barque

If I have punished your life, I live; my trials
strangely stood the test; here, my rich gift.
It was all in the name of love.
Do not smile at me! Take my virgin,
before the heavens fall - make this contract grow -
but hate your bed. You shall hate it,
therefore lamps shall light you.
I hope for quiet days and the murkiest den,
the most opportune genius, lust, to take away
that talk. She is my potent master, he
was drinking hot chocolate and watching television.
Her mother gave her money.

John Tranter. Blackout.

Prospero gazes upon California. His mission: to impose his speech on the wreck of modern America. Blackout consist of Shakespeare's The Tempest, the article 'Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream' by Joan Didion, and a chapter from 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' by Tom Wolfe, with most of the words removed, and the remaining words and phrases interleaved, though in the same order as they appear in the original texts. No other words have been added.

1-903488-00-1. 2000. 24 pp. £4.00 / $6.00

John Tranter is the author of fourteen books of poetry, and his writing is published in magazines from London to Prague to San Francisco. He was born in Cooma, NSW, and raised in an isolated farming district. He gained his education at country schools, and then at the University of Sydney. He has worked mainly in publishing, teaching and radio production. From 1971 to 1973 he was in Singapore as Asian editor for Angus & Robertson, returning to Brisbane to take up a position as editor and producer for the ABC until 1977. In 1975 he co-designed the first Books & Writing program for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a program format which was still in action twenty years later. He has worked as a publisher of Transit Poetry, 1981 to 1983, editor at the NSW Department of TAFE from 1983 to 1984. From 1985 to 1986 Tranter travelled throughout Europe and the USA lecturing on Australian literature and giving readings of his works and those of fellow Australian poets. From 1990 to 1993 he was poetry editor of the Bulletin. He edited the Bloodaxe Book of Modern Australian Poetry with Philip Mead. Under Berlin, published by the University of Queensland Press, won the Kenneth Slessor Prize (the New South Wales State Literary Award for Poetry) in 1989. His most recent books are The Floor of Heaven (Harper Collins, 1992), a book-length sequence of four verse narratives, the poetry collections Gasoline Kisses (Equipage, Cambridge, 1997), Late Night Radio (Polygon, Edinburgh, 1998), and Different Hands (Folio/Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1998), a collection of seven experimental computer-assisted prose pieces.  Heart Print, Studio Moon and Trio have all appeared from Salt.  He is now settled in Sydney with Lyn Tranter, the literary agent, and produces the web magazine Jacket.

Also by John Tranter:

Parallax
Red Movie
The Blast Area
The Alphabet Murders
Crying in Early Infancy: 100 Sonnets
Dazed in the Ladies Lounge
Selected Poems [1982]
Under Berlin
The Floor of Heaven
At The Florida
Gasoline Kisses
Late Night Radio
Different Hands Ultra

Heart Print

Studio Moon

Trio

Anthologies and compilations:

The New Australian Poetry

The Tin Wash Dish

The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Australian Poetry [editor, with Philip Mead]

Links

Editor, Jacket Magazine
Homepage: 5 megabytes of glittering literature, free.
Also see the biography, a recent bibliography, and early material on the University of Sydney Library site.
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