North of the latte line

AP features the Blake Prize shortlisted poems

2011-09-16T17:57:00.000+10:00

Australian Poetry has decided to feature the Blake Prize's shortlisted poems as their poems of the week for the next six weeks.

Robert Adamson has won this year's Blake Prize for poetry

2011-09-16T12:22:00.002+10:00

The 2011 Blake Poetry Prize for poetry ($5,000) has been awarded to

Robert Adamson for his poem Via Negativa, The Divine Dark

From the judges' report (Brook Emery, Bronwyn Lee and Judith Beveridge)
[Source: Blake Society's Facebook page]
"This is a powerful, visually striking, intelligent poem which explores complex ideas associated with negative theology in a humble but resonant way. The poem beautifully manages the movement between the immediacy of the present and difficult concepts such as time, suffering and the existence and nature of the soul; between the trivial ordinariness of the world and the large abstractions; between what can be knowable and precisely observed and what remains unknowable and concealed."

You can read the poem by downloading* the poem from the Blake Societys website.

*Why don't they use the web medium for what it is intended for -- displaying text -- instead of using it to store PDFs that have to be downloaded then viewed. How arcane in this day of electronic publishing to bury the gold in a PDF.

Judge's report, King Island Poetry competition 2011

2011-09-16T09:22:00.004+10:00

King Island Poetry competition 2011 – Results (also see http://www.fawtas.org.au/results.html)

1st Prize: 'Behold the Lamb' by Janeen Samuel

2nd Prize: 'Death in Venice' by Graeme Hetherington, Czech Republic.

King Island resident prize: no award.

Highly commended: no award.

Commended poems by David Campbell (2), Mike Cooper, Phillippa Cordwell and Lorraine Haig.

Judge's reportAnne Kellas13 August 2011

I'd like to start with a question: are poetry competitions a lottery? Are judges biased about what they pick as winners? I used to think so but I have come across a simple mathematical ratio that explains things: on average, in any poetry competition, by and large, there'll be five to ten percent of entries that are going to be in the running for the prize, and about 90 to 95 percent flawed pieces of writing in the judge's opinion. This poetry competition was no exception: there were 37 poems, from which two poems, right from the start, stood out as the contenders for the winning places.

What made me choose them? I could say, well, their execution was more adept, or their form more polished, but it's because, after a first reading of all the entries, those two poems stayed in my mind. They piqued my curiosity. I walked about with their images in my head. Stray lines came back to me unbidden. I had to find these two poems and read them again.

The cathedral's domes look feathery when wet,
like birds without the use of wings.

I had to find the lemon-ribbed image at the core of the other that had drawn me to it.

I wanted to go back to read them again, and when I read them a second time, my opinion that these were the winners was confirmed. (By the way, I read all the entries a several times.) A poem has to stand up to a second and a third reading -- and still please. Why else do we go back to read poems from the past? What attracts us to our favourite poets? Besides achieving the status of being what I would call a poem and not a piece of narrative, as many entries were, these two poems succeeded in their marrying of idea and image with a certain necessary grace and effortlessness. They also had that something that transforms a piece of writing on a page into something new that has not existed before. All this using only words.

In a poem, everything happens at the surface. The poet has the surface of the page as his or her canvas, onto which words and punctuation marks are sprinkled, in patterns delineated by white space and paragraph marks. But it's not the ragged right margin that makes a piece of writing a poem, it's not the breaking words and lines at the margin that makes a poem, it's not stretching out the lines and concertinaing them in again that makes a poem. The mere use of rhyme does not make a poem. A poem employs a reasoning of its own in its use of many things: metaphor, image, musicality, colour, tone. If there is no meaning behind the use of these "tools" of poetry then the poem too easily collapses back into being a collection of words on a page.

The breaking up of a word or a line on that surface of white space, if done at the wrong place, or for no apparent reason, is like an awkward trip in rhyme or meter, drawing attention to the author's pen instead of drawing the reader into another dimension of meaning: words encode meaning. The words a poet chooses either suit or clash with the music and breath of the poem when it is spoken out aloud. For we don't only read poems off a page or screen, we also hear them in our mind; poetry is an aural medium, a musical medium. It is the musical joining of image to meaning to rhyme makes the poem a poem.

Some of the entries were the start of poems and I'd encourage their authors to go back to them and complete them. The end result might be a protest poem, or a philosophical poem or a nature poem. Some entries never got beyond being the description of an event. The story in a poem can be strong, but the form might need to be a prose poem then, and not a prose poem chopped into lines. An event might ignite the poet into action, and a narrative might weave its way through a poem, but in the course of the poem, something must shift, change. That event, that narrative, must help take both the reader and the poet somewhere new. Let imagination work to find what that is¹.

Poems are often ruined because of how they end. Too often, the poem itself had already ended, but the poet put in a final appearance, rounding it off with “an ending" ... It's the poet's job to let the poem work its magic and get out of the way.

Some poems were ruined because, although they used rhyme and meter cleverly and even pleasingly, at some point the writer resorted to a contortion for the sake of rhyme or metrical foot: and like Churchill, that is something "up with which I cannot put".

In his judge's report for the 2005 Write Stuff poetry competition, Stephen Edgar said it all comes down to how a poet uses language.

Language. Not just sentiment. Not just plot. One poem found its way into the list of commended poems purely on this score -- because so few poems in this competition dared to let the tiger of language out of its cage. It's a poem called Sitting in the bush, a veritable thicket of stick-like words that bristle and battle their way as if through thorny undergrowth and it even invents a word or two to claw its way to a new meaning. It's not a perfect poem but it is striking because it does battle with words. Poems can be imperfect and still work. Like a crack in a glaze, a fault can let the light of meaning in (to paraphrase Leonard Cohen).

Another poem in the commended list, Dance, describes a relationship. It's an off-hand, slightly off-balance poem whose theme is matched by its off-balance line endings. Yet another, Tumblehome, uses that seafaring image as it allows the words to roll and sway while it keeps its balance thanks to its own inner kind of tumblehome. Both Greyface, with its kindly dramatic tone, and Hitch-hiker tell a story interestingly within a poem's frame and sustain the reader's interest to the end.

Finally it is the use of metaphor and imagery, in a way that is integral to the poem's meaning, that made me settle on "Death in Venice" and "Behold the lamb" as the two winners. "Death in Venice" gets second place, for its wonderful evocation of the atmosphere of decaying, sad-angel European city, and first goes to "Behold the lamb" -- it wins for its sheer simplicity and its use of imagery. I was slightly repelled by the poem's subject matter at first, but the poem won me over. I will never forget it for its lemon-ribbed core, for the way the hooves of the little dead lamb are described as butter curls / innocent of earth. It lies there under the pines, unmourned by its mother:

Already, the merciful crows
have taken away the eyes
(no need to see your way
into darkness you do not comprehend)
have pierced the side
into a chest no larger
than a ribbed lemon, lung
dark and dense as liver,
where no air has been.

In the penultimate issue of Five Bells, Ron Pretty cites poet publisher John Leonard as saying that "poetry reading circles -- poetry book clubs -- should be established -- and that writers' centres and poetry organisations should consider setting these up². I think this simple idea is excellent for an age of meagre opportunities and in cases where writers work in isolation both physical and geographic: especially writers on King Island would benefit from the adoption of Leonard's idea. Well, we all need to "hear" good poetry read aloud. I'd encourage the entrants in this competition whose poems didn't get a mention today -- and in fact everyone -- to read more poetry. I encourage poets to make the effort to read poems outside their usual comfort zone. There's still the public library -- the Visigoths of our dark ages have not yet confined all books to the tip. As long as we still have electricity to fire up the new Alexandria Library that our friends at Google and all the poets on YouTube are building, there's the plethora of poetry online to read, and to inspire us all.

Notes:

1. On the topic of imagination, see Unless it moves the human heart, by Roger Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt who says great writing is often less about what happens than about how it happens. He encourages poets to strive for imagination rather than invention, for anticipation rather than surprise, and to write with precision and restraint.

2. Five Bells, v.17, n.1-2, Summer/Autumn 2010, p.53. (Contact the new non-government peak body, Australian Poetry Ltd. for copies.)

Judge's report - Henry Savery short story competition 2011

2011-09-16T09:20:00.002+10:00

FAW 2011 Henry Savery National Short Story Competition
results (also see http://www.fawtas.org.au/results.html)

1st Prize: 'Tasty Necessities' by Neil McInnes of NSW

2nd Prize: 'Bitter Fantasy' by Neil McInnes of NSW

Judge's Report
Giles Hugo

13^th August 2011

There were 55 entries in this year's competition -- a good indication of the keen interest in short story writing among FAW members nationally. The wide range of approaches to story telling was also gratifying -- there are many ways to skin the fictional feline.

I followed my usual judging process of reading all the entries right through and assigning a "first impression" rating of 0 to 10. After 24 hours I repeated the process and made minor adjustment to some ratings. The two prize winners stood out from the rest right from my first reading. However, I reread all the entries twice more to confirm my impressions and judgements.

The quality of entries was extremely variable. Most that did not make the cut simply failed as short stories. A short story is not:

A wildly complicated tale of crime, death and duplicity more suited to an outline for an episode of a TV thriller.
A travellogue about "what I did on my OS holiday" -- often exacerbated by a saccarinely romantic or dystopic affair.
A philosophical treatise on life, the universe and everything. Even Douglas Adams needed a whole novella to explore that.
A rambling anecdote spanning decades and a cast of dozens, roughly threaded together by the presence of the narrator.
A childhood fragment about some kindly saint who warms the heart but chills the brain.

Several worthy attempts that achieved the form of the short story were spoilt by poor writing:

Flat or clichéd language.
Clumsy use of words.
Unconvincing dialogue. Here I suggest to all writers that they read all passages of dialogue aloud to judge their authenticity. Do people really speak like that, or only in parody?
Unfunny attempts at humour.
Totally unconvincing switches of personality or character at very short notice. Old dogs -- and bitches -- rarely learn new tricks. Some real people do -- but the cirumstances have to be extraordinary, not just convenient for neat plot purposes.
Poorly executed endings. This was probably the most common reason for failure to make the grade. A bang or a whimper? Both can work. The last line is your final shot, your last note before your word fall silent in the reader's mind or continue to reverberate. Miss it or blow it and you have undone all the careful wooing and stalking of the reader that your words should have achieved.

In judging competitions such as this, it has always been of interest to me what themes emerge in the entries. This year among the deeper themes that appealed to entrants were:

Sea changes.
Vietnam veterans and those close them.
The shadow of trauma.
Life in a retirement or nursing home. And this is where one of the prize winners excelled.

Unfortunately I had to disqualify three entries because of identification issues. In two cases -- inadvertently or otherwise -- the authors were identified by cover sheets with names on them stapled to the back of the entry. In one case an email was stapled to the back of an entry -- with the names of a sender and a recipient, one of which might have been the entrant. This should have been picked up before I was given the entries to judge and I urge the organisers to review and improve their processing and scrutineering. Fortunately none of the disqualified entries made the short list for the two prizes.

And so to the winners.

I'll start with the runner up: the second prize of $100 in the 2011 Henry Savery Short Story Award goes to Entry No.15, Bitter Fantasy.

I liked this on first reading because it is a simple tale of injustice and retribution -- somewhat in the Roald Dahl vein; well told and nicely restrained in the slow advance of looming menace and gruesome resolution. A very bitter fantasy, but most satisfying.

And the first prize of $400 in the 2011 Henry Savery Short Story Award goes to Entry No.14, Tasty Necessities.

