Category: Austin, Susan

Seasonal Poets Autumn Reading – Hobart, May 18th

5.30pm Monday, May 18: Seasonal Poets Autumn Reading

To be held at Fullers Bookshop, Collins Street, Hobart, featuring Liz Winfield, Susan Austin and Jane Williams.

Liz Winfield is widely published and a stalwart of Tasmania’s poetry community. Her soon to be released book is In My Heart, A Rainforest.

Susan Austin is a poet, eco-socialist activist and mental health occupational therapist. She has published three collections of poetry, and was longlisted in the Tasmanian Literary Awards.

Jane Williams is a poet of gentle, compassionate insight. To hear her read is to be immersed in fierce and thought-full understandings of the overlooked. Her tenth collection of poems, Afterimage, will be released soon.

Tickets are $12.00 and include a glass of wine or non-alcoholic beverage. Tickets can purchased at the door or at Trybooking. 

Sunday 5th Oct, Hobart: Tas Poetry Festival feature reading by six poets

2.30 – 3.45pm, Sunday 5 October

Tasmanian Poetry Festival Feature Reading in Hobart

The Tasmanian Poetry Festival presents a special Hobart feature reading by award-winning poets:

Enjoy this delightful afternoon reading by some of Tasmania’s finest poets addressing themes of nature, family, attention, and joy.

Hosted by Fullers Bookshop, 131 Collins Street, Hobart.

About the poets:

Erin Coull is an editor and contributor for WhyNot and is a past winner of the Andrew Hardy Poetry Prize, and has been published in FortySouth, Togatus, The Trailblazer and WritetheWorld Review. Her writing explores quiet anxieties, uncertain futures and complex connections.

Susan Austin is an award-winning poet, mental health occupational therapist, eco-socialist activist and mother, who has two poetry collections and a verse novel. She will read poems about times when we feel lost – with parenting, relationships and work – and ways we re-establish connection with nature and each other.

Young Dawkins has been published in two collections and numerous literary journals, and has performed his work internationally at major festivals, main stages, competitions and countless questionable bars. His poems draw on autobiography.

Ben Walter is a Walkley award-winning essayist, and the author of a book of short stories, What Fear Was, and the new poetry collection, Lithosphere. His poems explore the Tasmanian natural world in surprising ways.

Esther Ottaway is the winner of the $25,000 Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry in the Tasmanian Literary Awards, and holds multiple national and international shortlistings. Her poems are about family bonds, Tasmanian life, experiences of joy, and winter swimming!

Louise Oxley‘s three collections include poems that have won major awards, attracted state and federal grants and earned residencies at Varuna the Writers House and the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. She will read poems on the theme of mother and child.

Free event! Book here, or just attend on the day: https://www.fullersbookshop.com.au/event/tasmanian-poetry-festival-feature-reading-in-hobart/

This special event is a preview event leading up to the Tasmanian Poetry Festival full days of readings, held in Launceston from 10-12 October, and featuring Erin Coull, Liz Winfield, Les Wicks, Kim Nielsen-Creeley, Kit Kelen, Alex McKeown, and guest, Pam Schindler. Workshops include Constraint-Based Writing, Writing an Interior Monologue, Taking Your Words for a Walk, and Plan to be Published. You can view the program and book tickets at www.taspoetryfest.org

Fullers Poets in Conversation: Esther Ottaway & Susan Austin, 10 August

5.30pm – 6.30pm, Thursday 10 August

Fullers Poets in Conversation – Esther Ottaway and Susan Austin

Venue: Afterword Café, Fullers Bookshop, cnr Collins and Victoria Streets

How intelligent and seemingly social women can be exhausted from undiagnosed autism/ADHD; and how some women end up travelling on unseen, gruelling medical and IVF rollercoasters to become pregnant: Esther and Susan will converse on these issues and on the role of poetry in helping to cope with, and raise awareness about, these challenges. They will read compelling poems from their acclaimed new books, She Doesn’t Seem Autistic and Dancing With Empty Prams.

