives 1

Part Two of Excerpt from George and Clare dialogue in Play with Knives 1
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Quemar Press continues to add to our preview of Meeting Each Other Alive, our new English translations of the historic love letters between Manuela Sáenz and Simón Bolívar - two great leaders of the Nineteenth Century South American Revolution - and excerpts from Manuela Sáenz's diary. The ninth preview of Quemar's translation and commentary can be read on the Forthcoming page
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Following requests by readers, Jennifer Maiden has audio recorded the preview poem, Diary Poem: Uses of Biological Necessity from her 2021 Quemar Press collection, Biological Necessity. Quemar also asked her to record the poem, Diary Poem: Uses of Fear, from her new Quemar Press collection, The Espionage Act.The poem was written a week before the death of Jeffrey Epstein. The text of Uses of Biological Necessity can be read in the Biological Necessity preview on our Forthcoming page. The text of Uses of Fear can be read in the sampler for The Espionage Act on our Books for Purchase page.
Click on the titles below to listen to the poems:

Diary Poem: Uses of Fear

Diary Poem: Uses of Biological Necessity

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We're pleased to be organising a new paperback of Quemar's Modern English translations with our Printer.
This volume presents Marie de France's medieval romances Lanval and Guildeluec and Guilliadon (known as Eliduc) in Quemar Press' new Modern English translation, with the original Anglo-Norman French. The title All She Resolves to Rescue has two senses. On one level, the female hero in these texts discerns all that needs to be rescued. On another level, the rescues affect all, connecting disparate worlds through her emancipatory energy.

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Jennifer Maiden's new 75-page The Cuckold and the Vampires: an essay on some aspects of conservative political manipulation of art and literature, including the experimental, and the conservatives' creation of conflict is now available on the Books page with an ISBN as a free download.

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We were deeply sad to hear of the recent death of Professor Gerry Wilkes, Australian Literature Professor and editor of Southerly for over three decades. Jennifer Maiden, who was encouraged and published by him from early in her career, has commented: 'He was a great enthusiast for Australian literature and language, a strong and courageous intellect, and he made enormous efforts to ensure that Australian Literature survived and thrived as profoundly and diversely as possible'.

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After receiving new overseas orders for Jennifer Maiden's 2012 collection Liquid Nitrogen, Quemar Press asked her to audio-record an excerpt from its far-ranging longest poem, The Year of the Ox. The poem is also featured in Quemar's Selected of Maiden's work, Selected Poems 1967-2018. The full text of the poem can be read in the Selected Poems sampler on the Books for Purchase page. You can listen to the excerpt by clicking on the title below:

The Year of the Ox excerpt

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Quemar Press' new Modern English translation of Marie de France's Guildeluec and Guilliadon (a romance known as Eliduc) with a new Preface by the translator now has an ISBN, and is available as a free download on the Books page.

From Quemar Press' Preface:
'Near the story's conclusion, the narrator explains "they all made such effort/...so made their ending beautiful completely". Here, effort belongs to both natural force and protagonist, whether it is a storm forcing necessary truth to be revealed, or someone actively on watch over one she resurrected. Whether in a wave-torn ship, or unfolding and enfolding forest depths, this is a story where humane survival, affection and rescue come from action and deliberation, to surpass societal concepts such as roles in relationships, marriage and rivalry.'

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Because of Anzac Day, Quemar has received a request that Jennifer Maiden read her poem Into the bodies of poor men, about World War One and King's College Cambrige Carols - a poem from our first paperback Appalachian Fall. Click on the link below to listen. The text can now be read in the sampler for Appalachian Fall on the Books for Purchase page.

Into the bodies of poor men

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Vera Rudner - the 96-year-old exceptional post-war surrealist artist and the subject of Quemar's paperback 'Vera Rudner: A Study' - celebrated International Woman's Day with her daughter Ava on the 8th of March, 2020. After escaping Nazi Germany with her own mother, Rudner began her unusual work as a woman artist in the 40s, creating rare and significant art that deconstructs imbalances of power.

Vera Rudner, 96, with her daughter, Ava, celebrating International Women's Day

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A poem from The Espionage Act - Quemar's just-released collection by Jennifer Maiden - is part of Cordite's new issue, Earth (edited by courageous and brilliant Professor Maria Takolander).
Considering the new issue, and The Espionage Act's release, we asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record the poem, Diary Poem: Uses of the Noble Prize - a poem that encompasses the politics that vie for the Nobel Prize, and the speech by Nobel Prize recipient Harold Pinter, which addressed the dangers of disinformation, and the perilous role of writers.
Click on the title below to listen:

Diary Poem: Uses of the Nobel Prize

The text can be read at:
http://cordite.org.au/poetry/earth/diary-poem-uses-of-the-nobel-prize/

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This week, the mainstream media journal Australian Book Review made The Espionage Act - Quemar's just-released collection from Jennifer Maiden - their Book of the Week.
To accompany this, Australian Book Review featured a review of the book on their website.
From the review:
'...deals with the political, cultural, and sexual drama of espionage. The Espionage Act invites the reader to view an array of contemporary events... through the prism of twentieth-century intelligence history. Maiden shows herself immensely literate in the varieties of jargon employed by spies and their agencies; one of the pleasures afforded by this volume...
Since Maiden’s celebrated book Friendly Fire (2005), her work has consistently sought to dramatise the aftershocks of geopolitical upheaval at the level of the domestic and intimate. The Espionage Act continues in this vein...
...recovery in a world webbed with murderous design is the unspoken hope that marks so many of the new poems.
One of Maiden’s great strengths is her ability to preserve a tender awareness in the midst of privation and intrigue. It is there in Gore Vidal’s solicitude towards a sleeping Assange in ‘Gore Vidal Woke Up in Belmarsh Prison’: ‘Assange’s face had gentled younger, perhaps / due to the lack of close eyesight, to white light / from the barred window, the small television / with its simplifications like childhood.’ …

The review can be read at:
https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/features/abr-online-exclusives/225-abr-online-exclusives/6252-james-jiang-reviews-the-espionage-act-new-poems-by-jennifer-maiden

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In 2020, Quemar will publish Bernat Metge's late fourteenth century Catalan Lo Sompni (known as Lo Somni in modern Catalan, 'The Dream'), in our new Modern English translation.

The preview on the Forthcoming page now includes the entire Book One of Lo Sompni.

This work is a testament to Literature's ability to influence society and the political sphere surrounding it. Imprisoned in a dangerous setting for the murder of King John the First, Metge describes spectral conversations with the dead King so that the text will persuade society of his innocence. The intricate metaphysical debate in the dialogue reinforces the recognition that Metge is not regarded as guilty by the late King. There is also deliberate contextual irony in that the Metge persona continues to debate the existence of the spiritual afterlife with the vibrant spirit of the King, Metge now having moved on to the subject of the survival of animals' souls, for which survival he argues against the King, if still needing to display deference. There is a new facet of irony here, as the reader already knows that the King is accompanied by spectral birds and hounds. Whilst Metge will at last appear to accept the King's more orthodox position, the work allows him to present his own broader humane perceptions in a safe context. The scene is set for their dialogue to continue, although the King warns Metge to be succinct, as the King cannot stay long.

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In light of last week's release of Jennifer Maiden's new Quemar Press collection, The Espionage Act, and because of continuing intense interest in Maiden's Gore Vidal and Julian Assange poems, which form part of this collection, and because Assange's Extradition hearing will begin within days, we asked Maiden to audio record Maximum Security, the last Vidal/Assange poem in the collection. It can be heard by clicking on the title below. The text can be read in the sampler for The Espionage Act on our Books for Purchase page.

Maximum Security

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The Espionage Act: New Poems, Quemar Press' new collection from Jennifer Maiden is officially released now
A Sampler - Resistance ; Except (The Federal Police Raid on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation); Brookings Gets A Helmet; George Jeffreys: 25: George Jeffreys Woke Up on Abu Musa Island; The Espionage Act; Diary Poem: Uses of Fear; Clare’s Dream; Brookings Tries Out Ubiquity; Diary Poem: Uses of Alan Turing; Diary Poem: Uses of Poetry Wars and Maximum Security - can be read by clicking on The Espionage Act cover image on the Books for Purchase page.
To celebrate the official release, Quemar Press has just added the book's last Gore Vidal and Julian Assange poem, Maximum Security to the sampler.

From Quemar's Press Release:

'Speaking of the literature Nobel, I can’t think of a better Australian contender.' - Professor Maria Takolander, The Saturday Paper

The Espionage Act is the new poetry collection by the internationally renowned author, Jennifer Maiden. With her characteristic clear, powerful focus and crisp but sumptuous lyrical style, she analyses espionage in many senses - from the U.S. 1917 Espionage Act to reflections on the Deep State, to tactical levels in conservative espionage, to its sexuality of fear, to covert promotion and funding of experimental art, to espionage as survival, and to espionage's reactions to primal digital technology. Maiden also describes the mind itself in its multifaceted acts of espionage.
When she was asked about the unique style encompassing the collection, she replied: 'Genres such as the exclusively lyrical introspective, lyrical observational, introspective experimental, abstract experimental non-sequential, satirical or experimental satirical are all in their essence confined in a microcosm, even if with suggested resonances, but my technique attempts to operate in a macrocosm, where all those other techniques can seem to be utilised but are actually transcended. The purpose is to confront, present, inhabit and question real powers (individual or universal) in the world from as equal a basis as literature - which in itself has a natural potential for equality - allows.'
Here, being capable of understanding power is also an equalising force, and understanding espionage is a way of understanding power in domestic and global terms. In one of the poems, Maiden's created character, George Jeffreys intrigues his CIA drinking friend from Langley by observing 'the metaphysical necessity of understanding espionage to provide a macrocosm to oppose the microcosm of obvious immediate reality.'
Characters across this sphere include Gore Vidal, Julian Assange, Alan Turing, Dorothy Wordsworth, Jackson Pollock, Brett Whiteley, García Márquez, Alexander Downer, Emma Goldman, Princess Diana, Mike Pompeo, The Master of the Crossroads, Jeffrey Epstein, and Maiden's own Clare and George, the sometimes allegorical but always innocent little marsupial Brookings, George's CIA drinking buddy, the indigenous ASIO agent Olivia, and the archetypal critic, who is an aspect of any person with whom he speaks.
Within this collection, the mind's intrinsic acts of espionage can help remedy power or the lack of power. Clare, for example, watches the pre-dawn sky on behalf of her siblings, whom she murdered as a child, and explains: 'the mind has many mansions, many rooms/ and the children I killed as a child are in my brain, with me in/reality physically and cognitively, to enjoy the moon's wane/even when I'm not aware existentially of them. I remain/always their agent. My mind is a constant act of espionage.' In another poem, the poet asks about spies, 'How often were they actually angry?', and the poem finishes with the line: 'our unknown is always home.' Within this collection, actions of espionage can presuppose concealed emotional truth, just as acting presupposes an actor.
Here, exploring espionage's psychological complexities and deceptions allows the poet to observe and dismantle annihilating concepts of espionage - whether they involve intelligence operations, institutional deceptions, intimidations or assassinations - with her own guile and profound passion.

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Jennifer Maiden and Mrs. Macquarie's Chair

Current funding climate: Island have just accepted a poem, Lioness, by Jennifer Maiden but postponed its publication until 2021, citing their fear that the poem would lose their financial backers and a possible Morrison Government grant. We sympathize with their problem. So everyone involved can avoid censorship-by-delay we now publish the poem here on News. It is of course possible that it is the work of Jennifer Maiden as such and not just this one poem that is at issue. The current Island Poetry Editor - whom Quemar respects highly - is herself published by a well- established publisher who earlier also defended discontinuing publishing Maiden's books, so we understand her caution in publishing Maiden's work. It is apt that Maiden's forthcoming long essay The Cuckold and the Vampires considers conservative creation of conflict in art (previewed on Forthcoming page). Island also stated that Maiden had been published in the last 2 issues of their magazine. This is regrettably incorrect. She was not published in the last issue, and recently only in issues 157 and 155. These poems are now in her Quemar collections brookings:the noun and The Espionage Act.
Lioness was written in the first week of 2020, in the bushfire season, and depicts Mrs. Macquarie as she returns annually to watch the New Year's Eve fireworks on Sydney Harbour from Mrs. Macquarie's Chair. This year she is accompanied by Donald Trump's mother, Mary Anne, who is also Scottish. The poem is concerned with the violence of power, the complex and unpredictable nature of women who are chosen as figureheads, the dangers they face, the entrapment of animals and the catastrophic nature of the current scenes observed by these two women.

Lioness

This is a poem for the New Year
about lionesses. It begins on Mrs.Macquarie's Chair
- carved out of rock for her - at the side of Sydney Harbour.
She - Elizabeth - wakes up every New Year here
to watch the fireworks, saw the bridge appear
once in cataract fire where it did not exist before.
This year she has brought a guest with her:
Mary Anne MacLeod from the Hebrides, the mother
of President Donald Trump, whose soul is sore
from worry like a salt wound from seawater.
This is a poem for the New Year
about lionesses and lethal fire.
This night as they watch the soft harbour disappear
in burning bloodorange bayonets like war,
there is another battle near Malua
on the South Coast where the small zoo is in danger.
I myself have mistrusted the whole area
since years ago they shot a lioness there
who had wandered through a mistakenly open door,
but there is no doubt tonight I dread to read on Twitter
that all the rest of the inmates are on fire.
There was the same feeling about each prisoner
locked down for two days in Lithgow gaol earlier
as the flames approached, because it was too dear
to pay for an escort out for them. 'There is something drear
and dank tonight', said Elizabeth, 'about my harbour:
the fumes are not just prettiness but aged in wood with cancer.'
Mary Anne sat on the friendly stone seat closer.
She said, 'My son Donald has destroyed a force of fighters
against Isis in Iraq, pretending they were only Shia
fighting for Iran. He may have forgotten how in Libya,
they sodomised Gaddafi with a knife but later
lost one of their best spies, the Ambassador,
to a crowd by then exhausted with cold anger.'
Elizabeth sighed, 'I remember the Appin massacre.
Lachlan ordered herded Aboriginal families to slaughter
over cliffs, he said, to stop attacks on settlers.'
There was constant puny popping in the sky like gunfire.
'The multitudinous seas incarnadine', they both said together,
linking fingers for a wish, and resorting to Shakespeare.
This is a poem for the New Year,
about lionesses and death. Even Greta
Thunberg one knows now was an actor
arranging on a prior party phone call to star
as 'the lonely girl' for a staging photographer,
financed by powerful NGOs, including the PR
people for the White Helmets, that her Twitter
recommended a State of Emergency in Bolivia
to control wildfires as the Government there
fell to religious racists. There will be smooth and simpler
firework New World Orders to the older ones on offer.
That does not mean that the lonely girl is never
a lioness who can roam the apocalypse forever.
Indeed, the MSM has become quiet about Malala
since she explained socialism was her answer.
Our two Scots women clasp hands together.
Cows and horses explode like fireworks with small, noisier
eruptions in the paddocks after death. But here
I am writing a poem for you for the New Year.
This time, guards saved wild animals near Malua.
Mary Anne comforted Elizabeth, 'I knew we'd share
the same wish: that everything that has died has one latter
joy inside their head that all is better,
as we ourselves did beyond all that suffers.'
Without horror,
they saw the lioness in the blind wind devour
last fireworks burst in flowers on saltwater.

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As the Saudi Crown Prince is back in the news, we have had a request that Jennifer Maiden audio record her brookings: the noun collection poem, What Did They Do with the Bits?, in which Princess Diana and Mother Teresa discuss the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who was Dodi Fayed's cousin. We have included the text of the poem now in the sampler for brookings: the noun on our Books for Purchase page.

The poem can be heard by clicking on the title below:

What Did They Do with the Bits?