This is one of the rare cases where comic writing succeeds -- not because it tries to be a laugh a line, but because the humour emerges convincingly from real characters and situations. The premise -- that one of the residents of a retirement village can fundamentally change the lives of his fellows by daring to promote their virility and sexuality -- is both novel and delightfully realised. In area of human experience that is generally shunned as taboo, or treated as somehow bizarre, this story asserts the value of the liveliness and spirit of those who choose to grow old slightly disgracefully. Rebels with a cause. And why not?

Congratulations to both winners and the 53 others who tried so hard. It is most gratifying to see so many attempting to master the short story genre -- certainly not the easiest, but very satisfying on those rare occasions when your efforts succeed.

Giles Hugo

13^th August 2011

Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize 2011: Shortlist announced

2011-09-15T19:05:00.002+10:00

Last night, the Whitmore Press Manuscript prize announced the shortlist for the prize (publication of a limited edition chapbook in early 2012).

Shortlisted poets are:

B. R. Dionysius
Paula Green
Dominique Hecq
Jill Jones
Jo Langdon
Laura Jean McKay
Eddie Paterson
Nathan Shepherdson
Lucy Todd
Corey Wakeling

The winner, whose work will be published in a limited edition chapbook in early 2012, will be announced before the end of September.

Whitmore Press, in an email announcement to entrants, said 116 entries in this year's competition had been received, and that the entries were "of a very high standard".

North of the Latte Line thinks this high standard might be due to the prize's novel approach to submissions, asking entrants to submit not an entire manuscript, but a poem or poems toatalling up to 150 lines, from that manuscript, and also asking entrants to be sure they had the entire manuscript ready for publication within a tight time-frame after the prize award announcement.

Three recent Whitmore Press publications – by Jamie King-Holden, David McCooey and Cameron Lowe – were featured ABC Radio National's Poetica, 3 September [2011] during National Poetry Week: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/poetica/stories/2011/3286639.htm

Short story writer Geoffrey Dean has died

2011-08-25T22:14:00.003+10:00

Sadly, short story Geoffrey Dean died last week (19 August 2011). His funeral is on Friday 26 August at 12.30 at Turnbull's in Hobart.

Famous reporter editor Ralph Wessman has paid triubute to Geoff on his blog, Flowerdale, at http://www.walleahpress.com.au/flowerdale/?p=57 and I have put a tribute up on the Roaring Forties Press website at: http://www.roaring-40s-press.com/?p=227

Ralph Wessman ends his post:
"Possibly the degree to which you love someone is measured by the hole left in your heart when he or she is no longer around. You’ll be very much missed mate."

A friend told me today she's never liked the short story genre until I gave her a copy of Geoff's book The Literary Lunch. Today in a sympathy card she wrote: "Geoff: a remarkable, unique and talented man. His passing has left a void in many lives ... Thank you for introducing me to Geoff and his wonderful writings."

It was personal feedback like this that kept Geoff going during the times when recognition for his work was slow in coming. When we sold his book at Salamanca Market, it was the interaction with his readers that inspired him. We also had emails from abroad, from people who had read his early work, wanting more.

It is thanks to the Tasmanian Writers Centre's efforts in recent times that his reputation has grown, and I am pleased that in his lifetime, he was honoured not only by the prizes he won, but by being interviewed on The ABC in three separate programs in recent times.

Interviews:

* ABC TV Stateline Tasmania, feature story, on 3 June 2011 – view online
* 936 ABC Hobart, feature story, on 26 October 2010 (“Once a storyteller, always a storyteller’) – view online
* ABC Radio National’s Book Show, interview by Peter Mares on 17 August 2007 – see transcript, “The art of the short story”, reproduced on the Roaring Forties Press web site with permission.
* In 1994, Ralph Wessman interviewed Geoff for Famous Reporter.

Geoff: in the words of another avid reader of your stories, your passing is a major point in time for the Tasmanian writing scene.

Masterclass with Anne Kellas: June to November 2010

2011-02-06T13:49:00.000+11:00

This is just a quick note to say that I shall be running a masterclass for about 6 to 8 poets later in the year through the Tasmanian Writers Centre. It will have the general format of a long course, with twice-monthly sessions from June to November. Keep an eye out for details in their newsletter, or call them on 03 6224 0029. Email: admin@tasmanianwriters.org Mondays to Thursdays 10 am to 4 pm are their core hours).

And talking of anthologies...

2010-05-05T22:53:00.002+10:00

"Poets aren't always as generous as they should be. But as an editor [Peter Porter] was always immensely fair, and as editor of The Oxford Book of Modern Australian Verse, very inclusive. He was a wonderful poet." (John Tranter talking of Peter Porter who died last week. http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/tributes-flood-in-for-the-poet-with-a-rare-mind-20100425-tlnm.html

A review of the recent Australian poetry anthologies

2010-05-05T22:49:00.003+10:00

Kris Hemensley, poet and manager of Collected Works bookshop in Melbourne, has written an interesting article on recent Australian poetry anthologies in his blog, Poetry and ideas. Here's the link; http://collectedworks-poetryideas.blogspot.com.

Long course update

2010-05-05T22:47:00.002+10:00

The long course in poetry is fully subscribed. If you wish to find out about future courses contact the Tasmanian Writers Centre, thanks.

(Hobart) Poetry alive: A long course in poetry with Anne Kellas

2010-03-18T17:32:00.001+11:00

Poetry alive: A long course in poetry with Anne Kellas

Over a six-month period, develop a body of new work through this series of supportive monthly poetry workshops. Through the course material and the monthly workshops, you will find your poetry comes alive in a new way.

In the weeks between workshop sessions, you will be sustained by course material that will attempt to anticipate individual needs, tastes and interests, and this private work is at the heart of the course. While the group setting allows for times of sharing, the workshop sessions will focus primarily on individual learning, with participants working alone on tasks and themes set by the workshop facilitator. The workshop facilitator aims to structure group sessions so that new work is shared in an atmosphere of trust that is balanced and constructive for all participants.

This course will focus on the writing process, rather than on getting published. It will address specific questions about the music inherent in poetry, common errors with voice and tense, and questions about practice, such as: 

What do you do with a poem that is (still) not really finished after many months? And how do you know when a poem is complete?
Why do good titles matter (and how do you find them)?
How poems end.
When is a poem a poem and not a piece of cut-up prose?
When and how are reflective diary notes and journalling useful starting points for poems, and when are they distractions?
Exercises, traditional forms, and finding your voice.
How does the written poem use line endings, stanza breaks and white space effectively?
How do other art forms (music, art) usefully influence a poet's practice?
In what ways do readings of other poets help or hinder?
What can re-start your creativity in times of drought?

At the end of the course, participants will hopefully come away not with “workshop poems” but with a new direction and energy for their writing life.

Requirements

This course is suitable for those who have already set off on the path of writing poetry rather than those who are at the beginning of the journey. It is hoped that intending participants will already have a store of unpublished poems or work in progress to bring to the first workshop, and will be committed and open to exploring the intensive workshop setting over six months to reinvigorate their writing.

About the facilitator

Anne Kellas ran a popular series of poetry workshops for TAFE in the early 90s and in 2007 for the Tasmanian Writers Centre. She grew up in South Africa and emigrated to Australia in the dark days of apartheid in the mid-80s. Her first book (Poems from Mt Moono, 1989) was published in South Africa. In 1993 she received Tasmanian arts funding for work on what later became her second book, Isolated States (2001), and more recent funding support from an Australia Council grant is currently sustaining her work on a third collection. She graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a BA in English and German. Though tempted by an academic career, she studied librarianship and later, teaching. After a career in youth studies, she now writes full-time.

Dates and times:
Poetry Alive will run as a monthly session of 2.5 hours, from May to November. This would be a total of six sessions. Sessions would be held on a Monday evening from 6.30 pm to 9 pm, on the first Monday of the month:

Monday 3 May

Monday 7 June

Monday 5 July

Monday 2 August

Monday 6 September

Monday 4 October

Venue: Tasmanian Writers' Centre, first floor, Salamanca Arts Centre.

Fee: $300 to members. There are 10 places in the course, which will only run if all places are filled. Payment must be received to secure your place.

Bookings: Contact the Tasmanian Writers’ Centre, email: admin@tasmanianwriters.org or phone the centre on: (03) 6224 0029 to make a credit card payment.

Call for contributions to Trans-Tasman Poetry

2010-02-26T21:31:00.000+11:00

HOME & AWAY 2010

PressPress chapbook award open for 2010

2010-02-19T23:25:00.002+11:00

There is still time to enter the 2010 PressPress chapbook award.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~writerslink/PressPress/PressPress_Chapbook_Award.html

Scott-Patrick Mitchell wins the 2009 PressPress Chapbook Award

2009-07-04T12:49:00.000+10:00

The judging of the 2009 PressPress Chapbook Award has been finalised.

The full shortlist is (in alphabetical order):

Mandy Beaumont Breaking Open The Night With Fire

Anne Elvey Claimed by Country

Kit Kelen The Whole Forest Dancing

Jeanina Leane Dark Secrets: After Dreaming (AD 1887 – 1961)

Scott-Patrick Mitchell songs for the ordinary mass

Barbara Orlowska-Westwood Firing Neurones

The entries for the 2009 PressPress Chapbook were of a very high standard with significant experimentation and originality. Entries came from Canada, China, New Zealand, the USA and all Australian states - with a significant contingent from Western Australia this year. There was one bi-lingual entry.

After some tough decision-making the judges chose Scott-Patrick Mitchell's songs for the ordinary mass as the winner of the 2009 Award.

Thank you for your entry. PressPress looks forward to reading more from you in the future.

With best wishes

Chris Mansell

PressPress

www.presspress.com.au

Call for haiku, short work

2009-06-24T03:20:00.001+10:00

Part of Overload Poetry Festival 2009 [Australia]:

Hi everyone,

The 8th Overload Poetry Festival (4-13 September 2009) seeks submissions of short poetry for public display on the scrolling text tickers of the west-facing wall in Federation Square, corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets.

... Fed Square will let us feed poems up to these digital scrolling text screens over 10 days. This is one of the busiest intersections in Melbourne, a great opportunity to take your poetry to the people.

Send us haiku, one-line poems, short poems (up to 5 lines), short prose poems (up to 50 words) to submissions @ overloadpoetry.org by 31 July 2009. Payment: the joy of being read by hundreds of thousands of people.

In submitting, please be mindful of the medium and its public nature. Push the boundaries tastefully...

And please circulate this message among your networks.

Look forward to reading your gems,

Matt Hetherington and Luis Gonzalez Serrano

Revival of North of the Latte Line

2009-05-24T19:43:00.003+10:00

For the past 3 weeks, I have been experimenting with Twitter. Then I went to a presentation by Ivan Herman and Mike(tm) Smith of the World Wide Web consortium's W3C (Web standards committee) and suddenly the world looks different.

Importantly, it looks do-able. The problems of disparate web documents, creating pages, managing different web spaces and trying to keep it all together, will be – I think – a thing of the past one of these days; the difficulties dissipate as I slowly understand how the world of the web is undergoing yet another evolution. That evolution brings new technologies and for me they seem as groundbreaking as the mid-90s, as the days of the early browsers, the days of the browser wars ...

The ones I am watching are:

Twitter
Twine
Faviki, and
well, there is more ... but that's enough for now!

Let's see how all this helps revitalise work on The Write Stuff!

Follow The Write Stuff on Twitter

2009-05-24T14:23:00.002+10:00

While The Write Stuff figures out how to re-invent itself with the Semantic Web, which has been described as mashups on steroids, follow the Write Stuff on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TWS_TAS

Our Digital Island will be archiving The Write Stuff

2009-05-20T18:46:00.002+10:00

Our Digital Island will be archiving this site. To ensure long term access to the content on The Write Stuff, North of the Latte Line and Roaring Forties Press, I have asked the State Library to include those sites in their project, Our Digital Island. The first "capture" of those sites will be taking place shortly. Regards, Anne.