Join Esther and Susan to go in-depth on these important and unexplored topics in literature, and ask your questions in the Q&A time.

Esther Ottaway is the winner of the Tasmanian Literary Awards Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry and People’s Choice Award, the Tom Collins Poetry Prize, the Queensland Poetry Festival Ekphrasis Award, and has been shortlisted in the international prizes, the MPU, Montreal, Bridport and Mslexia. Her new collection is She Doesn’t Seem Autistic (Puncher & Wattmann).

Susan Austin is a poet, eco-socialist activist and occupational therapist. She facilitates group programs, including a creative writing program, in a mental health clinic in Hobart. Her first poetry collection, Undertow, was published by Walleah Press, an earlier version winning First Commended in the Best First Book category of the IP Picks competition. She was awarded an Australia Council for the Arts grant to work with Gina Mercer on her verse novel Dancing With Empty Prams. In 2021 she won First Prize and Highly Commended in the Fellowship of Australian Writers Tasmania Poetry Prize and was Commended in the Woorilla Poetry Prize. Susan has been a guest performer at various writing festivals and has been widely published in newspapers and journals.

Book here: https://www.fullersbookshop.com.au/event/fullers-poets-womens-untold-stories/

Seasonal Poets, Hobart, 17th July — A Taste of Poems from our Winter Poets

Dear Friends of Seasonal Poets,
Each of our featured poets, Pam Schindler, Therese Corfiatis and Susan Austin has provided a poem for you to ‘taste’ before the reading.
As usual, RSVPs are essential and admission is $10.00 (cash only) at the door.
We look forward to seeing you at Hadley’s on Monday, July 17th at 6:00.
Cheers,
Irene, Anne and Gina
Anne Collins, Gina Mercer, Irene McGuire
co-curators: Seasonal Poets at Hadley’s

Silent Hands by Therese Corfiatis

gums form a swaying fabric –

pale grey, silvery olive leaves

meld and merge

into the sky’s blue loom

clouds unwind their threads –

long milky fingers

weave the wind’s rhythms

with silent hands

Half a moon by Pam Schindler

Come and stay,

there’ll be half a moon by Sunday,

a gleaming bowlful of dark

enough to feed

the lover in me, the elusive

heart in you –

all the lost chances,

they are here still,

turning in sleep

in the dark bowl

the new moon comes carrying

like a gift.

Sonnet for lost lasts by Susan Austin

His class lines up in pairs at the berry farm.
His free hand is held out for me to find.
I’m surprised to feel his whole hand in my palm:
he used to curl his fingers round one of mine.
Another little last, like the daytime nap?
Last time I hold his hand to cross a street,
last picture book read snuggled in my lap,
the final time I help him brush his teeth.
When will be the last we share a bath?
No camera will snap the final trolley ride,
the moment plastic cups give way to glass.
His fluffy monkey comforter will slide –
with the glee he gets from using arms to fart –
into that chest of lost lasts in my heart.

Melanie Barnes, in conversation with Susan Austin

SUSAN AUSTIN

In 2007 you helped to found Students Against the Pulp Mill and lead demonstrations in Hobart and Launceston where students walked out of school to protest against the pulp mill. What’s it like to lead 700 or more high school students out of class and through the streets?

MELANIE BARNES

That was fantastic. I think high school students are the most energetic of all activists, they have so much enthusiasm, and when they get fired up about something, they really get fired up about it. Those rallies were successful because of the students themselves, their energy… they helped to organize it and spread the word amongst their friends. The pulp mill was an issue they felt they had a really big stake in because they didn’t want to see their state and the places where they lived become destroyed from the pollution from the pulp mill. They were also really annoyed about the corruption around the approval process. It was also amazing because you had all these adults telling them that they were too young to protest, that they didn’t know what they were talking about and the police on the day even told the students to go back to school, that they were being silly. You don’t tell that to someone who feels so passionate about an issue! They knew exactly what they were doing there and they got really angry when people tried to tell them that they had no clue.

[from an interview published in ‘Famous Reporter’ issue 43, May 2012]