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Because of recent increase in international conflict, we have received more comments about Jennifer Maiden's poem Rope from her 2019 collection brookings: the noun. The poem includes references to the U.S. Foreign Policy recommendations to move to nuclear options.
In a recent review of brookings:the noun and Jennifer Maiden's Selected Poems 1967-2018 in Plumwoood Mountain, Siobhan Hodge comments on Rope:
It is this lingering, latent threat of violence, shielded by the different iterations of political and social ‘brookings’ that plagues these poems. Maiden pushes back against complacency. In ‘Rope’, the speaker’s refrain ‘We’ll talk soon of Elbridge Colby’ hints at the catastrophic foreshadowing of the recommendation offered by Colby, a member of Trump’s administration: ‘If you want peace, prepare for nuclear war.’ The speaker throws the human cost of such rhetoric in the listener’s face:
They threatened and promised so much,
and why when I was contained, numberless,
and posed no threat?
We’ll talk soon of Elbridge Colby.
But I ask you to hold this rope,
as no postmodernist conceit.
My weight will rip inside your armpits
and I’ll sway like a corpse
back and forth on blind depths
too lightless even for black, too deaf
for wet echo …
Threats for peace do not offer grounds for purchase...'
We have now included the poem in the brookings:the noun sampler on our Books for Purchase page, and Jennifer Maiden has audio recorded it. The recording can be heard by clicking on the title below:

Rope

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Current events in Syria have renewed our readers' interest in the prescience of Jennifer Maiden's controversial long 2018 poetry and prose narrative George Jeffreys Woke Up in Damascus from her 2019 Quemar collection brookings: the noun. After requests, on New Year's Eve she has audio recorded the full sequence and it can be heard by clicking on the parts below. The text can be read in the brookings: the noun sampler on our Books for Purchase page.

George Jeffreys Damascus 1&2

George Jeffreys Damascus 3

George Jeffreys Damascus 4

George Jeffreys Damascus 5

George Jeffreys Damascus 6&7

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One of the best books of 2019 in the Sydney Morning Herald/The Age is our new collection by Jennifer Maiden The Espionage Act (we're proud, though the book isn't officially released yet!). Distinguished poet and critic Gig Ryan wrote: Jennifer Maiden’s The Espionage Act (Quemar Press) continues her sharply staged commentaries on machinations of power: "it is such great violence nothing comprehends it."'.

The article can be read at:

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/the-books-we-loved-in-2019-20191204-p53gvg.html

We still have advance copies of The Espionage Act available for purchase on the Books for Purchase page.
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In light of the recent new interest in Jennifer Maiden's 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize shortlisted collection, Liquid Nitrogen, and the Griffin Poetry Prize highlighting work from it, a reader requested that we ask Maiden to audio record a poem from it entitled Well Inside Fireground. This poem depicts a firefighter fighting a bushfire alone in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains.
You can listen to the poem by clicking on the title below:

Well Inside Fireground

As the poem is also featured in Maiden's Selected Poems 1967-2018, we added the text of the poem to the Selected Poems sampler on the Books for Purchase page.

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In light of the forthcoming release of Jennifer Maiden's Quemar Press collection, The Espionage Act, in 2020, and our advance copies available now (on the Books for Purchase page), we asked Maiden to audio record the title poem from the collection. In this poem, Gore Vidal and the anti-conscription activist Emma Goldman (who was imprisoned under the 1917 U.S. Espionage Act) speak at the bedside of an ill Julian Assange, who is under threat from the same Espionage Act. The text of the poem can be read in the collection's sampler on the Books for Purchase page. Click on the title below to listen:

The Espionage Act

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Quemar Press would like to send warm wishes to Vera Rudner, the exceptional artist and the subject of Quemar's paperback 'Vera Rudner: A Study', who turns 97 on the 1st of December.

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To celebrate the arrival of our advance copies of Jennifer Maiden's 2020 poetry collection The Espionage Act we asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record a poem from it, George Jeffreys: 25: George Jeffreys Woke Up on Abu Musa Island. This apt and lively poem is one of the three long George Jeffreys pieces in the collection, which also has poems on many different characters and topics. The poem's text can be read in the sampler for the collection on our Books for Purchase page. Click on the title below to listen to the recording:

George Jeffreys: 25: George Jeffreys Woke Up on Abu Musa Island

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Jennifer Maiden's collection The Espionage Act: New Poems (2020) - Advance copies available now

It can be purchased on the Books for Purchase page.

From Quemar's Press Release:
The Espionage Act is the new poetry collection by the internationally renowned author, Jennifer Maiden. With her characteristic clear, powerful focus and crisp but sumptuous lyrical style, she analyses espionage in many senses - from the U.S. 1917 Espionage Act to reflections on the Deep State, to tactical levels in conservative espionage, to its sexuality of fear, to covert promotion and funding of experimental art, to espionage as survival, and to espionage's reactions to primal digital technology. Maiden also describes the mind itself in its multifaceted acts of espionage.
When she was asked about the unique style encompassing the collection, she replied: 'Genres such as the exclusively lyrical introspective, lyrical observational, introspective experimental, abstract experimental non-sequential, satirical or experimental satirical are all in their essence confined in a microcosm, even if with suggested resonances, but my technique attempts to operate in a macrocosm, where all those other techniques can seem to be utilised but are actually transcended. The purpose is to confront, present, inhabit and question real powers (individual or universal) in the world from as equal a basis as literature - which in itself has a natural potential for equality - allows.'
Here, being capable of understanding power is also an equalising force, and understanding espionage is a way of understanding power in domestic and global terms. In one of the poems, Maiden's created character, George Jeffreys intrigues his CIA drinking friend from Langley by observing 'the metaphysical necessity of understanding espionage to provide a macrocosm to oppose the microcosm of obvious immediate reality.'
Characters across this sphere include Gore Vidal, Julian Assange, Alan Turing, Dorothy Wordsworth, Jackson Pollock, Brett Whiteley, García Márquez, Alexander Downer, Emma Goldman, Princess Diana, Mike Pompeo, The Master of the Crossroads, Jeffrey Epstein, and Maiden's own Clare and George, the sometimes allegorical but always innocent little marsupial Brookings, George's CIA drinking buddy, the indigenous ASIO agent Olivia, and the archetypal critic, who is an aspect of any person with whom he speaks.
Within this collection, the mind's intrinsic acts of espionage can help remedy power or the lack of power. Clare, for example, watches the pre-dawn sky on behalf of her siblings, whom she murdered as a child, and explains: 'the mind has many mansions, many rooms/ and the children I killed as a child are in my brain, with me in/reality physically and cognitively, to enjoy the moon's wane/even when I'm not aware existentially of them. I remain/always their agent. My mind is a constant act of espionage.' In another poem, the poet asks about spies, 'How often were they actually angry?', and the poem finishes with the line: 'our unknown is always home.' Within this collection, actions of espionage can presuppose concealed emotional truth, just as acting presupposes an actor.
Here, exploring espionage's psychological complexities and deceptions allows the poet to observe and dismantle annihilating concepts of espionage - whether they involve intelligence operations, institutional deceptions, intimidations or assassinations - with her own guile and profound passion.
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Considering continued interest in CIA Operations such as Mockingbird, which involved largescale infiltration of the press and publishing, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to record the powerful lyrical poem, Mockingbird, Mockingbird from her 2019 Quemar collection, brookings: the noun. Click on the title below to listen:

Mockingbird, Mockingbird

The text of the poem can be read in the brookings: the noun sampler on our Books for Purchase page.

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Quemar Press is delighted that Jennifer Maiden's 2020 collection, The Espionage Act: New Poems is now at the Printers. To celebrate, Quemar asked Maiden to audio record a haunting poem from this upcoming collection. In the poem, The word on the street, Gore Vidal shares powerful gossip with Princess Diana as they watch vigilantly over an ill Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison's hospital.
The text of the poem can be read in the preview for The Espionage Act on our Forthcoming page.
Click on the title below to listen:

The word on the street

Following the large gaol sentences imposed on leaders of the Catalan Independence movement recently, and subsequent vast street protests in Catalonia, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record two poems she wrote about the Civil Guard's use of force and violent tactics against Catalan voters in 2017. The poems, The Civil Guard and The Civil Guard 2, were featured in Quemar's first paperback - Maiden's collection Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, and Quemar's Selected of her work: Selected Poems 1967-2018.
The text of these two poems can be read in the Sampler for Appalachian Fall on our Books for Purchase page.
Click on the title below to listen:

The Civil Guard 1 and 2
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Quemar is proud to have four of our titles featured in the 2019 Small Press Network Christmas Catalogue - Vera Rudner: A Study; Once She Had Escaped the Tower: Aucassin and Nicolette and Marie de France's Gugemer; and Jennifer Maiden's works Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, and brookings: the noun. Following this, we added the full text of George Jeffreys Woke Up in Damascus to our sampler of Maiden's brookings: the noun. This is a prescient poem in poetry and prose set in Syria, and is one of the collection's poems analysing the controversial NGO, the White Helmets.
The complete poem can be read now in the brookings: the noun sampler on our Books for Purchase page.

The catalogue is available at:

https://smallpressnetwork.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/582SPNT_Catalogue-2019_v8_FA_web.pdf

George Jeffreys Woke Up in Damascus from brookings: the noun

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Jennifer Maiden launching Maureen Maguire's poetry collection 'Sometimes Smiling'

Maureen Maguire and Jennifer Maiden

Maureen Maguire and Jennifer Maiden with Maureen's dog Lily

On Saturday, 12th October, 2019, Jennifer Maiden launched Maureen Maguire's poetry collection, Sometimes Smiling, at Springwood in the NSW Blue Mountains. Maiden wrote the Forward to the book, which comprises a lifetime of writing by Maguire, who is now in her Nineties and participated in many workshops conducted by Maiden. Maguire emigrated from Lancashire in her youth, and her work deals with poignant and sometimes traumatic experiences in a skilful, original and sometimes humorous style. The launch was attended by Maureen's family and by many others with whom she has shared her work, including Danny Gardner from Live Poets at Don Bank. The book is published by Cutaway Publishing, 55 Arcadian Ct., Carlingford, Sydney, NSW, 2118.
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In view of the new issue of the vibrant online literary journal, Stilts, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record her new poem from it. The poem is titled Slow Wine and will also feature in Maiden's upcoming 2020 collection with Quemar, The Espionage Act. Slow Wine looks at spying, the levels of reality and the levels of acting within it, including a focus on Philby and Sorge. Click on the title below to listen:
Slow Wine

The text of the poem can be read at:
https://www.stiltsjournal.com/issue-5

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Considering the current debate about the internet's role in disseminating information and the control of it, Quemar Press asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record a poem from The Espionage Act, her forthcoming 2020 Quemar collection. The poem is Diary Poem: Uses of Alan Turing. Click on the title below to listen. The Text of the poem can be read in the preview of the collection on our Forthcoming page.

Diary Poem: Uses of Alan Turing

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Following the release of the exciting Australian Poetry Journal, Volume 9, No.1 (edited by John Kinsella),themed around dissidence, Quemar Press asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record her poem from it. The poem is entitled Umbrage in Vault Seven. The poem is from Maiden's forthcoming 2020 Quemar Press collection, The Espionage Act, and the poem's title refers to the U.S. Operation Umbrage, which involves inserting foreign words into the codes when hacking into sites in order to implicate other countries falsely. It was revealed as part of Wikileaks exposure of Vault Seven. The poem quotes the American Secretary of State, Pompeo, and in a short space casts light on many issues of political deception. Click on the title below to listen:

Umbrage in Vault Seven

Information about the Australian Poetry Journal is available at:
https://www.australianpoetry.org/australian-poetry-journal/

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Vera Rudner's daughter Ava has recently discovered on her computer hard drive a fifteen-year old photograph of the art collectors James Agapitos and Ray Wilson, standing with Ava in front of Vera's paintings Sacrilege and Kaleidoscopia at a Queensland exhibition of paintings from the definitive Agapitos/Wilson collection of Australian Surrealism, now in the Australian National Gallery. These two paintings and others of Vera's paintings are reproduced and analysed in Quemar's paperback, Vera Rudner: A Study, the only work entirely on Vera Rudner. It can be purchased on our Books for Purchase page.

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Quemar Press' new paperback, Workbook Questions: Writing of Torture, Trauma Experience, by Margaret Bennett and Jennifer Maiden, is now available.

It can be purchased on the Books for Purchase page.

Workbook Questions: Writing of Torture, Trauma Experience is designed to facilitate survivors of trauma and torture in writing of traumatic experiences, even if complex or untold, by using clinically planned questions to create a space where the survivor's sense of self and identity can remain securely intact.
This workbook and its questions were developed by the clinician, academic and researcher Margaret Bennett, who, for a decade, was the Director of STARTTS (NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors), and by the acclaimed author Jennifer Maiden, who was their Writer in Residence, and has conducted over a thousand other literary workshops dealing with traumatic material. This book includes a far-ranging, informal discussion between Bennett and Maiden on the questions' genesis and the theory and clinical experience underpinning them.

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Kris Hemensley in not-a-shop bookstore, formerly Collected Works

Loretta and Kris Hemensley

Kris Hemensley in not-a-shop

Following the closure of a great supporter of Quemar Press and advocate of Australian poetry and authors, Melbourne's Collected Works bookstore (which was owned and run by Kris and Loretta Hemensley), Kris explains, 'Melbourne friends can always try Kris Hemensley at the post-Collected Works not-a-shop'. He can be contacted by email at kris.hemensley@gmail.com or by the Collected Works Facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Bookstore/Collected-Works-Bookshop-175023895845165/
The post-Collected Works not-a-shop stocks all Quemar's titles. The pictures above were taken at Kris and Retta's not-a-shop recently by the prominent poet Alex Skovron.

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Jennifer Maiden: Clare's Dream from The Espionage Act

Jennifer Maiden: George Jeffreys Woke Up in New Orleans from Selected Poems

Following great interest in Jennifer Maiden's poem Clare's Dream, which we placed online in our preview of her forthcoming Quemar collection, The Espionage Act, she has audio recorded it for Quemar. Click on the title below to listen:

Clare's Dream

The text of the poem Clare's Dream is in our preview of The Espionage Act on our Forthcoming page.

As some of the interest included the poem's depiction of the Master of the Crossroads, we have added by request to our sampler from Maiden's Selected poems1967-2018, Maiden's earlier poem George Jeffreys: 7: George Jeffreys Woke Up in New Orleans in which George introduces Clare to the Master in hurricane-devastated New Orleans. The sampler is available on the Books for Purchase page.
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Quemar Press adds a new short recorded conversation between the 96-year-old artist Vera Rudner and her daughter, Ava. This conversation involves the use of Ouija boards by Abstract artists in the 1940s to contact the subconscious. In this case, the Ouija Board did not tune in to Vera's subconscious, but to the future of her husband, Albert, who was away at the Second World War.
Click on the title below to listen:

Conversation between Vera Rudner and her daughter, Ava, about Ouija board

Vera Rudner and her vibrant paintings are the subject of Quemar's Vera Rudner: A Study, which can be purchased on our Books for Purchase page.
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Following requests from some of our readers, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record a prose and a poetry section from her recent classic experimental novel, 'Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds'. She read the prose Chapter 11, 'Pia Mater', in which Maiden's Clare Collins and George Jeffreys sit around a table, with howling Russian weather outside, attempting to rescue a young arms dealer from her frightening telecommunications expert husband, Schmidt, as they talk with him. Maiden also read the verse Chapter 12, 'How did the Devil come?', which depicts Schmidt and looks at the idea that someone acting unethically may think of themselves as being innocent at some earlier point in time, and whether this is valid.
Click on the titles below to listen:

Chapter 11, 'Pia Mater' (Part one)

Chapter 11, 'Pia Mater' (Part two)

Chapter 12, 'How did the Devil come?'