The Write Stuff

2009-05-05T03:57:00.003+10:00

I cannot maintain this blog and for The Write Stuff any longer.

As you will appreciate, creating and uploading new content takes time, a lot of time. Imagine trying to maintain the 40 sections of the Showcase of Tasmanian poetry and to update them with new content, edit the aged content and to create new poet pages into eternity. Over the years, it turned me into a web site provider for 40 poets, providing, in most cases, their only web presence. Most of them need an update to their section, showing their new prizes, new, books etc.

Over the years, one of the services I provided via that Showcase was postman – very often, lazy visitors who couldn't be bothered to use a telephone book or write to a writer's centre would write in saying they wanted to get in touch with one of the poets they met in the year dot and wanted to say hi. In some cases, it was a publisher who urgently needed to contact their author: that happened at least twice. I don't mind, but the sheer volume of the site has taken its toll.

When our younger son died almost three years ago, I came to a halt. The site came to a halt.

There have been a few volunteers helping with this blog over the years, but there have been no helpers with The Write Stuff (apart from volunteered help with our competitions in 2004/2005).

I have done all that web work alone. I simply cannot do it anymore, not without my own writing time evaporating altogether into thin air. I cannot keep The Write Stuff current and I cannot bear seeing it age with neglect.

So I have decided to retire from all my external web work commitments, altogether. I plan to archive The Write Stuff's content permanently elsewhere (publicly available); I will keep the site alive, and provide links from The Write Stuff to those archived pages. Keeping the site alive has its own financial cost but I am prepared to pay that.

If a miracle happens and I get offers of support for the site (practical, active and sustainable support) who knows, it might be able to be continued, and I have ideas for how it could be continued, as a wiki for easy author contributions perhaps ...

In the meantime: Having the site online as it is, with gaps and lapses, is painful to me: There are poets I have not had time to put online due to my own life's personal tragedy and lack of time, poets who are more than deserving of a place alongside others on that showcase, like Jane Williams for instance.

So. Rather than present an uneven collection, this is my plan: to find an archive at the State library and provide links from the site to that content.

I wish everyone well and thank you for your support and feedback over the years.
Regards
Anne.

Christopher Bantick on Tasmanian publishing

2009-01-25T10:40:00.004+11:00

Once again, reviewer Christopher Bantick has had a bit of a go at the publishing scene in Tasmania, in today's edition of The Sunday Tasmanian.

I have heard of ABS statistics that Tasmania is home to more self-published authors than any other state. His comments about quality and the need to employ an editor before rushing into print are well worth heeding.

As a place that "bakes its own curtains and weaves its own bread" (Frank Moorhouse's quip), Tasmania is also home to more than a few "properly" published authors, and many of these are themselves owners or operators of small literary presses.

In defence of those small presses, it is worth saying that, by and large, the overwhelming proportion of their titles are works by other authors, not the owner-author – a signature of the generosity of spirit that operates down here.

The small literary presses all know about the need to hire a distributor, and all know the hideous costs of doing so. The mainland distributor I hire does his best and the Tasmanian-based distributor I have attempted to hire maintains a mysterious silence.

The alternative to offering one's title to a distributor at a prohibitive 60% or 70% discount is to work alone, as I did. For two years I sold my author's books at Salamanca Market (averaging 5 sales per Saturday most of the year and up to 20 sales per Saturday over the Christmas holiday season) operating a casual stall.

Buyers were mostly tourists and interstate or international visitors, and sales were superior to those at any Tasmanian bookshop.

Reviews of the book which I published The Literary Lunch (by Australian author Geoff Dean) were mostly in interstate papers and journals (The Age, The Courier Mail, and four others) and the author also made it onto Ramona Koval's Book Show a year ago for a half-hour interview with Peter Mares (due to my efforts and those of his other publisher, poet Edith Speers of Esperance Press).

Another alternative is for the small literary presses to work together to form some kind of consortium and share costs and expertise. Before establishing Roaring Forties Press, I tried to do so and invited no less than four other small presses to join me, but each was wary and preferred to work alone.

I also worked with another small press, the excellent Pardalote Press, at trying to set up a model for distributing Tasmanian literary titles here, but one way and another we were thwarted.

The photograph accompanying Bantick's article today is of Tasmanian Book Fair stall holders at the 2006 event, central aisle from foreground to the back: Quintus Publishing, operated by author David Owen at the University of Tasmania; myself; poet Peter Macrow (of Blue Giraffe) and in the far distance, Ralph Wessman of Walleah Press.

So there we are, isolated and fair game for a slow day at The Muck. We'll never know what bits from Bantick's article ended up on the cuttingroom floor, or why a 2006 photograph accompanied the article, but so what. In the end, people do what they like.

And in Tasmania, it just so happens that a lot of people like publishing, just as they like bottling fruit (again, ABS stats show we do more of that kind of thing than any other state) and making their own jam.

Which reminds me, I have lots of apricots. Anyone want some?

While I intend publishing more books, I am not making jam anymore.
Anne Kellas.

"Varuna conversations" (prose)

2009-01-25T10:36:00.002+11:00

From Varuna's page,
http://www.varuna.com.au/newsdiary.html

BLUE MOUNTAINS COMMUNITY WRITING PROGRAM - VARUNA CONVERSATIONS

"Varuna is committed to offering the local community of readers and writers an opportunity to engage with visiting writers in residence at Varuna.

"Beginning in January 2009, we will have an occasional series of conversations, where we will run an afternoon session with a visiting writer. They will do a short discussion on their work and reading and then take questions from the audience. It's a chance to enjoy the ambience of Varuna and hear different writers read their work, from a diverse range of genres.

"To be kept in the loop about these and other occasional events, you need to send your email address to varuna@varuna.com.au to be put on to the Varuna Community Mailing List. We'll give you as much advance notice as possible. "

"Varuna conversations" for poetry are currently on the drawing board. Watch this space for details.

The Guardian Poetry workshop for January 2009: the elegy

2009-01-25T10:24:00.003+11:00

Update to The Guardian Poetry workshop

This month, The Guardian's poetry workshop is all about the elegy.

Most months of the year, The Guardian asks a prominent poet to set an exercise, and choose the most interesting responses from readers with an appraisal of the poems.

The January 2009 poet is David Constantine, an award-winning poet and translator.

"His collections include the award-winning Watching for Dolphins, The Pelt of Wasps and Something for the Ghosts; Bloodaxe published his Collected Poems in 2004, and he has been shortlisted for both the Whitbread and Forward poetry prizes. He has translated the work of, among others, Hölderlin, Brecht, Goethe, and Michaux, and was awarded the Corneliu M Popescu prize for European poetry in translation in 2003. His latest collection, Nine Fathom Deep, comes out this month [January 2009]". (The Guardian, 21 January 2009.)

Write in Your Face: Grants for projects supporting writing practices by young people

2009-01-23T19:21:00.001+11:00

Write in Your Face
Closing date: 24 April, 2009.
Grants (up to $5000) available for projects supporting writing practices by young people.

Express Media is proud to present Write in Your Face, a program devolved to Express Media by the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. Write in Your Face supports emerging forms of writing practice by young writers, or organisations working with young writers. We invite proposals from people who are using language in innovative ways. This may involve writing for zines, e-zines, comics, multimedia, multi-artforms or cross-media works, websites, live performances and spoken word.

Download the application form and Frequently Asked Questions from http://www.expressmedia.org.au/projects.php

Contact: Bel Schenk
Artistic Director
Express Media
247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne VIC 3000
Ph: 03 9663 4155, Fax: 03 9663 4544, www.expressmedia.org.au

Call for Poems: Blue Velvet

2009-01-12T23:16:00.001+11:00

CALL FOR POEMS

'I can't figure out if you're a detective or a pervert.'

Seeking poems that explore the twisted world of David Lynch's Blue Velvet for The Private Press's next chapbook anthology.

Deadline: 28 February 2009. Payment: One copy of the chapbook.

Visit http://zoo.f2s.com/privatepress/callforpoems.html

Poems accepted via online contribution form ONLY.

Tim Thorne describes The Private Press's chapbooks as "stylishly produced" in his review, published in Famous Reporter: http://is.gd/57Oi

WILDCARE TASMANIA 2009 Nature Writing Prize

2009-01-03T16:07:00.002+11:00

WILDCARE TASMANIA 2009 Nature Writing Prize:
Download the entry form from one of these links:

Entry form has all the details.

The PDF can also be downloaded from Ralph Wessman's blog posting dated 7 Dec. 2008

Vale, Dorothy Porter

2008-12-10T15:43:00.000+11:00

> Sadly, Dorothy Porter passed away this morning at 6.00 am. Her cancer had returned and she'd been in hospital for two weeks, but hadn't wanted people to know. There will be a service at Springvale crematorium on Sunday 14th, 1.15 pm.

(From an email message sent by Tim Thorne, 10 December 2008)

Di Bates honoured

2008-11-02T09:37:00.000+11:00

Good news! Di Bates, the much acclaimed children's writer from the 'Gong who is also a great champion of writing for children, has been given Lady Cutler Award.

The Lady Cutler Award has been presented annually since 1981 for distinguished service to children’s literature. It is sponsored by Hachette Livre & hosted by the Children’s Book Council of NSW.

Poets and compost

2008-10-28T11:48:00.000+11:00

Here are some links to the Forgodot exercise, which began with a posting, "Coming soon to Forgodot" that said they would soon be publishing new poems from .... 3,500 poets or so, some long-dead like Chaucer etc. The new poems were to be published online, as Issue 1, in a PDF ...

Here are the links:

http://www.forgodot.com/

Blogs picked up the story everywhere ...
e.g. http://poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/10/3785_page_pirated_poetry_antho.html

Eventually the Forgodot bloggers explained themselves in a Polite clarification,
http://www.forgodot.com/2008/10/issue-1-polite-clarification.html

Another of the explanations:
http://poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/10/anthology_spoiler.html

Their project to teach a machine, Erika, to write poetry, uses whatever the Erica T Carter algorithm is ...

They harvested names from the Poetics e-list, and maybe from Ron Silliman's blog (which for example, has links to this blog, North of the Latte Line).

Anyhow, the part that interests me is the whole association of a person's "Name" with a "Work" and how we understand that association on a page. For me I think I was most angered by the long silence before the college students explained themselves.

I am perversely amused that the poem attributed to me has bad line breaks, something that really annoys me intensely.

Well for the Erika project, the experimenters are now asking for poets to send them chapbooks so they can feed those into the machine -- because they need lots and lots of stuff for it ...

- - -

Gwen Harwood was apparently very good at making compost but I wonder if she would ever have composted her poems in this way. The question is not very interesting, either poetically or horticulturally, to me. What interests me more is the Gwen Harwoodness of her words, not the generation of them.

Adelaide reading

2008-10-19T13:54:00.000+11:00

16th Reading OCTOBER 21st
o LEE MARVIN IN
YO-YOs WITH MONEY
Aidan Coleman
Ken Bolton
Jill Jones
Kyriaki Maragozidis
Simon Robb

9 Anster St., Adelaide
(off Waymouth at the King William end, near FAD nightclub)

7.30 for a prompt 8 PM start
Price $5

The issue of Issue number 1

2008-10-06T22:42:00.005+11:00

Post avant poetry defined.

The fallout of Issue 1: For Godot:

and everywhere else ...

I know it's a joke, but why is it so annoying then ... maybe it's because what I hate most about the poem attributed to me in the For Godot project are the awful line-breaks ...

