We’re ‘judging’ poetry, and do so humbly, full of piss. Thirty-nine poems. Some get it, some are close, some are miles off. Some are even really good poems, but they just don’t get it. We started this prize in part so we could work out what it is. We know it when we read it, we’ve been thinking about it for years. We know it’s in the poetry of Bukowski and Baudelaire (Oh, Baudelaire: ‘Alas, the vices of man, as horrifying as they are presumed to be, contain proof (if only in their infinite expansiveness!) of his bent for the infinite.’). We know it’s in the poetry of Blaise Cendrars, we know Henry Miller (his protégé) wrote novels about it, and we know for sure it’s in the bawdy masterpiece ‘Regime de Vivre’ by the mad, aristocratic genius John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester. Blaise Pascal: ‘Que le coeur de l’homme est creux et plein d’ordure’. Yes, the heart of man is hollow, and full of filth. There is something brilliant in this simple knowledge. A release, a freedom.

So we reap what we’ve sown, and find out only this: we love wallowing in this filth of ours, of our poets and their winsome, grubby poems. There’s something about these seedy underbellies that is life affirming, edifying. It’s revealing. It has something to do with freedom. The entries we love the most are by and about men and women who just don’t give a fuck. They embrace their dark predicaments, their vices, their addictions, their perversions, their crimes in all their black honesty (fuck off, just because it’s poetry doesn’t mean it’s not fiction). It is the stuff of life. And we do it and write about it and, if we’re lucky, we just don’t give a fuck.

First prize goes to Sydney poet Fleur Beaupert for her fearless poem of prostitution and perversion, ‘I’m almost addicted’. This is tight poetry that gets it and is top shelf writing to boot. Not only is this work unafraid of the depths, it pushes into the heights, the joys of filth and perversity. ‘sometimes I like it/control is separating/into two bodies/yours and mine oh!’ Every time another poem felt like it was close to first prize, we pulled out Fleur’s again and were kicked in the teeth by another great image, another nuanced turn of phrase. In the end, Fleur’s poem was both on the money, and outstanding poetry by any measure. We loved this: ‘sunlight flickers/the empty screen/under my miniskirt/to be written apart…’

Our two runners-up, with nothing between them: Graeme Butler, with an untitled poem, and Jude Bridge with ‘The Trip’.

Graeme Butler served up simplicity and (if you care to think about it) complexity, and a glimpse into every night we’ve ever been out on the grog. Here’s Graeme’s poem in full:

is it her breasts that I like

or the beer

I keep buying

or the hinge in her thighs

so barely disguised

by the high riding black material?

“I’ll have a midi of gold” I say

to prolong my stay

for whatever reason

the evening is most agreeable

Graeme, you public bar philosopher, you Socrates of the Sauce. Yes, he gets it. Man before beer keeps on buying, is it the beer, is it her? It’s both, you bawdy bastards, you thinkers.

The poetry of Jude Bridge was such an appalling and beautiful surprise. Who knew there was poetry to be had in Midland, that appalling and beautiful human canker festering in Perth’s eastern suburbs? Her poem ‘The Trip’ is a modern Regime de Vivre. John Wilmot would look on with pride at Jude’s grotty and debauched day out on an Australian airline. Flying pissed reminded us of our recent adventures in the east where we got loaded and talked a hostie into swapping a copy of Regime 01 for a bottle of grog (we love you, you loved us, mile high club it could’ve been but then the angry one came over and told us to turn off the music). Here’s Jude’s killer opening: ‘I wonder if that astronaut, what’s-his-face,/was as pinned as I am when he looked down at earth/and called Perth/The City of Lights…’

There was plenty of other good stuff. Some lines we liked, in no particular order:

Jude Bridge in ‘The Trip’: ‘I’d like two women, I say;/one shiny as a beetle’s back, the other dull, slack…’

Ian C. Smith in ‘Sixty’: ‘Tryst under the clocks, time stopped./Epitaph: tiny flightless birds together.’

Katerina Protopsaltis in ‘Field Notes from Midnight: Canterbury Rd ’97’: ‘Oh some-some have only roads for rivers/And ply them through the night/The seas forgotten…’

Andrew Bifield in ‘The Glass’: ‘Suds on the lacquer; fingers tracing strange designs;/a careless light reflected; the taunting of the fluorescent…’

Stuart Barnes in ‘O Tina’: ‘Cunt, you had me bang and bang and bang/whichever cur seemed to fit./Prometheus, I burned/upon an awfully/neutral/gurney.’

