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The Little Red Door & Winston Thursday night saw the launch of Alogopoiesis, the fascinating new collection from Amelia Walker published by Gazebo Books.
Amelia has been writing and performing poetry since her early teens, had seven books published, including four collections of poems, and teaches creative writing at UniSA. And this launch was a little different, in that other local poets read from Amelia’s book who shared their connection with Amelia, their chosen poem(s) and responded with one of their own.
First up was Mike Ladd who read the first poem in the collection ‘Kite’, in which the speaker studies a tree-trapped one ‘arcing, diving’, considers how it arrived there by ‘romancing cyclones’, juxtaposing this child’s toy with ‘the opposite of violence, shining like a knife.’ Mike then read a poem about his mother who, as a girl, was literally caught up in a dust storm, continuing the theme of turbulence.
Kerryn Tredrea was up next with ‘You’re missing’, where the absence of another creates ‘holes’ to be sewn up, re-filled, as if darning a beloved garment to make it last longer, with the action of missing a way for the speaker to keep the loved one present, near. Kerryn responded with a poem about internet dating, another way of seeking what may often seem an elusive someone.
Heather Taylor Johnson followed by reading three versions of ‘Taking time’ that revolves around an ailing father isolating during the pandemic to stay safe, the daughter understanding and yet ‘it stung’, realising the risks associated with contact, ‘But still. But still.’ Heather then shared a three-part poem about menopause, mirroring the refracted self in a multitude of ways.
Sarah Pearce read two different versions of ‘Island’ next, in which a woman is the island upon which ‘sailors wreck themselves’, and how she is ‘cultivated’ and ‘shaped’ by another woman who, after everything, prefers the speaker ‘wild’, her original self. Sarah responded with a poem called ‘Ophelia’, unspooling the tragedy that culminates in the individual being ‘mossed in fear’.
Last up was Bronwyn Lovell who shared two versions of ‘Through the cracks’ where a relationship is examined and left wanting, the ruin of the furnishings surrounding them indicative of where it’s at, as the speaker relates to their ‘chipped’ plates, feeling ‘faded, missing, cracked’. Bronywn finished the readings with a poem about her ex-boyfriend, echoing the previous disconnect.
Gazebo Books offer ‘books for curious minds’ and indeed it is a curious book, with an extraordinary structure throughout and a title that captures the contents perfectly – ‘alogia’ meaning an inability to speak fluently and ‘poiesis’ making – and so these poems speak of absence, the blank space of a page where the challenges of being exist. The interwoven intricacies of several versions of the same poem render it kaleidoscopic, the colours and cadence and circularity so evocative of life, that a reader’s compelled to explore it.
I was part of a fabulous line up Wednesday evening at this month’s No Wave poetry readings at The Wheaty – Jelena Dinić, Caroline Reid and Jennifer Liston – curated by the equally fabulous Jill Jones.
Jelena was first up who shared some poems from her recent trip to Serbia that were haunting and quiet and devastatingly beautiful, just like the rest of her work. Jelena’s collection In the Room with the She Wolf published by Wakefield Press charts her journey from her former home of Yugoslavia to Australia, from childhood to becoming an adult, and won the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature Unpublished Manuscript prize in 2020.
I was next up and shared some poems from my new collection ice cream ‘n’ tar, one of the winners of the James Tate Chapbook Poetry Prize last year published by Survision Books in Dublin. Offering a surrealist take on climate change, my work produced many contemplative responses, which was exactly the reaction I’d hoped for, as the idea behind these poems was to help people focus on the human impact on our wonderful world.
After a short break Caroline took the stage, whose work was highly entertaining in its grittiness and appeal, where poets were compared to dogs with their bite and how the monthly bleed can generate associations in various guises. Caroline won the 2021 Mslexia International Poetry Prize with ‘A Poem to My Mother that She Will Never Read’, which I remember finding in the magazine and being completely wowed by it.
Last but by no means least was Jen who read poems from her forthcoming collection Grace Notes due out from Salmon Publishing later this year, about Grace O’Malley the Pirate Queen of 16th century Ireland who, despite commanding over 200 men at sea, was written out of history. Jen’s poetry is mesmerising and this was no exception, as she gave voice to this heroine once again following her sold out shows at the Adelaide Fringe in 2020.
It was a brilliant evening compered by Jill who shared witty alternative bios alongside our real ones (seem to recall I was a famous chef!) and the variety of poetry shared worked incredibly well. The readings were recorded for Vision Australia Radio‘s Emerging Writers program, to be broadcast alongside the interviews we gave to Kate Cooper, one of its volunteers, which was another fabulous opportunity to reach a wider audience. Here’s my reading and interview if you’re interested and be sure to check out the others too.