The text of these chapters is included in the sampler for the book. The sampler can be read on our Books for Purchase page.
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Vera Rudner's Sacrilege (courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia) and Quemar Press' Vera Rudner: A Study

Quemar asked Vera Rudner and her daughter to discuss Vera's work, with its vivid depiction of emotion, warfield and energy. Her daughter, Ava, recorded a conversation with her, in which the 96-year-old Rudner speaks about creating her powerful painting Sacrilege. Sacrilege and other works by Vera are discussed in Quemar's paperback, Vera Rudner: A Study, the only book entirely about her work. Click on the title below to listen to the recording:

Vera Rudner in Conversation with her daughter, Ava, about Sacrilege

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Quemar Press' lively new far-reaching paperback, Once She Had Escaped the Tower, is now available.

From Quemar's Press Release:
‘Fine translation…with both accuracy and grace… A reminder, and an example, of how compelling narrative poetry can be.’ (on 'Gugemer')… It is so touching and magical… a page-turner… translating a love-story as a labour of love… capture[s] the right tone and that balance of grace and intensity.’ (on 'Aucassin and Nicolette') - Jan Owen
The title 'Once She Had Escaped the Tower' has two meanings: once a lady escaped an imprisoning tower resolutely; and the lady continued her actions after escape. In contrast to literature in which a female hero dies captive in a tower, and to works in which her escape signals the end of narrative, Quemar Press’ new volume shows female protagonists’ survival, and casts light on them as they continue. This volume includes two texts encompassing this ability to continue: Medieval French chantefable 'Aucassin and Nicolette' and Marie de France’s Anglo-Norman Romance 'Gugemer'.
Quemar's Modern English translations are juxtaposed with the early French texts. This volume also includes a subjective essay by the translator.
'Aucassin and Nicolette' is a Medieval French ‘chantefable’ (a song-fable) by an anonymous author, interconnecting prose and song, creating a courtly love story.
Marie de France's 'Gugemer' comes from traditional Breton. She is considered earliest female French poet, her work written 1160-1215.
In this volume, the stories’ energy and fine emotional intensity is shown in illustrations inspired by Medieval art.
Here, the female hero’s character is never bound to fixed moments. Instead, new light falls on her as she moves across unconfining ground.

It can be purchased now on the Books for Purchase page.

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On the 27th of June,2019, B'nai B'rith and COA Sydney hosted a cocktail party to celebrate their exhibition showcasing exceptional work by Jewish artists, and to give the public an opportunity to meet the artists. Two paintings - Suburbia and Be Back in the Morning - by the subject of Quemar's paperback, Vera Rudner: A Study, the rare and vital Surrealist artist, Vera Rudner, were on show. The publisher of Quemar Press, Katharine Margot Toohey, recorded a short interview with 96-year-old Rudner at the event. She asked about Rudner's early experience of art in Berlin before Rudner escaped Nazi Germany, and the contrast between those art movements and early Surrealism in Sydney.
You can listen to the recording by clicking on the title below.

Short Interview with 96-year-old Surrealist artist Vera Rudner by Katharine Margot Toohey, 27th June, 2019

Pictures of the event are available below.
The exhibition itself runs until the7th July, 2019, at the B'nai B'rith Centre, UNSW, Barker St., Kensington (next to Shalom College)
Mon to Thurs 10AM-4PM, Sunday 11AM-4PM. Gold coin entry.

Quemar Press publisher Katharine Margot Toohey and Vera Rudner with Suburbia

Vera Rudner and Quemar Press author Jennifer Maiden with Be Back in the Morning

Exhibition of Jewish Artists at B'nai B'rith Centre, UNSW, Sydney

Vera Rudner with Suburbia

Artists Clifford Rubenstein and Anna Krendal with Vera Rudner

The Exhibition's Accordionist

Vera Rudner and Jennifer Maiden with Be Back in the Morning

Katharine Margot Toohey recording Vera Rudner

Quemar Press publisher Katharine Margot Toohey and Vera Rudner with Quemar Press' book Vera Rudner: a Study

Vera Rudner and Jennifer Maiden with Be Back in the Morning

Vera Rudner and her cousin with Quemar Press' Vera Rudner: a Study

Katharine Margot Toohey, Jennifer Maiden and Vera Rudner

Vera Rudner and Katharine Margot Toohey with Be Back in the Morning

Vera Rudner and Jennifer Maiden with Be Back in the Morning

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In light of the just-released
issue 157 of Island Magazine (edited by Vern Field with Sarah Holland-Batt editing poetry) featuring terrific writers, Jennifer Maiden audio recorded her new poem included in the issue, Pollock Whiteley and the critic. In the poem, in a darkened art gallery, in a space away from time, Jackson Pollock, Brett Whiteley and the archetypal critic stand in front of Pollock's Blue Poles and speak of conservative misuse of experimental art movements to distract from Socialism in art and the effect of this on artists. Click on the title below to listen:

Pollock, Whiteley and the critic (Part One of audio)

Pollock, Whiteley and the critic (Part Two of audio)

Maiden's recent poem in Island issue 155, Hillary and Eleanor: 16: Concrete, is featured now in her latest collection, brookings: the noun.
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Considering the recent leaked OPCW Engineers' Assessment that the gas cannisters responsible for the Douma gas attack in Syria were not likely to have been dropped by the Syrian Government, despite the subsequent 'retaliatory' bombing by Western Forces, Quemar has asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record her 2003 poem, 'Intimate Geography', written at the beginning of the Invasion of Iraq, in which she discusses the nature of language distortion in that war. The poem was published in her 2005 collection 'Friendly Fire' (first published by Giramondo) which is out of print, with copyright returned to the author, but which is available on our Quemar Press Books for Purchase page as an electronic download. At the great British Bloodaxe publisher Neil Astley's request, the poem became the title poem of Maiden's Bloodaxe Selected: 'Intimate Geography, Selected Poems 1991- 2010'. It has also been reprinted in her Quemar 'Selected Poems, 1969- 2018'.
Click on the title below to listen:
Intimate Geography

Quemar also added the poem's text to the Selected Poems 1967-2018 sampler on our Books for Purchase page.

The Bloodaxe page for Maiden's work is:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/intimate-geography-1021
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Vera Rudner paintings Be Back in the Morning and Suburbia, Quemar Press book Vera Rudner: A Study

.Two paintings by the essential Surrealist Vera Rudner, Suburbia and Be Back in the Morning will be on show at:
An Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists
Presented by B'nai B'rith and COA Sydney
at the B'nai B'rith Centre, UNSW, Barker St., Kensington (next to Shalom College)
Mon to Thurs 10AM-4PM, Sunday 11AM-4PM. Gold coin entry. Opening Sunday 23rd June 11AM.
Artists' Cocktail Party 27th June, 6.30 PM for public to meet some of the artists, including Rudner.
Rudner and her work are the subject of Quemar's Vera Rudner: A Study - the only book entirely about her rare and remarkable work, which she painted after escaping to Australia from Nazi Germany. A sampler of Vera Rudner: A Study is available on our Books For Purchase page. The book can also be purchased on that page.
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Current cover image of Margaret Bennett and Jennifer Maiden and photograph of them from 1990s when they were developing workshops for rehabilitating Torture and Trauma survivors

In 2019, Quemar Press will publish a paperback title to facilitate writing from Torture and Trauma survivors by Margaret Bennett, former Director of the N.S.W. Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors and Jennifer Maiden, who was their Writer in Residence. First 8 pages of sample of the discussion between Margaret Bennett and Jennifer Maiden from this Quemar Press paperback on questions devised by Bennett and Maiden to assist writing by Torture and Trauma survivors, are now available on the Forthcoming page.

In light of this project, Quemar wishes to add a seminal poem to our Sampler of Maiden's Selected Poems 1967-2018, 'Look, I'm standing on no-floor' - a poem she wrote in the 1990s, while she and Bennett devised workshops to help survivors of torture and trauma write of their experiences and regain their sense of self. It explores the connection between trauma and instability in social, sexual and artistic hierarchies.
In her book Thrive Beyond Traumas: A Guide for Trauma Workers and their Managers, Bennett quotes the Indigenous psychologist, poet and academic, Professor Dennis McDermott , who said 'Look, I'm standing on no-floor' was 'the best poem he had read addressing these issues'. Critic Martin Duwell also wrote in Jacket: 'I think of this poem as one of the best of its decade'.
The poem can be read in our Sampler of Selected Poems 1967-2018 on our Books for Purchase page.

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Les Murray

Quemar is deeply saddened by the death of the poet Les Murray. Our author, Jennifer Maiden has commented: 'Les and I knew each other for many years and maintained a healthy respect for each other's work and a healthy disagreement about some political and aesthetic matters. On that basis I submitted my poetry collection The Winter Baby to him in the late 1980s when he was a poetry editor at Angus&Roberston. I wrote an accompanying letter acknowledging our disagreements but saying that I was sending him the submission because of our respect for each other and also that we had a similar sense of humour. He responded thanking me for my 'generous letter', appreciated my joy in my daughter, and accepted the manuscript. It was therefore published by A&R in 1990. It won the Kenneth Slessor and C.J. Dennis Awards. It is hard to think of Les as not being as alive and as formidable as he always was. But he is in my head asserting that I add that he is "still living and still pretty formidable", and so there is still that.'
In respect and appreciation for his commitment to Australian Literature, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to audio record the title poem from the collection he accepted, The Winter Baby, and we have added the text to our sampler of Jennifer Maiden's Selected Poems 1967-2018. The audio can be heard by clicking on the title below. The sampler can be read on our Books for Purchase page.

The Winter Baby

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Jennifer Maiden's 'The Winter Baby' and 'Selected Poems 1967-2018'

Cover image and Cover from Once She Had Escaped the Tower

In 2019, Quemar Press will publish Once She Had Escaped the Tower, a paperback combining Quemar's new Modern English translations of the Medieval French Chantefable, Aucassin and Nicolette, and Marie de France's Medieval Romance, Gugemer, with a subjective essay on the translations by the translator, Katharine Margot Toohey. We're pleased that this title will be at the printer's soon. Part of the translator's essay can be read below:
The title Once She Had Escaped the Tower has different levels of meaning. On one level, it suggests that once a lady was able to escape an imprisoning tower resolutely. On another level, it suggests the lady continued her actions after the escape.
Here, both senses reflect the ventures and endeavours of the female heroes in this volume’s Medieval French works: the chantefable Aucassin and Nicolette, and Marie de France’s Anglo-Norman Romance, Gugemer.
In some later classic literature, an imprisoned female character might be seen to exist only in relation to such a tower, where she remains captive or the narrative closes on her escape - just as Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott dies from the curse confining her:
‘She left the web, she left the loom
She made three paces thro' the room
She saw the water-flower bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shalott.’
Whether the narrative ends with the character dying imprisoned or the story concludes soon after her escape, there may be no ongoing scenes away from imprisonment in which the character's experiences of captivity can be incorporated to develop her characterisation. This could leave any on-going effects of incarceration - and the nature of her survival after confinement - unaddressed.
Considering this, Quemar Press wished to compile this new volume of translated work in which the female heroes are imprisoned in towers but escape and survive, capable of decisive action, far from any tower.

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On 21st April, 2019, Jason Steger's 'Bookmarks' column in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age had an astute section about the poem 'Resistance' - a preview poem from a Jennifer Maiden collection to be published by Quemar in 2020. The poem analyses the recent arrest of Julian Assange from the point of view of Gore Vidal. Assange was holding Vidal's History of the National Security State when he was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy, and was reading it in Court before his trial commenced.
Steger describes the poem: '[It] begins in familiar Maiden fashion: "Gore Vidal woke up in a London magistrate’s Court. Julian Assange/ was beside him ..."Later the narrator says of Assange: "he seemed to share the love of Montaignian honesty/ in discourse Vidal regarded as the first necessity/ to perpetuate the human"'
The column can be read at:
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/bookmarks-the-sound-of-adrian-mckinty-working-on-a-chain-gang-20190416-p51ejj.html
Quemar's proud of the enthusiastic responses we've had about this poem. In light of the interest surrounding it, Quemar asked Maiden to record the poem in audio. Click on the title below to listen to this recording:

Resistance

The text of the poem is available on the Forthcoming page.

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Quemar's complete new Modern English translation of Lanval, Marie de France's Medieval French Romance, is now available as a free download on our Books page with an introduction.

From Quemar's introduction:
'Marie de France's Medieval Anglo-Norman Romance, Lanval, may be seen often as a story in which a Knight, a city and all those within it are affected by an ethereal force, far-reaching, capable of the act of rescue, a force surrounding and intrinsic to a sprite-like Lady, the Ladies who serve her and the spaces around her. Some translations of the text might mirror this interpretation. In the original text, however, the Lady might not be seen as only an aspect of an enchanted process. Instead, she has active agency and distinct emotions, judges the best course of action and decides to act...
In this Romance, instances in which injustice is prevented by public truth are as important as enchantment. Here, the female hero can stand focused and otherworldly in a corrupt Court or a Knight can renounce the Court to ride fast with her to Avalon, her living place, an enchanted orchard-island distant and fair in all senses.'

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In view of the threat independent publisher Julian Assange faces, in particular the threat of imminent American extradition, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to record a poem on his situation. The poem, 'George Jeffreys Woke Up in Langley', was written six years ago and imagines an American agent trying to decipher Wikileak's encrypted data and speaking of the implications of extradition. The poem is featured in Quemar's Selection of Jennifer Maiden's work, 'Selected Poems 1967-2018'. Click on the title below to listen:

George Jeffreys Woke Up in Langley

Quemar has also added a poem to our sampler of Maiden's recent collection, 'Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power'. It is 'The Civil Guard: 2' - a poem on the Catalan Independence movement and violence towards it from Spain. We added this poem in light of the current trials of Catalan Independence Leaders, and Spain's political influence over its former colonies in Central and South America, including Ecuador. There has been media discussion and speculation that one reason Assange may no longer be permitted to shelter in the London's Ecuadorian Embassy is his recent support of Catalan Independence.
The 'Civil Guard: 2' can in read in our 'Selected Poems 1967-2018' sampler on our Books for Purchase Page.

Considering the current political and media focus on internal and external forces in South American countries, a reader told Quemar they would like Jennifer Maiden to audio record 'George Jeffreys: 8: George Jeffreys Woke Up in Rio', a poem from her Quemar Press 'Selected Poems 1967-2018'. In the poem, Clare outruns a police assassin through shimmering Carnival and from the heights of the Cristo Redentor and the Corcovado Mountain. In 'The Australian', the poet and critic Geoffrey Lehmann wrote of the poem: 'Some of the poems in Pirate Rain are extraordinary, for example the moment when one of the heroines of a poetic sequence, Clare, who has inexplicably been a killer as a child, is climbing up the Cristo Redentor statue in Rio, glowing in the dusk with its outstretched arms. Clare is running from a pursuing assassin and as she reaches the shoulder of the statue she throws a high-heeled shoe at him, causing him to fall to the ground and his Beretta to explode.'
The poem was originally published in Maiden's 2009 collection, 'Pirate Rain', which was awarded the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and the Age Poetry Book of the Year.

Click on the title below to listen to the recording of the poem:

George Jeffreys: 8: George Jeffreys Woke Up in Rio (Part One)

George Jeffreys: 8: George Jeffreys Woke Up in Rio (Part Two)

Quemar also added the text of the poem to our sampler of Maiden's 'Selected Poems 1967-2018'. The sampler is available on the Books for Purchase Page.

