VALE RAY STUART Sad news. This from the Friendly Street Poets website: Friendly Street is saddened to learn of the recent death of Ray Stuart. Ray was a regular at Friendly Street for many years, making valuable contributions as poet and editor (co-editing Friendly Street Poetry Reader 24 with Jude Aquilina), Committee Member and Convenor. His warmth, wisdom, humour and poetry…
Poetry reviews & their effects
A review of Jill Jones’ 2005 collection Broken/Open [Salt Publishing] appeared in yesterday’s Weekend Australian, drawing comment today on the poetry mailing list ‘poneme’, of which Jones is a member. How much do reviews – positive or negative – affect sales? someone asked. I can’t say, Jones replied. ‘I don’t know if reviews (or indeed…
Chris Mansell —Poetry in a time of fire
‘I go into schools to do poetry workshops/readings. Everyone’s very keen on poetry in schools. It’s part of the curriculum in my state (though less than it used to be) and teenagers still write it (and SMS each other small poems — usually doggerel, often obscene) and some teachers still love it. During the course…
Hecate, issue 31 Jan 2005
A new issue of Hecate has arrived in the mail featuring poems by Gina Mercer, Jan Dean, Angela Costi, Dael Allison, Helen Hagemann, Maria Christoforatos, pio, Helen Cerne and Jena Woodhouse. There’s a special feature focussing on Women’s Suffrage with articles by Audrey Oldfield, Ann Nugent, John McCulloch and Lenore Coltheart, articles and essays including Chilla Bulbeck’s ‘Schemes and Dreams:…
Vale Selwyn Pritchard
Saddened to learn poet Selwyn Pritchard passed away at the end of June. A lovely man … his poetry perhaps epitomised by a few words of intro that appear on his website: “I want poems which don’t distance themselves, hold aloof, poems about living against the background of collapsing democracy, religion, social life and the corporate greed…
Tim Thorne’s ‘Head and Shin’
Tim Thorne’s new book ‘Head and Shin’ (Walleah Press) will be launched in Hobart by Pete Hay on Thursday 19 Aug 2004, Hobart Bookshop at 5.30 p.m. and in Launceston on Saturday 21 Aug, 2pm at Fullers Bookshop by CA Cranston.
Melissa Ashley—in conversation with Kate Middleton
KATE MIDDLETON You were saying before that you’ve written work that has been quite experimental in the past where you feel you might have pushed that too far – what do you see as too far? What does it become? MELISSA ASHLEY I felt that I went too far in the sense that I stopped…
Jordie Albiston—in conversation with Kate Middleton [Dec 2001]
KATE MIDDLETON Joan Didion once said of her novels that her first sentence has to be perfect, because everything grows from that, and once you’ve got your first paragraph written, there’s no going back. JORDIE ALBISTON I agree with her! And of course it’s more compressed with poetry — you’d be talking about your first…