So, I consider ice cream ‘n’ tar officially launched and what better place for it than at these prestigious readings. I even managed to sell several signed copies, although of course a poet is never in poetry for the money; it’s all about the words.
August is Australia’s poetry month, deemed so by Red Room Poetry, a leader in commissioning, creating, promoting and publishing poetry in meaningful ways. And it was busy.
Launched in 2021, Poetry Month aims to increase access, awareness and visibility of poetry, with Red Room Poetry hosting a variety of events, such as readings and workshops, and providing prompts to generate those all-important words. There’s also a poetry showcase in each state and one of the many wonderful aspects of this initiative is the ‘pay what you can’ ethos.
The first event I signed up for was an online book club, with Andy Jackson, Ellen van Neerven and James Jinag, facilitated by the effervescent Felicity Plunkett. Each shared passages and reflections on a favourite book of their choice with some wide-ranging and collaborative selections. Andy’s and Ellen’s fantastic work I’m familiar with, Human Looking and Throat being their latest collections respectively, but James I wasn’t, so it was great to hear his thoughts on the texts shared and learn about him.
Next up was an online workshop with Andy Jackson through Writers SA called Un-alone Poetry, where we delved into self-portrait poems with Andy sharing some from his latest collection that brings together the voice of the disabled. I’ve participated in Andy’s courses before and this was of the same brilliant ilk, perfectly balancing time to read and reflect with the opportunity to write and share. We even indulged in some collaborative poetry by being paired and swapping lines via the chat function in Zoom, that delivered some surprising results.
The Dog-Eared Readings are brainchild of two beloved poets, Heather Taylor-Johnson and Rachael Mead, with the inaugural one taking place mid-week at The Howling Owl. Backed by a grant from Arts SA and with free drinks very kindly provided by Red Room Poetry, these readings aim to fill the gap left by Ken Bolton’s Lee Marvin series and offer the same imitable blend of poetry and prose. First up was Stephen Orr reading from his novel Sincerely, Ethel Malley, followed by the krumping (a new performance style I discovered!) Matcho Intrumz Cassidy and finished with Dominic Guerrera in conversation with Natalie Harkin who shared poems from her latest collection Archival-Poetics, a gift of poems (literally) that reckon with the State’s colonial archive.
Another online workshop, The Speculative Poet, with Sally Wen Mao completed the month for me, in which we explored blurring the boundaries between fact and magic, research and conjecture, with poetry the perfect form with which to do so. Sally shared slides and some insights from the infamous Toni Morrison on speculation, as well as a few of her own poems, with ‘Nucleation‘ a particular standout for me. Sally’s award-winning collection, Oculus and forthcoming, The Kingdom of Surfaces, both from Graywolf Press, are the latest additions to my ever-growing wish list.
What I love about projects and events like these, apart from showcasing the fine work that’s out there, is their ability to inspire and connect, and for me generated several ideas for the next full-length collection I’m working on, as well as introducing me to new poets and forms. So next year, I must remember to clear my calendar for August again, give the poetry room to breathe.
It’s been an eventful week. Wednesday I went to the launch of Jill Jones’s latest collection at Goodwood Books and Saturday to Poets and Pizza at Coriole.
Acrobat Music: New and Selected Poems is Jill’s thirteenth collection who is one of the most prolific poets I know, not to mention amazingly talented and widely read. Published by Puncher and Wattmann and introduced by book curator and arts consultant Sarah Tooth, Jill began with the beautiful poem ‘mother i am waiting now to tell you’ about things unsaid, which she read with her wife Annette, alternating the left with the right justified lines on the page. And then followed a Q&A style session, with Sarah asking how Jill got into poetry who shared her inspirations, which includes Kenneth Slessor and lines from his infamous poem ‘Five Bells’ that left an impression:
Deep and dissolving verticals of light
Ferry the falls of moonshine down.
And it’s this same sense of profound reverie that’s so evocative of Jill’s work, pulling you in and under to a different line of sight. Jill read several poems, including an ekphrastic one literally split into snippets of art and most notably ‘Unbuttoned’, which opens with ‘If I have to earn some skin does it have to be new?’ then proceeds to explore ways to obtain this, culminating in this rather haunting undress:
Or shall I unbutton and fold
what’s left, step out of my nerves
and my veins, leave everything
– corpse, crevice, carcass, shell –
but keep my breath for
the impending and tremendous air
that’s beyond howling when
I touch it to my old pelt?
