Month: December 2024

Vale Judith Mok

Sorry to learn of Judith Mok’s death last month. From The Hot Press Newsdesk – 28th November 2024

“Judith was a remarkable woman, a force of life, a powerhouse, with incredible life experience,” a statement from the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris reads.

Tributes are continuing to pour in for Judith Mok, following the sad news of the acclaimed classical singer, vocal coach and writer’s death this week.

Her passing was confirmed by her publisher, Antony Farrell of Lilliput Press, who stated in an online post that Judith “died on the morning of Monday 26th with her husband, writer Michael O’Loughlin, keeping vigil.”

“She was a doughty soul and personality, who bore her cancer fearlessly,” his statement continues.

(Sephardic song Addio Querido performed by Judith Mok and Mani Koshravesh in the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. Filmed by Oisin Byrne, 2020. From Judith Mok’s website).

‘I’D never quite met anyone like Judith before, and I found out afterwards, of course, that there was nobody like her,” says writer and poet Michael O’Loughlin. “We started talking on the first night we met, and we’re having that same conversation 29 years later. We find that we still argue about the same things!”

(from the Irish Independent, September 2011)

As a footnote, I was fortunate enough ten years ago to be introduced to Michael O’Loughlin at a Dedalus Press launch in Dublin. In retrospect, I wish I’d known more about his poetry at the time, might have enquired about his career as  ‘one of the few genuine, intellectual, working-class voices in Irish poetry’ (Poetry International). ‘Pleasure to meet you,’ I said, ‘I thought you played a great game against Collingwood last weekend.’ (Where’d that spring from? Regretted the words immediately.) Quick as a flash he shot back, very generously, with ‘Yes, I was quite pleased with my performance myself.’

The ubiquitous becomes sublime: Adrienne Eberhard launches ‘undercurrents’ by Jane Williams

undercurrents by Jane Williams’, Ginninderra Press 2023, was launched by Adrienne Eberhard at The Hobart Bookshop on Thursday 29 June 2023.

Thank you for joining us tonight for the launch of Jane Williams’ latest collection, undercurrents, published by Ginninderra Press. Like most of you, I imagine, I have been a fan of Jane’s work for a very long time, over two decades now, lured by its seeming-simplicity that masks the undercurrents beneath.

I first met Jane at a Tasmanian Poetry Festival, organised by Tim Thorne, when my second son was a baby in his pram. Jane, who is the same age as me, was attending one of the sessions with one of her daughters who was in her late teens, and it both amazed and gladdened me to meet this poet who had already published a number of books and raised two daughters. It gave me hope that both were possible, that anything was possible! Jane’s poetry, as I came to read it and seek it out, confirmed this; in her poetry, anything is possible. The ordinary becomes the extraordinary, the ubiquitous becomes sublime. Humans are angels, and the holy is found in our everyday lives. Jane’s poetry works a quiet magic – from seemingly simple ideas the extraordinary bursts.

Read the launch speech at Rochford Street Review.

Jane Williams reading from her 2023 collection undercurrent.