Welcome to Phoenix’s world-changing Salon

A port­manteau. A treas­ure trove. A time cap­sule. A poetry book. A diary. A photo album. Memor­ies. Dreams. Wishes. Hopes. An open letter to an unsus­pect­ing public. An intim­ate con­fes­sion to close friends. A declar­a­tion of intent. A whis­per of love. A per­sonal record. An exper­i­ment in intro­spec­tion. A per­form­ance space. A polit­ical rant. A wild yawp. Why do any of us pub­lish our words and images online? Come, dream with me.

Stolen generation

by | Aug 1, 2007 |

Just heard on NPR that a South Aus­tralian man has received almost half a mil­lion dol­lars com­pens­a­tion from the State gov­ern­ment for his treat­ment as a child (being stolen from his family and handed to whites to raise; it’s a common story for indi­gen­ous Aus­trali­ans and…

Passing inspirations & observations

by | Aug 1, 2007 |

I’ve been watch­ing the Haneef case in Aus­tralia of course. Too depressed about it to want to look at it, given that I’m unable to do much about it from here. I may get around to doing a brief sum­mary for those Amer­ican read­ers who haven’t been watch­ing and don’t know…

That’s more like old times

That’s more like old times

by | Jul 30, 2007 |

Well, this week­end did resemble a more *me* kind of a week­end. Yes­ter­day, I spent most of the day clean­ing the house from top to bottom with great music blar­ing, which was ener­giz­ing and ter­rific. One slight hiccup, but that’s OK; solved that with a walk to the park…

Ah, retail therapy

Ah, retail therapy

by | Jul 26, 2007 |

Most of you prob­ably don’t know, but I have enorm­ous feet. Mum nick­named me “anthrax” in utero, saying that if I had Dad’s feet and her mouth, I’d have foot and mouth disease.It’s impossible to find a size 11 1⁄2 to 12 in a women’s shoe and have it be attractive.…

Friends on high bookshelves

Friends on high bookshelves

by | Jul 19, 2007 |

In addi­tion to the recent US launch/re-release of patch­workkid’s novel, The Music of Razors, I just dis­covered a whole tri­logy of young adult novels by old Galaxy cus­tomer and fellow fairy-tale fiend, Justine Lar­balestier. Justine and I had a par­tic­u­lar connection…

While I’m at it…

by | Jul 19, 2007 |

I never posted this Keith Olber­man video from July 3, a scath­ing indict­ment of Bush’s reign that ends with call­ing for his resig­na­tion. I don’t think I men­tioned either that on July 4, I read the Declar­a­tion of Inde­pend­ence and was sur­prised by how many of the…

Young fodder

Young fodder

by | Jul 19, 2007 |

I think the most dis­turb­ing thing about Amer­ica for me is the fre­quency with which I hear young teens talk about their friends leav­ing for boot camp. For a lot of other people vis­it­ing the US and hanging around with adult friends, I don’t think this would be as…

Icons and facebook and more

Icons and facebook and more

by | Jul 18, 2007 |

The last few days have been some­what wear­ing on my soul. So, this after­noon I have been wast­ing time fid­dling around with Face­book (cer­tain people who shall remain name­less enticed me there and since it’s well done – the Devil is always seduct­ive – I’ve given in…

Just add crayons

Just add crayons

by | Jul 15, 2007 |

There are bad things about insta-fam­il­ies – like being so stressed that you forget all about the cool Writers With Drinks magazine trib­ute that antho­lo­gie invites you to the day after she invites you (sorry, I sooo wanted to go to that) – but there are good things…

Sweet seventeen

by | Jul 15, 2007 |

People keep saying that this par­ent­ing gig draws a lot on your own memor­ies of being a teen­ager and it’s true. Doug’s daugh­ter Tina turned 17 on Thursday, so we all headed out to an amuse­ment park a few hours away and spent a crazy day on go karts and bumper boats…

Guilty pleasures

by | Jul 9, 2007 |

Noth­ing quite like your favor­ite café decid­ing that today is loud guilty pleas­ure 80s music day to knock the edge of your moping. So far, “Video Killed the Radio Star”, Devo’s “Whip It”, some uniden­ti­fied Meatloaf and now “Call Me”. Def­in­itely get­ting into it.

Phoenix Emberstone

Phoenix Emberstone

pas­sion­ate polit­ical poet

These are poems and mean­der­ings that made their way to the page. I’d love to hear what you think of them. Want to get in touch? Drop me a line!

Photo of Rosanne Bersten

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I am also known as Ro Ber­sten, a com­mu­nic­a­tions spe­cial­ist with more than 20 years’ exper­i­ence. See my CV and pro­fes­sional projects.