The bookshop was packed and the line for a signed copy snaked to the door. Originally hailing from Sydney, Jill is now a permanent part of the Adelaide poetry scene, for which I’m immensely glad.
Two of my favourite poets read at Saturday’s event – Rachael Mead and Louise Nicholas – along with Kalicharan Nigel Dey and Bruce Greenhalgh, facilitated by another wonderful local poet, Jude Aqualina. First up was Bruce, whose clever and compact repertoire focused on rhythm and rhyme, both entertaining and far-reaching, in which he explored various aspects of the human condition in a relatable way.
Rachael followed, beginning with ‘The wild grammar of leeches’ from her collection The Flaw in the Pattern by UWA Publishing, with the poem part of a sequence about trekking the Overland Track in Tasmania containing these gorgeous snippets:
I shed my clothes like an awful first draft,
…look down to find my body being edited, its pages
harshly corrected with black punctuation.
…full of stolen content they race end for end
across my skin, challenging my sensitive narrative
with their bold-third person revisions,…
Rachael also shared a poem inspired by the #metoo movement and another comprising a series of broken questions, the kind you hear every day, but in this context, stick.
Louise followed the break with a selection of poems centered around family and memory, sharing the rather poignant ‘Echolalia’ from her collection The List of Last Remaining published by Five Islands Press, about her graceful name-giving and how it changed after her mother’s death:
So when she died
my name for a time
lost its grace
became shape without shadow
question without answer
and even now
if I were to stand on a mountain top
and shout out my name
there’d be no echo
calling back.
Louise also shared entertaining poems about the year she was born, the wife of the man who invented the pap smear and about her children who were in the audience, but presumably forewarned.
Nigel finished the set, urging us to dance and sing, delivering his poems in a unique way, his previous acting career clearly evident in the way he performed and engaged with the crowd.
And now I’m planning my own event to launch ice cream ‘n’ tar, which offers a somewhat surreal perspective on the ever-shifting climate and lack of inaction. Every little helps.
at The Wheaty Wednesday night was epic featuring a stellar line up – Bronwyn Lovell, Alison Flett and Dominic Symes – who helped launch each other’s new collection.
First up was Bronwyn whose work I’ve long admired and her collection, In Bed with Animals from Recent Work Press, is possibly one of the best debuts I’ve ever read.
Bronwyn is a novelist and science fiction scholar as well as a poet, and her work has been shortlisted for some big poetry prizes, including the Dorothy Hewett Award. These poems speak of one woman’s experience of gender discrimination in an ecofeminist voice, calling attention to the exploitation of the environment and animals too. ‘Bitching’ is a fine example, in which Bronwyn draws comparisons between herself and her beloved dog Carmela, both in terms of treatment and temperament:
We domestic animals are still wildly
frightened. If a man mauls me,
they will look for the predator’s DNA
carved in crescents under my claws.
from ‘Bitching’ in In Bed With Animals by Bronwyn Lovell
Alison followed next with her captivating collection Where We Are published by Cordite Books, evocative of home wherever that may be.
Originally hailing from Scotland, Alison travels back to her roots in these raw, visceral poems of longing and belonging, of here and there, conjuring memories along the way interspersed with the delectable Scottish dialect. Alison’s poetry is simply brilliant and I was so pleased to see her infamous fox poems in this collection, (which form a chapbook by themselves published by her own imprint Little Windows Press), a symbol of this fleeting life that shines with her brilliance:
from ‘Semiosphere’ in Where We Are by Alison Flettthe rain runs in rivers
through its red-black fur
and the pavements are thick
with its foxy scent
and the rain rises
to meet it as it runs
and the pavements run
with rivers of its redness
Last but by no means last was Dom reading from I Saw The Best Memes Of My Generation also from Recent Works Press and with a title that sticks.
Dom founded the monthly No Wave poetry readings to try and fill the gap left by the Lee Marvin ones, brain-child of Ken Bolton who is another fine Adelaide-based poet, both of which I’ve had the honour of reading at. Dom’s work is both tender and funny, can make you laugh out loud or nod in rapt agreement, and he had a clever technique; letting the audience choose which poem he shared, that cheered for a Cher poem louder than a Prince one:
I’ve been instructed by The Guardian –
which I pay for now
after being guilted by that widget which kept telling me how
many free articles I’d read & which I’ll admit
feels kind of like paying a bully at school to stop you from
getting beat up (I believe that is called a ‘racket’)
– to feminise the cannon
from ‘Queering the Cannon’ in I Saw The Best Memes Of My Generation by Dominic Symes
Adelaide has a thriving poetry scene, much of which buzzed in the room that night, and with this being the final No Wave coupled with the heartfelt words shared, emotions were high. And it was a festive celebration too, with Alison supplying delicious home-baked treats and party hats, each with a line from a poem and it’s author on the back. Everyone was invited to select one that speaks to them; this was mine:
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.
from ‘And the days are not full enough’ by Erza Pound
So if you’re looking for stocking fillers, buy these books. Brimming with confessions, heartbreak and wit, they will not disappoint because their appeal extends beyond poetry. It reaches you.
