April 30 Word of the Day: Microcredentials
Remembering to turn the calendar at the end of the
month is a subject no one learnt at school. A pinch and a punch for the first
of the month was, at some stage, included in the one-hour microcredential
course on offer, free of charge, on the domestic front.
April 29 Word of the Day: Walking
Image: Fence graffiti along The Secret Way near Stevenson
Street in Kew, Melbourne.
Of those who never make eye contact, walking headlong or headstrong or something all-head as if we were not there passing them early in the morning along the footpath and they have nothing to say or are lost in thoughts (to be charitable) or just don’t say hello as a rule, or on principle whatever that principle may be, gone without a murmur past the shoulder into the past tense. Of those, contrariwise, who do say hello and always will even before daylight has filtered through enough for them to see who they say hello to and always will, just as we say hello briefly by way of reciprocal recognition of their existence and the existence of existence in general, for example birds starting to chirp and a vehicle careering along the street.
April 28 Word of the Day: Breathing
Effusions everywhere
slip
from guards,
light green
figuring lines
surprised
as day,
dragging colour
out
of night
and
its grey
brown presages.
Airy
air fillers,
lovely constraints
featured
for water.
Rain remembrance
from
its first sign.
Cool brain
fanned
with green.
Pure consolation,
timely relief
attracting
an isolated mind.
Untimed foliations
spiralling
around houses,
edging streets,
hanging
about places,
soft watery,
just
like gurgling.
Firm
as thought
at
the root,
up
above high voltage,
inscribing freeways.
Where
are their endings?
Brushed up
vacant lots,
halved
around wires,
hilltop generations.
Endearing survival
spreads
into the sky
just
like breathing.
What
birds this way?
Fringes sway
colour pale,
frail
as thought
reaching
new currents,
its
own pattern
of itself.
[From
‘The Times’, a series of poems written in 2007]
April 27 Word of the Day: Spelling
Teaching again today to young children writing.
How to spell moon.
They choose to write about what they’ve decided
already.
The poem of getting here from there.
One writes the speeds of his scooter in five lines.
Downhill’s best.
There’s the girl who has been to Europe and Rome
and Bali.
How to spell Europe.
Another lists the contents of a magical forest.
The poem of getting there from here.
But they need not go with the set theme of travel.
Dogs are the best, and cats, with names.
One child describes a bird building a nest.
How do you spell twigs.
Another finds dead wood and builds a fire.
Her first bush camp in large lettering.
And the world is quiet and the words come forth.
Steadily towards page two.
Sometimes a dee for a bee and a backwards kay.
Correctly spelling bee’s a beginning.
And who am I to interrupt the HB loops.
The rubbing out and the margin doodles.
A concentrating room of poets.
Words that are all theirs precise and best.
April 26 Word of the Day: Blatteration
A
Glossary of Domestic Sounds
whirligig
a
toy which children spin round
“the
remote jumps streams, a whirligig in their hands”
volant
flying;
passing through the air
“invisible
messages in good faith and bad arrive volant with pings in the phone”
tink
to
make a sharp shrill noise
“the
kettle’s boiling tinked”
sternutation
the
act of sneezing
“the
cat betrayed its whereabouts with a bout of sternutation”
rodomontade
to
brag thrasonically; to boast like Rodomonte
“all
morning talkback radio rodomontaded”
larum
1
alarm; noise noting danger 2 an instrument that makes a noise at a certain hour
“wake-up
larum a rooster, sleepy-bye larum ambient chimes”
ignivomous
vomiting
fire
“the
new ignivomous stove lights automatically”
gleek
musick;
or musician
“the
needle drops into the groove unstopping sleek gleek”
1
the act of flowing 2 the matter that flows 3 [In mathematicks] The arithmetick
or analysis of infinitely small variable quantities; or it is the method of
finding an infinite small or infinitely small quantity, which, being taken an
infinite number of times, becomes equal to a quantity given. Harris.