Launch, Carolyn Fisher's 'The Unsuspecting Sky'

2008-10-06T18:55:00.000+11:00

TIM THORNE

Sunday 5th October, Launceston
Tasmanian Poetry Festival

In 2004, when I decided to begin the process of closing down Cornford
Press by not accepting any more manuscripts, I did so after a fairly
agonising debate with myself. The reason for this was that there
were three collections of poetry which were crying out to be
published. Were I to bring out these three books I could retire
satisfied. A bit like an addict, I suppose, trying to convince
myself that I’d quit after just three more hits. In the end, I went
cold turkey (well, there was a bit of backsliding later, but that’s
another story.)

The three collections that I really wanted to see in print were by
Jane Williams, Ouyang Yu, and Carolyn Fisher. Earlier this year I
had the pleasure of launching Jane’s Begging the Question in Hobart,
and in the mail on Friday, just two days ago, I received a copy of
Ouyang’s The Kingsbury Tales. This morning I complete the
trifecta, and so it is with a sense of relief that I stand here
before you to send Carolyn’s The Unsuspecting Sky out on its voyage
into the world of readership and critical appraisal.

Of course it is with much more than a sense of relief. It is also
with a sense of admiration for her skill and one of gratitude for
what she has given us as readers. I remember my first encounter with
Carolyn Fisher’s poetry. It was in the Forth pub at one of those
readings organised by the indefatigable Fay Forbes. There were well
over a hundred people there and a considerable percentage of them had
a poem or two to present. As one would expect in such a gathering,
there was a fairly mixed bag, a vast range of styles, subjects and
levels of expertise. One poet stood out. I don’t think I caught
her name at the time, but I later came to know her and her work,
which was growing in quantity and quality over the next few years.

When Chris Mansell informed me that Carolyn had won the inaugural
PressPress Chapbook Award, I was really pleased. Not only did it
mean that Cornford Press was somewhat off the hook, but, more
importantly, that my judgement of Carolyn’s poetry had been
vindicated by someone whose opinions and publishing acumen I respect
immensely, someone from interstate who didn’t know Carolyn
personally (the manuscripts were submitted anonymously), but, above
all, someone who was in a position to do something practical about it.

And what a wonderful job she has done, too! This little book is, as
are all PressPress chapbooks, elegant and simple, a demonstration of
the principle that poetry doesn’t need big flashy production values,
that an inexpensive product, if tastefully and thoughtfully created,
will not only look good in itself, but will actually enhance the
presentation of the poems. Not that the poems themselves need any
enhancement. They would be great whatever the presentation, but it
is gratifying to see them given the respect they deserve.

Carolyn’s strengths include a remarkable eye for telling detail, an
ability to cast that detail into crystalline imagery, and an
overarching compassion which not only informs the work but fixes it
in the heart of the reader. To take just one example, in first
stanza of the poem “Pademelon” we are shown “the sunrise / of
her underbelly”, a well-observed and delightfully captured detail,
but the poem immediately goes on, “…slowly setting / by the side
of the road”, building the original metaphor into a conceit, but
maintaining the tone while deepening the emotional content and
advancing the narrative. All this in about a dozen words. But
that’s not all. The poem has started, a couple of lines earlier,
with “the full stop”. This is in itself an arresting opening.
After all, we are used to poems ending with a full stop, not
beginning with one. That this is more than just a clever device,
however, is clear when we realise that the poem has started with the
ending of a life. The “full stop” is more than a conceptual
metaphor, however; it is also, from the perspective of the driver/
poet, a visual one: one tiny corpse in the whole scheme of life,
roadways, traffic, busy-ness. That it is followed, “a couple of
hops / further on” by the “tiny comma” of the joey, is not only
felicitous as reinforcing and unifying imagery, but it marks the
significant shift in the dynamic of the poem, out from observation to
engagement. So, having started with a full stop, the poem restarts,
as it were, with a comma.

I could go on with this sort of analysis of each of the poems in this
collection, but this is a launch, not a lecture, so I shall leave
you, the readers, to discover such joys for yourselves. Even if you
don’t dig so deeply into the way the textual richness of Carolyn’s
poetry has been constructed, there is a great deal of pleasure to be
obtained from just revelling in the results of this construction.
And pleasure, after all, is the whole point of reading.

So, buy the book, enjoy it, and wait, as I am waiting, for the next
collection by one of Tasmania’s most exciting poetic talents. It is
with great enthusiasm that I launch Carolyn Fisher’s The
Unsuspecting Sky.

Tanka workshop in Hobart

2008-09-29T21:31:00.000+10:00

"In Tempo with Tanka"

This is a workshop on how to write these Japanese 'short songs' or short poems, conducted by Jenny Barnard -- who writes: "Tanka are beautiful, melodic and contemporary".

11 October 2008, from 1 to 4 pm
at Salamanca in Hobart:

Salamanca Arts Building 77 Salamanca Place (first floor – meeting room)
Cost: $25 dollars for members of the Tasmanian Writers Centre
$50 for non-members

To book, contact the Tasmanian Writers Centre, ph: +61 3 6224 0029

Source: Jenny Barnard, email, 29 September 2008.

Gwen Harwood poetry prize winners announced

2008-08-24T21:59:00.001+10:00

At Living Writers Week in Tasmania, the final event was the announcement of the winner of the annual Gwen Harwood poetry prize, organised by Island and supported with funding from both the Hobart City Council and the Hobart Bookshop.

Winner: Angela Malone

Highly commended:
Joan Kerr
Kirsten Lang
Mike Ladd

Also see Ralph Wessman's blog post about the prize.

The Versatile Man, by Terry Whitebeach, launched by Peter Read

2008-08-23T10:40:00.000+10:00

Terry Whitebeach recently gave a lecture to the Indigenous Biography group at the National Museum in Canberra on 4 August on The Versatile Man, her biography of Kaytetye stockman and cattle station owner, Don Ross.

Published by IAD Press, The Versatile Man was launched by Peter Read at the Indigenous Lives conference at the National Museum in 2007.

The book provides an important perspective to Indigenous history, and has already been listed by several universities in their curriculum materials.

Overseas it's been listed by the University of Barcelona, Spain as a set text in their Australian Studies course.

Asked why she thought her biography had appealed to people in Spain, Terry said the book can be read on a number of levels:

"Many people identify with the story of someone who had no legitimate place in the society in which they were born, but who made their own way, against the odds, through sheer skill and personal charisma. Also, the pastoral focus of much of the book is familiar to many Spanish and South American students."

The Versatile Man is an account of the working life a stockman, of Kaytetye and European ancestry, who lived through the momentous changes brought by the 20th century on both sides of the frontier in outback Central Australia.

Terry Whitebeach, author of two collections of poetry, three radio plays and two novels for young adults, has a PhD in history/biography. Currently, she is on the board of the Tasmanian Writers Centre and is one of the two Australian Society of Authors' Tasmanian board members.

Register by 31 August for the Progoff Intensive Journal retreat

2008-08-23T10:00:00.001+10:00

Intensive Journal® Retreat

A program of exploration and integration through Journal writing.
Based on the work and writings of Ira Progoff.
led by Kate Scholl

1 - 4 November 2008
Venue Maryknoll Retreat Centre, 15 Home Avenue Blackmans Bay, Hobart, Tasmania

Joseph Campbell once called the Intensive Journal process "one of the great inventions of our time". The process was invented by a student of Carl Jung's, Ira Progoff. For more details on the Intensive Journal process, see: http://www.intensivejournal.org

In Australia there are a few licenced practitioners giving the intensive journal workshops, and Kate Scholl is one of them.

You need to register before 31 August

To register, contact Kate Scholl, email: kscholl@optusnet.com.au or tel (02) 9674 1216 (evenings)
You will need to pay a deposit of $100 towards registration by 31 August.

DETAILS
The retreat includes:

* Life Context workshop: 10 am Sat 1 Nov- Sun 2 Nov and

* Depth Contact workshop (Life Context workshop is prerequisite)

7 pm Sunday 2 Nov - Tuesday 4 Nov 3 pm.

Come to one or both.

Full residential cost is $570 for both workshops + 4 nights accommodation.

$300 for one (one workshop + 2 nights accommodation).

Commuter fee is $195 per workshop or $360 for both.

About the workshop facilitator

Kate Scholl, a leader for over 20 years, began using the Intensive Journal method while studying Adult Spirituality at Loyola University in Chicago. Since moving to Sydney in 1987, she has held a variety of roles, including workshop and retreat facilitator and Executive Director of the Eremos Institute. She is currently Volunteer Development Coordinator for the St Vincent de Paul Society (NSW).

Hobart reading, Friday 15th August at 6pm

2008-08-14T06:49:00.000+10:00

Upstairs, Republic Bar & Cafe

Morris Gleitzman in conversation with Tim Cox (6-7pm)

7:00 pm, The Tasmanian Writers’ Centre and Arts @ Work present

Readings with Geoff Dean, Karen Knight, Philomena van Rijswijk, Anne Kellas, Louise Oxley, John Biggs.

Followed by Open Section

The Passionate Crone: Cento Australiana

2008-08-06T08:48:00.000+10:00

Have a look at the Cento written by Rosemary Nissen-Wade: The Passionate Crone: Cento Australiana

PressPress award goes to Carolyn Fisher of Tasmania

2008-07-06T08:48:00.000+10:00

The PressPress chapbook award has been won by Tasmanian poet Carolyn Fisher; and talking of PressPress: its manager, NSW poet Chris Mansel is one of the featured poets today at the Republic Bar and Cafe in North Hobart (corner of Elizabeth and Burnett Streets) at 3 pm (Sunday 6 July 2008).

Book Launch - Venie Holmgren

2008-06-24T21:18:00.000+10:00

A Sense of Direction
A Travel Story Like No Other
by
Venie Holmgren

will be launched by author, June Keir
Date: Thursday July 3rd
Where: Regional Art Gallery, Zingel Place, Bega
Time: 12.30 pm

2008-06-18T09:08:00.000+10:00

CROSSING THE LINE
by Dianne Bates

Orphaned then abandoned by long-term foster carers, teenager Sophie lives with Amy and Matt. For a long time and unknown to others, Sophie has been self-mutilating: more recently she has been in therapy. Concerned about Sophie’s increasing depression, the doctor admits her to a hospital. There Sophie is placed in an adolescent ward where she forms tentative relationships with other troubled teenagers and begins sessions with psychiatrist, Helen Marshall. However, the doctor crosses the patient-therapist line, but so too does Sophie ...

Australian haiku on Poetica

2008-06-16T19:47:00.000+10:00

Australian haiku will be on Poetica for two weeks running.

Details on the Poetica website.

Which reads:

Australian Haiku - Part 1

A detailed exploration of this burgeoning poetic form with some of Australia's leading practitioners.

It will please some and surprise many that the seemingly mystical art of 'Haiku writing' is not only alive throughout Australia but is truly flourishing. This intriguing little 17-syllable poem, which originated in Japan, is daily beguiling and tempting writers across the country from Perth to Brisbane... and not only the case-hardened Haiku devotees but an increasing number of mainstream poets as well.

In Poetica's two part feature, Peter Holland, Jodie Buzza and Murray Dowsett read a couple of hundred Haiku along with discussions with Haiku writers across Australia.

North of the Latte Line has been told Lyn Reeves and Peter Macrow are among the haiku poets to be featured.

Readings and events coming up

2008-06-13T10:26:00.001+10:00

Endless Summer Literary Lunch
14 June 2008

With Emma Hardman, DC Green and Meg Bishop.

When: 12noon, 14 June 2008
Where: St Georges Basin Country Club, Paradise Beach Road, Sanctuary Point
Cost: $45
Bookings: Margaret 02 4443 4207 or Vala 0422 678 940

Rocket Readings - featuring Jane Gibian and Christine Paice
17 June 2008

When: 6.30pm, Tuesday 17 June 2008
Where: Music Farmers cafe, 5 Crown Lane, Wollongong (laneway opposite the western entrance of Crown Street Mall)
Bookings and information: SCWC 02 4228 0151 or scwc@1earth.net
Cost: Free event your donation gratefully accepted.

