AUSTRALIAN POETS AT WORK SERIES 1
Komninos Zervos
Selected by Coral Hull
[Above] Photo of Komninos Zervos by by Effie Alexakis, 1992.
CH: What kind of working environment best suits you?
KZ: As a performance poet i definitely wrote my best poems sitting in coffee lounges or cafes in busy streets or shopping centres or markets, or even at poetry soundings (I like to call them soundings and not readings as readings to me implies a solitary activity of reader and text). As for the working environment for sounding my work, well you can't beat a dedicated performance space like a small theatre (eg La Mama) with a poetry appreciative crowd, and writers in the park in sydney and miettas in melbourne used to stage soundings very well, good sound and light. When writing plays with death defying theatre or rock and roll circus I liked to work with the actors and director during the day and writing at night, and the writing was mainly documenting a shared development from the day's activities. As a cyberpoet I like to sleep beside my computer and jump on when I feel like it. It's a habit i developed when doing my masters, I was rendering animations and making movies that took hours to render, so I'd go to sleep for a while and wake up and continue with a piece I was working on all through the 24 hour day. As an academic writing my Phd the best working environment for writing is when the kids are at their mums for a while, I have the house completely to myself, I don't have teaching to worry about and I can sustain a single train of thought for as long as I like. I do become zombie-like though, so I go to coffee lounges and read relevant texts underlining bits I'll use later, just to sit amongst other people and to de-zombify myself.
CH: What makes you sad?
KZ: The thought that all my prized possessions, that I have hoarded and carted around Australia, that mean so much to me, is worthless stuff that when I die will be reclassified from treasure to trash. The thought of either of my children dying before I do makes me sad. People dying before their time through no fault of their own, like terrorist victims and children with terminal diseases.
CH: What are your favourite websites?
KZ:
http://thesaurus.plumbdesign.com/index.html
http://webartery.com/webarteroids/index.htm
http://www.desvirtual.com/info.htm#Giselle
http://www.thewordproject.com/animatedart.htm
http://creativity.bgsu.edu/courses/art586/Sum99/students2/Jason/index.html
http://www.debris.org.uk/
http://www.evilpupil.com/epv2/#
http://www.mediaboy.net/1010100-1100001-1111010/1001001011011101000011110101010/1.html
http://www.factoryschool.org/home.html
http://www.hotkey.net.au/~netwurker/
http://www.vectorlounge.com/04_amsterdam/jam/wireframe.html
http://beehive.temporalimage.com/bee_core/index.html
http://www.pd.org/~thatguy/lepervr.htm
http://www.stickdeath.com/
http://www.codebox.com/
http://brandon.guggenheim.org/
http://abc.net.au/arts/stuff-art/default2.htm
http://www.ubu.com/contemp/martin/martin.html
http://webartery.com/defib/webarterymembers.htm
http://members.tripod.com/~repoem/blood/weak_e.html
http://www.eliterature.org/index2.html
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/
http://www.interlog.com/~drokeby/ll.html
http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/atlas.html
http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html
http://www.ualberta.ca/~cguertin/Guertin.htm
http://vispo.com/
http://netartefact.de/repoem/
http://www.heelstone.com/meridian/
CH: When did you first fall in love?
KZ: With poetry? When my grandmother would make up rhymes and tell me stories. With another person? When I was 15, on the rubbish bins in the back street, smoking cigarettes and staring at the night time sky with the girl next door - alas it was only one way. With another person that loved me too? At uni, but I think it was love of sex, lust. With another person I loved more than I loved myself? When I was thirty I split up with my first wife and fell in love with Andrea, a young rebellious cypriot refugee, and some people may remember the coffee lounge in Melbourne called 'tsakpina' where our passionate relationship was played out from beginning to end. I totally surrendered myself to Andrea's teenage obsessions and when it was over felt my ego had been destroyed. Not a bad thing really in retrospect, as a new me was to develop, and this is when I first began to write poetry. With myself? When I began to write poetry as part of my reconstruction and to sign the poems komninos (I was Kevin Zervos most of my life, but when I started writing I used the name I was given at birth and which I was called by my family till I went to school, ie Komninos). With my children? The moment they were born. With life? When Komninos found performance poetry and decided to follow that path.