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On the 1st March, 2019, the online Fairfax papers ran an appreciative review by Geoff Page of Jennifer Maiden's new collection 'brookings: the noun'. The review praised the collection's poems calling them 'disturbingly effective' and saying the work '[updates her] increasingly numerous readers on the moral complexity of our slippery world.'
The review concluded with an interesting topical question about the controversial Non-Government Organisation, The White Helmets, and whether it is advisable that poems detail and analyse scenarios in which such organisations may appear malign.
Continuing this vital discussion, the former Director of the NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors, Margaret Bennett, wrote to the newspaper, and sent Quemar Press a copy:

'I am responding to the critique by Geoff Page of Jennifer Maidens new collection ‘brookings: the noun’. While the collection has been praised by several reviewers Page takes issue with commentary in a poem concerning the NGO in Syria the White Helmets. Maiden questions its activities, possible child abuse and its funding (a plethora of possible government backed sources). When I attended the UN World Conference on Human Rights over 20 years ago, questions were raised then about increases in the trafficking of women and children by foreign NGOs and some government funded protection agencies. As a consultant to some international NGOs and previous director of torture and trauma services it does not stretch my imagination to accept and be intrigued by the concerns Maiden raises. Maiden has a penchant for exploring the ways torture and human rights abuse occur under the veneer of respectability. 'Brookings: the noun' reminds us to be vigilant.
Margaret Bennett'

Margaret Bennett

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On the 1st March, 2019, the online Fairfax papers ran an appreciative review by Geoff Page of Jennifer Maiden's new collection 'brookings: the noun'. The review praised the collection's poems calling them 'disturbingly effective' and saying the work '[updates her]increasingly numerous readers on the moral complexity of our slippery world.'
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/brookings-the-noun-review-jennifer-maidens-poems-across-the-political-world-20190218-h1bety.html
The review concluded with an interesting topical question about the controversial Non-Government Organisation, The White Helmets, and whether or not it is advisable to have poems that detail and analyse scenarios in which such organisations may appear malign. In light of growing unease towards the White Helmets from some Press, humanitarian groups and governments, and the collection's own main theme of mistrusting manipulative sympathetic concepts, Maiden says she felt her fictional scenario was appropriate.
To look at this intricate discussion further, Jennifer Maiden has just written a poem for Quemar. The poem also clarifies a misunderstanding in the Fairfax review that described the gentle creature embodying safe-seeming but deceptively dangerous politics in brookings: the noun, as a 'stray cat'. In the spirit of post-modernism, Maiden says her readers are welcome to imagine 'Brookings' as a cat, but that she actually created him as a marsupial.
The poem and an artist's concept by Maiden of herself with Brookings in his helmet are below:

Brookings Gets a Helmet

Wee Brookings is curled up foetal in his basket. It
is all my fault. I read him the Herald review that
called him a 'stray cat', and that again was my fault
for not fully explaining his marsupial nature: that
when in defining brookings as things that trickle
the Overton window rightward by focusing on little
soft left topics and saying this suggested a creature
to my mind: Brookings, the silk-nosed squeaker,
I did not allow for his solidity, his timidity,
the wildness of his sensitivities. He must
have followed me home again without
my realising, after I read him the book review -
which was otherwise so positive - as
I leaned against his tree, not understanding how
the power of his receptive language works.
He seems to be a cross between a wombat
and a possum, but 'pombat' seems an insult.
Maybe not? At any rate, the other tricky point
in the review was about the White Helmets,
and somehow he has found one. It encompasses
most of him in his abject state, but I can fix
the buckles under his ears. It is an elaborate
contraption, full of straps and panels: white
with serious blue trimmings. It was thought-out
cleverly to suggest respectability, cleanliness,
practicality. It is the planning that takes the breath
always and the millions in the funding, not just
the Al-Nusra connection and the deaths, but it
seems to make Brookings feel safe. Perhaps Penrith
is not a good place for me to think or research,
according to the review, but would another area
suit little Brookings better? Here he is as near
to his bushland as he chooses. From his basket we can both
see the mountains: he, too, ambles wide enough in Walden.
The photos of themselves by the White Helmets
have them carrying such children in their grasp.
If Brookings could be older, with more deliberation,
I'd ask 'Should all my poems have tables, footnotes, stats?',
but I've been reading him The Scarlet Pimpernel, Scarlet and Black
and War and Peace and he sees himself like that.
I'll be caressed back by his innocence to the last.
And who am I to take away his comfort,
who has offered me such comfort with his trust?
I talk into his fur as he regains his equilibrium,
clinging to my shoulder, in his hat.

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On the 23rd February, the Saturday Paper featured a brilliant review by Prof. Maria Takolander of Jennifer Maiden's newly published collection 'brookings: the noun'.
From the review:
'Maiden’s work is idiosyncratic, urgent and brutally intelligent. She is also committed to her imbrication in the politics of the world, dedicated to her art... Speaking of the literature Nobel, I can’t think of a better Australian contender.'
The review can be read at:
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/books/2019/02/28/brookings-the-noun/15508404007488

Maiden just recorded 'History's Actors' - one of the poems from 'brookings: the noun'. This is a poem that uses a well-known quote attributed to Karl Rove and interconnects methods of changing the political narrative with reflections on the nature of 'King Lear'. Click on the title below to listen:

History's Actors

The text of the poem History's Actors can be read in our sampler of 'brookings: the noun' on the 'Books for Purchase' page, with some other poems from the new collection.
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In the light of Jennifer Maiden's new collection of poems, brookings: the noun, and the latest Issue 155 of Island Magazine, she audio recorded Hillary and Eleanor: 16: Concrete - featured in both publications. In the poem, by a Sydney Harbour lost in fog, Hillary Clinton is consoled by Eleanor Roosevelt, who has returned to her, worried. They speak of Syria, Russia, safe-seeming distractions and the void left when a threat is not real. Click on the title below to listen.

Hillary and Eleanor: 16: Concrete (Part One)

Hillary and Eleanor: 16: Concrete (Part Two)

More information about Island Magazine issue 155:
https://islandmag.com/

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Quemar Press is proud of the responses we have received to the first copies of 'brookings: the noun' - our collection of new poems by Jennifer Maiden. It has been called a 'wonderful challenging book with superb poems', and there has been praise for the work's stunning lyricism and accomplished humour. We've also received comments that refer to the cover's artistic and intellectual power.
One of the most remarked-upon poems so far is 'The round pretty eyes of the Hebrides: 2: Mirrors and Smoke', a work in which President Trump's Hebridean mother and President Trump speak in a golden White House Oval Office, while Bolton paces and U.S. foreign policy focuses away from Syria, and onto a small South American region (one even smaller than its current fixation, Venezuela) - Patagonia.
In light of the book's release, Jennifer Maiden recorded this poem in audio for Quemar. Click on the title below to listen:

The round pretty eyes of the Hebrides: 2: Mirrors and Smoke (Part One)

The round pretty eyes of the Hebrides: 2: Mirrors and Smoke (Part Two)

brookings: the noun is now available for purchase on our Books for Purchase page
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brookings: the noun, Jennifer Maiden's new poetry collection from Quemar Press, is now available in paperback and electronic editions from the Books for Purchase page.

The sampler from the Forthcoming page is available now on the Books for Purchase page, and now includes the text of the poem Brookings Follows Us Home, which Jennifer Maiden recently recorded in audio for Quemar. That audio recording is on this News page, below.

From Quemar's Press Release:

The title brookings: the noun has different levels of significance: venturing into a brook's safe appearance when it will turn to a threatening river, and, in extension, a noun to signify the misuse of something politically safe and sure as a distraction to conceal something politically dangerous. The poems observe how political decisions are concealed by ideas of rescue, protection, safety.
Jennifer Maiden describes brookings: the noun as 'a collection to do with disarming (both as an adjective and verb) deception which falsely identifies a target or cause of indignation, or deception which identifies causes as being left wing when they are safe and acceptable but ignores other profound and dangerous problems, or deception which accepts a cause as benign when it is misleading and possibly malign.'
Here, on an otherworldly edge of Lake Geneva, Borges speaks of things kept from him and questions conservative manipulation of experimental literature; in a room, a safe-seeming animal - gentle but entrancing - sleeps to deceptive music; in a golden White House, President Trump and his mother decipher the words around them; in a constructed Nirvana, Princess Diana addresses veiled aspects of murder freely with Mother Teresa; watching Sydney Harbour, Eleanor Roosevelt and Hilary Clinton speak of safe appearances; Maiden's renowned characters Clare and George rescue a child from lethally deceptive White Helmets in Syria; in a 'luminous' Sydney dust storm, Tanya Plibersek can speak with Jane Austen about discouraging Asylum seekers; the archetypal Critic can be an aspect of anyone he addresses; and the historical CIA policy of media influence, Operation Mockingbird, perches echoing soft and lyrical in the night.
This collection creates a surface over unsure tides, ripples and opaque currents, in constant, clear reflection.
The title poem quotes Longfellow's 'standing with uncertain feet, where the brook and river meet'. brookings: the noun navigates unknown depths to stand fast, to gauge shifting water.

'...sharp, ferocious, funny, poetic… There is never anything less than steely revelation in these poems. And what is revealed is the humanity of the poetic voice and art' - ALS Gold Medal citation on Maiden's work

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New audio recording of work from Jennifer Maiden's next collection, brookings: the noun, soon to be released by Quemar Press:

Click on the title below to listen:

Brookings Follows Us Home
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Quemar is pleased to have the first proof of the covers for 'brookings: the noun' - Jennifer Maiden's forthcoming collection of new poems - back from the printer.
To celebrate, she audio recorded an intricate poem in which Tanya Plibersek and Tanya Plibersek's most admired author, Jane Austen, are imagined in a room in the middle of a luminous Sydney dust storm drinking Mr. Rudd's tea from fine china and speaking of the Australian Labor Party's immigration policy, and of the deliberate creation of refugees by global war. Click on the two parts of the title below to listen:

Tanya and Jane: Four: 'Their business is evil' Part One

Tanya and Jane: Four: 'Their business is evil' Part Two

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Quemar Press has just added a new, fine in-depth piece by Dr. Lisa Gorton on Jennifer Maiden's Selected Poems 1967-2018 to our Commentary Page.
The piece illuminates aspects of movement in the poems and links these to their frequent images of jewellery and the connection with Maiden's Indian ancestry in the poems and the Selected's cover illustrations.

Also new on the Commentary Page is an excerpt from Danny Gardner's lively and evocative account of Maiden's recent Don Bank reading
from her Selected and latest novel, Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, and a perceptive and enthusiastic response by him to her Selected paperback, which he purchased at the event.

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Quemar Wishes Vera Rudner a wonderful 96th Birthday. She spent the week celebrating with her lovely daughter Ava. Our study of Vera's vital paintings is available from our Books for Purchase Page.

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In spite of the most severe Sydney storm in a hundred years, many poetry enthusiasts came to this year's final Live Poets event at Don Bank on 28th November, 2018. Jennifer Maiden read her latest titles from Quemar Press: Appalachian Fall, her new Selected Poems 1967-2018, and Play With Knives: Five.
Other performers included the Duck River Band, the accomplished organiser and poet Danny Gardner reading poetry from World War One, and an open section including Edwin Wilson, who recalled in his reading his delight when Jennifer Maiden reviewed his first collection in the Sydney Morning Herald 35 years ago.

Photographs from the event are available below.

Jennifer Maiden at Don Bank

Jennifer Maiden, Edwin Wilson

Danny Gardner, Jennifer Maiden

Some of the year's participants at Don Bank, 28th November, 2018

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Like all in Australian Literature, Quemar Press is in mourning for Judith Rodriguez. She was a brilliant poet, critic, and activist, who will be remembered by each individual for her special appreciation and encouragement of their work. She was responsible for instigating the Penguin first Selected Poems by Quemar's Jennifer Maiden three decades ago, wrote a fine appreciation for Maiden's first Play With Knives novel, when it was published by Allen&Unwin, was an enthusiastic supporter of Maiden's second Play With Knives novel, Complicity and Maiden's recent poetry. Lately, she was very encouraging to Quemar Press, writing that it was 'a wonder'. Jennifer Maiden has commented: 'She is an enormous loss to all who knew her, all who read her and all who were assisted by her untiring principled practicality.'

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Hillary and Eleanor: 16: Concrete (a long poem from 'brookings: the noun', Quemar's forthcoming collection of Maiden's new poems) will first appear in the exciting new issue 155 of ISLAND Magazine (out 28/11/18)

https://islandmag.com/

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To celebrate the holiday season, and to thank our readers, Quemar has placed Jennifer Maiden's Drones and Phantoms collection online as a free download until the 1st of January 2019. This collection shows essential aspects of her work, and was awarded the 2015 Australian Literary Studies Gold Medal.

Maiden has also just audio recorded one of the collection's vivid story poems, Clare and Manus, for Quemar. Click on the title below to listen:

Clare and Manus

The Judges' Citation when Drones and Phantoms won the ALS Gold Medal in 2015:

'The ALS Gold Medal has been awarded annually, from 1928 (apart from a brief hiatus between 1975-82). The Australian Literature Society awarded it until 1928, and ASAL for the last 32 years. I was privileged to work with two of my ASAL colleagues, Susan K. Martin and Paul Salzman on the judging panel for 2015, on your behalf. And what a phenomenon it was!
Over 60 works of literature by the great and illustrious, to first time writers.
The shortlist of five works, announced on May 4, was:
The Golden Age, Random House, a novel by Joan London. Drones and Phantoms, Giramondo Poets, poetry by Jennifer Maiden, Earth Hour, UQP, poetry by David Malouf, When the Night Comes, Hachette, a novel by Favel Parrett, Nest, Hachette, a novel by Inga Simpson.
The judging panel had a cornucopia of fine literature to judge, and we had our small disagreements. How interesting it is to hear another’s sense of a work, and to measure how it meets with, or doesn’t meet with, one’s own impressions. But about the shortlist we had no disagreements. There were several other works which could have/should been shortlisted, though it would no longer have been short.
But for 2015, the winner of the ALS Gold Medal is…the author of 19 poetry collections and 2 novels, a three times winner of the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, two-time winner of the C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry, and many other national prizes. She is, of course, Jennifer Maiden, for Drones and Phantoms.
Jennifer’s works include:
 1974: Tactics. (UQP, 1974)
 1975: The Problem of Evil. (Prism, 1975)
 1990: The Winter Baby. (Angus & Robertson, 1990)
 1993: Acoustic Shadow. (Penguin, 1993)
 2005: Friendly Fire (Giramondo, 2005) ISBN 1-920882-12-X
 2010: Pirate Rain (Giramondo, 2010) ISBN 978-1-920882-59-4
 2012: Liquid Nitrogen (Giramondo, 2012) ISBN 978-1-920882-99-0
 2013: The Violence of Waiting (Vagabond Press, 2013)
And Drones and Phantoms - awarded the 2015 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for its sharp, ferocious, funny, poetic rendition of contemporary Australia – and America, and Ethiopia, and feminists (ethically secure and insecure), and human evil– from the highly personal to the incisively political, often in purposeful collision:
It opens:
When I was young, I wrote that poor men
Do not belong in rich men’s houses, thinking
Of Forbes visiting more comfortable
Poets who were into Real Estate, but
There is also the memory of a sanguine
Real Estate mogul saying
Privately that they liked it when
The Labor Party was in power, as
Labor cost less to bribe.
That’s the opening “Diary Poem: Uses of Live Odds”.
This is not a politically correct volume of poems. It is not personal in any light, confessional, love-me kind of way. It’s muscly, and funny, and bristles with incongruities: Tony Abbot and Queen Victoria in mutual puzzlement; Hilary Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt stepping together out of time; Lady Diana and Mother Teresa, “both the most vulnerable of creatures”.
It’s poetry that stabs at the moral evils and stupidities of our day, revealing their quotidian disguise, but also the monstrous human, as in “Maps in the mind”, which would like to paper over human violence, but discovers
The isle of the dead is always rock
and piled rock huts with a block
for proclaiming sorrow,
impatient as rape, tomorrow
too hot, too cold
like maps-in-the-mind of Manus Island,
like maps of Manus Island.
You can hear the musicality of rhyme, the way flip, popular images topple over into deep political insights, orchestrated in the firm, often deceptively jaunty rhythms. But there is never anything less than steely revelation in these poems. And what is revealed is the humanity of the poetic voice and art, in jagged juxtaposition with the capacity for monstrosity - recognized in the most shambling of protagonists like Tony Abbot, discoursing with Queen Victoria at a backburn where fireman Tony “wiped the black/fine fire sweat from face”, enduring a sermon on the dubious wisdom of excluding the “most eager”, the refugee, from our shores. “My dear Albert would have seen/an extravagance of a similar nature/to that of real war.” [Tony] sighed/like fire lost in the branch tops, said/ “But, Ma’am, inside me everything is war.” (24-5)'

The full collection can be downloaded by clicking on the cover image below.

