The Negativity Bin
A6 40 pp ISBN 978-09807718-7-9
$9.90 including postage
Winner of the 2010 PressPress Chapbook Award
The Negativity Bin won the 2010 PressPress Chapbook Award with its sure tone and clever, witty response to an unlikely topic: unemployment.
B.R.Dionysius was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival and Director of Fringe Arts Collective Inc. a not-for-profit literary collective that organised the Brisbane Writers Fringe Festival (1993-1996) the Queensland Poetry Festival (1997-2001), The Arts Queensland Award for Unpublished Poetry (now the Val Vallis Award for Unpublished Poetry) published the poetry broadsheet, Seriously Fishy, and ran literary events in Brisbane including Chalice Poets, With Baited Breath and The Word Made Flesh. He has an M.Phil. (Creative Writing) from the University of Queensland and currently teaches English at Ipswich Grammar School.
He has published an artist’s book, The Barflies’ Chorus (1995, Lyrebird Press), two collections of poetry, Fatherlands (2000, FIP) and Bacchanalia (2002, IP) and a verse novel Universal Andalusia (2006, soi 3). Fatherlands was shortlisted in the 2002 Mary Gilmore Award, Bacchanalia won the inaugural IP Picks 2002 Poetry Award and Universal Andalusia was shortlisted in the 2006 C. J. Dennis Poetry Prize.
With poets Liz Hall-Downs and Sam Wagan Watson he wrote a sequence of poems, Boondall Cycle for the Black Fellas White Fellas Wetlands: Boondall Wetlands Website project (1996-1999, Brisbane Stories, Brisbane City Council). An audio CD of the poetry from the Black Fellas, White Fellas Wetlands project was released in 2000.
In 2000, he was awarded a New Work Grant from the Literature Fund of the Australia Council to write the verse novel, Universal Andalusia. He was a general poetry editor for Papertiger: New World Poetry CDROM from 2000-2006.
Papertigermedia won the Queensland Writers’ Centre’s Johnno Award in 2002. He was awarded the 1998 Harri Jones Memorial Prize and recently won the 2009 Max Harris Poetry Award.
Other books by B.R. Dionysius
The Barflies’ Chorus (1995, Lyrebird Press)
Fatherlands (2000, Five Islands Press)
Bacchanalia (2002, Interactive Press)
Universal Andalusia (2006, soi 3).
CDROM (As poetry editor)
Subversions: generations of contemporary poetry (2000, papertigermedia)
Papertiger: new world poetry #01 (2001, papertigermedia)
Papertiger: new world poetry #02 (2002, papertigermedia)
Papertiger: new world poetry #03(2003, papertigermedia)
Papertiger: new world poetry #04 (2004, papertigermedia)
Papertiger: new world poetry #05/06 (2006, papertigermedia)
Audio texts
Blackfellas Whitefellas Wetlands: Poetry & music from the Boondall Wetlands (2000, Cultural Services Section Brisbane City Council)
Visual Texts
Black Fellas White Fellas Wetlands: Boondall Wetlands Website project (1996-1999, Brisbane Stories, Brisbane City Council).
Excerpt from The Negativity Bin:
(i) Lower than the Angels
‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’
(i) Woolloongabba, Brisbane 1998 AD
The first thing Helen says is,
‘If any of you touch me,
it’s assault’.
Their first session
in Job Search Training
with Work Corrections Australia.
The Maori man beside Baldwin
has difficulty filling in
his career skills survey.
How can you describe a life
in twenty-five words or less?
(ii) Misbah
Misbah does not call
the Job Network member (JNM)
to let them know that
he’s not coming in.
He figures, in one hundred
years we’ll all be jobless
(& with God) anyhow.
He’ll enjoy this day
like it’s his last.
A lick of breeze lifts.
(iii) The Ascent
‘Every animal leaves traces of what it was; man alone leaves traces of what he created’ – J. Bronowski
The Taung baby;
the first pre-millennial
Hollywood child star
raises her head & time stops.
The Rift Valley hums like
an apartment block on M LOW defrost.
Unemployed for two million years
her child labour resumes in 1924.
Australopithecus -‘Southern Ape’,
the first astronaut on that -
‘awful planet of the apes’.
No paid overtime, no holiday loading,
no maternity leave in the ascent of man.
(iv) Now, the other dole bludgers in the queue:
– fossil lemur (50 million BC.)
– Aegyptopithecus (30 million BC.)
– Dryopithecus (20 million BC.)
– Ramapithecus (14 million BC.)
– Australopithecus (4-5 million BC.)
– Homo Erectus (1 million BC.)
– Homo Sapiens (500,000 BC.)
NB. Neanderthal Man tried to jump the queue 100,000 years ago & was breached out of existence.
NB. Fire making; the first work for the dole project.
Good morning
Work Corrections Australia
This is the Taung child
How can I help you?
