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During my continued adventures around the globe, I’ll be in Artistry in Singapore as part of their Speakeasy series. If you’re in town come join us!

What: Speakeasy #6

Where: 17 Jalan Pinang, Singapore 199149.

When: 12 October 2013, 19:00 – 22:00.

Commiserate is a monthly experiment in poetic collaboration.

Sept, 2013: Emily Ballou – Ask a Lizard

Says Emily: “For a long time, I have been, first visited, and then stalked, by a creature and poetic subject known to me as LIZARD. Lizard was born on a typewriter overlooking Loch Long and subsequently accompanied me to Beirut with Ryan Van Winkle where he had his first public outing as a suite of poems for a longer book I still have not finished. Ryan is therefore, an old friend of his. When Ryan and I discussed co-writing a poem or a series of poems, I suggested the title “ASK A LIZARD”. I had been watching a lot of “Ask a Monk” on You Tube, where a bald man in orange robes tries to answer your most existential questions. I felt at times that Lizard would have more interesting answers. And so began our project “ASK A LIZARD” which Ryan and I sent back and forth over the course of several months. If you have any other questions for LIZARD, please send them.”

Ask a Lizard

What is Sleep?

First, there is no cure.
Second, sleep is opposite of everything else
you think you are.
It is the black pulsing shadow on the rock
on the bark, on the sand.
It is the name for the stretched out shaded space that grows
to infinite proportions
blown by breeze, shape-shifted by sun
where Goannas eat man.
And it is the place you would step if you were able
to be nowhere else but there
in the black sketch of exile
(can you even remember it?)
that is the preparation for the long sleep
with no stories inside it.
Lizards don’t tell their tales at night.
Every day they press another claw into the sand
which tomorrow will not be there.

Is it possible to be alone in a crowd?

If you can lie down
in a city rush say, at nine
in the morning
on a Monday, mid-September,
eighteen days from Washington
and curl up into a small ball
on the warming stone
of the footpath
imitating a lizard
or a penguin egg
take your pick
keeping your eyes shut tight
or just one eye in Asynchronous
Eye Closure
and a small handwritten sign
that reads
I am not dead, keep walking,
soon, the sound of work shoes
gingerly tap over and around you
(a meaningless stone in a river
of babbling soles)
and the slow slide
of passing traffic passing by
will massage you into a sort
of alone and wakeful rest
known to all lizards
of every tree and continent
as Qw – Quiet Wakefulness.

How Much Does the Earth Weigh?

Go easy and lift
from the knees
when you multiply
what you know
with what you don’t
or count the seconds
of a day, every one

until it is done
and see if you don’t float
in black nets of stars

What pulls harder than the moon?

Whatever draws or presses another is as much drawn or pressed by that other.
If a lizard draws a thread bobbin tied from its foot to a shrub, the lizard will equally be drawn back
towards the shrub, for the distended thread, by the same endeavor to relax or unbend itself, will
draw the lizard as much towards the shrub as it does the shrub towards the lizard and will obstruct
the progress of one as much as it advances the other.
(from Lizard’s Third Law of Inertia)

Do you Ever Think of Your Mother?

Look sideways at the sun or lick a rock
when the canopy ruffles like fur

What is the Doctrine of Chances?
(The Doctrine of Chances: or, a method for calculating the probabilities for events in play)

Taste the air
with your wet
claw, let it tell you
which way it is blowing.
Does it hold rain?
Does it hold coming sun
or slacking moon? Or a total eclipse
of want, a total westward of
want? Does it hold
your supper or just stone dust
or the pale pollen of children
gusted up as far off as Adelaide?
Does it cradle night? Or does nigh
cradle you; rock you awake? You have to ask
yourself why you are asking. Can you
taste that light that comes out
when the cold shutter of sky closes,
when the yellow goes?

You know what happens now.
The whole world starts singing.

See that tree over there
with the cicadas in it? Their long wings
are lattices, both crispy and translucently sweet.
Your path from rock to bark
is an Isosceles or a Scalene
but if that hawk’s overhead
you gotta gauge the chances
that he’ll take a short line

and take his chance on you. Is it an accident
if his black beak catches? How many collisions
and near-misses, how much beaten wind
have you heard in your short warm life?
Mind this doctrine
when you dare that dash to scale that trunk
or it will shorter still.

What did your face look like before you were born?