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Jennifer Maiden is a featured poet in the current edition of the Rochford Street Review, contributing three new poems from her upcoming collection, brookings: the noun, plus a poem from her first collection with Quemar Press, Appalachian Fall, a poem from her Selected Poems: 1967-2018, and a poetry chapter from the final poetry and prose novel in her experimental Play With Knives quintet, George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds.
The new poems from brookings: the noun, What Did They Do with the Bits?, brookings in fur, and Rope, can be read at:
https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2018/11/07/featured-writer-jennifer-maiden-three-new-poems/
The poems Rich Men' Houses (from Appalachian Fall), Mary Rose (from Selected Poems 1967-2018), and Solstice Eve from (Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds) are on the Rochford Street site at:
https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2018/11/07/featured-writer-jennifer-maiden-excerpts-from-appalachian-fall-playing-with-knives-five-and-selected-poems-1967-2018/

In light of these three new poems from brooking: the noun, Maiden has audio recorded the poem brookings in fur for Quemar Press. Click on the title below to listen:

brookings in fur

Jennifer Maiden will be appearing and reading from her latest works as part of the renowned and welcoming Live Poets at Don Bank series of events. She will be reading on the 28th of November. The event will take place in North Sydney from 07:30 PM to 10:30 PM. More details are available at:https://www.facebook.com/livepoetsdonbank

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Following the growing interest in Jennifer Maiden's new poem White Helmets from her forthcoming collection, brookings: the noun, Quemar asked her to record the poem in audio. White Helmets looks at ways in which words and organisations presenting themselves as humanitarian can be dangerously deceptive constructs. Click on the title below to listen. The text of the poem can be read in our preview of brookings: the noun on the Forthcoming page.

White Helmets

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In light of the release of Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds - an experiment across poetry, prose, Russia, Sydney's Western Suburbs, the self and action - she audio recorded one of the poetry chapters with the work's exhilarating pace, 'The Woman from ASIO'. Click on the title below to listen:

The Woman from ASIO

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A new poem which will be in Jennifer Maiden's upcoming collection 'brookings: the noun', was published this month in Australian Poetry Journal 8.1. The poem is entitled 'Butterfly Bullets' and considers the concept of these dum-dum bullets, which fragment outwards upon entry, to then analyse the use of them, the spectrum between overt violence and public opinion, and the possibility of metamorphosis. Maiden recorded the poem in audio for Quemar. Click on the title below to listen:

Butterfly Bullets

Quemar Press is pleased to be a member of the Small Press Network now.

Maiden's final novel in her anticipated Play With Knives quintet - Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, is available now from bookstores. We thank our readers for their great response to the works.

We were grateful to the distinguished and irreplaceable late Professor Peter Pierce for his wonderful support, and his analysis of the original Play With Knives novel in his book The Country of Lost Children : An Australian Anxiety. Later, in the Sydney Morning Herald, he wrote that the novel was 'one of the most chilling but underrated Australian novels of the early 1990s'.

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Last week, Quemar placed Jennifer Maiden's new poem, 'On the Edge of Lake Geneva', online, in our preview of her forthcoming collection, 'brookings: the noun'. She recorded this haunting poem in audio for Quemar. You can click on the titles below to listen:

On the Edge of Lake Geneva (Part One)

On the Edge of Lake Geneva (Part Two)

The text of the poem can be read in Quemar's preview of 'brookings: the noun' on the Forthcoming page.

About the Poem

In 'On the Edge of Lake Geneva', across all time, Borges speaks with overview to the archetypal Critic. Here, Borges talks of his grief about not receiving the Noble Prize for Literature, his conservative politics, and his re-embrace of Democracy later. No longer blind in this state of being, he and the Critic look at Mont Blanc, and discuss how Modernism can be misused by Conservatives. Ultimately, the otherworldly Critic offers to cross time and use his skills to arrange the Noble Prize for Borges, but Borges declines, as it was not given when it would have had significance to him. The Critic then asks, 'then why am I with you?' and Borges explains.
This poem is Jennifer Maiden's work at its finest, in all its grasp of the essential and ability to transcend.

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Following the release of the final novel in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, an experiment across poetry, prose, action and the self, she has just recorded a lively excerpt in audio from chapter 23, on political violence as a psychological pathology including reference to the Marquis de Sade. Click on the title below to listen:

Chapter 23 excerpt

The text of the chapter can be read in the sample on the Books For Purchase page.

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In response to requests for Jennifer Maiden's Julie Bishop poems, Quemar was pleased to add the poems Orchards and Animism to our sample from Maiden's new Selected Poems 1967-2018. She also recorded Orchards as audio.
These poems can be read in our Selected Poems 1967-2018 sample on the Books For Purchase Page.

Click on the title below to listen to the audio of the poem 'Orchards'

Orchards

Jennifer Maiden opening Play With Knives Five

The final novel in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, is available now.

At the Books for Purchase page, you can find information on how to purchase or obtain it.

From Quemar's Press release:
The last novel in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds experiments across poetry, prose, style, person, action and sense of self.
Clare was the central character in what the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature calls Maiden's 'impressive' first Play With Knives novel. Set in Sydney's Western Suburbs, it was first published in 1990, and centres on Clare and George's survival as Clare is released from prison. The Quintet outlines the growth of these characters...
Whether in Russian winter light, or the light of a Mount Druitt mall at midnight, this work experiments to create platforms where aspects of reality or experience can integrate, as they move between a sense of self and overview, between action and the ability to transcend it.

This Saturday, the 1st of September 2018, Jennifer Maiden took part in a panel at the Rose Scott Women Writers' Festival with other terrific writers Fiona Wright and Rozanna Lilley. The panel was chaired expertly by the ABC's Kate Evans, and the discussion was entitled 'Crossing Over' and focused on relationships between poetry, biography, academic research, humour and other genres of writing. It centered on the physical and emotional experience for writers when they use or combine these forms, and on how such forms are at once independent and interconnected.
Photographs of the event, which show the lively rapport between the participants, are available below.

Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley, Fiona Wright, Kate Evans

Jennifer Maiden, Fiona Wright, Kate Evans

Jennifer Maiden, Fiona Wright mugging for camera with Kate Evans

Jennifer Maiden, Fiona Wright, Kate Evans

Rozanna Lilley, Jennifer Maiden

Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley, Fiona Wright

Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley

Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley, Fiona Wright

Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley, Fiona Wright, Kate Evans

Kate Evans, Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley, Fiona Wright

With the last novel in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, 'George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds', days from release, she has audio recorded a poetry chapter from this experimental novel across poetry, prose, style, person, action and sense of self.
This chapter spans an idea of the dead as icon, Natasha's sorrow at Petya's death in War in Peace, Putin's sorrow for the death of his brother in the Siege of Leningrad, and ultimately focuses on the female hero, Clare, who killed her siblings as a child and is jealous of other's guiltless grief, as she holds her infant son, Corbyn. Clare was the central character in what the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature called Maiden's "impressive' first Play With Knives novel. Set in Sydney's Western Suburbs, it was first published in 1990, and centres on Clare and George's survival as Clare is released from prison. The Quintet outlines the growth of these characters. Click on the title below to listen.

On the death of brothers

In 2019, Quemar Press will publish a collection of new poems by Jennifer Maiden, titled 'brookings: the noun'. This week, a poem from it, 'The Thousand Yachts: Two', was published in Stilts, a new, strong free online journal. The poem continues her much acclaimed dialogue between Slessor & the archetypal critic. It can be read with fine new poems from other terrific writers in the journal at:
https://www.stiltsjournal.com/single-post/2018/08/17/The-Thousand-Yachts-Two-Jennifer-Maiden

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George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, the fifth and last book in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, is now at the printers. In preparation for the release of this experiment across poetry, prose, genre and persona, Maiden recorded an excerpt from chapter 35 in audio, in the prose of the male first person, George Jeffreys. Click on the title below to listen:

Excerpt from chapter 35, Persephone's Garden

This scene is included in Quemar's preview of the novel on the Forthcoming page, with the first 34 chapters.

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Diary Poem:
Uses of the Appalachian Fall: 2

'that stole a child'? What sunless one is out there
in the hills' blue shadows that they know will come
and take away the very flesh of living, what one
moonlessly will trap their staring soul alone
scared torchlit with its possum-eyes in wire,
so that the next step can never happen, never
the next new scent or difference in wild
between cob and seed or apple, pear and melon:
that future tasting on the tongue, but gone?
The dance is a ballet so moves like a rumour,
glides lithely then springs up with terror,
like a gunshot in the crags at the horizon.
Then mellow, mellow, mellow, like a child
swathed and swaddled mellowly in slumber,
since children taste sleep like solid supper,
if the appetite's more sudden in possession.
There is the use here of suddenness to own
and suddenness to defend the hearth's power.
But I crave now mellowness like some song
by slaves about Gilead's balm: not any quiver
when the mountain monster enters like a zephyr
and carries off the child in its arms. When
it cradles up in rugs the smiling sleeper
and carries off the future in its arms. Then
what would need to be involved again
except the monochrome ballet and staid water
forever like some millstream grinding down?
Why would the dance resort to any figure, wild
erratic and mechanical as a gun? Unless he came
to return the rumoured life, if by him stolen:
if not, steal into woods to bring it home?
If it's all about the loss and something out there,
the idea of use is not in temporal bounds. Nor
is there any need to trust the hunter. All within
the dance stretch out uncaught, on the ground.

Terence Koo, Jennifer Maiden

Last Wednesday night, poets Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball collaborated with pianist Terence Koo at a unique event organised by Girls on Key. At the event, the poets read their work to the piano, in spontaneous timing, without any rehearsal. Maiden read her Uses of the Appalachian Fall 2, while Koo played refrains from the Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts. Maiden requested this hymn, as it was used by Copland for Martha Graham's ballet, Appalachian Spring: one of the inspirations for Maiden's Appalachian Fall collection. Another aspect of the collection was the influence of the Appalachian area of America on President Trump's election.
Quemar has uploaded an audio excerpt of the performance. In light of the subtlety of the voice and the piano, there were some issues in recording. Taking that into account, the performance was stunning.

You can listen to the excerpt by clicking on the title below:

Diary Poem: Uses of the Appalachian Fall 2

The full text of the poem is also available on the left. The excerpt starts at the line 'that future tasting on the tongue, but gone?'

Photographs of the event are available below.

The poem, Uses of the Appalachian Fall, is available in Maiden's collection, Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, and in her Selected Poems 1967-2018. Both books were published by Quemar Press in 2018, and are available for purchase on the Books for Purchase page.

Terence Koo, Jennifer Maiden

Terence Koo, Magdalena Ball, Jennifer Maiden

Terence Koo, Magdalena Ball. Jennifer Maiden

Terence Koo, Jennifer Maiden

Terence Koo, Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey

Jennifer Maiden reading Appalachian Fall

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Quemar Press' unique study of the post-war Surrealist artist, Vera Rudner, is now available for purchase on the Books for Purchase page.
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Following the interest surrounding George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds - Jennifer Maiden upcoming novel in poetry and prose, the fifth novel in the powerfully transcendent Play With Knives books, Maiden performed the latest prose chapter in audio for Quemar. Here, she reads in 1st person, as the male hero George Jeffreys. You can click on the title below to listen:

The Summer Dacha

The first 33 chapters are available in our preview on the Forthcoming page.

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In light of the enthusiastic response we received to the latest chapters in our preview of Jennifer Maiden's forthcoming novel Play With Knives: Five - chapter 30, Solstice Eve (poetry), and chapter 31,The World Cup (prose) - Quemar asked her to record the remarkable, transcendent and haunting poetry chapter in audio. You can click on the title below to listen:

Solstice Eve

The text of this poem, and the chapters 1-31 in our preview can be read on the Forthcoming page.

Quemar's upcoming study on the essential Surrealist painter, Vera Rudner, will be available for purchase within weeks.

The official publication date will be the 1st of August, 2018.

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Stemming from Jennifer Maiden's reading of her work at the launch of Anne Elvey's powerful protest ebook anthology, Hope for Whole: Poets Speak up to Adani, Quemar asked Maiden to audio record a recent poem with a focus on survival and environment. The poem Exit Pursued by a Polar Bear and a Carbon Credit Salesman, looks at Carbon Credits in relation to pollution caused by war. It is from her latest collection, Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, which was published this year by Quemar Press.
You can listen by clicking on title below:

Exit Pursued by a Polar Bear and a Carbon Credit Salesman

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Last Sunday, Jennifer Maiden read with other poets Michael Aiken, Michelle Cahill, Jonathan Dunk, Michele Seminara and Anne Elvey at the Sydney launch of Anne Elvey's strong new e-book anthology Hope for whole: Poets Speak up to Adani, a dynamic protest against the Adani coal mine. At the event Maiden read her poem, Adani, from the e-book and her Quemar Press Selected Poems 1967-2018, and her poems On the Seventh Day He Excavated and My Heart has an Embassy from her collections with Quemar, Appalachian Fall and Selected Poems 1967-2018. Following the launch, she recorded On the Seventh Day He Excavated in audio for Quemar. The poem is about Appalachia and mountaintop mining. It was dedicated to Anne Elvey.
You can click on the title below to listen:

On the Seventh Day He Excavated

Hope for whole: Poets Speak up to Adani is available as a free download from Plumwood Mountain at: https://plumwoodmountain.com/hope-for-whole-ebook/

Quemar Press' photographs of the launch are below:

Jennifer Maiden reading

Anne Elvey, Jennifer Maiden

Michael Aiken, Jennifer Maiden, Michelle Cahill, Jonathan Dunk, Anne Elvey, Lilli Barto

Angela Stretch

Lilli Barto

Anne Elvey

Michael Aiken

Michelle Cahill

Jonathan Dunk

Jennifer Maiden

Michele Seminara

Michael Aiken, Michele Seminara, Jennifer Maiden, Michelle Cahill, Jonathan Dunk, Anne Elvey, Lilli Barto

Audience member and writer Jenni Nixon with Jennifer Maiden

Michele Seminara, Michael Aiken, Jennifer Maiden, Michelle Cahill, Jonathan Dunk, Lilli Barto

Michael Aiken, Michele Seminara, Jennifer Maiden, Michelle Cahill, Jonathan Dunk, Anne Elvey, Lilli Barto

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To mark Jennifer Maiden's collection, Drones and Phantoms (2014), Quemar asked her to record two of its poems in audio, the title poem, Drones and Phantoms, and So That's Who Those Motorbikes Were. The poem, Drones and Phantoms, partly juxtaposes and looks at then Prime Minister Gillard's support of American Foreign Policy, and American policy on deploying drones. In light of the recent royal wedding, Maiden also recorded So That's Who Those Motorbikes Were. In this poem, Princess Diana sits, speaking of her life, death and sons, with Mother Teresa, out of all time, in some beautiful part of Wimbledon Common. You can click on the title below to listen:

Drones and Phantoms & So That's Who Those Motorbikes Were

Drones and Phantoms, Jennifer Maiden's 2015 ALS Gold Medal awarded collection ceaselessly shifts and widens the political window, with an unhindered, intact sense of self. Here, compartmentalisation, in all senses, can be transcended and analysed - whether it is a character's personal, political disintegration, the act of reading when it is broken into elements, a Denmark zoo's dismemberment of a giraffe or situations where discourse itself turns to disparate shards. In this collection, 'not cut up, the politics is still poetry, the giraffe the man, and there is no part less'.