“a
washing-machine, that by fluvial fluxion flushes out infinite fluxion fragments”
eructation
the
act of belching
“the
station wagon let out a series of eructations”
dyspnoea
a
difficulty of breathing; straitness of breath
“the
dyspnoea of the emptying plughole”
blatteration
noise;
senseless roar
“the
blatteration of lawnmowers every Saturday”
[Selections
from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755]
April 25 Word of the Day: Hormuz
No one’s going anywhere in the Strait of Hormuz
All attention telescoped on shipping at anchor
Where no means yes and the command is refuse,
Destroyers indistinguishable from tankers.
World’s attention telescoped on shipping at anchor
Asks who is the prince and who the buffoon,
Carriers indistinguishable from tankers
When next week or next year both mean soon.
Ask who is the prince and who the buffoon -
It’s a narrow call, a tight squeeze, a stalemate
When next week or next year both mean soon
And you are merely the current head of state.
It’s a narrow reach, a sight tease, a failed state
The Strait of Hormuz every second in the news
And you are clearly the current headline’s fate
Running out of energy searching for clues.
Dire strait of Hormuz every second in the blues
Knows everyone to blame and no one to thank
Running out of energy not wanting to choose
With holidays on hold and no tiger in the tank.
Now everyone’s to blame and no one’s to thank
What’s mine’s mine turning overnight oil shocks
With holidays on hold and no extra in the bank
The very latest form of Persian paradox:
.
Mine’s mined, burning midnight oil shocks
No one’s going anywhere in the Strait of Hormuz
The very oldest form of Persian paradox
Where yes means no and the command is accuse.
April 24 Word of the Day: Tokyo
This time not, will never go
Neon noodles anime shops
Perfect parcels fishbowl
lenses
Now overseas is out of reach.
Noodle neons anime stops
Behind roller doors’ double
locks
Now overseas is out of reach,
The Tokyo I have never seen.
Beyond roller doors, double
locks
Grow bamboo walls moss-bank
gardens
Old Tokyo where I’ve never
been,
The place you read about in
books
Green bamboo walls moss-dank
gardens
Cinder layers of firestorms
Places you only see in films,
Nonstop faces’ fluent
markets.
Cinder layers of firestorms
We can only half imagine,
Nonstop faces, fluid markets
Not now, all grounded.
We can only half imagine.
Microcircuits scroll up and
down.
Not now, all grounded,
Only us at home like
thousands.
Microcircuits must do instead
This time, now we’ll never
go,
Only online pictures
thousands
Perfect parcels fishbowl
lenses.
[August 2020 & April 2026]
Image: Sake tributes in Tokyo, by B. Harvey 2025. In
online poetry group during lockdown, as an exercise I invited members
to write a poem about a city that they currently could not visit: “The poem can
go anywhere. It can be descriptive. Memories may fill the poem. Longing to
return is possibly at work. By imagining the city then and now and even in the
future, you play with one of poetry’s strongest devices, which is tense. The
reader is left with a strong sense of the city.” I chose the pantoum and wrote
three poems for the group (Florence, Jerusalem, Tokyo) in August 2020, which
are released here, with little alteration, in April 2026.
April 23 Word of the Day: Bardolatry
[Found Poem]
Ranking
Shakespeare's plays is so subjective.
Is
it the intricate plot?
So
much of Shakespeare is about the contradictions
between
the private and the public self,
and
how we adopt a part to perform the latter.
But
of course, your personal favourite may be influenced
by
the actual production and the cast. While there are
some
obvious strong and weak plays,
different
plays speak to different situations.
Even
the (reputedly) bad plays often have sheer brilliance
within
them. Because most Shakespeare plays
have
some very meaty roles, a great performance
can
really boost the enjoyment of the play,
in
my opinion, transcending
some
of the weaker plot elements.
Ranking
Shakespeare's plays is so subjective.
Is
it the evocative and sometimes impenetrable dialogue?
It's
a concentrated assault on the language processing centres
of
the brain, for sure,
but
it leaves me giddy with emotion.
Love
the language in all the plays.
Yet
atomising the plays here
apart
from the nominal multi-parters
ignores
the reality that no play stands alone,
the
sum is greater than the parts,
and
there are clearly much larger-scale projects afoot.
