Category: Williams, Jane

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. 

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.

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

 

Review, Jane Williams’ ‘Points of Recognition’

Alison Clifton reviews Points of Recognition, one of two of Jane’s collections to appear in 2021 (the other: Between Breaths, Silver Bow Publishing, Canada).

‘Jane Williams’ Points of Recognition is inherently human poetry. Her concerns are wide-ranging: from empathy to idiosyncrasy, the mundane to the marvellous, compassion to passion, diffidence and restraint to ecstasy and excess. Always she is wondering, inquiring. What does it mean to be human? And what does it mean to be inhumane, even inhuman, in our treatment of others?’

(Read more: Alison Clifton, StylusLit)