CH: How do you measure success in your life?
KZ: When I'm doing what I want to do and surviving. When i have a good balance of love, work and creativity.
CH: What do you think we can learn from children?
KZ: How fascist we really are, despite our claims to be otherwise.
CH: Do you believe in life after death?
KZ: No. Only in the sense of being remembered by other people. And of course the eternity of atoms.
CH: What advice do you have for young Australian poets?
KZ: Don't take advice from old fart poets, find your own way with words, try and do what others tell you you can't do, and don't be afraid to fail. Try and read/listen to/digitally experience poets other than yourself. Well I think i've written enough now.
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the bobbit blues
the bobbit blues
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be computerized, globalized, actualized, virtualized, realized
u can not be - programmed
u can not be expanded, broad banded, heavy handed
u can not, be programmed
u can not be coded, over-loaded, ergoded
u can not be fire-walled, over-hauled, web-crawled
u. can not be programmed
u can not be encrypted or scripted
u can not be cyber-spaced, interfaced, erased
u. can. not. be. programmed
u can not be disconnected, infected, ejected
u can not be hyper-linked, kitchen-sinked, wysi-winked
u. can. not. be. programmed.
u can not be lurked, jerked, net-worked
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu can not be programmed
u can not be deleted, repleated, defeated
u can not be contexed, hyper-text, cyber-sexed,
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
u can not be programmed
the enviromantic love triangle
always there is nature.
nature is abundant and generous.
nature is wild, impetuous, violent,
unpredictable.
society comes along.
society is attracted by nature.
nature offers society many things.
society fears nature, can't explain
nature.
technology comes along.
techno seductive.
nature is indifferent to technology.
society and technology have an affair.
nature is not jealous, but society
distances itself from nature.
society starts to feel protected from the
violence of nature,
but nature offers society things that
technology can't.
society starts to take advantage of
nature.
technology begins to grow in influence.
technology is envious of society's
dependence on nature.
technology mimics nature, becomes wild,
impetuous, violent, unpredictable.
society is hurt by technology.
society begins to fear technology.
society feels guilt for its mistreatment
of nature.
society sees nature in a new way.
society gets infatuated by nature once
more.
technology can not live without society.
technology gets sexier, more alluring.
society lusts after technology.
but always there is nature.
society is stuck in the eternal
enviromantic love triangle.
and that is where we are today.
i the writer (has previously appeared in overland)
i the writer the poet the writer the person that others
saw as a poet a writer a person that earned their
living by writing had an idea an idea to be a student
again a student of writing and so he wrote a proposal
a thought an idea on paper and presented the idea to
a professor and a panel of academics for approval
for acceptance acceptance being of course a reason
for the writer becoming a writer in the first place to
seek acceptance to belong to this country this
landscape this society this place this place where the
writer the i the poet was born but was never made to
feel a part of or never felt that he because a he he
was he was born a he and a he he was undeniably
and undoubtably because there was never any doubt
ever in his mind of his he-ness just the proportions
of his he-ness or at least the attention drawn to the
proportions of the thing that linked him to all other
hes his he-ness his penis was small his mother said to
the doctor well not his penis his father would not
approve of her saying penis or pregnant in front of
children his glands his glands doctor they look well
underdeveloped for his age doctor but doctor said
they'd be o.k. and they were but he always thought
they looked small a smallish he-ness never ever
never no wishing for a her-ness just release from the
harness of gender and classness this he-ness this
writer this poet this i never felt part of this this
so-called classlessness this blacklessness this
genderlessness this loch-nessless bunyip land of milk
and honey and cream brick houses on a quarter acre
of land this land the i the writer the poet re-wrote to
include himself in because he is a he he is a he who
is a writer who sees things from a he point of view
he who redefined the environment the atmosphere
the landscape in which he could exist as a he and as
a blackless he a blackless classless cuntless he he