Has anyone else noticed the ‘haiku’ disease that has infected Australian poetry? Almost everyone’s at it. Not that we understand what a ‘haiku’ is, not really, but we reckon poems should be good before they get to be ‘haiku’. Thank you for this grubby little ‘haiku’ masterpiece, Andy Smerdon. Just short of a prize, but we liked it. Top shelf, honourable mention, etc:

Haiku: Pain

Just shut the fuck up.

Punching, blood, flesh against flesh.

Pain is less when shared.

We are more than proud of our winners and all the conglomerated mess that was the Regime de Vivre Poetry Prize 2013. These poems were funny, enlightening, surprising and made excellent beer coasters. As a collective we feel we have made a scratch on the insurmountable granite cliff face that is poetry, and have enjoyed pissing our name in its dust.

NATHAN HONDROS & DAMON LOCKWOOD

Nathan Hondros and Damon Lockwood at the Launch of Regime 02.

…But really, people want to know what Regime is all about. In Express Magazine this week, Travis Johnson wrote that Damon and I are one mind in two bodies. So I’m going to quote Damon who said, ‘We’ve always had a love of dangerous, interesting, revelatory writing. We didn’t think there was an avenue for more interesting pieces, so we said “Screw it, we’ll do it ourselves”’.

This is the secret of Regime. Damon and I come from a place where art can be thin on the ground and when we grew up, and we grew up together, we couldn’t afford to sit around waiting for people to put it on for us. This is evident in Damon’s theatre work. When he woke up, broke and hung-over on that fateful day in the early nineties and decided he wanted to see a good theatre show, he put one on himself.

Regime Magazine is no different. We wanted to read good writing, writing that is different from much of what is published in this town and elsewhere, and thought, well stuff it, we’ll just do it.

I’m often asked about my writing, ‘what did you mean when you wrote X or Y.’ And I can be quite stubborn. My answer quite truthfully is usually, ‘I dunno, if I could explain it, I wouldn’t have to write it.’ I don’t understand writers who criticise their own work. It doesn’t make sense to me. And to an extent any art or literary criticism is a lost cause for me. Anything you need to know should be within the four walls of the work itself.

Regime Magazine is similar. I’m often asked, ‘what are you looking for? What’s your editorial style?’ Understandably, writers need to know whether their work is a fit for the magazine. Or which piece in the top drawer would suit. I fall on the editor’s cliché, ‘I think you’d better buy a copy’.

But here is my best go at explaining things. I don’t know if anyone else will agree with me.

The creation and appreciation of art is necessarily a subjective business. We like what we like, and anyone who believes they can unlock the secrets of this bizarre sorcery would be better off spending a lifetime devoted to alchemy.

Here are some pointers if you’d like your writing to please these humble editors.

• First, be honest in your writing.
• Then be bold and fearless.
• Do not concern yourself with markets. That’s were publishers lose their money. Think instead of readers.
• Being avant-garde is no longer avant-garde.
• There is no point having a secondary layer of meaning if only the academically gifted can understand your first layer of meaning.
• Listen to crazy Uncle Ezra Pound, who wrote, ‘The natural object is always the adequate symbol.’
• Lastly, humility will serve you well. As Hemingway said, ‘We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.’

So, to finish with Damon’s words: Regime Magazine is completely about the illuminating, the revelatory, and the different.

Writer and Regime Magazine Editor Damon Lockwood finds himself in Cocker Alley, Melbourne (November 2012).

Our first port of call was the leafy suburb of Surry Hills. We found ourselves some cardboard, wrote down some information and set up our impressive display. We chose an auspicious day to sell our book on the street because Sydney Public Records would later show us it was the quietest day in Sydney since January 1788.

Sayings exist for a reason, ladies and gentlemen, and the classic ‘ignorance is bliss’ still holds true. I had ignorant visions of people running madly down the street to buy our publication, hordes of people lining up hoping not to miss out on this golden opportunity to snap up an edition of our treasured text, wondering if we’d be all out of copies by the time they got to the front of the line… but, ladies and gentleman, the very first time I approached a person on the street and said ‘Street Literature, only $15’… I knew we were screwed.

We tried classic catch-cries like ‘All the way from Cultural Perth’, ‘Please, we have a family to feed’ and ‘That really hurts, please stop hitting me’, but in every way we were hated by the passing general public… Interestingly, though, not one person asked us to move along.

Next we tried the back entrance of a gay nightclub on Oxford Street in Sydney. We got some middling interest out of a couple of local rats, picked up some nice heroin off the street, had a quick dance, but again no one asked us to move along.

Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park was next, where we got out sold by an old Italian man singing ‘New York, New York’ and ‘Celebrate Good Times, Come on’. It was a beautiful spot to sell for half an hour, and yet still nobody asked us to move along.

‘All the way from exotic Perth…’ Writer and Regime Editor Nathan Hondros waits for Surry Hills to provide beer money.

Never to be deterred, we returned back to our original spot in Surry Hills, set up our impressive display again, crossed out the figure $15 on our cardboard placard, placed a lonely copy of Regime 01 on the street and wrote the word FREE above it with an arrow pointing down to it. We retired to the balcony of a nearby pub to watch proceedings.

Ladies and gentlemen, we could not give the fucking thing away! People would repel from it like it was radioactive poison. ‘We just care about literature!’ we wanted to scream from the pub’s balcony!

And just when all seemed lost, though Nathan and I were three gin and tonics in by this stage so we were feeling mildly better, an old man dressed in a dirty black suit, raggedy black fedora hat, and best of all, walking down the street with a bottle of red wine in a brown paper bag in his hand, stopped, looked at our magazine, took a few steps, then stopped again.

You can imagine by this time Nathan and I were already on the edge of our seats. The old wino picked up the copy, flipped through it, gave it a quick review… then slowly walked away with our intrepid little magazine, silently reading the first couple of pages to himself. Nathan and I danced around like little schoolgirls with a new crush. We were ridiculously excited, and the rest of the patrons in the pub thought we were a little disturbed. The old homeless man had decided to love our literature, or alternatively had found a new paper product to wipe his arse with.

Regime Magazine: free to a good home or homeless shelter.

Melbourne was next, and after not being asked to be moved on by anyone in Federation Square, we set up outside the Victorian Performing Arts Centre. We were a little concerned that previously people might have thought we were a fanatical Christian group, so we decided to put up a sign that read ‘We’re not Christians’… on the day that three Christian Primary Schools decided to visit the Victorian Performing Arts Centre, and walk past our pissy display. If we weren’t going to hell before we certainly are now. We did manage to sell a copy of the book to a woman whose son was a lawyer but always wanted to be a writer. We told her to implore her son it would be a stupid change of career if he ever thought of trying it. No one asked us to move along.

Federation Square, Melbourne: No one fucking asked us to move on.

Skip forward a month and imagine in your mind if you will a magical wonderland of arts and creative expression called the Perth Cultural Centre. We were organised, this time, ladies and gentlemen. We had a trestle table, a nice display, and change for all the copies of Regime 01 we were going to sell.

Now I don’t know if you noticed some imposing devices looming around in the Perth Cultural Centre. They are incredibly high powered surveillance camera’s that are so strong they can actually predict your evil thoughts before you have them, like trying to sell a literature magazine to the unsuspecting West Australian general public. How effective they are in preventing you getting beaten up on Friday and Saturday nights is of course another question entirely.

Regime Editors Chris Palazzolo and Nathan Hondros in the NINE minutes before being shut down by Dicks with Epaulets.

Ladies and gentlemen we lasted NINE minutes before we were promptly told to pack up our well-intentioned attempt in imparting culture to the city of Perth and to please move along… actually I don’t think there was a please in there at all. Nine minutes, ladies and gentlemen – read into that what you will.

But of course it’s not how you get knocked down it’s how you pick yourselves up that matters, so undeterred we moved to the sunny streets of Subiaco on the same day where we received more genuinely interested attention than we could ever have hoped for and sold more copies there than anywhere else in Australia. We’ve never loved Subiaco more.

So, ladies and gentlemen, if you see us on the street, sad and crying, alone and desperate, trying to sell copies of Regime 02, please, God please, come up and say ‘How you doing boys?’, maybe purchase a copy for someone you like, spend a minute with us, because we will be more than happy to serve you.

by Damon Lockwood

Regime 02 will be launched by the editors and contributors, with readings by poets Shane McCauley and Roland Leach, and writer Michelle Faye.

The Second Edition of Regime Magazine is an impressive collection of poetry, fiction and performance writing that is Australian in essence, but international in outlook.

Not only are we proud to publish new work by Australian writers such as Geoff Page, Ryan O’Neill, Shane McCauley, Kate Middleton, Andrew Burke, Graham Nunn and Roland Leach (and so many others), we include international voices such as Frederick Pollack, Karla Linn Merrifield, Paul Fauteux and Jonathan Greenhause.