Writing about Art with Wollongong City Gallery Director Craig Judd
12 July 2008

An introduction to some of the pleasures and pitfalls of writing about art with Wollongong City Gallery Director Craig Judd.

When: 12.30-1.30pm Saturday 12 July 2008
Where: Wollongong City Gallery, corner of Kembla and Burelli Streets, Wollongong
Information and bookings: Vivian Vidulich, Wollongong City Gallery, 02 4228 7500.
Free event. All welcome.

State of Play - Australian Poetry Now! 6th Australian Poetry Festival
5-7 September 2008

Opening Night Party and Performance; Poets from around Australia and overseas; Panels on the State of Play in Contemporary Oz Poetry; Performance Night; The Judith Wright Lecture (to be delivered by Bruce Dawe); The $3000 Poets Union Poetry Prize (entry form on site); The Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Verse; Launch of the Poets Union Anthology; Pre-Festival Events (Monster Open Reading; Reading Seminar); All to be recorded in a special double edition of Five Bells which will be a significant contribution to thinking about the craft of contemporary Australian poetry. Full Program, Ticket Prices, Early Bird Booking Coming Soon. If you have scheduled a event around this time, or you would like to do so, and you'd like it advertised in the program as an Umbrella Event, please contact Brook at the address below. All inquiries, offers to help, requests, etc appreciated. Supported by the Australia Council, Arts NSW, City of Sydney, Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, University of NSW.
Enquiries Brook Emery: brookemery@gmail.com

When: 5,6 & 7 September 2008
Where: Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney

Poet's Picnic at Bundanon
14 September 2008

With Sam Wagan Watson and SCWC member Jennifer Dickerson.

When: 12noon-4pm, 14 September 2008
Where: Bundanon Bomestead Lawn, Bundanon, near Nowra NSW
Cost: $10/$7
More information: http://www.bundanon.com.au

LEE MARVIN READINGS in JUNE 2008!

2008-06-04T14:15:00.000+10:00

Tuesdays
at Gallery de la Catessen

9 Anster St., Adelaide
(off Waymouth at the King William end, near FAD nightclub)
7.30 for a prompt 8 PM start * Price $5

7th Reading JUNE 10
o LEE MARVIN IN
A SLOW BOAT TO CHINEY

Mike Ladd
Keryn Goldsworthy
Jill Jones
Ashley Graetz
Jordan D'Arsie

8th Reading JUNE 17
o LEE MARVIN IN
A GUN OF TOBLERONE

Patricio Munoz
Carol Lefevre
Stephen Lawrence
Jason Sweeney
Caroline Horn

9th Reading JUNE 24
o LEE MARVIN ON
The 3.10 TO YUMA

Peter Goldsworthy
Cath Kenneally
Nic Rowan
Geoff Page
Ken Bolton

Kefala, Maiden and Stewart read at UTS, Sydney

2008-06-04T11:48:00.000+10:00

Reading/performing are:

Antigone Kefala
Jennifer Maiden
Amanda Stewart

Music from

David Finch

Thursday the 12th of June

UTS Studio (Note: NOT The Loft), 6.30 (for 7) pm

Dear friends, poets and lovers of The Word— Come and join us for an evening of poetic pleasures with three of Australia’s most diverse and accomplished poetic voices. On Thursday the 12th of June, Antigone Kefala, Jennifer Maiden and Amanda Stewart will be performing at the UTS studio. Their work spans a huge aesthetic spectrum, from variations on traditional prose forms to abstracted experimental poetics, and this promises to be reading not to be missed.

Doors open at 6.30 – come down and join us for a drink before the show. Readings will begin shortly after 7.

The UTS Studio/Performance Space, Building 3 (Bon Marché), Room 105

(Corner of Harris Street and Broadway Road, Broadway. Entry on Harris St)

Entry: $5/$3 for Students and working/unworking poor

For More Information... Berndt Sellheim: 0420 243 751 / berndt.sellheim@uts.edu.au

The Loft Readings could not continue without the support of the Writing and Cultural Studies Area at the University of Technology, and generous funding from The Literature Board of The Australia Council for the Arts.

Antigone Kefala was born in Romania of Greek parents. She moved with her parents to Greece while still a child, and in 1960 came, via New Zealand, to live in Australia. She writes in both Greek and English, and these diverse influences contribute to a poetry that is haunting and intense. She has published a number of poetry collections, including The Alien, Thirsty Weather, European Notebook and Absence: New and Selected Poems. Her most recent publication is a prose work entitled Sydney Journals: Reflections 1970 – 2000, with Giramondo Press.

Jennifer Maiden was born in Penrith, New South Wales. Thirteen of her poetry collections (one including short stories) and two of her novels have been published. Her most recent collection, Friendly Fire (Giramondo, 2005) won the Age Book of the Year Award, and she has received a swag of other prizes for her work, including, on two occasions, the N.S.W Premier’s Award for Poetry, The Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry and the Christopher Brennan Award for a lifetime of achievement in poetry.

Amanda Stewart is a Sydney based poet and sound artist. Since the 1970s she has been producing a variety of poetic texts, performances, radio, film and multi-media works in Australia, Japan, the US and Europe. In 1989 she co-founded the performance ensemble Machine for Making Sense, she co-wrote and directed the 1990 film Eclipse of the Man-Made Sun. Her collected works book and CD entitled I/T won the 1999 Anne Elder Award for poetry.

Two new books from Walleah Press

2008-04-26T21:04:00.002+10:00

The following two new books are being launched at Hobart Bookshop
on Thursday 8th May, 5.30 pm:

* Seasoned with Honey, an anthology of poetry by four Hobart women, Anne Collins, Mary Jenkins,
Gina Mercer and Lyn Reeves. This collection, in manuscript form, was awarded first prize in the National FAW Victoria Awards for an anthology by a writing group in 2006.

The collection, published by Ralph Wessman of Walleah Press / Famous Reporter fame, will be launched by Pete Hay.

* The ink brushed distance, by Lyn Reeves, will be launched by Karen Knight.
This chapbook is also published by Walleah Press.

Tim Thorne's launch of Jane Williams' new collection, 'Begging the Question'

2008-04-15T19:12:00.000+10:00

Jane Williams Begging the Question (Ginninderra Press 2008)

Launch Speech by Tim Thorne, 10 April 2008, Hobart Bookshop

When Jane asked me if I would launch this wonderful little book, I felt that I owed her one. I was feeling guilty for having knocked back her request that Cornford Press publish her Crying in Public Places in 2004. This decision had nothing to do with the quality of the poems, which were excellent, but it was merely an unfortunate matter of timing, as I had made the decision not to publish any more books, just before her request arrived. Had I kept going for another year, there is no doubt that Jane’s would have been one of those collections chosen. I had not been aware of her first book, which won the Anne Elder award for a first volume, and so the manuscript of Crying in Public Places came out of the blue, as it were. I was very impressed with it, certainly more than I have been with any other manuscript submitted to Cornford Press by a writer whose work I had not been familiar with. Of course, having met Jane, having heard her read at the Tasmanian Poetry Festival, and being therefore sufficiently aware of her work to keep an eye open for her name in journals, I soon remedied my ignorance.

So it is certainly not out of a sense of guilt alone that I am here before you, but primarily because I have become even more of a fan of Jane’s poetry each time I encounter some. Hers is an important voice, a voice which chronicles, explores and celebrates the world we live in not only by what it says but more significantly by how it says it. She has a wonderful capacity for catching the precise, telling detail and presenting it in the perfect nuance of tone. Examples of this facility abound in Begging the Question, but here are a few: from “Some Towns”:

and neighbours who know enough to know timing changes everything
when to call the cops when to mind your own and when exactly when
to put the kettle on

and then there’s the “lolly pink backpack” in “Groupie”, the “red lace curtains” in “Deviations on Home” and lots more.

Actually, the title of that last poem also tells us a great deal about Jane’s approach to poetry. Most writers would have been content to call the piece “Variations on Home”, but Jane squeezes the language just that bit further to get the tastier juice out of it. At times she does this in a playful mood, as when she says that the right poem can “bring a dogma to heel”, or when in “Churches of the Developed World” she refers to “salivation” in a context in which we might be expecting “salvation”. At other times the felicitous choice of words reinforces the emotional strength of an image, as, for example, when the young couple in the bottle shop (in “Days of Hope”) converse in “silver-lined whispers”.

If I could, without sounding too pompous, make a general observation on the state of poetry in Australia today, there are far too many “good” poems. What I mean is that too many poems are written within the acceptable boundaries of what poems are supposed to be like. There is an insidious and politely ignored suffocation implicit in this phenomenon. Whilst I am not advocating complete anarchy, I scan the pages of anthologies and journals, often in vain, for those poems which break out of the constraints of what I would call “meritorious mediocrity”.

Jane Williams’s poems do break out, and for this we should all be grateful. They break out, first of all, from the confines of the ego. This is one of the most life-threatening forces working against contemporary poetry. If I read another poem which concerns itself primarily with the poet’s feelings, I’ll track down the perpetrator and inflict some sort of appropriate punishment. That is not to say, of course, that there is no place for the presence of the poet in the poem. Jane is very strongly a presence in her poems and they are the more interesting for that. She is, however, their cause without being their reason. These poems are always reaching out: out to other strongly delineated individuals, to friends and family, to history, to the physical and social worlds she inhabits.

They also break out, as I indicated before, from the confines imposed by safe, politely understated diction. Her tone, while always spot-on, is variously modulated. This allows her to go beyond the sort of writing where (to quote a line from “The Land of Just Right”) “nothing is too big small hot cold high or low.” Because she has the ability to pitch her language so accurately (in other words, she writes with her ear — by far the most important organ for a poet) she can tackle the poetic presentation of a variety of situations, characters, events and settings. So these poems also break out from the constraints imposed by what sometimes appears to me to be a consensus, even a conspiracy, as to what constitutes proper raw material for poetry.

To say that this book is published by Ginninderra Press means not having to spell out that it is stylishly designed and handsomely presented. I congratulate Ginninderra for having the sense and good judgement to go where I was unable to go four years ago, and, more importantly, I congratulate Jane Williams on a remarkable collection which I am pleased to launch and to commend to you wholeheartedly.

Poets Union Poetry Prize

2008-04-09T18:49:00.000+10:00

$3000

The maximum length of each entry is 100 lines. The fee for each entry is $15, or
$10 for financial members of the Poets Union.
The deadline is Friday 25 July 2008

Go to the Poets Union site for an entry form.

Or contact:
The Poets Union
PO Box 755
Potts Point NSW 1335
Phone: (02) 9357 6602
Email: info@poetsunion.com
Website:www.poetsunion.com

2008-04-09T12:26:00.000+10:00

THE LEE MARVIN READINGS 2008!

at Gallery de la Catessen

9 Anster St, Adelaide, SA
(off Waymouth at the King William end, near FAD nightclub)
7.30 for a prompt 8 PM start
Price $5

3rd Reading APRIL 15
o LEE MARVIN
ON A DEAD MAN'S CHEST
Rob Parry
Jordan d'Arsie
Caroline Horn
Bel Schenk
Naomi Horridge

4th Reading APRIL 22
o LEE MARVIN
FARCIOT EDOUARD AND THE NO-NO MEN
Stephen Lawrence
Steve Brock
Martina Newhook
Jordan d'Arsie

5th Reading APRIL 29
o LEE MARVIN
AND THE NO-NO MEN
Rachel Hennessy
Cath Kenneally
Eva Sallis
Ken Bolton
Teri Hoskin

Government funds new Chair in Australian Literature -- in WA

2008-04-09T10:45:00.000+10:00

Source:
Media release, 9 April, Julia Gillard

reads as follows:

The Minister for Education has today announced that the Rudd Government will fund a new Chair in Australian Literature to be established at the University of Western Australia (UWA).