The work sparks new focus. We have had enthusiastic comments on it lately, sometimes stemming from Maiden's recent audio recording of a poem from it, 'Uses of Dismemberment'
This collection is rare now, as former publishers have stated that 200 copies were pulped by them in March 2017, in the course of pulping 5,450 of their excess stock books in general at that time. Its rights reverted to the author in January, 2018, but only a handful remained for the author to purchase. However, we are pleased to be able to offer the irreplaceable collection in a full electronic scanned version, as a $3.00 download in support of Quemar Press, and our work in the future.

This Electronic copy is available for purchase on our Books for Purchase Page.
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As we continue our celebration of Jennifer Maiden's new Selected Poems 1967-2018 from Quemar Press, she recorded one of its poems in audio for us. The poem entitled, Diary Poem: Uses of Dismemberment, has characteristic unswerving humanity.This poem looks at the levels of prestige and tenuous moral justification surrounding the concept of dismemberment in literature, surgery, society, and that of a giraffe in a Denmark zoo and its aftermath. You can click on the title below to listen:

Diary Poem: Uses of Dismemberment

Following enhanced interest in one of Jennifer Maiden's poems from her Quemar Press Selected Poems 1967-2018, she recorded it in audio for Quemar. Its title is Positional Asphyxia, and it has an unusual, controversial history. It was first published in her collection Pirate Rain in 2009. When that collection was reviewed by Geoffrey Lehmann in The Australian, he quoted the poem in full. This came to the attention of a Dublin periodical, which requested the poem. It became the subject of a polarising debate, with one editor saying he would resign if they did not publish it. They published it.The poem looks at violence and political trauma with balance in the context of the bombing of Qana. You can click on the title below to listen:

Positional Asphyxia
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To celebrate Quemar's new paperback combining Jennifer Maiden's powerful contemporary novels in poetry and prose, Play With Knives: Three: George and Clare and the Grey Hat Hacker & Play With Knives: Four: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies, Quemar asked her to record a section of the prose from Play With Knives: Four. She recorded part of the chapter entitled The Haystack in the Floods, written from the first person viewpoint of the male narrator George Jeffreys, looking for a child disappeared in sinister, uncertain circumstances.
You can click on the chapter title below to listen:

Excerpt from chapter, 'The Haystack in the Floods'

Play With Knives: Three & Play With Knives: Four - Jennifer Maiden's recent, cutting-edge novels in poetry and prose - are available in one paperback volume from Quemar Press.

It is available for purchase on the Books For Purchase page.

From Quemar's Press Release:
Play With Knives: Three: George and Clare and the Grey Hat Hacker is a sequel to Maiden’s original two Play With Knives novels and those of her later poems which feature the characters George Jeffreys and Clare Collins. The ‘Grey Hat Hacker’ in the title is George’s grandson, Idris, known on the Internet as ‘Red Idris’, a daring political hacker and leaker. In another sense, the ‘Grey Hat Hacker’ is also death, ‘the blind swipe of the pruner and his knife busy about the tree of life’, as Robert Lowell has it.
Clare (who murdered her siblings as a child) and George (her ex-probation officer and partner) now work as observers for a human rights organisation. They are house-sitting by the sea in Thirroul, in grief after they are unable to stop a round of executions by the Indonesian Government. They realise that a dispatch was not part of the executions, and that they had both fallen in love with one of the condemned as they tried to rescue her. Dealing with their own trauma, they spend time on their emotional and physical relationship. Maiden’s aptitude for explicit, relational love scenes is at its height here.
Later, Idris, targeted by political assassins, takes refuge with George and Clare. Clare’s friend Sophie (a French woman who was saved, with her baby, by Clare in France) is now Idris’ girlfriend. She and Florence, her now seven year old daughter, come to stay with them. Sophie works with Idris to piece together ‘Frankenphone, The Unhackable Hacker’, allowing them to learn when the attack on Idris will be - information which is encrypted in Quantum in Europe. George and Clare plan to smuggle Idris to safety, and unexpected events follow.
In Play with Knives: Three: George and Clare and the Grey Hat Hacker, Maiden glides back and forth between third person verse and first person prose, enjoying the advantages of both forms together. This also allows the forms to blend into each other, bringing illuminated lyricism to the prose and energised narrative to the verse.
Play With Knives: Four: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies juxtaposes prose and verse, combining them and illuminating the thriller in a continuous pace and pattern - but as well as being a 'thriller' Play With Knives: Four is something wild and undefinable - glinting in the dark like an animal spirit or a quantum diamond. Through verse, in the heatwave wind on backsteps, the heroes Clare and George are asked to visit a fifteen year old Indigenous boy incarcerated in a Western Suburbs Correctional Centre. In prose, George promises to find a missing baby, while watching her dog still perform tricks for her. Through verse, in the winter's 'spinning stars', the heroes learn why a drug and telecommunications criminal organiser is concerned with diamonds that could be used for quantum computing. At night, In prose, they attempt to rescue the missing baby from the criminals in an actual cave in the N.S.W. Blue Mountains named after the god Baal. In verse, the pregnant hero Clare goes into labour in an early spring of 'shivering wattle'. The third person verse presents and facilitates mysterious true-to-life processes within the plot, such as spontaneous beauty, coincidence or serendipity. In the plot Clare experiences an empathetic dream-vision about Jimmy, the boy at the Correctional Centre, and an apple half from an anti-miscarriage spell turns into an apple plant, when it might not. Another aspect of the verse is the explicit love imagery between George and Clare, which is always in-keeping with the verse's encompassing aesthetic quality. The first person prose is a force for incarnate description and present action. In both novels, line spacing changes with tempo. On another level, nothing in the novels, and neither Clare nor George, are compartmentalised in any way. Having murdered as a child, Clare feels she can only survive by acknowledging her murders and not being forgiven, especially not by George. That everything stays connected is vital to them. Anything that happens in the verse shades the prose, and the two forms blend for the reader, incarnating the verse and expanding the prose, creating characters who wish to be complete in humanity, and also creating unfragmented, unexpected thrillers - or works which again escape all genres.

‘[Maiden] works with sudden free shifts of perspective, vital to her vision of how art works as a movement between outside and inside points of view, perspectives of justice and compassion….From the first, Maiden’s novels have taken a steady interest in violence, its motives and its consequences. They are—and seek to be—uneasy and unsettling…With needling intelligence, Maiden considers, in these works, what virtue is, and empathy…. Clare has been violent, and she has suffered violence. Through both Clare’s guilt and Clare’s compassion, Maiden brings the knowledge of state violence into kitchens and bedrooms and loving human relationships…With the novels, the study of love and violence in the story of George and Clare finds its closest and most intimate, most unsettling expression.’ - Lisa Gorton.
'Compelling' - Anna Couani.
‘[The]novels explore guilt and innocence, good and evil, and the individual versus the state or government, using changing tense and viewpoints. The grand conception is fairly ambitious, but Maiden handles it all smoothly and the stories read like…thrillers…Maiden doesn’t flinch…At no point does Maiden overly simplify the issues she explores, whether it’s the implications of love and intimacy, or the morality of war, refugees, or the nature of violence and suffering… there’s a richness to the language that draws on Maiden’s poetic skill and linguistic precision. The multi-genres novels contain elements of the thriller, mystery, and romance, all of which keep the reading fast paced…engrossing reading that takes the reader to new places from both a literary and a political/theoretical perspective’ - Magdalena Ball.
‘A great achievement' - Tim Thorne.
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Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey, Vera Rudner

In mid 2018, Quemar Press will publish our new, short paperback study of the compelling surrealist artist Vera Rudner. This will be the first full book to feature her work. She escaped from Nazi Berlin and painted in Australia in the 40s and early 50s, exhibiting with other great Surrealists like Sidney Nolan. Rudner's small but essential body of work moves from deconstructed still-life to deconstructed war-field. Quemar is working in close consultation with the artist and Quemar's publisher Katharine Margot Toohey met with her recently about Quemar's forthcoming book. She had already expressed much enthusiasm for Jennifer Maiden's poem (in Quemar's Appalachian Fall) about her painting Sacrilege and in honour of her work and the new book, Maiden wrote a new poem about her painting Be Back in the Morning. A recording of this new poem can be heard by clicking on the title below:

Be Back in the Morning

Vera Rudner's painting Be Back in the Morning

Jennifer Maiden reading her Be Back in the Morning poem to Vera Rudner

Jennifer Maiden, Vera Rudner

Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey, Vera Rudner

Vera Rudner photographed by Katharine Margot Toohey

Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey, Vera Rudner

Katharine Margot Toohey, Vera Rudner

Jennifer Maiden, Vera Rudner

Vera Rudner enjoying Jennifer Maiden Quemar Press books

Vera Rudner, Katharine Margot Toohey

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In view of current events in Syria, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to record her poem Premature Burial, from her new Quemar Selected Poems. The poem was written in 1991, during the first US Gulf War, after a 6 month media embargo on an incident in the middle east when American troops ran thousands of Iraqis down with tanks, burying them in sand. 'Burial' here is also perilous psychological suppression and compartmentalisation in war. It is the last poem in her Gulf War Sequence of poems. Click on the title below to hear the audio recording:

Premature Burial

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Quemar has asked Jennifer Maiden to perform her wide-reaching poem, My heart has an Embassy, in celebration of Quemar's new Selected of her work, and in light of the current uncertain situation involving Julian Assange and his access to communication in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The poem, written on the night he originally moved into the embassy, was featured and analysed by the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Their analysis and the full text of the poem are available at: http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/my-heart-has-an-embassy-2/ The poem is included in Maiden's Selected Poems 1967-2018, and her 2012 collection, Liquid Nitrogen. You can click on the title below to listen to the audio performance:

My heart has an Embassy

This weekend, there was a very positive review of Quemar's new Selected of Jennifer Maiden's work, Selected Poems 1967-2018, in the print editions of Sydney Morning Herald and The Melbourne Age. The review was written by the apt and accomplished critic and author, Geoff Page, who wrote:
'Jennifer Maiden is a key yet relatively isolated figure in contemporary Australian poetry. Never a member of any coterie or "school", she has produced 23 collections over the 51 years covered in this new Selected Poems. Her work has won a swag of prizes including the NSW Premier's Prize for Poetry three times. Her appeal, especially since Friendly Fire in 2005, which won the Age book of the year award, has reached well beyond those readers who make a point of keeping up with Australian poetry.'
The review can also be read at the online Fairfax papers. It is in the online Sydney Morning Herald at:
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/jennifer-maidens-selected-poems-review-morally-complex-yet-accessible-poetry-20180328-h0y33d.html

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As it is set at Easter, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to record the poem In the International Pavilion from her new Selected Poems 1967-2018. In 2016, this poem was featured and analysed by the Griffin International Poetry Prize. The full text and analysis are available on their website at: http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/in-the-international-pavilion/ The poem connects cats, Fukushima, an ambivalent Easter fair and an equinoctial moon. Click on the title below to listen to the recording:

In the International Pavilion

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Following Quemar's release last week of the faceted, topical poem, Novichok, as part of our preview of Jennifer Maiden's upcoming novel in verse and prose, Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, she has just recorded the poem in audio for Quemar. This poem is illuminating as a stand-alone piece or as an intricate part of the novel. Click on the title below to listen

Novichok

The text of the poem is available in the novel preview on the Forthcoming page.
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We're proud to continue our free download titles, as we are proud of our paperback books for purchase. In July this year, we will release officially the paperback companion book to our paperback compilation of Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives & Play With Knives: Two: Complicity. The upcoming paperback will combine our thrilling Maiden titles in poetry and prose Play With Knives: Three: George and Clare and the Grey Hat Hacker & Play With Knives: Four: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies. This book is currently with our printers.

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In celebration of Quemar's new Selected of Jennifer Maiden's work, Selected Poems 1967-2018, Maiden recorded Uses of Cosiness in audio, one of the 228 poems included in it. Uses of Cosiness focuses on the sense and intrinsic politics in Sylvia Plath's poetry. In the recording, Maiden describes how she added this poem to the Selected. She explains that, while, in general she would not change any poem before adding it, the version of this poem in the Selected was created in an unusual process. Here, she reads both versions.
You can click on the title below to listen:

Diary Poem: Uses of Cosiness

Jennifer Maiden's awaited new selected from Quemar Press, Selected Poems 1967-2018, is now available for purchase on the Books for Purchase Page, in a paperback and an electronic edition.
From Quemar's Press Release:
This new Selected of Jennifer Maiden’s poetry was chosen by her from her twenty-two poetry collections and five novels. The poems chosen are now arranged approximately in the order they were written. The cover depicts the author and a rope swing, as such a swing could represent many aspects of her work: its technical rhythmic continuity, like metronomic beats of poetry, the possibility of moving weightlessly between levels of a hierarchy in trauma, and being able to survive the problem of evil in a space between an ideal and what is real, all happening with the author keeping hold of the ropes and in control of speed and direction. This Selected glides from 1967 to 2018, between the personal, the political, between levels of lucent life study and platforms where those in power can speak with the person who inspired them across time. It spans her first collections, Tactics and The Problem of Evil to her latest collection, Appalachian Fall, new uncollected work and the recent verse and prose novels. For the first time, all the collection poems involving the characters from Play With Knives, human rights' observers Clare (who murdered her siblings as a child) and George (her ex-probation officer and her partner) are included. The entire Selection has 228 poems - wild succinct poems to expansive ineradicable classic poems from her collections which have received accolades such as the ALS Gold Medal, The Victorian Prize for Literature, three Kenneth Slessor Prizes, two C.J. Dennis Prizes, two Age Poetry Book of the Year Awards, The overall Age Book of the Year, The Christopher Brennan Award for Lifetime Achievement and a shortlisting in the Griffin International Poetry Prize.

Here the poems build into an unshakable, timeless, transcendent momentum.

To celebrate Quemar's new Selected of Jennifer Maiden's work, Selected Poems 1967-2018, she performed a topical poem from it, Uses of Small Dogs, with its ineradicable last lines: ...all mercies/now interdependent as species'.

You can listen by clicking on the title below:

Diary Poem: Uses of Small Dogs

As well as being included in the Selected, the poem was originally published in Maiden's collection, The Fox Petition (2015). The fine critic and writer, Sarah Holland-Batt recently commented 'God, I love that book' in an interview quoted in the Sydney Review of Books.

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Quemar Press wishes to thank Magdalena Ball and MacLean's Booksellers for the Newcastle launching of Appalachian Fall: Jennifer Maiden's new collection and Quemar's first paperback. The staff and management of MacLean's facilitated the event expertly, while remarkable writer and critic, Magdalena Ball, chaired it, and led a dynamic Q&A session with Maiden. Maiden also read poems from the collection, then signed copies.

A transcript is available on the Commentary page

Magdalena Ball's Compulsive Reader has a complete audio recording of the event at:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader/2018/02/14/jennifer-maiden-launches-her-poetry-book-appalachian-fall

Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball

Book Signing: Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball with enthusiastic readers

MacLean's owner and staff with Jennifer Maiden

Katharine Margot Toohey

Jennifer Maiden, Magdalena Ball and Katharine Margot Toohey

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Writers Professor Robert Adamson and Jennifer Maiden read at the launch of the Liberation Prison Project's exhibition at Western Sydney University's Margaret Whitlam Galleries, Parramatta. The exhibition is of artwork by prisoners engaged with the project in several regions, such as Latin America or North America. It is also interconnected with the project's focus on meditation in incarceration and its possibility of incarnation and transcendence. The launch by Juno Gemes was chaired by Ven. Thubten Chokyi. Details about the exhibition are available at:
http://www.publicnow.com/view/F54A9CED0CEE9C17B273A9FF9CBE6D42ACED33BE?2018-02-08-00:30:22+00:00-xxx6071

Maiden read her powerful, recent poem 'And Suddenly the Guns', at the event. The poem was included in Play With Knives: Four: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies, and it will be in her upcoming Selected Poems 1967-2018. In the midst of a fierce Western Sydney heatwave, it analyses a youth correctional centre. Quemar is pleased to have audio of her performing it. You can listen by clicking on the title below:

And Suddenly the Guns

Ven. Thubten Chokyi

Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden

Robert Adamson

Jennifer Maiden

Ven. Thubten Chokyi, Jennifer Maiden

Juno Gemes

Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden

Juno Gemes, Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden

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We are celebrating the fact that our upcoming paperback Selected Poems 1967-2018 by Jennifer Maiden is at the printer. In light of this, Jennifer Maiden recorded her very early poem, Dew, for Quemar. This is the first poem in this Australian and NZ Selected of her work, which has 366 pages and is comprised of 228 poems.

