Phil Hall joins me in the cabin of TRUCK

As I may have bragged before, I'm guest editor of TRUCK magazine for the month of November. At present, I am following a line on collaboration, so I thought I'd prompt you to visit http://halvard-johnson/blogspot.com/ and read on from this beginning -

Shikibu Shuffle

Andrew Burke / Phil Hall

Murasaki Shikibu (973—1014)

Ornette Coleman (double quartet experiments, 1960)

Editor: One of those happy turns of fate brought Phil Hall, Canadian poet, and myself together in a Perth backyard about three years ago. He also hails from Perth - but his one's in Canada. We struck up a conversation, swapped poetry anecdotes and a couple of books, and kept in touch by email. Then I had a heart attack and was queued up for life-saving surgery. I just had to wait, unable to do much at all, kept alive by sprays and medical potions. To distract myself and to learn something of Phil's absolutely different poetics, we agreed to collaborate on a text. I wrote, he wrote, then we shuffled lines together to make a final text - actually, although I wrote 50% of this, Phil did most of the shuffling because he was so good at it! 

2.

Don’t play what’s there

play what’s not there

a Chinese dragon of smoke

wearing my dead friend’s clothes

above the marina

I stall on the floating bridge

and turn Schubert or Mingus

down low     upright in

the long paddock

gathers rain