the home page of david prater

We are planets. Some endure. Others melt, or spin off course, like tops. I'm one of those. This poem is my brand new abstract moon, a satellite whose strange attraction causes moods to rise and fall like waves, abstract tides. The truth is, by the wooden wharves, even fishermen are gods. Inside each plastic bucket, offerings to the moon. Each hook's a hope or prayer; every cast an arm around the shoulder of a tearful stranger. I'm one of those. Lightning is a kind of poem, a song sung by clouds as they rub together. I'm one of those. Shoes on cobbles, words on the wind. Ask somebody if they'd mind walking slowly. Who knows, they might just say goodbye. We're abstracts in each other's eye. That's okay. You'll find a flower in the smog; I can already hear little white trees. Hands hold onto us. You're the kind of person who sees a single moon. I'm one of those too.

Last year, as part of my residency in Seoul , I wrote an article for the Australian National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) on the subject of my experience of teaching at Sogang University. The article has now been published in the NTEU's Advocate and can be downloaded as a PDF along with the rest of the contents of the March 2006 issue . The article contains a small factual error: in the final sentence I state that the way to say "I am Australian" in Korean is "hoju saram", when in reality the correct way to say it is "hoju saram ipnida". Just in case anyone's ever called upon to explain US foreign policy whilst travelling in Korea. Then again, perhaps it'd be even more useful to know how to say "I am not an American" in that delightful but difficult language.

It's funny what you remember and forget about yourself sometimes. For example, I just remembered that in 2002 I was involved in an online discussion forum as part of a project called text-e.org and which was organised by (amongst others) the French Bibliotheque Publique D'Information. Ten forums were held between October 2001 and March 2002 on various topics "dedicated to investigating the impact of the Web on reading, writing and the diffusion of knowledge." Forum presenters included Jason Epstein, Dan Sperber and Umberto Eco. I contributed a response to Dan Sperber's topic: Reading Without Writing , or "the future of texts which will continue to be read but will no longer be written." You can read my contribution and Dan Sperber's response under the heading "Advantages of Speech to Text?" (it's a javascript pop-up, hence I can't link to it here).