You can listen by clicking on the title below:

Dew

We have just released the Selected's cover to our Forthcoming page,

From the back cover:

The cover depicts the author and a rope swing, as such a swing could represent many aspects of her work: its technical rhythmic continuity, like metronomic beats of poetry, the possibility of moving weightlessly between levels of a hierarchy in trauma, and being able to survive the problem of evil in a space between an ideal and what is real, all happening with the author keeping hold of the ropes and in control of speed and direction.

Quemar Press is very pleased by our readers excitement that we have published Play With Knives: Two: Complicity in paperback, combined with the first Play With Knives. To clarify, this is the first time Play With Knives: Two was ever published in print. Its unpublished manuscript enjoyed a tenacious underground reputation and advocacy from literary figures such as Dorothy Porter, John Frow and John Hanrahan (as an article in Australian Book Review, Hanrahan wrote an open letter Where You Go, I Will Follow to Jennifer Maiden in which he recommended the manuscript strongly to publishers)

To celebrate, Jennifer Maiden has performed an excerpt from the novel in audio for Quemar, as the hero, George Jeffreys, in first person.
Click on the title below to listen:

Play With Knives: Two: Complicity Excerpt

The novels Play With Knives & Play With Knives: Two: Complicity, combined in a paperback book, are available for purchase on our Books for Purchase page.

Jennifer Maiden opening copies of her new Quemar Press paperback, 'Play With Knives & Play With Knives: Two: Complicity'

Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives & Play With Knives: Two: Complicity in one 296 page paperback volume - now released from Quemar Press.

It can be purchased on our Books for Purchase page for $21.00 (Australian) with free postage worldwide.
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Recently Jennifer Maiden visited the 95-year-old surrealist artist Vera Rudner, who has said she was pleased by Maiden's poem in Appalachian Fall on her painting, Sacrilege: ''I felt honoured to be included in it. You saw many things in Sacrilege that in my mind's eye I was seeing.''. Rudner showed Maiden accomplished and extraordinary paintings she painted over 60 years ago, and a book on Surrealism by Butler and Donaldson, which included her two works in the Australian National Gallery, Sacrilege and Kaleidoscopia.

Vera Rudner with her paintings Kaleidoscopia and Sacrilege.

Jennifer Maiden and Vera Rudner with Appalachian Fall, in front of Rudner's painting, Suburbia

Jennifer Maiden and Vera Rudner in front of Rudner's painting, Tree of Life

Jennifer Maiden and Vera Rudner in front of Rudner's painting, Suburbia

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Jennifer Maiden has recorded an unusual poem in audio for Quemar, one from her new collection and Quemar's first print book, Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power. Cobham is unusual in the sense that it involves indigenous solitary confinement at a Sydney Western Suburbs youth detention centre. While she is not herself indigenous, and so would not presume indigenous experience, the poem discusses the need to still write the poem, and to refer to current, specific as well as earlier or general indigenous issues. Click on the title below to listen:

Cobham

As the poem states, Cobham is also a setting in Maiden's recent novel, Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies, available as a free download on the Books page.

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The critic, Magdalena Ball, has written a brilliant, sharply focused review of Appalachian Fall, concluding: 'a multi-layered, complex and powerful book that crosses genre and illuminates the state of the human race in all its frail, dangerous beauty'
Her review can be read at Compulsive Reader:
http://www.compulsivereader.com/2018/01/07/a-review-of-appalachian-fall-by-jennifer-maiden/

Appalachian Fall can be purchased from our Books for Purchase page, and from Gleebooks, Collected Works and Readings.
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We are very happy to invite our readers to the Newcastle launching of Appalachian Fall at MacLean's Bookstore on the 13th of February, 2018, 6pm, including a discussion between Jennifer Maiden and the vibrant critic and poet, Magdalena Ball.

In early 2018, Quemar will officially release our first print book, Jennifer Maiden's Appalachian Fall, a print volume of her novels Play With Knives and Play With Knives: Two: Complicity, proudly giving Play With Knives: Two its first print publication, and a new print Selected of Maiden's poetry from 1967-2018, chosen by her.
To preview Quemar print books, she has just recorded the poems Diary Poem: Uses of the Appalachian Fall: 2, from Appalachian Fall, and Council from the new Selected. She has said that Uses of the Appalachian Fall was a hugely enjoyable poem to write , as she was able to 'give the horse its head' in terms of lyricism and sensuous physical structure. She commented 'I just gave the horse its head and indulged myself in sumptuous lyricism. Although, it still has meaning, of course - the dark positive/negative hill spectre is partly Trump.' Click on the title below to listen:

Diary Poem: Uses of the Appalachian Fall: 2

The recent focus on redaction in Australian poetry reminded Quemar of Maiden's early poem about redaction, Council, written in 1978. She agreed to perform it, too, in audio for Quemar, incorporating the blank 'redacted' sections into the performance. You can listen by clicking on the title below:

Council

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Jennifer Maiden has made an audio recording of her poem Missing Elvis: 2: All Ways Winds, written in 2001 at Christmas. The poem will be in her upcoming Selected Poems from Quemar Press. At the time it was written, there were bushfires over the New South Wales Blue Mountains, and the Australian Government hired an American skycrane, named Elvis to extinguish them. In this poem, he is also the spirit of the popular 50s singer, and he and the poet discuss American war and its simplifying effects. The poem was also published in her English Bloodaxe collection, Intimate Geography. It was published first in her collection, Friendly Fire, available on our Books for Purchase page. Click on the title below to listen:

Missing Elvis: 2: All Ways Winds, Christmas 2001
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While we are working on Marie de France's Gugemer and Bernat Metge's Lo Sompni (The Dream), we are also working on some new Jennifer Maiden titles: her novel set in Russia and the Western Suburbs of Sydney, fifth in the Play With Knives books (great response to brilliant chapters four and five in the preview on the Forthcoming page last week), the first combined print volume of Play With Knives and Play With Knives: Two: Complicity (currently at our Printers), and an Australian and NZ Selected of her poetry from 1969 to 2018, chosen by her.

A poem Look, I'm Standing on No Floor from her choice for this Selected appears in her Bloodaxe Intimate Geography collection( http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/intimate-geography-1021 ) and in Margaret Bennett's skilful and analytical book, Thrive Beyond Traumas: A Guide for Trauma Workers and their Managers. Bennett, the former Director of the New South Wales Torture and Trauma Rehabilitation Service, incorporates this poem by Maiden on how trauma relates to a hierarchy. Bennett quotes the Indigenous psychologist, poet and academic, Professor Dennis McDermott that it was 'the best poem he had read addressing these issues'. Critic Martin Duwell also wrote in Jacket: 'I think of this poem as one of the best of its decade [the 90s]'
In view of the impact of this poem, Quemar Press asked Jennifer Maiden to perform the poem in a new audio recording. Click on the title below to listen:

Look I'm Standing on No-floor

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Recently, Jennifer Maiden's collection, The Metronome, was included on the shortlist at the Victorian Premier's Literary awards. Quemar is still pleased to offer our electronic edition for $5.00 (Australian Dollars) on the Books for Purchase page.
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Quemar's first print book, Appalachian Fall by Jennifer Maiden, has just received a succinct and thorough review across Fairfax mainstream media, such as the Sydney Morning Herald. The reviewer, Geoff Page, concludes: 'Appalachian Fall... readily satisfies the expectations that Maiden's intrigued and loyal readers have developed since Friendly Fire back in 2005'.

The review can be read at:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/appalachian-fall-review-jennifer-maidens-morally-complex-poetry-20171124-gzsizc.html

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In response to the positive reactions to her collection Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, Jennifer Maiden has performed an audio recording of the short lyric The Civil Guard: 2, of which the poet Tim Thorne has just commented: 'There are also two blistering poems on Spain/Catalonia, one of which in particular, "The Civil Guard: 2", shows that Maiden's talents go way beyond the discursive to the ferociously lyrical.'
To hear the recording, click on the title below:

The Civil Guard: 2
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Of the many enthusiastic responses to Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power so far, one of the most moving for Quemar is that of the almost 95 year-old painter Vera Rudner, who wrote of the poem in it about her great painting Sacrilege: ''I felt honoured to be included in it. You saw many things in Sacrilege that in my mind's eye I was seeing.''
This is the link to the painting at the National Gallery in Canberra: https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?irn=167342
Jennifer Maiden has now recorded that poem, Sacrilege, in audio.
Click on the title below to listen:

Sacrilege

Appalachian Fall is available on our Books for Purchase page

Sacrilege - Vera Rudner 1948

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Many thanks to those who have purchased Jennifer Maiden's new collection, Appalachian Fall: Poems about Poverty in Power, and for their enthusiastic response upon receiving the book in the post. We hope it will be a great success, too.

We have received several queries about the nature of the purchase of Appalachian Fall. The advance copies are complete ones and the same as they will be in a shop. If in a shop, the Recommended Retail Price will be at least $21.00 and the electronic edition will not be included.

We are offering the book and download for $18.50, and the download by itself for $5.00. We are not charging postage anywhere. We are posting the book through Australia Post mail as soon as the order is placed, and it has always been received very promptly (there have been inquiries as to whether these were only advance orders). If the purchaser does not wish to use PayPal, other arrangements such as cheque can be made via our contact page, and we have already been happy to do so.
To clarify further, the collection has 23 more poems than the sampler, which can still be downloaded through the cover image on the Books for Purchase page. In the collection, but not in the sampler, are new poems such as those on Brigitte Bardot, Nora Barnacle, Bruce Beaver, Christopher Brennan, Vera Rudner, polar bears, carbon credits, Twin Peaks, Jane Austen and Tanya Plibersek, May Holman, Carols at Kings, the poem as essay, Appalachian terrors, mountaintop mining and extraordinary autobiographical pieces.

Following support and requests from our readers, complete advance copies of Jennifer Maiden's new 150-page, 40-poem collection, Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, are now available from Quemar Press in our own exclusive print and electronic editions.
Quemar Press is offering the Print Edition for $18.50 (Australian dollars) with free postage world-wide. The Electronic Edition is included with purchase of the Print Edition.
We are also offering the Electronic Edition separately for $5.00 (Australian dollars), to cover the costs of printing this fine and extensive new collection.

The editions can be purchased from our Books for Purchase page.
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To celebrate the release next week of full advance copies of the print edition of Jennifer Maiden's Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, and the electronic edition, she has recorded the poem Rich Men's Houses from it, in audio for Quemar. The text of the poem is available in the sampler on the Forthcoming page.
The poem is about political corruption and Maiden's own witnessing of the Luna Park fire. You can click on the title below to listen:

Rich Men's Houses

Quemar Press readers will be pleased to know that Jennifer Maiden's new collection Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power is at the Printers and that we hope to offer complete advance copies of electronic and print editions for purchase in November. Our official publication date is very early 2018.
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Quemar Press is delighted that the excellent and judicious editor Sarah Holland-Batt has chosen the poem Metronome from Jennifer Maiden's poetry collection The Metronome for the Black Inc 2017 Best Australian Poems anthology.
Maiden has recorded the poem as an audio file for Quemar. Click on the title below to listen:

Metronome

The Metronome collection is available from Quemar's Books for Purchase page in Quemar's electronic edition, and from Giramondo in the Giramondo print edition

Sarah Holland-Batt and Jennifer Maiden at Qld Poetry Festival

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Jennifer Maiden Reading Dulcinea and I were Enchanted from Appalachian Fall

With the release of Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power approaching, Jennifer Maiden has made an audio recording of her new poem from it about Gough Whitlam and Don Quixote, 'Dulcinea and I were Enchanted'. The text is available on the Forthcoming page. You can click on the title below to listen:

Dulcinea and I were Enchanted
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Jennifer Maiden has just performed three of her poems in the above YouTube video for Quemar. She began by reading two poems, Below One's Best and Mandela in New York, from Intimate Geography, her collection from Bloodaxe Books (available at http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/intimate-geography-1021) She concluded with George Jeffreys Woke Up in Thirroul Again, from her forthcoming Quemar collection Appalachian Fall. The text of that poem can be read on our Forthcoming page.

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Quemar has added an audio performance of Jennifer Maiden reading her succinct, powerful latest poem, The Civil Guard. It was written yesterday (20th September, 2017) when the Spanish Guardia Civil commenced dawn raids against the Catalan election process. The text is available in our Appalachian Fall preview on the Forthcoming page. You can listen by clicking on the title below:

The Civil Guard
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In the lead-up to the release of Jennifer Maiden's next collection: Appalachian Fall: Poems about Poverty in Power, Quemar now adds a new poem to our preview on the Forthcoming page. Victoria and Tony: 7: The Veil involves Tony Abbott and Queen Victoria in a discussion of same-sex marriage. Maiden also recorded the pro- gay marriage poem in audio for Quemar. It can be heard by clicking the title below:

Victoria and Tony: 7: The Veil
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To accompany The round, pretty eyes of the Hebrides, the new Duet poem about President Trump and his mother, in our preview of Jennifer Maiden's Appalachian Fall collection, Quemar has uploaded a new audio recording of Maiden reading it:

The round, pretty eyes of the Hebrides
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Quemar has released audio of Jennifer Maiden reading one of her poems from her upcoming collection, Appalachian Fall, titled 'Posing a Political Threat'. Upon request, she read it aloud at two events of the Queensland Poetry Festival (late August, 2017).
Her audio recording for Quemar can be heard below, while the text of the poem is available in our preview of the collection on the Forthcoming page.
Posing a Political Threat
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Jennifer Maiden appeared at the Queensland Poetry Festival in late August, 2017, reading her work at three events, and discussing it in a one-on-one conversation with Australian poet and scholar, Sarah Holland-Batt. At the readings Maiden read poems from her up-coming collection from Quemar Press, Appalachian Fall, including her latest poem, George Jeffreys 23 (available as a preview on our Forthcoming page). She also read from her newest collections, The Metronome, and The Fox Petition.

In correspondence before their illuminating and articulate one-on-one discussion, Jennifer Maiden wrote and sent Sarah Holland-Batt the following note, which Holland-Batt printed out and Maiden read aloud during the session:

'The difference between what I do and other things called political poetry or satire is that they consist of commentary or caricature, both of which place the writer in a superior or inferior position. My work is imaginatively empathetic from an equal basis, which is a more fluid and internal position politically and therefore much more insurrectionary. It isn't a traditional Marxist philosophy that discounts the individual in favour of historic events. It's more like AJP Taylor's belief that history depends on the peculiar traits of individuals - hence his interpolation that of course in politics the impossible always happens. My work is not conservative in that I don't believe my characters are inevitably in power or will inevitably retain it, or that the reader and I have no right to inhabit them. By personality, of course, I don't mean public persona but rather the inner individual and also the effect their persona has or doesn't have on that individual. Also the equal positioning allows one to examine a much wider range of politicians, not just those safe to hate in left or right wing terms.'