Cover artwork is by acclaimed Sydney artist, Joanna Wolthuizen.

More information can be found by visiting our online launch invitation: http://paperless.ly/YrvwJ1. Please feel free to circulate this link to anyone who may be interested.

Copies of Regime 02 can be purchased from our website: regimebooks.com.au.

Whether it is life on the streets, alcohol, drugs, sex or crime, there has for hundreds of years been a profound attraction for writers to the seedier elements of existence.

The Regime de Vivre Poetry Prize 2013 will be for poetry that is bold enough to fearlessly tackle these themes. The most fascinating poetry sometimes comes from the darkest places; from Baudelaire to Bukowski, the list of writers inspired by this side of life is almost endless.

The prize will be awarded to the poem that best embodies the spirit of the prize itself.

We wanted to set the poets of the world an interesting challenge. Regime Books has distributed the following clues, which if properly pursued will reveal everything poets will need to know about the prize.

1. The title of the prize is named after a seventeenth century poem of sleaze and debauchery; and
2. A maxim attributed by Samuel Beckett to Sébastien Chamfort, but which may be a fragment from Blaise Pascal: ‘Que le coeur de l’homme est creux et plein d’ordure’*.

In addition to a warm inner glow (or a sense of existential emptiness, as the case may be), the winner shall be awarded US$200 and be published in the third edition of Regime Magazine, to be released by Regime Books in 2013. Two runners-up will be awarded US$50, and also published.

Regime Books is promoting the prize in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Deadline for entries is strictly Midnight EST, 31 March 2013. The winners will be announced by 30 April 2013.

Entries will only be accepted online at: regime.submittable.com.

* UPDATE (2/1/2013): Thanks to good friend of Regime Books, poet Harry Calhoun, who did the research we couldn’t. The phrase ‘Que le coeur de l’homme est creux et plein d’ordure’ appears in Pascal’s Pensées #143. A handy translation is, ‘How hollow and full of ribaldry is the heart of man!’ You can read more about Harry Calhoun on his website.

So come down and grab a copy…You can find us in the area between the Library, Museum and the Art Gallery. If someone in uniform gets upset, we’ll be in the PICA bar.

CHANGES TO THE SUBMISSION ENGINE: Submissions for the second edition of Regime Magazine have now closed. But if you’ve been a slacker, don’t worry because we are immediately open for submissions to Regime 03. You can drop off your submissions at our submissions website here: regime.submittable.com.

However, beware: we have introduced a $2 fee for each submission of one short story or five poems. We hope this will cover the cost of offering hopeful contributors the ability to submit online.

Regime Magazine is coming to Sydney and Melbourne next week. Regime Books Editors Nathan Hondros and Damon Lockwood will be beating the drum for our western literature venture by talking to as many fellow travellers in the east as we can; in fact, if you’re free in Sydney on 24th November, or Melbourne on 25th November, you’ll find them drinking themselves to beatification in the Pubs of the East.

They’ll be personally taking submissions for Regime 02 and talking literature and nonsense to all comers:

Sydney, 5pm onwards, 24 November 2012
Friend in Hand Pub
58 Cowper Street, Glebe

Melbourne, 8.30pm, 25 November 2012
Town Hall Hotel
33 Errol Street, North Melbourne

And…if you buy a copy of Regime 01 from us for only $15, we’ll throw in a beer! How’s that for a deal?

Submission Deadlines Extended

The dream of a new edition of Regime by the end of the year is now gone, dear friends. But there is good news. This means that you have more time to drop your subs for Regime 02. Please visit our submissions machine here: regime.submittable.com. Also, you can mail submissions to the office.

The Editors.

Regime Books is now seeking submissions of poetry, short stories and performance writing for the second edition of Regime Magazine, REGIME 02.

With thanks: We couldn’t be happier with Regime 01. Not only did we release into the wild some blistering-hot new writing from all over the country (and beyond), we scored some excellent reviews and sold a few books to boot. Thank you to everyone who contributed their work, to all the merry pranksters who came to the launch, and to our fine friends of good taste who parted with their hard earned bread to get the sultry feel of Regime Magazine in their hot little hands.

If you missed out, a few copies are still available  right here.

Mischa Ipp and Matt Longman in Damon Lockwood’s Forget Me Not.

This interview appeared thanks to our friends at the awesome We Love Perth.