The
camera angles are typical of its director.
Ranking
Shakespeare's plays is so subjective.
Such
ranking is necessarily an exercise in both futility
and
eccentric preference. Shakespeare should not be read
as
history, despite the desperate attempts of some
to
insist they are true biography. Of course,
all
the politically incorrect plays are lower down the list:
every
age creates the Shakespeare
that
reflects its self-image best. Shakespeare wrote
for
the theatre at the time,
not
for PhD theses centuries later.
The
outdoor ambience is amazing,
with
songbirds around the park
adding
ad-libs from nearby.
Just
magic.
[Found Poem: Fragments from the Comments column to
‘To see or not to see : every single Shakespeare play – ranked!’, by Michael
Billington. The Guardian, 22 April 2026: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/ng-interactive/2026/apr/22/every-shakespeare-play-ranked-lear-antony-cleopatra-hamlet
]
April 22 Word of the Day: Jerusalem
City of my childhood
prayerbook
Acres retold, promise unseen
Temples pool sides stone
golden gates
I have not a rhyme for those
Promises retold, aches unseen
Ancient columns of politics.
I have not a rhyme for those
Saints who deal with all the
damage
Modern columns of politics,
There aren’t the words to
express that.
Saints have acts for all the
damage
Morning after to start again,
There aren’t the words to
express this.
Here are some: light, home,
food, warmth, rest
Mornings after. To start
again
Is enough to hope for in this
world.
Here are some lights, homes,
food, warmth, rest
Ample on hill lovely afar
Quite enough to lose in this
world.
Enough to sing when they’re
quite gone.
Ample on hill lovely afar
All languages reiterate
Enough to sing when almost
gone,
Adults understood at best in
part.
Languages reiterate
The city of my childhood
prayerbook,
Adults understand at best in
part
Temples pool sides stone
golden gates.
[August 2020 & April 2026]
Images: Iso-mandala No. 85 – Jerusalem (September
2020). In online poetry group during lockdown, as an exercise I invited members
to write a poem about a city that they currently could not visit: “The poem can
go anywhere. It can be descriptive. Memories may fill the poem. Longing to
return is possibly at work. By imagining the city then and now and even in the
future, you play with one of poetry’s strongest devices, which is tense. The
reader is left with a strong sense of the city.” I chose the pantoum and wrote
three poems for the group (Florence, Jerusalem, Tokyo) in August 2020, which
are released here, with little alteration, in April 2026.
April 21 Word of the Day: Fog
Fog
estranges the early riser at the undrawing curtain view, softly encumbering
roofs and gardens and vision itself whitely with condensation divested of all the
usual linearity. Estranges, not exactly, the verb is more like surprises or
soothes or gratifies, the way difference envelopes or calmness descends or airiness
nubilates before our very eyes. Indeed, makes domestic rather than estranges,
makes of our familiar habitation a tranquil mind of belonging, makes of our
indigenous present a stillness stiller still, missing any sign of motation. Eftsoons
fog has not budged from its former glory of the half-hour previous, glowing
increasingly by degrees with niveous splendour, albeit the latitudes are
temperate in these parts more given to various pluvious thicknesses on any a
time but today; fulsome immensities obstructing cloudiness from cloud abstractedly
and rendering the watcher, casting waking looks, into a state of sedate obmutescence.
Eftsoons fog as they say is thick, damp, blanketing those waking up with the
densest definition of undefined blank, structures their foundations dreamy to
vision and gentle against glass; settles across acres of the convenient commonwealth
of city, an enigmatist converting nature into watercolours and nursing the
ravaged edges with autumnal cool. Eftsoons fog lowers itself lower, raising
questions of and amidst more early birds. If fog is neither chimera nor
chiliaedron how then to name it or which shape to compare? Surely evaporation
is not instincted with animate anatomy nor virtuoso with deity, never let it be
said? Eftsoons say ten o’clock fog as they say lifts, if they must, perhaps too
quickly unnoticed, vehicles seem cleaner and flora brisker and fauna all
whiskers and the epidermis of the wakeful tenses tenderly with sunlight, our
epitome of measure. Light blue reaches through and opens wide. Had the
humanists amongst us only more time in the day, the answers might be plain to see
and dilate upon, as the charming layers of white, not so much layers as
penetrable substance, dawdle about treetops and sail idly and without incident above
riverbends and reflect in portholes before they pale and unfleck, and suchlike
verbs, into the all-purpose atmosphere.