re-wrote re-interpreted the text the textures the yet
to be expressed textness of this land and was
accepted was accepted as a he that fitted into the
he-scape he created the he-scape the he-text
accepted him as a he in context he contextualized
his blacklessness classlessness cuntlessness
existence his text was accepted as a measure of
acceptance acceptance of his status his context as a
writer a poet a text generator a text experimenter in
the context of this vast classlessness this sunburnt
blacklessness this suck-my-cock cuntlessness was
accepted to study writing to study again to create to
reflect to comment on the text created as a writer as
a problem solver as a traveler as a scholar as a
student of creative writing new writing writing that
engages that enrages that breaks conventions that
challenges beliefs and defies definitions and
traditions the i the writer the poet was accepted and
by being accepted rejected the he he had been for
that he the he he had been was a has been that he
seemed like a stranger to him the writer the poet the
i that wrote himself into the landscape into being
into being accepted and was accepted as a student
and as a student began to re-define the he he had
been the he he called i the i that he wrote the i he
thought i was because the i that writes is not the i
that is written about for the i written about is never
the i that writes but the i i thinks i is or the i i wants
to be never he never i never the i that i is for in the
context the he-text i writes within this lessness
context this first world context this one world one
globe context this well fed warm bed context this
post berlin wall context this reconstructed marxist
context this new world order context this solar
powered environmentally friendly nuclear free
context this post n.a.s.a. moon walk space probe
intergalactic context this gloriously infinitesimal
infinite infinity in the context of this infinity there is
no absolute truth no absolute truth except that the i
the i that writes the i that proposes proposals of
study the i that is writing that i is finite that i has a
beginning and an end known as birth and death and
between birth and death there is life and having a
beginning and an end and a life that i must have a
middle and a mid-life and that mid-life is also a part
of the context the mid-life he finds himself in or tries
to find him self in for i has a self as well as a he and
a context a place a landscape and a blacknessless
and a classlessness and a cuntlessness and a self that
is neither he nor she nor it a self that doesn't want
his cock sucked when he is depressed a self that is
happy in being and a self that enjoys self makes
problems for self and a self that enjoys solving those
problems for self enjoys being by itself creating for
itself a self comfortable with the infinity of the self a
self masquerading as a he a mid-life he manifesting
as the i i the poet i the writer i the he the midlife he
the she-less he the she-less he he chose to be not for
another she but to re-acquaint his self with he with i
i the writer the poet to create a new context in which
to exist to construct a new reality so that i could
only place himself in the context of things to come
not things that have passed the self is comfortable in
the present can not be found in the past or the future
i writes for the future creating a context for the self
to be comfortable with when the future becomes
present and he can be blamed for the past so the
poet the writer the i began to write the dissertation
the writing that would make a significant
contribution to the genre the genre of writing called
poetry and he called that writing cyberpoetry. |
About the Poet Komninos Zervos
|
Komninos, performance poet, has been poeting since 1985 professionally, taking his poetry to schools, community groups, hotels, music venues, prisons, coffee lounges and universities, radio and television and now the internet. Komninos has had three plays performed by professional theatre companies in Sydney and Brisbane. In 1992 Komninos received the Australian Human Rights award for Literature and in 1991 was awarded the Australia Council's Ros Bower Award for outstanding achievement in community arts. In 1995 Komninos completed a Masters of Arts in creative writing at the University of Queensland, in which he authored a cd-rom of cyberpoetry for his dissertation. In 1997 Komninos travelled to London to be writer in residence at Artec, a multimedia training and resource centre in Islington, where he authored a cd-rom, cyberpoetry underground. Komninos is a full-time lecturer and convenor of the CyberStudies major in the School of Arts, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus. |
[Above] Photo of Komninos Zervos by by Effie Alexakis, 1992.
I Next I
Back I
Exit I
Thylazine No.3 (March, 2001) |
