Andrew Burke wrote:
Let the Games commence ...
Hello all, I'm new to this list, I'm a Kiwi poet and
editor of a little magazine (online at
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~mbellard/) and I'm
unfortunately going to be starting off with a bit of a
grumble. I'm responding to Andrew Burke's posting on
the Sydney Olympics...I hope that the games will NOT
commence. I think it's unfortunate that Andrew does
not mention the very strong opposition to the event
emanating from many parts of Australian society (I'm
getting the vibes from over here, across the ditch).
The Aboriginal community, especially, is deadset
against the Olympics, which is not a genuine sporting
festival but a commercialised farce with an entry fee
unaffordable to the vast majority of Aussies.
Aboriginal Australians are bitter about the fact that
the right-wing Australian government has consistently
refused to apologise for the genocidal crimes against
Aboriginals committed by its predecessors. It is also
worth noting that the Aussie government has, in an
effort to 'beautify' Sydney for visiting Olympic VIPs,
ordered the bulldozing of a number of poor
neighbourhoods - neighbourhoods populated by
Aboriginals, in the main - in the vicinity of games
sites. Anyway, things are looking like they will be
pretty explosive come September in Sydney, and most of
the action looks like being off the track. Protests
will be given an extra spur by the fact that, at the
same time, a group called the World Economic Forum
will be meeting in Melbourne to make decisions about
free trade and aid cuts to third world countries. For
months now groups have been planning activities
designed to make this meeting into the 'Seattle of the
South Pacific.' Last year a big meeting of leaders -
APEC - took place in my hometown, Auckland. The
group(let) of poets centred around my little magazine,
Salt, tried to orient its activities around the dozens
of protests which were taking place against the APEC
gathering. We published anti-APEC poems (no, they were
not horrible Brecthian propaganda pieces!) and
information on our website, for instance, and
leafletted for demos. The question I want to raise
here is: should Andrew Burke's zine and the poets
around it be doing the same sort of thing, instead of
getting caught up in the media-inspired hoopla
surrounding the Sydney games? Obviously giving an
answer to this question will entail giving an answer
to a whole host of curly questions about the
relationship between poetry and political and social
issues. I think that these are important questions,
which is why I have made this post, which will
hopefully not be viewed as entirely grumpy in tone :)
Cheers
Scott Hamilton
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Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 18:16:58 +0800
Subject: SNAKESKIN Announcement
From: Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]>
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To All -
Speaking of sport, due to the upcoming Olympics in
Sydney, SNAKESKIN has
gone far afield and called Andrew Burke off the bench
to edit a Special
Inside Sports edition for September.
Please submit previously unpublished, original poems
on aspects of ANY
sports to "George Simmers" <[log in to unmask]> by
August 20th. They do
not have to relate to the Olympics in anyway - We're
just using that as an
excuse to go sporty!
Even though I am editing it, please send all material
through George
Simmers as he is controlling it.
Let the Games commence ...
Andrew
----------------------------------------
Andrew Burke Copywriting
[log in to unmask] Creative Writing
http://www.bam.com.au/andrew/ Editing
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=====
"Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the moon? And how
could I try to doubt it? First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps I have
been there would strike me as idle. Nothing would follow from it, nothing be
explained by it. It would not tie in with anything in my life... Philosophical
problems occur when language goes on holiday. We must not separate ideas from life,
we must not be misled by the appearances of sentences: we must investigate the
application of words in individual language-games" - Ludwig Wittgenstein
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