Category: Ottaway, Esther

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/

Red Room—Showcasing Tasmanian poetry and musicians. Mona, 27th August

Red Room Poetry Month features an afternoon of free entertainment at Mona in Hobart, Saturday 27th August at 1-2.15pm.

Come for the art, the architecture, the aesthetic, stay for the poetry. In partnership with MONA, come along to see/hear/feel some of Tasmania’s finest wordsmiths and spoken word artists including Esther Ottaway, Rebecca Young, Rohan King, Kathryn Lomer, Damon Young, Warren Mason and hosted by Bert Spinks plus live music by acclaimed troubadour Ben Salter and sets either side by legendary local jazz ensemble the Spike Mason Quartet.

 

Rebecca Young, performing at the 2020 Tasmanian Poetry Festival, Launceston. (March 2020)

 

Other work:

04 Sep 2003: Sarah Day’s launch of Kathryn Lomer’s ‘Extraction of Arrows’ (University of Queensland Press)

01 Dec 2003: Tim Thorne’s review of Kathryn Lomer’s ‘Extraction of Arrows’ (University of Queensland Press)

27 Feb 2014: Philomena Van Risjwick’s launch of Kathryn Lomer’s ‘Night Writing’ (University of Queensland Press)

27 May 2021: Jane Williams’ launch of Esther Ottaway’s ‘Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things’ (Puncher & Wattmann)

 

Kathryn Lomer, with Ray Liversidge and Nathan Curnow. (Queensland Poetry Festival, 2012)

 

 

Notes from a launch: Esther Ottaway’s ‘Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things’

My take on Jane Williams’ launch of Esther Ottaway’s poetry collection ‘Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things’ in Launceston last year — please visit here.

‘I’ve been a fan of Esther Ottaway’s poetry since her first, small, powerful book Blood Universe some fourteen years ago.’ she said. ‘The long wait has been well worth it and … I suspect Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things could not have been conceived, written, crafted and let go of any sooner because the result is so intellectually and emotionally gratifying. This is a book about the deepest connections we make – with lovers, family, friends but ultimately self.’ (Jane Williams)

Ralph