The Australian Government will provide $1.5 million towards the initiative which will re-invigorate the study of Australian literature at university, in our schools and throughout the community.

Though a number of universities submitted impressive proposals, the six member selection panel unanimously found the University of Western Australia to be the strongest candidate.

UWA’s proposed strategies to promote Australian literature both nationally and internationally as well as the support of the Western Australian Government were identified as strengths in the application.

As the University’s application noted, UWA has pioneered and remained constantly committed to the teaching and research of Australian literacy studies and is today at the forefront in this field.

The University of Western Australia is to be congratulated on its achievement.

The University of Western Australia has been recognised for its long-standing commitment to the promotion of literature and culture in the community.

The decision follows a competitive process which was open to all Australian universities.

The Government sought a university that could best demonstrate its commitment to Australian literature and was best placed to further promote scholarship in Australian literature.

Funding has been drawn from the Diversity and Structural Adjustment Fund which is aimed at promoting diversification of the higher education sector.
Media Contact:

media@deewr.gov.au
Non-media queries: 1300 363 079

The Australian Popular Songbook launches

2008-04-02T08:18:00.000+11:00

Alan Wearne is launching his The Australian Popular Songbook (poetry) in The Gong and Sydney:

Launch by Bonny Cassidy
7 pm Friday 8 April
Headlands Hotel
Headland Ave
Austinmer
info: 02 4221 4098

Launch by Pam Brown
3.30 pm Sunday 20 April
Gleebooks
49 Glebe Point Road
Glebe
RSVP 02 9660 2333

Intensive Journal workshop, Maryknoll (Blackmans Bay, Tasmania) Nov. 2008

2008-03-30T14:04:00.002+11:00

Intensive Journal® Retreat

A program of exploration and integration through Journal writing.
Based on the work and writings of Ira Progoff.
led by Kate Scholl

31 October – 4 November 2008
Maryknoll Retreat Centre, Blackmans Bay, Hobart, Tasmania

Joseph Campbell once called the Intensive Journal process "one of the great inventions of our time". The process was invented by a student of Carl Jung's, Ira Progoff. For more details on the Intensive Journal process, see: http://www.intensivejournal.org

In Australia there are a few licenced practitioners giving the intensive journal workshops, and Kate Scholl is one of them. To register for her workshop, contact:

Maryknoll Retreat and Conference Centre
15 Home Avenue
Blackmans Bay
TAS 7052
tel (03) 6229 3109
Fax (03) 6229 3109
email: maryknoll@bigpond.com
RSVP: SEPT 1st 2008

For more information about the workshops, contact kscholl@optusnet.com.au or tel (02) 9674 1216 (eve).

About the workshop facilitator

Kate Scholl, a leader for over 20 years, began using the Intensive Journal method while studying Adult Spirituality at Loyola University in Chicago. Since moving to Sydney in 1987 she has held a variety of roles, including workshop and retreat facilitator and Executive Director of the Eremos Institute. She is currently Volunteer Development Coordinator for the St Vincent de Paul Society (NSW).

Kerry Leves booklaunch

2008-03-28T12:38:00.001+11:00

Come to 'Benledi', Glebe Library, 186 Glebe Point
Rd, Glebe, on Sunday 30 March, 3.30 for 4pm, where/ when Nicolette
Stasko will be launching A Shrine to Lata Mangeshkar, by Kerry
Leves, published by Puncher and Wattmann, rrp $25.

A journey into another culture, conducted through words that feed the
senses and stretch the imagination

Money business workshop by ASA

2008-03-26T22:20:00.000+11:00

Financial Issues seminar - 9 April - Wollongong

Date: Wednesday 9 April 2008, 10am-4.45pm
Venue: South Coast Writers Centre, Level 3, Cnr Crown & Kembla Streets, Wollongong
Note: There is only stair access to the 3rd floor.

The ASA's seminar on financial issues aims to provide writers with the tools to effectively manage the business side of writing.

Presenters have been selected for their knowledge and expertise in advising clients on matters ranging from compliance with the tax office to providing income for the future.

Lou Kinnas, Chartered Accountant from Akele Kinnas & Co, has over 20 years’ auditing experience and will speak about:
* Running a small business: record keeping * An eye for detail: the importance of record keeping * Financial reporting: GST, BAS and FBT for the financially challenged * Tax accounting: ABNs, invoices and payments * Royalty payments

Penny Miles, Arts on Tour
* Applying for grants, awards and competitions

Jeremy Fisher, Australian Society of Authors
* CAL, PLR and ELR * Freelance writers and illustrators: negotiating payments

Sean Butcher, Wealthinsure Financial Services
* Superannuation: types of funds, superannuation guarantee * Insurance: accident & illness, defamation, public liability and income protection.

With the CAL Cultural Fund’s generous support of the ASA’s professional development program, we are able to offer this seminar at the affordable price of $82.50. If you know anyone who might be interested in attending the seminar, please let them know we have a limited offer of $172 for non-members, which gives them one year ASA membership and the seminar is free!

Come along to this very practical seminar, have your questions answered, and get your business organised!

Download your registration form at:
www.asauthors.org/lib/pdf/zPD_Seminars/2008/Reg_Form_Wollongong08.pdf

or email: kris@asauthors.org for a registration form.

PressPress Chapbook Award

2008-03-07T15:15:00.001+11:00

Endangered: Drawing the line: Art, poetry, music, performance

2008-02-29T13:19:00.003+11:00

Endangered - Drawing the Line is a collaborative exhibition and series of arts related events with artists, poets, musicians, film makers, performers, writers, scientists, ecologists and community groups.

If you are in Hobart in March, make a special point of visiting the Rosny Schoolhouse art gallery and take a look. Many poets have been collaborating with a group of artists who for the past year worked along the lines of a theme, "endangered" ....

All details, along with key art work and poems, are online at: http://www.endangered-drawingtheline.com

A parallel exhibition of their work along with the key poems accompanying that work (suspended as a diaphanous veil near the artwork itself) is opening at the Long Gallery at Salamanca on Wednesday 5 March.

" ... a heartfelt response to the plight of endangered species, the threatened loss of our ecosystems, our cultural and social identities, and our relationships with Earth and all beings."

Lending Rights title claims

2008-02-29T08:19:00.000+11:00

Lending Rights is now online at:
www.arts.gov.au/lendingrights

The Lending Rights Office says:

Please mark 31 March 2008 in your diaries! It is the new closing date for submitting
title claims for Public and Educational Lending Rights.

To make PLR and ELR more responsive and efficient, 31 March will be the permanent
closing date for 2008 and into the future.

Prime Minister's Literary Awards

2008-02-27T12:42:00.000+11:00

Entries for the 2008 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards are now open.
The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards are a new initiative celebrating the contribution of Australian literature to the nation’s cultural and intellectual life.

A prize of $100 000, proposed to be tax free, will be awarded to the work judged to be of the highest literary merit in each of two categories:

Fiction
Non-Fiction
Authors, publishers and literary agents are eligible to enter books written by living Australian citizens and permanent residents. Works must be first published in English and first offered for general sale between 1 January and 31 December 2007.

Entry forms for the Awards and the guidelines, outlining eligibility criteria and providing further information, are attached to this email.

<> <>
Completed entry submissions must be received by the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts by 2pm, Friday 28 March 2008 (Australian Eastern Standard Time).

If once you have read the guidelines you require further information, please contact the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, at the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts:

Phone: 1800 707 889
Email: pmliteraryawards@environment.gov.au

Regards

Christabel Wright
Manager - Literature and Lending Rights
Culture Division
Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts

PressPress Chapbook Award 2008

2008-02-04T10:41:00.000+11:00

The PressPress Poetry Chapbook Award 2008 has opened for submissions. You need 30-40 pages of original poetry to enter.

The winning the Award will get you:
1. incalculable glory
2. $300AUD
3. Publication of a chapbook with PressPress.

Full guidelines and entry form on the PressPress site at www.presspress.com.au.

Basho's Trail - National Geographic Magazine

2008-01-17T13:43:00.000+11:00

Basho's Trail - National Geographic Magazine

Guardian Poetry workshop for January 2008

2008-01-16T17:18:00.000+11:00

The January workshop is open:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/poetryworkshop/
Workshop poet: Jean Sprackland

She is the author of three collections which have been shortlisted for Forward, Whitbread and TS Eliot awards. Her latest, Tilt, won this year's Costa poetry award

IM event: John Forbes

2008-01-10T10:10:00.000+11:00

John Forbes
Ars Poetica

Saturday, February 02, 2008
3.30 for 4pm Free Event

Venue: gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe,NSW
RSVP: gleebooks - 9660 2333

For those who might be around Sydney.

More information from: the deletions

Recording

2008-01-07T22:02:00.000+11:00

Have a listen to my new recording of 'Water' (aka 'Would Condoleezza Rice do that?' on bMuze" and don't forget to scroll down and vote.

And thank you for allowing this shameless promotion of my humble poem.

Photo by: William Sturgess

Griffith University | Josephine Ulrick Prizes

2007-12-12T10:19:00.000+11:00

Griffith University site

$10 000 poetry prize now closing on 21 January 2008.

The Poetry School - Poetry courses and workshops

2007-12-11T11:29:00.000+11:00

The Poetry School - Poetry courses and workshops This page lists some British poetry competitions for those who might be interested.

Poems disappearing from classrooms ...

2007-12-08T05:41:00.001+11:00

Classic poems are in danger of disappearing from the classroom as poorly trained teachers rely on "lightweight" verse; few primary school children know William Wordsworth's Daffodils and teachers increasingly concentrate on nonsense and humorous poems or those that are easy for children to imitate, according to a report in the UK. from Ofsted.

In the report, inspectors warn that "too few" poems are "genuinely challenging" as teachers shun the classics from English and other cultures.

Only a "very small minority of schools" use poems such as Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin ... More in the UK's Daily Telegraph

The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation - Homepage

2007-12-07T09:19:00.000+11:00

The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation - Homepage:

Dave Eggers's What Is the What is the novelized autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, from his pre-war life in southern Sudan to his resettlement in the United States. All proceeds from the book go to aiding the Sudanese in America and Sudan.

I have just finished reading this book. I recommend you read it: a truly 'good book' in that it is well-written and has something to say. It is written by Dave Eggers from the life story of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Sudanese 'Lost Boys' who walked from southern Sudan to Ethiopia through many trials while still very young, then landed in a refugee camp in Kenya where they stayed for a long time before being flown to the USA.

Eggers is an interesting character, possibly a saint, who can tell, who apparently has a huge amount of energy and intelligence and a fearlessness which I admire. What is the What is written in the voice of Deng with a clarity and distinction which is unsentimental and so seems authentic (though Eggers and Deng point out it's a novelisation).

Launch, Anne Collins: Blue Giraffe 6 (Sunday 2nd December, 2007)

2007-12-03T13:47:00.000+11:00

Blue Giraffe 6 is a very satisfying read and Peter Macrow is to be congratulated for his choice of poems that resonate with one another in profound and at times unexpected ways.

A poem beckons
eagerly I reach for it
beyond the mind’s edge.

Jennifer Furst’s stanza from her poem ‘Five Seven Five’ could easily describe the effect on the reader of many of the poems in this anthology.

