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.

Creating community: longterm lessons?

by | Mar 4, 2007 |

I’m not sure what to make of the riots in Copen­ha­gen. For those who haven’t heard, the Danish police entered a squat­ted build­ing that had been used as a youth centre for more than 25 years, and evicted the squat­ters. Why? Because, in 2000, a “Chris­tian organization”…

Too close to home

by | Mar 2, 2007 |

I had read early today that a body was found in the Yarra at Abbots­ford but hadn’t really put two and two together. The ABC news just told me it was found at Dight’s Falls. That’s right near me. In fact, that’s where I walked to only last night for my after-dinner…

Turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes

by | Feb 28, 2007 |

My copy of The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edi­tion, arrived today from Amazon. Apo­lo­gies to all my Aus­tralian and Brit­ish read­ers: this journal will now (be attempt­ing to) follow Chicago style guidelines. In simple terms, that means Amer­ican spellings and…

Oscars nominees

by | Feb 25, 2007 |

The night before the Oscars. I’ve seen everything I can see bar The Good Shep­herd which I’m seeing tomor­row and The Queen which I’m not inter­ested in. I’m troubled by three of the major nom­in­ees having themes of pedo­philia or at least inter-gen­er­a­tional pred­a­tion and…

Seeking work

by | Feb 15, 2007 |

Apo­lo­gies to all who mon­itor mordwen_poetry which just re-sent all the RSS feed of the last 10 poems I posted. The reason, how­ever, is that I’ve revamped my home site with a view to the US job hunt. Know anyone Stateside who would like to employ me? Simply post them a…

Garage sale

by | Feb 14, 2007 |

My place, this Sat­urday, from 11am till about 4pm. If you don’t have my address, e‑mail mordwen@gmail.com and I’ll provide it. What’s up for grabs? Small aquar­ium, vari­ous clothes, clothes rack, IVAR shelving system, books, prob­ably some animé DVDs, a Golden Books…

Vale, Aveline

by | Feb 6, 2007 |

So many famil­iar faces. So many names from the past, changed bodies, changed people. So many I had never met, still would­n’t. Such a breadth of influ­ence. There aren’t too many people who get Tim Cos­tello out­lining their bio­graphy at their funeral and per­form­ing the…

Young people today

by | Feb 2, 2007 |

I had a young friend come to stay with me for three days this week. Aged nine, he flew down unac­com­pan­ied from Can­berra because it was the last week of school hol­i­days. Having him here was grand, des­pite my emo­tional tur­moil around per­sonal issues. There were a couple…

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

View my portfolio

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