[Selections
from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755]
April 20 Word of the Day: Doors
The door into the bathroom promises steam and perfume.
The door into the garden grows green as sun revisits.
The doors of the car are shields.
The door to the café bursts forth good gossip and old
soul music.
The door to the club is boarded up with agonised graffiti.
The door without hinges opens with a light beam.
The door of good turns welcomes every stranger.
The door you meet you don’t read about in books.
The door piled halfway up with softening autumn
leaves.
The door of the quaint news-stand half-open all
day.
The door surrounded by a halo.
The door of the glass hothouse a massy swirl of hydrangeas.
The door improved by brass numbers screwed into place.
The doors bending inwards into old class trams.
The door where secrets go and snib the lock.
The door where one thought leads to another and
another.
The door in the tireless street of daily occurrence.
April 19 Word of the Day: Quatrain
Quantities
of Quatrains
Reaching
out he seized the world,
Sunrise,
cities, passions, dreams,
But
all his wild and wanton words
Finished
up in little magazines.
April 18 Word of the Day: Bastard
Read today ‘Bastards and Buggers’, an article by
Simon Musgrave and Kate Burridge (2014), leading with this epigraph: “Which one
of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?” Their footnote reads: “Allegedly
uttered by Australian cricket captain Bill Woodfull during the Bodyline series
of 1932-3 in response to the English captain Douglas Jardine’s complaint that
one of the Australian players had called him a bastard.” Jardine directed his
bowlers to aim at the bodies of the batsmen in order to limit the Australians’ prodigious
scoring. It was Woodfull who famously (not just allegedly) said, “There are two
teams out there. One is playing cricket and the other is not.” The first use of
‘bastard’ in his interrogation calls his team mates to attention; it is an
almost endearing if blokey way of treating the team as equal before the law.
His second ‘bastard’ refers objectively to the haplessly pompous Jardine, for
whom the epithet applies even if Woodfull is questioning the Englishman’s legitimacy
as a sportsmanlike sportsman, not the legitimacy of his birth. The third ‘bastard’
has none of the foregoing tone of positive jocular bonhomie, its negative meaning
being very precisely what got up Jardine’s nostril: he is a reprehensible bully.
Gerald Murnane, the urbane Victorian novelist, has put in print that his sons
are quote “bastards” unquote. While it might be possible to believe he uses
this word simultaneously for all the meanings spelled out so far, the humour of
this unpleasant but prideful accusation balances on the question of Murnane’s knowledge of
the paternity of his own family. Elsewhere in his writing it is apparent the
author has a finely tuned sense of irony and double entendre, a perverse wit
when it comes to etymology. While no reader for a moment would conclude that
Murnane’s sons are bastards, we have his word for it that they are. Don Chipp,
the flinty Victorian politician, knew a bastard when he saw one, for example the
well-born son of the squattocracy, Malcolm Fraser. Such was his dislike for
Fraser and other former Liberal Party colleagues he formed a new party, with a
primary objective that was not so much a policy as a moral imperative: Keep the
bastards honest. Such was Fraser’s notoriety during the Dismissal (1975) and afterwards
as Prime Minister that many Australians referred to him as the Big Bastard. Unlike
Douglas Jardine, Fraser took some pride (allegedly) in this sobriquet, as it denoted
respect for his legend as a ruthless operator, manipulative backstabber, and
aloof leader. Depending on who was using the term, an insult could become an
expression of admiration or grudging respect.
April 17 Word of the Day: Florence
Where does the day go, and
the night
David’s already said goodbye
No flights out and, in fact,
no flights
Churches declare the reason
why.