The theme of Blue Giraffe 6 is, as it turns out, the landscape of death and grief in all its mystery and everyday human detail. In exploring the experience of death, many of the poems here ponder that aspect most difficult to verbalise, but paradoxically present nonetheless: the sense defined by the space where he is not as Liz Winfield puts it in her poem: ‘after the fall’; or an unthinking chance as in Jennifer Furst’s other poem: ‘To Kate As She Leaves Us’; or grief as symbolised by a creaking blue door in Megan Schaffner’s war poem: ‘Every Day a Blue Door’.

The featured poet in Blue Giraffe 6 is Anne Kellas whose poetry I always reach for eagerly. These central poems are the anthology’s meta-physical thread: their ethereal, philosophical quality takes us even further into this essentially enigmatic space, leaving us to meditate on the cloud of unbeing as in her poem: ‘Journey to my son July 2006’. We accompany Anne feeling my ways through words as she attempts to grasp the essence of that uncanny absence we each experience in different ways, after someone close to us has died and we become as Anne suggests fractions of ourselves.

Death can also teach us that living the moment matters. And so to the other poems in the anthology that celebrate some of life’s intriguing patterns. As Jenny Barnard writes in her poem ‘Deep Song’: World is our making/ tears, bones, art, laughter, shadows. Blue Giraffe 6, like most good anthologies, has its share of poems that celebrate the energy of the natural world: here our gaze is directed to winter, seaweed, light, herons, insects: The earth is insect mad writes Richard Hillman in his poem: ‘When It’s Too Hot to Play’ and we can easily imagine a certain kind of summer intensity; while Sally Clarke vividly describes Spiders stitching carport to pergola, jacaranda to hills hoist in her poem ‘Spider’.

Human domesticity is detailed in settings that tell of street life, the world of children and the secret, forgotten things found behind wardrobes. Venturing outwards, other poems tell us stories about Bollywood, life in a psychiatric hospital, and the local swimming pool as a place of sexual awakening. The life of poetry in which we poets all have dinky jobs as Anne Morgan cheekily proclaims is also explored, as is the life of art as portrayed by Christiane Conesa-Bostock in her poem ‘Painters or Models’.

All good poetry celebrates language. rob walker’s poem: ‘shall I compare thee’ is a clever and amusing examination of contemporary vernacular at its most abstract. I read this poem out loud a few times with great enjoyment and wondered what a person learning English for the first time might make of it. It would be a great performance piece.

There are many lines from Blue Giraffe 6 that beckon and stay to grow into something that settles deep within you as you read and re-read. I encourage you to buy a copy in the hope that you will enjoy them as much as I did. Congratulations to all those involved in Blue Giraffe who made this latest anthology so special.

time out of time

2007-11-28T08:09:00.000+11:00

On the Birth of his Son

Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister.

Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101 CE), trans. Arthur Waley

Trust : Kathleen Mitchell Award

2007-11-26T11:43:00.000+11:00

About The Kathleen Mitchell Award

The Kathleen Mitchell Award is an Award dedicated to encourage young Australian authors to achieve their dreams.

Established by the will of the late Kathleen Adele Mitchell who directed the Award to encourage “the advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature, to improve the educational style of the authors and to provide them with additional amounts and thus enable them to improve their literary efforts”.

First established in 1996, the Award is a biennial award with prize money being $7,500.

Eligibility is for those authors that are under thirty (30) years of age at the time of their book’s publication. The author must also be a resident of Australia for the twelve months preceding the closing date for entries and must be either Australian or British born, or be a naturalised Australian.

Closes 22 February 2008

Trust : Kathleen Mitchell Award

Tom Collins Poetry Prize

2007-11-26T09:22:00.000+11:00

One to look at. The closing date is 31 December.Fellowship of Australian Writers WA

SILO

2007-11-25T14:15:00.000+11:00

Have a look at this visual poetry: no 23 SILO

Cross cultural dance

2007-11-18T14:44:00.000+11:00

This is not directly literary, though I've posted it here because of the unique cross-cultural experience. Fascinating.

Aboriginal interpretation of Zorba the Greek.

And a bit from YouTube:

Frank Djirrimbilpilwuy from Milingimbi has been in the Indigenous Media Industry for many years and has been a long-standing member and supporter of the Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association, TEABBA Radio. He has worked Independently in Music and Film for many years also.

As the man behind the camera and release of the video, Frank is also representing the dance group who call themselves "The Chooky Dancers". Frank has said that he filmed the footage at this years Ramingining Festival on the 30th September 2007 and knew it would be "something special" as soon as he saw the boys rehearsing. "The crowd went wild as you can see in the video, and the classic song Zorba the Greek has now become a hit overnight in the communities and now it seems, everywhere else too" Frank said.
In just one week of being released onto "You Tube" by the staff at TEABBA Media Services, the video has received rave reviews been given a 5 star rating and has now been viewed well over 15,000 times.

It's many more now. A brilliant piece.

[Tas] Poetry Discussion Group: 21 Nov: An afternoon with Dr Gina Mercer

2007-11-06T20:18:00.000+11:00

[Tas]

Dr Gina Mercer will be the guest of the Poetry Discussion Group on Wednesday afternoon, 21 November 2007; 2 to 4 p.m.

The Poetry Discussion Group has met for many years on the third Wednesday of each month at the Church Street Adult Education Centre (music room). For November, their guest speaker is Dr Gina Mercer – poet, creative writing teacher and editor of Island. Gina's most recent collection, Handfeeding the Crocodile, stylishly published by Pardalote Press, will be on sale along with other collections of Gina's poems.

In a recent review of Handfeeding the Crocodile, Simon Patton commented on the "moments of tenderness and of grim human drama scattered throughout this collection" and on the "inventiveness of the language [being] well matched to the intensity of the experience evoked" (Island, n.110, 2007).

$5 donation to cover fees. Afternoon tea/coffee will be available.

Contact: Megan Schaffner, ph: (03) 6225 2360; email: mschaffner [at] auswide.net.au

Source: email announcements received 6 November 2007.

Have a look at this

2007-11-05T08:47:00.000+11:00

See the article: Beyond intellectural Property: From file-sharing to distrubuted archiving.Soul Sphíncter is the blog of Jim Brrett who researches new media, spatial and performative modes, copyright and ip, text reception, digital culture...

Nanowrimo anyone?

2007-11-03T22:07:00.001+11:00

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30... More at: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano

Alan Marshall Short Story Award

2007-10-31T16:26:00.001+11:00

The annual Alan Marshall Short Story Award is now open. Entries close on Friday 22 February 2008. The competition is open to writers from across Australia. There are a number of prizes, the main one being the $2,000 open section prize for a story of up to 2,000 words. For further details, see the competition website.
(Source: Jessica Neath, Arts Officer, Nillumbik Shire Council, PO Box 476 Greensborough VIC 3088; ph: 03 9433 3126.)

Events Submission

2007-10-30T21:30:00.000+11:00

Where to submit your event/conference/reading/workshop event details to AustLit (Australian Literature Resource): Events Submission

otoliths

2007-10-29T09:30:00.000+11:00

Interesting little magazine online which I fell across today:

otoliths

Australia Council, Literature board grants

2007-10-27T06:18:00.000+11:00

The Australia Council's award of grants from the Literature Board are contained in a PDF document on their website, available from this link.

A Passion for Poetry: Pardalote Press event 4 November, Republic Bar and Cafe

2007-10-25T09:59:00.000+11:00

4th November Republic Bar & Café, cnr Burnett and Elizabeth Streets, North Hobart 3-5pm

A Passion for Poetry:

Pardalote Press, celebrates seven years of poetry with readings from its stunning list of poets:

James Charlton, Gina Mercer, Karen Knight and Ian Johnston and members of the Watersmeet haiku group.

There will also be an open mic session with prizes of beautiful Pardalote books, and a lucky door prize.

Books will also be on sale – with generous discounts. It’s a great opportunity to buy some special Christmas gifts or to indulge your own love of fine poetry.

Hope to see you there!

Lyn Reeves
Pardalote Press
http://www.pardalote.com.au

North of the latte line editors

2007-10-25T09:35:00.000+11:00

It's great that North of the Latte Line now has Ivy Alvarez, Chris Mansell and Ralph Wessman as co-editors of this blog with Anne Kellas. Lyn Reeves will also be contributing. If any other poets would like to become occasional news contributors, please contact me at: anne -dot- kellas [+AT] gmail -dot- com

Reading very far north of the line

2007-10-24T21:26:00.000+11:00

If you're my way, come to the reading on 20 November (6pm) at Hair as a Weapon (yep, a hair salon) at Globe Lane, Wollongong (enquiries South Coast Writers Centre 02 4228 0151)

Sex Mook launches in Melbourne and Canberra

2007-10-24T21:22:00.000+11:00

A post from poet Ivy Alvarez:

Bringing together the voices of over 60 people, this collection of articles, creative stuff [including haiku!] and how-to guides presents an unusual take on the topic of sex.

Melbourne

Canberra

HAIKU PRIZE

2007-10-22T23:40:00.000+11:00

Melbourne Poets Union is offering a $100 prize for the best haiku written by anyone in Australia 18 or under.
Judge: *Myron Lysenko*
Deadline: 28th October.
Entry fee: 3X 50c stamps per haiku. (Don't have to be pretty ones...but unused please.)
Check our website, PO Box 266, 246 Flinders Lane, 8009 for an entry form.
Check this site for some ideas about haiku: http://www.haikuoz.org/

Blusterhead resources

2007-10-21T15:56:00.000+11:00

Greetings! You might like to take s stroll over to Blusterhead which has a multitude of links to useful writing information.

Doris Lessing

2007-10-16T23:34:00.000+11:00

Lessing on Nobel: "It's about 40 years since they sent one of their minions especially to tell me they didn't like me at the Nobel Prize and I would never get it. I've never asked for it, you see, so this struck me as very bad manners. So now they've decided they're going to give it to me... do they like me any better?"
(Source: BBC: Past Nobel Literature winners)

Time Magazine's take on her Nobel Prize award.

ABC's report

The Call of Aurora - exerpts from from a new chamber opera in progress by JOE BUGDEN

2007-10-16T23:21:00.001+11:00

17 November 8pm at the Peacock Theatre, Salamanca Place, HOBART. The Call of Aurora - excerpts from a new chamber opera in progress by JOE BUGDEN. Based on Douglas Mawson's 1911 - 1914 Antarctic expedition. Tickets are $10 at the door, or to book email theverysoundoperacompany@yahoo.com.au or phone 0432 126 421. More details at www.tasmanianwriters.org/callofaurora

Lyn Reeves' poetry workshop at Women Tasmania

2007-10-16T23:19:00.001+11:00

Thursday 8 NOVEMBER 2pm - 4pm: Writers’ Workshop at Women Tasmania, 140 Macquarie Street, Hobart: LYN REEVES [WORKSHOP PRESENTER] -- get the details from the Tasmanian Writers' Centre, ph: 03 6224 0029.

Launch of Annette Sumner's latest book

2007-10-16T23:17:00.000+11:00

Thursday 25 October, at The Hobart Bookshop, 22 Salamanca Square: presumably at 5.30 pm: Book launch:

Annette Sumner's From Sandy Bay To Woburn Sands: The Journey Continues, will be launched by Terry Whitebeach

Republic readings 4 November

2007-10-16T23:14:00.000+11:00

On Sunday 4 November, Republic Bar and Cafe North Hobart: 3 to 5 pm:

Poetry reading based around poets published by Pardalote Press.

James Charlton, who has a new book, So Much Light, will be joined by other wonderful Pardalote poets: Gina Mercer, Karen Knight, Ian Johnston and the Watersmeet haiku group.

