On being alive in Berlin Lit

Well, I’m totally pretending that having a poem published in Berlin Lit is about as good as visiting Berlin. Isn’t it???

Maybe not, I’ll keep trying to convince myself.

Anyway, that’s my problem. You can check out the strange, little poem recently published at Berlin Lit. It’s called On being alive. It’s an odd poem that came from writing experiments I’ve been trying since my last collection came out.

For this particular poem I was playing around with the idea of using a cut up technique, all the words in this poem came from Sydney Morning Herald articles that contained the word ‘petri’ – yep, there are heaps. Lots of science articles, but also plenty of ‘cultural petri dish’ style articles. You could easily write a ‘Petri’ sequence! Special shout out to the people named Petri out there – I’m looking at you Petri Pitkanen – who added entirely unexpected elements to the poem.

Here’s an extract, head over to Berlin Lit to read the whole poem – and a whole bunch of other pieces in the winter issue.

On being alive

There is flesh grown in a petri dish

that pretends to be alive

sometimes pretends to be

human

and we listen as the meat talks

about the marble in its thigh, 

provenance, all the grass it hasn’t eaten, 

how for years it was suckled

and called a different name.