Damon Lockwood is a fella who gets around a bit. You can find him both on the stage, as well as behind the scenes as a playwright, director and in all manner of roles. He also edits a local, independent publication, and he even had a gig on Access 31 discussing the Western Australian Football League. He is doing some great work for the arts in Perth, and we wanted to find out more…

You have your finger in many pies! We see you in live theatre and comedy, on the screen, behind the scenes in shows, writing and more. Do you have an official job title?

I currently hold the position of Artistic Associate at Black Swan State Theatre Company, but apart from that no official title. Perhaps ‘enthusiastic lifer’? ‘Passionate artist (which translates directly to ‘broke artist’)? ‘General dude?’

Let’s just go with actor, writer, director, and leave it at that.

Summarise your career background and how you’ve come to where you are now:

Bachelor of Arts at Murdoch University; one year working graveyard shift at Shell Service Station (some of my best work); one year at Victorian College of the Arts before I told them what I thought and I got kicked out; then working my heart out at every gig offered to me or inspired by myself.

Oh God, I’ve wasted my life…

What do you get up to in a typical working week?

I do judge the success of every day by how much writing I manage to achieve on that day; perhaps a couple of auditions to get knocked back from; a couple of improvisation shows; interacting with all the wonderful people at Black Swan; editing a new publication of contemporary writing called Regime; hopefully a strong twenty minutes of watching Ellen; then on Tuesday…

Can you tell us a bit about Regime Books and also the new magazine…

My oldest friend Nathan Hondros and I have always been very passionate about quality literature. We have edited and critiqued each other’s work for twenty years now, and it is a very special relationship. We felt there wasn’t adequate avenues in this country for harder, more daring writing to be read, so we said screw it let’s start a new magazine. It’s a very exciting project. Regime 01 is currently available at PICA, Planet Books, Crow Books, and some groovy little book store in Tasmania if you’re heading that way.

You’ve done some great things. One that stands out for me was your show at The Blue Room a while back, I (Honestly) Love You. All of us at We Love Perth went and laughed out loud. But I have to ask… what possessed you to accept the WAFL On job, and whose idea was it to try and fuse comedy with such an important issue as WAFL football?

It was a paid gig and we did what the producers asked us to do.

Fair enough. Do you keep a bit of en eye on the WAFL nowadays?

You know, I loved the WAFL before and I still do!

[Commiserations to Damon whose team, East Fremantle, lost on the weekend. But congratulations of course to the mighty Claremont Tigers!]

You really do great work in enriching the culture of Perth. What have you got coming up?

Regime 02 should be out round Christmas; the Big Hoo-Haa carries on from strength to strength every Saturday night at Lazy Susan’s Comedy Den; I’m directing a freaking awesome play for Black Swan next year called Midsummer: A Play with Songs; and I (Honestly) Love You is returning for a two night season in November for the City of Stirling. I will also be partaking in as many personal pub and tavern reviews as I can manage. I am my own toughest critic so I will be spending a lot of time in said pubs and taverns…

What do you love about doing the work you do?

The people, the thrill of it all, living your passion. Mostly it is a career that makes you feel like you are contributing towards improving the human condition and on occasions are truly throttling the day.

Is it all so sweet? Any particular hurdles you’ve had to face on the way?

It is a silly and very hard industry. It is an absolute truism that if you manage to snag one out of every ten auditions you go for it means you are a very successful actor. It’s all incredibly subjective as well – if you are looking for accolades this is the wrong industry for you. My skin has become so thick I can’t even sweat any more.

What has been your proudest achievement?

Maybe my play HorseHead winning the Rome Fringe Festival this year, which means it now has a season in New York next year. Maybe my one man show Domestic Bliss, when it won a National Competition and was performed by Gyton Grantley in Sydney and directed by David Williamson’s son Rory. I’m not sure, any time I get to engage with my work I’m pretty bloody happy.

Which local artists/musicians/creatives do you admire?

I love love love my fellow Hoo-Haa-ers. We go on stage every Saturday night, often in front of 100 people who might have had a few too many fizzy-pops, look out for each other more than you could imagine and deliver international standard improvisation every week. I hope to look like Rick Ardon one day as well.

Any advice for those trying to enter into the creative community in Perth?

Be prepared to work work work. And humility will always be your greatest tool.

What do you love about Perth?

The beach, my dogs, and the fact that it’s not Adelaide.

What does Perth need?

Sports stadium at Burswood.

Most frequented coffee spot?

The Bird – by coffee you meant beer, right?

Best live music venue?

The Rosemount.

Favourite beach?

City.

Up north or down south?

Way down south, somewhere beautiful and remote like Spearwood or Coolbellup.