David already waved goodbye
Gaze on his marble flesh no
more.
Churches declare the reasons
why
Santa Croce forlorn at morn.
No gazing on those supple
forms
Again, and ingrained imagine
Santa Croce at dawn forlorn.
We’ll not behold their
likeness again.
Again and again he imagined
Dante, he knew, never went
back.
We will not see his like
again
His great plans all done and
dusted.
Dante, you know, never went
back,
Self-isolated in his cell.
All the planes are done and
dusted
Only shells of their former
selves.
Self-isolated in our cells
We have the words, we have
the snaps
Only shells of their former
selves
Those schemes, vacations,
dreams and dares.
We have the words, we have
the naps.
Where does the day go, and
the night
In dreams of vacant doors and
squares.
No flights out and in. Fact:
No flights.
[August 2020 & April 2026]
April 16 Word of the Day: Coal
1966 is famous for ‘Norwegian Wood’ and our school excursion
to the Morwell opencut mine. Changing trains at the splendiferous Caulfield
Station, we stepped into a Gippsland red rattler, pulled down the windows, and
stared with open eyes towards our rapidly approaching destination: the yawning
abyss of Yallourn. Colossal powerhouses streaming with steam overwhelmed our
childish expectations. Mountainsides of prehistoric coal met our collective
consciousness, the magical fossil that brings new, if transient, life. After
the first half hour of this industrial-sized vision we were wondering why we
hadn’t been taken instead to the circus, or a movie at the crystalline Capitol
Theatre, or several hours of the zoo staring back at us. Interface with coal
has always been a one-way exchange, as is the nature of fossil fuels: they are
all give and we are all take. This was part of the educational purpose,
perhaps, of our excursion and if it was then it was a quick lesson. Artistic value
was in short supply. Truckloads of briquettes rattled past towards the depots
of Melbourne, jostling about like darkness visible. Their heavy sooty smell
hung in the evening side streets of childhood as neighbours stoked their heaters
to a perfect orange-red glow. The idea that coal needed to be phased out, in
fact should fade out as soon as possible, had never entered their minds, or
been entertained by public decisionmakers. We knew it was unlikely that if we
waited long enough on our excursion the compound pressure on the coal would
turn it into diamonds, just more coal, of which we had seen enough already.
Childhood was a time of boundless energy and infinite possibilities.
April 15 Word of the Day: Gash
White cells rush in to stop the flow though it’s
only the vegetable knife, only onion, the red blood
shines and sticks to things. Skin. The course of events
has something to do with it: having to wait
‘interminably’ for whatever: just those two
quarrelling on the escalator got you. Down. Why
can’t they find somewhere else? Versus, that is
how quarrels actually look! Then the heat,
in the workroom and ‘someone’ was not being upfront.
When they act like a prat you wonder what’s your
part: do I overreact, sound usual, absorb it all
in practised silence, say something to clear the atmosphere,
what? We know what happens through mini-disasters,
we keep on going. But damage control is only
half the battle. The red swells up in its svelte way.
Never afraid of it, but you know it means
something else, alack: the day has been loose, hectic,
unsatisfactory. Apply elastoplast on the washed area.
Loose? Hectic? Unsatisfactory? Did you say that
on the spur of the moment cutting your thumb?
Actually so even-handed, and you have to be easy
to finish cooking anyway: exact litres, tablespoons
and minutes, serendipity of an extra flavour,
the art of the spicy aroma or lifting boiling
water off the heat. The outside goes quiet.
The gush heals of its own accord. The night cools,
No doubt an essential purpose of cool nights.
In its place, the sign of a ‘hot’ day: a red
stripe. In its place, steady breathing, ask me
to accept the forces not so aching blind.
The gauze bandage an alternate flesh colour for those
who eat too many oranges. A soft distraction
from a page of night-reading. Drifting mind
could escape all those bad moves, mistaken
accusations. Retract them, even.
You could be walking away like
a perfect hermit who has found sophia.
[September 2020, retrieved and reworked April 2026]
