{"id":370,"date":"2022-06-12T10:15:58","date_gmt":"2022-06-12T10:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/?p=370"},"modified":"2022-08-21T03:38:36","modified_gmt":"2022-08-21T03:38:36","slug":"mary-blackwood-book-launch-hobart-22nd-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/2022\/06\/12\/mary-blackwood-book-launch-hobart-22nd-june\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Blackwood \u2014 book launch, Hobart: 22nd June"},"content":{"rendered":"
A little over thirty years ago, I sat down and interviewed poet and children’s writer Mary Blackwood in Hobart. To my dismay, the recording failed, necessitating a return visit to re-record our conversation, though Mary kindly says that part of the experience doesn’t figure in her recollections. In her conversation, she spoke of being a writer in Tasmania, also mentioning her grandmother \u2014 Agnes M. Morris \u2014 a poet too … and a couple of her Agnes’s poems appeared on the website alongside the interview<\/a>.<\/div>\n
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   In May at a poetry reading in Oatlands, I sat down again with Mary and admired her poetry collection Small Cosmos<\/em> (Ginnindera Press), her first. ‘I’m a somewhat slow writer,’ she observed, ‘I was probably only averaging a poem or two a year’.<\/div>\n
‘Life gets in the way,’ I suggested.<\/div>\n
‘Yes!’<\/div>\n
   <\/div>\n
     Gathering a lifetime’s poems into a book invariably means it has more to offer than interrogations of school and early adult experiences; sorrow and loss ineviteably intrude. But wry humour’s in evidence too in her words \u2014 the poem ‘At Your Age’, the lines …<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
     The physiotherapist tells you<\/div>\n
     there are three things the matter<\/div>\n
     with your foot<\/div>\n
     all of which can be expected<\/div>\n
     At Your Age<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
     I wrote to Mary, sharing my own experience of ‘At Your Age’: the first time a teenager stood to offer me his seat on a bus. The discombobulation, not being sure whether to laugh or cry…. She says she could write a variation of that poem ‘pretty much every week’.<\/div>\n
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     <\/div>\n
Mary Blackwood’s <em>Small Cosmos<\/em> will be launched by Karen Knight and Liz McQuilkin on Wednesday 22nd June at 3 p.m. at the Royal Yacht Club, Marieville Esplanade, Sandy Bay.<\/div>\n
     <\/div>\n
   <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little over thirty years ago, I sat down and interviewed poet and children’s writer Mary Blackwood in Hobart. To my dismay, the recording failed, necessitating a return visit to … Continue reading “Mary Blackwood \u2014 book launch, Hobart: 22nd June”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[78,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blackwood-mary","category-book-launch"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":375,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}