You come to understand
wherever you go
you’ll see your own face
in the mirror
not like stone
more like steel
each day, a little more rust

Irish poet Paula Meehan has been called “that rare and precious thing – a vocational poet of courage and integrity” by Carol Ann Duffy, and in this wide ranging interview you will see why. “I think poetry acts as lightning rod to earth the energies of the Zeitgeist that you are living through… Often to get real, true peace you have to actually nearly reopen the wound to clean it.” We discuss the Troubles in Ireland, issues with the priesthood, witchcraft, abuse and suicide, but at all times Paula remains sparklingly eloquent, thoughtful and maintains a sense of intense wonder and joy with the world. Her many accolades include the Irish American Cultural Institute’s Butler Award, the Denis Devlin Award and the Marten Toonder Award.

Shortly after my voyage to Australia I’ll be hitting Singapore for a show alongside Alvin Pang, an awesome poet and thoroughly personable fellow.

World Voices features Ryan Van Winkle

 9 October, 7.30pm, Earshot Café, 1 Old Parliament Lane, Singapore.

Ryan Van Winkle is an American poet who resides in Edinburgh, Scotland. His incredibly personal and intimate poetry-theatre experiment Red, Like Our Room Used to Feel, which has been showcased at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe amongst other places, has been known to captivate even those who shun poetry.

Join us as he reads from his evocative poetry, and presents a treat in the form of his ViewMaster. Ryan’s ViewMaster is a personal slide-show performance that is at times surprising and surreal, and offers viewers a chance to travel through scenes with your eyes and ears.

This session will be moderated by Alvin Pang, a noted and award winning poet.

Very pleased to be part of The Guardian’s second podcast for the Brisbane Festival! Red, Like Our Room Used to Feel is part of the Festival’s Basement Late Night series, it would be lovely to see you there.

On Friday 20 September Red Like Our Room Used to Feel will be making its southern hemisphere début at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. After successful runs at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe, in the Battersea Arts Centre in December 2012, and most recently at the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre, we’re really excited to share the show with a new audience.

An intimate poetry performance from Ryan Van Winkle. An audio voyage featuring ambient melodies from Ragland. An installation with paintings, photographs and ephemera from a host of artists. Joy, memory and loss condensed into fifteen minutes. A red room to lay down in. A cup of tea, a snifter of port, and space to listen.

‘Intimate and haunting’ – The Guardian

‘it might be a landmark production for poetry in performance. If you are at all interested in literature, memory, performance or joy, you must see this show’ ***** – The List

‘Simple, yearning and effective’ **** — Time Out

‘An intimate, emotional experience guaranteed to win over even the most poetry-phobic’ –  The Observer

Tickets can be booked on the Melbourne Fringe site, and are by donation only. Whatever you feel it was worth!

What: Red Like Our Room Used to Feel

When: Melbourne Fringe Festival, 20 September – 5 October, 7-9pm (20 min shows)

Where: Fringe Hub – The Warren, North Melbourne Town Hall, 521 Queensberry St, North Melbourne.

How Much: By Donation.

I’m now taking bookings for the Red Room Melbourne Fringe. If you want to enjoy a free poetry experience just drop me a line and I’ll gladly save you a slot. :::::::: For reservations please email Ryan: ramvanwin@gmail.com; subject line ‘Booking for Red Room’. In the email please write two preferred dates/times if possible. Bookings can be made up until 2pm on the day of the performance.

We chat with Gavin Bain aka Brains from Silibil-n-Brains, a couple of guys from Scotland who pretended they were a famous Californian hip-hop group. The film The Great Hip Hop Hoax was a huge hit at the Edinburgh International Film Festival earlier this year and it will be out in cinemas next week, so we sat down with Brains and he gave his side of the story.

We travel around the world in this episode of the podcast. First up, from merry Cornwall, we have performance artist and poet Sally Crabtree, aka the Poetry Postie, who we caught up with at the StAnza poetry festival. Also at StAnza we recorded three poems from the Romanian poet and TV presenter Robert Serban. And we speak with Persis Karim from the Bay Area in San Francisco about Iranian poetry and the importance of translation.

Artist Alicia Bruce discusses her photography project which documents the effect Donald Trump’s golf course had of the community of Menie. In a wide ranging interview, Alicia discusses how she wanted to represent the community to balance some of the many negative media portrayals of the people involved. You can see the photos on Alicia’s website. Alicia also has a exhibition at the Dovecot Gallery in Edinburgh until mid September.

Staying with the Edinburgh Fringe, we chat with some of the exciting people who produced some extremely interesting work there this year. First we talk with Debbie Pearson, one of the curators of the Forest Fringe, who discusses some of the work to expect there and we get an excerpt from her own show. We also hear from Lorne Campbell, Lucy Ellinson and Chris Thorpe who are taking part in The Bloody Great Border Ballad Project. Finally we include a piece from Viewmaster, Ryan’s own collaboration with Dan Gorman.