Showing posts with label australian poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label australian poetry. Show all posts

Monday, 4 February 2013

NEW LITERARY SALON MELBOURNE


I'm organising a new monthly salon in Melbourne featuring only the best Oz writers, poets, artists and thinkers. Info for 4 Feb Debut Night here. Have been no recent postings on blog as I'm engrossed in finishing the new book of poems THE BOOK OF SKINS, to be published by John Leonard Press early 2013, and ruminating on a couple of challenging book reviews which are worthy truly of the rumination. Will be posting them soon - 

NEW MONTHLY LITERARY SALON STARTS 4 FEB 2013
A new monthly literary salon starts this Monday 4 February in South Melbourne, featuring Melbourne-based writers Alison Croggon and Stephanie Honor Convery. A well-known novelist, poet and critic, Croggon will be reading poetry. A novelist, blogger and activist, Convery will be reading work based on her in-progress book on the politics of exercise and the body. The event will be MCd by writer and performer, Bo Svoronos, with an open session for writers following the features. The event is on Monday, 4 February, at Evening Star, corner Cecil and York streets, South Melbourne, 7.30 pm for 8 pm. There is no admission fee. Organised by writer Jacinta Le Plastrier and Evening Star restaurateur and writer Renan Goskin, the salon is part of the venue’s Port Phillip Gilgamesh Readings. Upcoming writers at the salon, to be held the first Monday of each month, include Petra White, Steve Smart, Gig Ryan, Kent MacCarter, Ali Alizadeh, Matt Hetherington, Elizabeth Campbell, Cheryl Overs, Kevin Brophy, Elizabeth Campbell and Jacinda Woodhead.  The idea of the salon, says Le Plastrier, is to create a serious but enjoyable forum for literature, politics and culture. (For more information, the Port Phillip Gilgamesh Readings FB page.)

BIOS
Alison Croggon has published several collections of poetry, which won the Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes and were shortlisted for the Victorian (twice) and NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Her most recent collection is THEATRE (Salt Publishing 2008). She is the author of the best-selling fantasy quartet THE BOOKS OF PELLINOR, which has been published worldwide, shortlisted for two Aurealis Awards and named one of the Notable Books of 2003 by the Children's Book Council of Australia. The US edition of THE NAMING, was judged a Top Ten Teen Read by Amazon.com. Her new novel BLACK SPRING has just been released in Australia and the UK. From 2004-2012 she ran the review blog THEATRE NOTES for which she won the 2009 Geraldine Pascall Prize for Critic of the Year, and was formerly Melbourne theatre critic for The Australian and The Bulletin. She has written several works for theatre, including the operas THE BURROW and GAUGUIN with the composer Michael Smetanin, and MAYAKOVSKY, commissioned by Victorian Opera in 2013.
Stephanie Honor Convery is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, criticism and commentary in the fields of feminism, politics, Indigenous Australia, literature, art and travel. Her work has been published by Meanjin, the ABC Drum, Overland Literary Journal, the Melbourne Writers’ Festival blog, harvest, Voiceworks, The Wheeler Centre and The Big Issue. She has completed a first novel, BIG RIVER, a magical realist drama set in the Australian tropics. She is presently writing a non-fiction book on the politics of exercise and the body. Stephanie is also an activist and academic. She blogs regularly at www.gingerandhoney.com 
MC: Bo Svoronos recently completed his doctorate in Indigenous Festivals and Reciprocity. He has been an independent producer and tour manager for the Global Poetics Tour and chairperson of WELL Productions inc. In his role as Indigenous Arts Officer for the City of Port Phillip, he founded, produced and programmed five Indigenous multi-disciplinary festivals, curated visual art exhibitions and established significant cultural programs. Bo re-founded, produced and co-directed two St Kilda Writers’ Festivals. He also writes and performs his own works across various disciplines and genres.

Wednesday, 31 October 2012

WHAT I AM UP TO PART 2:


Attending THIS THURSDAY NIGHT ‘Melbourne Feminist Action: an open meeting’, Meeting Room 1, Trades Hall, 54 Victoria Street, Carlton, 1 November, 6.30 pm. This is a new location due to the hike in expected numbers. Enter Victoria Street. Follow Facebook event– convened by Jacinda Woodhead and Stephanie Honor Convery

Posted today under Poetry (above), Part 1 of a long poem on Love and also the Word – in the writing for the past year - titled overall ‘The Book of Assassination’. Sections to be posted sequentially in coming weeks. Also here is a poem by Fernando Pessoa (trans. David Butler), the enigmatic Portugese great (1888-1935), not only one of the major poets of the 20th-C but also with acute, disquietening relevance into the 21st.  From ‘Selected Poems – Fernando Pessoa’ (Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2009). For locals who want to support the great Collected Works bookstore in Melbourne, buy it there. Both posted poems read this week at what was a truly excellent Gilgamesh Readings (Evening Star, South Melbourne, Mondays, 7.30 pm for 8 pm).

Meditating this Friday evening: I am running the meditation segment at the end of a new FREESTYLE ECSTATIC DANCE evening 2 November, evening start 7.30 pm (meditation approx 9.15-9.45); $15 entry. All welcome. At St. Columba’s Hall, 24 Glenhuntly Rd, Elwood (entrance via Normandy Rd.) Facebook META(morphosis)Dance.

Still reading to review ‘Money Shot – A Journey into Porn and Censorship’, Jeff Sparrow (Scribe). A truly outstanding must-read for anyone who wants to think about the phenomena of pornography in our lifetime.

Friday, 12 October 2012

What I have been up to


Launching this blog now: which has been some time in the gestation and making. Go to ‘About’ above to see what I will be posting on. You can subscribe at right…Robust Debate Welcome. You can also cross to new, related Facebook page. Publishing and editing as Publisher at John Leonard Press a range of exceptional and eminent writers and poets. 2012 Releases: Robert Gray’s landmark Collected Poems - ‘Cumulus’; the late great Peter Steele’s Selected Essays - ‘Braiding the Voices’; Brook Emery’s poetry volume, ‘Collusion’; and Graeme Miles’ ‘Recurrence’. Writing a prose speculative-non-fiction book on spiritual perspectives on the feminine – just released – ‘The Divine Woman and the Twin Flame’. An article on the book – why I wrote it - is also posted here. Writing new poems and in final editing of a poetry volume for early 2013 publication, ‘The Book of Assassination’. The title follows the book’s long, long-line poem on love and the word. Poetry – others and mine, archival and new, Australian and international – will be posted regularly. Hosting this Monday, 15 October, 7.30 for 8 pm, a new reading/salon, Gilgamesh Readings. Featured writer is one of Australia’s finest poets Petra White. Free. At Evening Star, corner York and Cecil Sts, South Melbourne. Reading two extraordinary new releases, both world-class and both by Melbourne-based authors: the luminary literary prose of Alison Croggon in her new novel, ‘Black Spring’ (Walker Books), a rewrite on ‘Wuthering Heights’ among other things; and Jeff Sparrow’s narrative-journalistic ‘Money Shot – A Journey into Porn and Censorship’ (Scribe). Will also be posting on both. The blog has an ‘Inspire’ tag – about the work of others. Check a brilliant Australian-based initiative to provide tech-savvy downloadable apps which provide teenagers (and younger ones and adults if interested) with accessible, intelligent and practical short meditations about mindfulness. I’ve been practising the first one – highly commend the site and not for profit project: go to: smiling mind