First Fridays at South Australia’s Art Gallery (AGSA) provide an opportunity to experience art after-hours without the daily crowds. Last night saw brilliant local poets Jill Jones and Alison Flett read poetry inspired by the current exhibition Clarice Beckett: The present moment.
‘The boatshed’, 1929, Clarice Beckett, image courtesy of AGSA
This stunning collection is split into the times of day Clarice enjoyed painting – sunrise, daylight, sunset and moonlight – with each room lit accordingly. Her work is exquisite. Using a limited palette, she captures shimmering scenes that although everyday, have an ethereal quality, best viewed from a distance to heighten the depth of each piece.
And the poetry was just as stunning. Introduced by the gallery’s director, Jill and Alison identified the work or works their words sought to frame, then alternated between themselves, as well as haiku and longer poems. Both captured the delicate movement and light streaming through Clarice’s art superbly, insightful gifts beautifully rendered.
I plan to revisit the exhibition before it closes, compelled in fact. It moved me, swept me elsewhere and yet now, left me with Alison’s lines on life and our place in it and Jill’s question – how much do we need to love the world?
Last night I went along to Tenx9Adelaide at The Jade having been invited by friends. I wasn’t aware of this concept and what a brilliant one it is – nine people have ten minutes to share a true story based on a theme. Yesterday’s was ‘A brush with…’
Copyright@Tenx9Adelaide
Stories ranged from a brush with death and politics through to the media and fame:
- a young boy inadvertently helped coppers retrieve stolen goods from a river and appeared on the news;
- an anthropologist travelled to a remote Inca community and en route got bitten by a poisonous spider;
- a detailed description of a robber was shared and only at the end did we learn it was Ronnie Biggs (the description, not the storyteller!);
- another anthropologist told of how his bike was stolen in Boston and its subsequent retrieval;
- a woman shared how she nearly lost her life in a flat fire after one of her housemates left a candle burning;
- another told of her geological trip to Nepal where the shipment of apples was more important than backpacks;
- a former priest relayed his perilous hike in Japan after agreeing to minister a wedding there; and
- a comedian shared the time he accepted the gig of warming up the QandA crowd before Julia Gillard came on.
You’ll note that’s only eight; one storyteller pulled out, which resulted in an open mic session where two audience members took the stage to share their two minutes stories – one, having lost both her underwear and swimwear, was invited to climb a coconut tree on a tour (but had to decline being knickerless in a dress), while another told of his amazement at being asked a rather inappropriate question by the media during a press conference about a new hospital.
It was engaging stuff; their stories drew laughs and intakes of breath from the crowd. Some read from notes, others without, but all were perfectly timed (else a horn is sounded!).
The next event is on Thursday 19 July with the theme of ‘Because of her…’ and I’d recommend a visit, to either listen or to share. Do you have a story to tell?
Tim Winton gave a talk at the Adelaide Convention Centre last night – Tender Hearts, Sons of Brutes – as part of his tour to promote his latest book. The place was packed.
Winton is an iconic Australian author. I remember when we first moved here, I wanted to immerse myself in Australian culture and literature, and was promptly pointed in his direction. I started with Cloudstreet and have never looked back. In 2007, he was named a Living Treasure by the National Trust and has won the Miles Franklin Award four times.
The protagonist in The Shepherd’s Hut is Jaxie Clackton, a young boy searching for a better way to be, having learnt everything about being a man from his dad, a brute and a bully, and so has been shaped by, and marinated in, violence, as Winton shared:
I think we forget or simply don’t notice the ways in which men, too, are shackled by misogyny. It narrows their lives. Distorts them. And that sort of damage radiates; it travels, just as trauma is embedded and travels through families.
Winton opened the session with an extract from the book speaking as Jaxie, explaining how he now knows what he wants but has ‘been through fire to get here’. For Winton, a novel is not a tool but a toy; something to explore with curiosity because ‘useless stuff resonates, experiences linger’ – ‘useless beauty’ is why he writes. He’d planned to write the story from three or four people’s perspectives, but it didn’t work because all he could hear was the voice of the ‘unlovely boy’ and so gave him the floor.
