Hands are unbearably beautiful. They hold on to things. They let things go.

—Mary Ruefle

Dunce, her new book of poems, is out now.

 

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Listen.

FEATURED SONG
More Women - Saâda Bonaire

Slow weekend mornings, check. These are the sounds homemade croissants are made of. BYO strawberry jam.

 

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Think.

GARDENING THE DESERT
Al Baydha is a regenerative agriculture project in the middle of the Saudi Desert. This is a short film covering the transition from complete desertification to a functioning native grassland in an area that sometimes gets a total of 0 ml of annual rainfall. That’s right, zero.

This is an incredible example of the speed at which landscape—any landscape—can regenerate with the help of people.

 

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Feel.

IS THIS PURE MUSIC?
There are people that hear it once and say ‘never again’ and there are people that hear it once and think ‘my God, what the hell was that’.

Free improvisation is for many the ultimate expression of a pure kind of music. It’s music that makes its own rules; no songs, no structure, no standards, no destination.

 

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Wonder.

MICHAEL ONDAATJE, MASTER WRITER
"When you attempt a memoir, I am told, you need to be in an orphan state. So what is missing in you, and the things you have grown cautious and hesitant about, will come almost casually towards you. “A memoir is the lost inheritance”, you realise, so that during this time you must learn how and where to look.

In the resulting self-portrait everything will rhyme, because everything has been reflected. If a gesture was flung away in the past, you now see it in the possession of another. So I believed something in my mother must rhyme in me. She in her small hall of mirrors and I in mine.

This is a paragraph somewhere near the middle of Warlight by Michael Ondaatje. If you like poetry, novels and poets that write novels then you’ll love this book. It’s one of our favourites from 2018. 

Here is the master writer himself, talking about Warlight on Bookworm.

 

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Extra bits.

1. Some good honey people.
Honey Fingers, a Melbourne beekeeping collective run by Nicolas Dowse, have just launched modular online beekeeping courses. The first class sold out quickly but Nic has just announced a second class, so now’s the time to learn about bees before spring! Nic released a poetry zine entitled Sparrows in the Supermarket earlier this year too. Check it out on their website.

2. Some good food.
Watch Pete from Hope St Radio, featuring Kreme, make a banging nettle risotto for Hope St’s new sensual offering, Hope St Restaurant - Episode 1.

3. Some good reads.
We just finished reading The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. It’s a gender-bending memoir covering Maggie’s relationship with gender fluid artist Harry Dodge and the creation of a (queer) family. It critiques sexuality, gender, marriage and child-rearing. Next on our list is Sex and Lies by Leïla Slimani, a collection of essays about women grappling with sexual politics in Morocco.   

4. Some good live sounds.
Watch Sampa The Great perform a few tracks live for Roots Picnic. She’s got a new track dropping July 22.

5. Some good art.
We LOVE Lisa Morgan’s art. Her work My Morning Was Pink #2 is the cover of this issue. Below, Boundaries 4562.

___The end.