Quemar Press received very positive feedback regarding Maiden's work at the events, and we would like to thank Margaret Bennett, who was in the audience, for taking and sending Quemar the photographs we used to create the collage above.
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Quemar has released a new audio recording of Jennifer Maiden reading Diary Poem: Uses of Catalonia. The poem, which is sympathetic to different kinds of Independence, whether it is that of Julian Assange or Catalonia, is from her most recent collection, The Metronome. Click below to listen:

Diary Poem: Uses of Catalonia
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Jennifer Maiden will be participating in the Queensland Poetry Festival at the end of August 2017. She will reading her work at two events, and taking part in a one-on-one conversation with Sarah Holland-Batt. The details are available from:

http://www.queenslandpoetryfestival.com/site/performer/jennifer-maiden/

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The Metronome, Jennifer Maiden's latest collection recently received involved, astute reviews from Louise Jaques for the NSW Writers' Centre, Alice Allan for the eco-journal, Plumwood Mountain, and, earlier, from Jill Jones for Australian Book Review.

NSW Writers' Centre review

Plumwood Mountain review

Australian Book Review review

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Jennifer Maiden has recorded new audio versions of two poems: her newly completed Wind-rock from Appalachian Fall (the text of Wind-rock is available now as part of the Preview on the Forthcoming Page) and a new reading of her popular poem Mary Rose (In transcript further down this page) from The Metronome (available here in an electronic version on Books for Purchase and in a print edition from Giramondo). Click on the poem titles below to hear the audio:

Wind-rock

Mary Rose

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There are excellent reviews of Jennifer Maiden's The Metronome in The Sydney Morning Herald by Geoff Page, and in The Australian by Peter Craven. Page's SMH review mentions Quemar Press and Maiden's Quemar Press Play With Knives novels.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/poetry-review-paws-for-thought-20170322-gv43kl.html

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/the-metronome-jennifer-maidens-nod-to-history-in-topical-verse/news-story/9c15c8c17f6e2015ee968848c328d6c7

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Jennifer Maiden discusses satire, interviewed by Australian poet Robert Adamson at the launch for the Giramondo print edition of Maiden's 'The Metronome'.

Transcript:
A. And it works both ways because at the time being they're working as satirical poems really well, and, you know, satirising the particular people, but they will work in the long run as well.
M. Yeah, uh, when you say 'satire'.
A. Well 'satire' might not be the right word, actually, I thought about that. Yeah.
M. Yeah. I.
A. Yeah, I think I'm wrong about that. I didn't mean to say that.
M. One of the best critics in Australia, Lisa Gorton, has said that I write satire. So I'm a bit wary of saying I don't write satire because I respect Lisa so much, but I don't like satire. I don't write satire.
A. I agree.
M. It's a very conservative form, and I don't like it.
A. No, I agree with you. Yeah, no no, you're right. Compare your work to, say, Jonathan Swift. It's a whole different generosity, as I said, in your work... In Swift and people like that, there is a viciousness in most satire.
M. And they're conservative.
A. And conservative as well.
M. They want to return to something. They want to return to the earlier ideal.
A. No, that's true, that's true. You're right, you're right. I think that's what satire was acquired from.
M. Yeah.
A. Yeah, I know. That's really good to talk about that.
M. Yeah. Even the trendy, new TV satires are basically conservative.
A. Yeah.
M. They're on the ABC or they're sort of, you know, on the make comedians or something like that. They're not... they're conservative.
A. Yeah. And that's why I was careful about using the word 'political', too. It's, it it seems inadequate to to the weight of your poetry as I read it through. Your poetry was much broader than just... being labelled 'political' can put people off, and not let them open up to the riches in, and spiritual side of, your work.
M. Well, one, one of the things we're trying to do, isn't it, when we write so called 'political' poetry is actually broaden the definition of politics.
A. Yeah, yeah.
M. Yeah. To include poetry.
A. Yeah, yeah.
M. Anyone got any requests?
Audience member: Could you read us something, please?
M. What?
Audience member: Could you read us something?
M. [laughing] Could I read something.

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The paper edition of Jennifer Maiden's The Metronome was launched by Professor Robert Adamson, with an introduction by the print publisher Professor Ivor Indyk, at Gleebooks Bookshop on 26th March, 2017. In his speech, Professor Adamson said that Jennifer Maiden was a great poet, and that The Metronome was a proof of his claim.

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Jennifer Maiden reading her poem, Mary Rose, heard by Australian poet Robert Adamson, at the launch of the Giramondo paper copy of her collection, The Metronome. Mary Rose is included in The Metronome. Quemar Press' electronic edition of The Metronome can be purchased for $5.00 (Australian dollars) securely through PayPal from the 'Books for Purchase' page.

Transcript:
M. I'll do one called 'Mary Rose'
A. Great. Great.
M. I love 'Mary Rose'. Okay.

One thing among the many things I love
about Gen Y is that they’re ready to accept
transgender in anything, as if Caitlyn Jenner
was the best fan fiction ever. I’m thinking of Emily Bronte
having baked the bread for her family,
charging over the moors, with a rapturous dog
and a headful of Heathcliff and Cathy. I’m thinking
of the first and one of the best English
novels, Defoe’s Roxana, written in a saucy
female first person: never marry a fool, she says,
ladies, whatever: you must never marry a fool. I’m
thinking of Alfred Hitchcock, after Marnie, eager
to film Barrie’s Mary Rose. He’d seen the play
in England as a boy: in England, where the police
locked him as a child in a cell, to frighten
any trace of crime away, his parents quite okay
with that: Oh, God. The plot of Mary Rose
is that a little girl on a remote Scots island goes
AWOL into mystery, returns the same, but later
visits as young bride with baby, does
the moonlight flit forever, until one
day her grown-up son returns to find
her, by accident: the child-ghost-mother,
perching on his knee: a little ‘ghostie’,
transcending any fear. I think, from memory,
they part again, but everything seems better. He
should have made that movie, despite
studio screams about money. After Marnie,
he was opened like an oyster in the dark. The Hitchcock
blonde, of course, is Hitchcock, hence
his tendency to beat her, but now here
Marnie was allowed an understanding, maybe
relief from retribution: we escape
those hours in the killing cell at last. I’m
thinking of Gen Y with real thanksgiving. When I
was young and used male first person in my
novels, my feminist critics - as if I wasn’t one -
were horrified that I seemed to want to be
a dull man when I was still really such an
interesting real-life woman. Really. Now they’ve
grown old as me, some still seem to disparage
transgender as if they had monopoly austerely
on anything female, or indeed maybe
on all things that can stop the living body
claiming its other half in any way. Gen Y
would have no problem with moorbound Emily
in perfect English hymn metre writing ‘There let
thy bleeding branch atone’, or Keats, becoming
Lamia so he could face the autumn, writing ‘You
must be mine to die upon the rack
if I want you’ to an unfazed Fanny Brawne. The psyche
well-expressed splits like an atom. Its energy
flies wild as the unconfined electrons
of lightning finding home.

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Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden

Ivor Indyk, Jennifer Maiden, Robert Adamson

Ivor Indyk, Jennifer Maiden

Jennifer Maiden, Robert Adamson

Juno Gemes, Katharine Margot Toohey

Signing The Metronome

Juno Gemes, Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden

Phyllis Perlstone, Jennifer Maiden

Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey, Robert Adamson, Chris Mansell

Katharine Margot Toohey, Jennifer Maiden, Joanne Burns

Jennifer Maiden, Ivor Indyk

Chris Mansell, Juno Gemes, Richard Tipping, Jennifer Maiden, Robert Adamson, Katharine Margot Toohey

Jennifer Maiden with The Metronome

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Critic and author, Magdalena Ball, from the online review, Compulsive Reader, has published an in-depth audio interview with Jennifer Maiden, in which they discuss the Play With Knives trilogy, and The Metronome:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader/2017/02/12/jennifer-maiden-on-play-with-knives
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The Giramondo print edition of Jennifer Maiden's The Metronome is available now from their website:
http://giramondopublishing.com/
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Jennifer Maiden's latest poetry collection, Giramondo's print edition of The Metronome, will be launched at Gleebooks (in Glebe, New South Wales, Australia), 4 for 4:30 pm, Sunday, 26th of March, 2017. Professor Robert Adamson will be launching it. You can RSVP at the Gleebooks website:
http://www.gleebooks.com.au/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=277262
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Jennifer Maiden's three Play With Knives novels are still available as free downloads from Quemar Press. The English publisher of her Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books has recently uploaded a video in which she introduces and reads four of her political poems. It includes three of her poems that feature George Jeffreys, Clare Collins and other characters from the Play With Knives books. Her introduction to these poems analyses and describes her theory behind the plot and characters. The video is currently available on Bloodaxe's twitter and Facebook, and permanently available on their Vimeo site:
https://twitter.com/BloodaxeBooks
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bloodaxe-Books/17150289985
https://vimeo.com/200746566

Bloodaxe has released the video now to promote their upcoming book and DVD set, In Person: World Poets, and also their published selected of Jennifer Maiden's work, Intimate Geography: Selected Poems 1991-2010. Her poems from the video were published originally by Giramondo.

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Jennifer Maiden's new poetry collection, The Metronome, is available from Quemar Press as a PDF file for $5.00 (Australian dollars)

The 'Buy Now' button leads to the secure Paypal site. After filling in a form on the Paypal site with payment details, you will be brought to a new Quemar Press webpage where you can download the collection. All payments are done securely through Paypal (including credit card payments) not Quemar Press as such. Purchase and download on the same device, because the download link will be lost if the process is interrupted. After the download is completed, it can be transferred to other devices.

Due to the topical relevance of Jennifer Maiden's new poetry collection, The Metronome, which deals partly with the current U.S. elections and includes their result in an epilogue, Quemar Press has now uploaded its electronic edition on 9th November, 2016, immediately after the outcome of the U.S. elections. The print edition, to be published by Giramondo, will follow in February 2017. Quemar Press offers its electronic edition of The Metronome for $5.00 (Australian dollars), under agreement with Giramondo.

If you have any problems purchasing or downloading, contact Quemar Press using the Contact page.

Requests for email of possible review or educational copies can be made with the form on the Contact page.

Maiden's early novels, Play With Knives and Play With Knives: Two: Complicity, which involve two of the characters from The Metronome - Clare and George - are still available as free downloads from the Books page.

EXCERPT FROM THE METRONOME

George Jeffreys: 20:
George Jeffreys Woke up in Washington

George Jeffreys woke up in Washington, thirsty, in
a hotel room in November. Results of the election
would be on TV tonight. Clare sat, glistening, in an
armchair, nude and reading. He laughed,
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. I asked you to sit
like that, and then I fell asleep.’ She
said, ‘That’s okay’, then lied: ‘I thought that
that was part of what you were doing.’
She’d found in his tin trunk a copy
of Kathleen Tynan’s biography of Kenneth.
George opened some Pol Roger, and saw
she’d turned up the air-conditioner. It was too early
for exit polls, but of course Clinton
would take California tonight, and Trump take Texas.
He watched Clare kneeling naked in the narrow
armchair, with a round glass of champagne
in her hand, and the sombre champagne light
of the Washington window flooding down, reflected
back by the silver in her skin. ‘Little fox,
little cat, little lion’, he sighed,
without lifting his voice or moving, as
the gestalt and the alcohol kicked in.
She smiled, ‘It must have been odd, with
the Tynans…’ the TV caught her eye. She added:
‘If Clinton loses just one firewall State, then
everything springs open.’  He nodded, all of any day’s
ironic understatement in his eyes...
His sleep had been advantageous. Before it, she was hunched
in her old gone-to-earth position, fingers
clasped on knee or elbow. Now she lolled
back with her arms on the edges: discarding
familiarity’s fake indifference, to recognise terror,
the way the body has of always lying
that one thing is another. She knew now she was simply
frightened he would die, and she felt better. The Fall
night fell huge in frozen clouds behind her:
                                    in sumptuous grey-rose. On
the TV now the exit polls were crowding, although
his eyes still watched her, as accepting as still water.
He had beautiful eyes in repose.
                               And the Exit Polls continued as expected:
Trump had the southern states, and she some coast. George said now,
‘I met Trump a few times in the City. At a couple of bars and a dinner.
He gave money to Prisoners of Conscience, maybe thought
we were the CIA one, by mistake. At any rate, we agreed
on nothing but being against Globalism - though that was ever
at those boring troughs, a cheerful bond in hate.’
                                                       Clare’s hair was waterfalling
on the chairtop. On the bed, George held its silver
satin clip like a nestling in his hand. He said, ‘Spread
both your arms.’ She did, and laughed ‘Maria Cross’, naming one
of his burden books, of essays by Conor O’Brien.
                                                      It saw women in sex in fiction
as a crucified Christ, both saviour and martyr, more victim.
                                                                            She trailed
her outstretched fingers down the chairsides. A Washington of night
sprang behind her in the window. The position raised her breasts,
looking tidy and white around rose-dark areolae. She could see
he wasn’t depressed now. He had been, and she’d felt guilty
in Thredbo that her fighting for the brumbies undermined
his general defences. The animal - like the refugee -
thing is always endless, and can kill outright, without
the yield-factor in a skyscraper for storm.
                                                           She moved somewhat,
tried Pre-Raphaelite postures. It was less like an execution, more now
like Andromeda on the rock, he thought.
                                                           And then from what
would one rescue? On TV, the firewall states weren’t going Clinton.
George’s mobile rang. And it was Trump...: ‘George.
I thought they’d set me up to lose, but, Christ, they may
have set me up to win, and why? And why?’ ‘It may be Syria’,
said George. ‘Or revenge for the Russian uranium. Who knows?
Or they think Hillary is sick. How explicit was
your promise to the Clintons? But, anyway, it’s early days
yet’, and Clare said: ‘Her firewalls may be holding.’
                                                               Someone
helped Trump turn off his mobile, from wherever he had
needed for a minute to pause time. George said, ‘I hope
they don’t know he rang me, or they’ll find me
somewhere under a bush like Dr. Kelly.’...

Continued in The Metronome

PREFACE

The Metronome in the title of Jennifer Maiden’s new collection is a reassuring sign of life through every problematic aspect of austerity, like the metronome that was used as a comfort noise on the radio during the siege of Leningrad. The poems themselves calibrate events and processes and are also metronomes.
An important symbol of the metronome in the collection is the Asian Lucky Cat (Maneki Neko) which beckons customers and money with a paw that still maintains a vigilant binary rhythm. It holds a coin and represents great riches. Its left paw, in this case, is also raised in what could be seen as the socialist salute. Maiden’s sketch of a Lucky Cat is included in the cover design, as are photos of her hand and face while she (the poet) deals the poems rhythmically, like cards.
The metronome standing, keeping binary pace, proving reality and calling the game of anything untrue, is represented by many elements in the poems: conversations between the living and dead; the need for transgender in art; the bisexuality of the imagination; dialogues as political duets. Her characters as such also act as steadying metronomes for each other.
Here Countess Markievicz and Jeremy Corbyn discuss the economic confines of austerity and the nature of patriotism on Ben Nevis, Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt try to comfort a disintegrating Hillary Clinton, Malcolm Turnbull and William Bligh speak about the similarities between hunting men in politics and hunting animals for art (watched by a parrot Bligh killed to paint a watercolour). After misreading her constituents, Tanya Plibersek invokes Jane Austin in Sydney, and Yannis Varoufakis and Harold Wilson address Marxism, technology, the E.U., and revolutions in tandem by the Yarra River. Bernie Sanders demonstrates socialism with his arms around a cat. On Nauru, Maiden’s character Clare Collins steps through the results of charismatic financial faith, risk and desperation to rescue a detention centre victim. Elsewhere, Clare walks with metronomic precision after trying to save wild horses, and then reunites with her partner, George Jeffreys. Later, in Washington, the two address death, sexuality, and survival and observe the Presidential election results.
This last poem concludes an epilogue that consists of three poems clustered around a line from Keats: ‘You must be mine to die upon the rack if I want you’, to analyse austerity carefully through the lenses of use and need.
The Metronome collection, is anti-austerity in all senses - in finances, in politics, in gender, in art and in humanity, as in the lines on Malcolm Turnbull:
‘even his mother had returned at last, as
if time ticked like a metronome of mercy’.


                                       Katharine Margot Toohey

                                       QUEMAR PRESS

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