Having read only six of his twenty-nine books (Dirt Music and Minimum of Two I borrowed from friends), I still have some reading to do. His writing is inspirational with a focus on landscape and place (his novel In the Winter Dark spurred me to write a poem called ‘primordial’ I’m rather proud of and is currently finding a home).
Winton spoke well to a captivated crowd, exploring childhood, identity, poisonous masculinity, domestic violence:
In this airless universe there are no conversations, only declarations and fraught silences
and was humble, describing himself as ‘just a storyteller’, a brilliantly iconic one at that.
Tuesday evening saw the launch at The Howling Owl of the second series of chapbooks from Little Windows Press; a small local publisher with ‘little books, big horizons’.
Launched by Jill Jones, an extremely talented and acclaimed poet herself, these chapbooks are exquisite – pieces of art in their own right – and in this limited-edition print run present work by Ali Cobby Eckermann, Kathryn Hummel, Jen Hadfield and Adam Aitken.
Ali read first from The Aura of Loss, a collection of poems exploring the stolen generation and its impact on those survivors who carry its grief. Ali is a Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal poet and author of seven books, including the verse novel Ruby Moonlight. Her poem ‘My mother’s love’ is a painful insight to maternal absence – ‘her touch is devoid and I am frantic’ – followed by a peeling of the self until ‘my fingers now bones dipped in blood I etch the lines of my first poem’, a haunting final image.
Kathryn’s diverse award-winning work spans poetry, non-fiction, fiction and photography, published and performed both here and overseas. Her last collection, The Bangalore Set, delves into her time in India. Among others, Kat shared ‘Wharf’ from her chapbook The Body that Holds, a poem about Port Adelaide where ‘time is a sinew to be thinned between thumb and forefinger’ and ‘rumination has its own magnifying silence.’ With nothing to do, two men wait while ‘between a jacket and its lining a flat light comes’.
Alison read poems from Jen’s chapbook Mortis and Tenon, a fellow Scottish poet whose own work is simply brilliant, while Jen lives in the Shetland Islands. As well as poet, Jen is a visual artist and bookmaker, winning the T.S. Eliot prize with her second collection Nigh-No-Place. Jen has language in landscape, beautifully evident in ‘Two Limpet Poems’ in which ‘above the rockpool everything is tilt or rough glazed in weed like afterbirth’ and where ‘This is no place to turn up without a shell / all that protects us from the press of heaven.’
Jill read some of Adam’s work in his absence who lives in Sydney and has had a number of poetry collections published, in addition to short fiction in journals and anthologies. Adam’s chapbook, Notes on the River, are just that; vivid snapshots that explore its nuances as in the title poem where ‘It is not a river but a question.’ A plethora of images flow thereafter, culminating in a favourite – ‘Eels find their way to flood. They dream of babies, stalk the shadows and lay each other down in them.’
With eye-catching covers and painstaking production, these chapbooks really are a gift, and in this series with the wonderful addition of pull out poems to keep handy when you need a little bliss.
Last night The Hearth hosted their ‘Of the Night’ readings at The Jade; an evening of themed writing shared by handpicked local creatives, which I was thrilled to be a part of.
The Hearth Collective comprises Lauren Butterworth, Alicia Carter, Emma Maguire and Melanie Pryor who met as English/Creative Writing PhD candidates and launched a series of themed events based on the old tradition of les veillées – when folk gathered around the fire at the end of the day to share stories, news and company.
Lisandra Linde kicked off proceedings by sharing her firsthand experience of cadavers and a crypt beneath a church in Rome; an interesting piece. Andrew Lee followed who read three intricate poems, which explored who we become at night, providing context after each one. Marina Deller finished the first set with an engaging piece woven with the untimely deaths of both her best friend and her own mum, and meeting her now partner.
After the break saw Melanie take to the stage, one of the Collective’s own, who shared a rather haunting tale about a murder that took place in the vast Australian landscape. I followed with six poems featuring the moon in some way; from an astronomer’s wife to how the moon feels waiting for the sun to set. The evening finished with a short question and answer session, where members of the audience quizzed us on our work, process and the techniques we use to convey ourselves.
Afterwards I was asked by a fellow poet if I had been nervous because it didn’t show. Despite being the last reader and the biggest crowd I’ve read to, I didn’t feel any nerves at all. There’s a certain comfort in art shared by all those there; a beautiful connectivity between readers, listeners, the hosts and a talented musician, Dee Trewartha, who played between sets.
The Hearth Collective facilitated a very memorable evening, so I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open for any further submission calls from them, that’s for sure!
J V Birch 