Vicki Viidikas

Dear Silliman,

I want you to drop everything and fly to Sydney. I am living on an Island north of the city with a group of Waggaists. We have joined up with James K. Baxter, Louis Johnson and Nigel Roberts, all great New Zealand poets who have joined the cause. The Cause?  Well, this is the issue: we have  set up a new experiment in communal living here, with poetry and sex as our creed and Wagga-blood as our ritual drink. We had to deal with Michael Wilding first though. Being the owner of the land and its dwellings, he became cynical and put aside his study of Paradise Regained last week and has returned his attentions to Paradise Lost. We had to put him into a chicken wire cage for a while, and we are feeding him poems by Peter Skrzynecki - we tear these into pieces and boil them for an hour along with the head of a mulloway, this makes a broth that induces ‘sincerity’ and ‘honest responses’ to the questions that trouble the once brilliant Wilding. Dr Greene wanted to apply the wire mouth guard but Olson arrived just before the operation and tore the contraption from Dr Greene’s hands and threw it into the river. What we need from you Silliman is to council Greene - he needs a grounding in Language Poetry so that when he speaks to Wilding the words wont disturb the troubled man.  By the way, we have a huge supply of wagga-steak - Nigel Roberts fries this up for breakfast and serves it with lots of Zest shipped down from California. I can  hear Wilding pecking the pages of the ‘Immigrant Chronicle’ now out the back, we are running out of copies, please come and bring the equipment for print-on-demand books you stole from Salt Publications.

Your Muse in the wild,

Vicki Viidikas

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Dear Vicki Viidikas

this is an interesting invitation, and I accept. However, if I do travel to this island, there are certain essential items that must be provided before I can make the long journey. These are, in order of importance:

• Bubble-Tree Convergence For Harmonic Maps - a book that is only available in Australia. It is very expensive and can be purchased from Nicholas Pounder in Sydney. 

• King-size blue pinstriped flannelette sheets.

• Mineral water in glass bottles. I don’t particularly mind which brand, but the sodium content must be below 0.5%.

• Canopy-style mosquito net.

It sounds likely that violence will erupt on the island. If that is the case, fine, although you must be prepared for me to record it on my blog in sentences that are flat, overlong, and empty as a red oblong.

Because I expect an extended stay, I am sending the print-on-demand equipment ahead of me, via international express courier. Wilding needs to foot the bill for everything.

The Red K will never make it onto my blog or into any of my books. I taught him everything he knows and all he does is recycle the tainted spittle of Charles Bernstein.

Ron Silliman