James Charlton's new poetry book - launch 21 October

2007-10-16T23:13:00.000+11:00

Sunday 21 October 2pm, at Fuller's Bookshop Collins Street Hobart. Catherine Schulz will be launching ‘So Much Light’ a new collection of poems by JAMES CHARLTON.

Eric Beach is in town ...

2007-10-14T12:36:00.000+11:00

Eric Beach is in town ... This quiet achiever's poetry is surely one of Australia's best. There is a sample of it on The Write Stuff.
His poem, Purple Iris, is one of the many he has written in memory of Judith St Leger, and is one of the most beautiful poems I have read.

Eric Beach in New Town Hobart 13 October 2007 (photograph by Giles Hugo).
If ever you get the opportunity to attend an Eric Beach poetry workshop, don't miss it.

Writerly news from Liz Winfield's October email newsletter

2007-10-14T12:34:00.000+11:00

North of the Latte Line s delighted that Liz Winfield has given permission for exerpts from her email newsletter to be re-posted on this blog on a regular basis.

Many of the entries here are now old news because I was not fast enough in getting her October email newsletter up here in time, but for the record here it all is.

Opportunities for writers, from Liz Winfield's October newsletter

2007-10-14T12:29:00.000+11:00

Writing for the box: industry placement
Hear hear! Get your audio work online
The Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarships 2008
CAL | Cultural Fund
Rodney Seaborn Playwright's Award
The Science Fiction Writers of Earth 27th annual Science Fiction/Fantasy short story contest
FAW-Tasmania Christmas Competitions 2007
St Petroc's Society First International Poetry Competition
NIDA Playwrights Studio
Black Inc | Growing up Asian in Australia: a new anthology
Australian Book Review Poetry Prize 2008
Tom Howard/John H. Reid Short Story Contest
Screenwriting mentorships
Australian Songwriters Conference
Opportunities for writers from Vignette Press
More opportunities:

Competitions & Opportunities

Writing for the box: industry placement

The Southern Star Entertainment Writing for Television Drama Initiative is a fantastic opportunity which aims to give a writer exposure to the specialised requirements of writing for adult drama and help develop an awareness of all aspects of this genre. The successful candidate will receive an industry placement with Southern Star Entertainment in 2008 allowing them to participate in script development meetings of an adult drama production. The writer will also receive $5,000 for expenses. Applications are invited from both new writers and those who have experience in other areas of performance writing, such as children’s television. Applicants must be members of the Australian Writers' Guild and in their application should state why they want to write television drama; what visions or goals they have in this genre; and list any relevant writing credits. Applications (2 pages max) should be sent to admin@awg.com.au with "Southern Star Placement" in the subject header.
Closing 19 October

Hear hear! Get your audio work online

Audiophile is a new Australian not-for-profit website devoted to publishing radio docos, audio stories, field recordings, and more. Become a member of the Audiophile community and start publishing your original material now. Hear Hear is offering a small cash prize as part of it initial call for works. All works uploaded before 20th October will be go into the draw to receive the prize. Audiophile is devoted to publishing the works of emerging audio producers with an interesting story that they want the world to hear. Duration - 30 seconds or more. Email eardrum@audiophile.org.au Website www.audiophile.org.au
Closing 20 October

The Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarships 2008

Two travelling scholarships of $18,000 offered in each of the following categories: acting, instrumental music, painting, poetry, prose, singing. Full terms and conditions outlined on application forms available for download on the website. Contact the Cauz Group Pty Ltd Tel 02 9326 5507 Email trustawards@cauzgroup.com.au Website www.trust.com.au (to Philanthropy).
Closing 26 October

CAL | Cultural Fund

The Copyright Agency Limited's Cultural Fund offers grants to support research, education and cultural development projects that enhance the economic and creative climate in which CAL's members and CAL operate and to provide practical assistance to these creators to the benefit of the Australian cultural community generally. The priority area for funding for the fund in 2007 and 2008 is 'The Development and Dissemination of Australian Content'. The Cultural Fund also comprises the Professional Development Fund, offering support for individual Australian creators seeking to improve their skills and expertise through participation in a course, festival or conference; and the Publishers' Career Development Fund, supporting career development opportunities for publishers' staff. Contact Susan Hayes Tel 02 9394 7600 Email research@copyright.com.au Website www.copyright.com.au/cultural_fund.htm
Closing 26 October

Rodney Seaborn Playwright's Award

Offering a $10,000 prize for a script or theatre proposal which, in dealing with individual, family, social or environmental issue(s), conveys an awareness or message of faith, hope and love. Attention will focus on product from artists requiring financial assistance to support some further development in the form of workshopping, production, restaging, publishing or touring. The Rodney Seaborn Playwright's Award began when NIDA entered into a partnership with the Seaborn Broughton and Walford Foundation, and welcomed Dr Seaborn as a Board Member and Life Governor. Entry must include a synopsis of the play plus two copies of the script and a statement on the intended use of the funds. There is an entry fee of $15. Contact Carol Martin Tel 02 9697 7654 Website www.sbwfoundation.com
Closing 29 October

The Science Fiction Writers of Earth 27th annual Science Fiction/Fantasy short story contest

closes on 30th October. Head to http://home.flash.net/~sfwoe/ for full details.
Closing date: 31 October 2007

FAW-Tasmania Christmas Competitions 2007

Open to FAW-Tasmania members only. Free entry, limit of 2 entries/award/member

Terri & Hal Moore Memorial Poetry Award: for a poem on any theme and in any style, limit 40 lines.
Betty Nicholson Memorial Short Story Award: for a story on any theme, no longer than 2500 words.
Margaret Giordano Memorial Non-fiction Award: for an article or essay on any subject, limit 2000 words.

Send entries to:- FAW-Tasmania, PO BOX 234 NORTH HOBART TAS 7002

St Petroc's Society First International Poetry Competition

Closing Date: 01-Nov-07 http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/competitions/?id=376

NIDA Playwrights Studio

The NIDA Playwrights Studio is a year-long part-time course designed to develop skills in writing professionally for performance. Studio participants have access to NIDA’s facilities, resources and expertise, including attendance at over 20 NIDA play productions during the year. A major component of the course requires participants to develop a short play over the year, culminating in a rehearsed reading to an invited audience. Entry is by application and interview. Website www.nida.edu.au
Closing 2 November

Black Inc | Growing up Asian in Australia: a new anthology

If you're an Asian-Australian with a story to tell, share your thoughts and experiences with Black Inc for their upcoming anthology, to be edited by Alice Pung. Closes 1 December.
Asian-Australians are known to each other and the outside world by many labels: Quiet Achiever. FOB. Gangster Chigger. Mainlander. Banana. Are these labels based on some degree of truth, or only fiction? What is it like to grow up Asian in Australia? Black Inc. invites Asian-Australians to share their personal experiences of growing up in Australia that are unique, honest and reflective, for inclusion in an anthology. The pieces can take any form, tone or style, but should steer clear of abstract or sociological treatments. Submissions should be between 800 and 3,000 words in length. Email deniseo@blackincbooks.com Website www.blackincbooks.com
Closing 1 December.

Australian Book Review Poetry Prize 2008

Entries are invited for the Australian Book Review Poetry Prize 2008. Now in its fourth year the competition has established itself as one of the country’s most prestigious and is now also one of the most lucrative with a first prize pot of $3000. Entries need to be a single poem of not more than 100 lines in length and the closing date is 15 December. For more information go to www.australianbookreview.com.au.

Tom Howard/John H. Reid Short Story Contest

Postmark Deadline: March 31, 2008
Now in its 16th year. Prizes of $2,000, $1,000, $500 and $250 will be awarded, plus five High Distinction awards of $200 each and five Most Highly Commended Awards of $100 each. Submit any type of short story, essay or other work of prose, up to 5,000 words. You may submit work that has been published or won prizes elsewhere, as long as you own the online publication rights. $12 entry fee. Submit online or by mail. Early submission encouraged. Winning Writers is assisting with entry handling for this contest. Judges: John H. Reid and Dee C. Konrad. See the complete guidelines and past winners. http://www.winningwriters.com/contests/tomstory/ts_guidelines.php

Screenwriting mentorships

Acclaimed screenwriting teacher, Linda Aronson, is offering a small number of one-to-one mentorships for screenwriters from November 2007 to early March 2008. Mentorships will suit writers considering a tertiary screenwriting diploma, and are open to all levels, from beginners to experienced writers wishing to experiment in non-linear/multi-story structures. Linda has won awards for scripts, plays and fiction. Her book Screenwriting Updated is required reading at NYU and many other film schools around the world, and she guest lectures widely/ Linda offers mentorships only in Australia and numbers are strictly limited. Email newsandcomment@bigpond.com with ‘2007-2008 Mentorships’ in the subject line.
Ongoing

Australian Songwriters Conference

6 – 9 June 2008
Songwriters from across the country will converge on Sydney in June 2008 for the first annual Australian Songwriters Conference, and with a limit of 500 attendees, organisers expect the event to sell out quickly. The Australian Songwriters Conference is a four day event, taking advantage of the Queen's Birthday long weekend. Although week-long songwriting camps and conferences are regularly held overseas, particularly in the USA, there has never been a conference of this scope, especially for songwriters, held in Australia. Website www.australiansongwritersconference.com.au

Opportunities for writers from Vignette Press

ph. 03 9381 2123 fax. 03 8610 2058 www.vignettepress.com.au If you have received this email as a forward and would like to hear more from us, please email newsletter@vignettepress.com.au with 'subscribe' in the subject line.

More opportunities:

Awesome prizes and kudos galore up for grabs in the 2007 GC O'Donnell Essay Prize. The topic is copyright and the protection of author interests. Closes 19 October 2007.
Positive Words is holding an end-of-year short story and poetry competition. Cash prize and publication to the winner, and you can enter with stamps, which I love. Closes 31 October, entry details from 466 Old Melbourne Road, Traralgon 3844, Victoria.
Short and Twisted seeks submissions of stories to 2000 words, super-short stories to 500 words and poems to 30 lines for a 2008 issue. Stories must have a twist! Closing date 30 November.
Signature is seeking new voices and new impressions for an ongoing, online publishing project. In particular they want ideas, stories and voices that aren't usually covered by mainstream media. Check their site for the low-down.
The gorgeous Kat is collecting accounts of depression in written or visual art form for a compilation book called Head Noises. They are seeking any truthful and raw accounts that you would like to share to help bridge the gap of loneliness experienced by sufferers of depression. Details on Social Experiment.

Liz Winfield's (Tasmanian) writers' diary

2007-10-14T12:23:00.000+11:00

Writers’ Diary

6-8 October Fri to Sun Launceston – the Tasmanian Poetry Festival.
Features: Eric Beach, Philip Salom, Charmaine Papertalk-green, Adrienne Eberhard, Lyn Reeves, Julie Beveridge, Deidre Kessler (Canada) Liz Ryan, & Michael Crane.
+ the infamous Launceston Poetry Cup!
Contact Cameron Hindrum via email inc@yahoo.com.au or visit TWC website:
www.tasmanianwriters.org/taspoetryfest for a full program and venue information
(The program is also on this blog.)
7 October 3-5 pm, Republic Readings at the Republic Bar & Café 299 Elizabeth St, North Hobart; readings by Eastern Shore Writers (ESW) - a chance to hear new work by fantastic writers you may not have heard before - and to take part in the open mic session. (I’ve left you in excellent hands here while I zoom up to the Tas Poetry Festival –Liz)
10 October 7.30pm Friends Meeting House Argyle St, FAW Meeting.
11th October 2 - 4pm Women Tasmania, 140 Macquarie Street, Hobart. Poetry workshop with Esther Ottaway.
12 October Friday 6.30– 9pm, Burnie Public Library, reference section. Europa Poets: A night of poetry and music! Europa poets reading their own work, with music by members of the Burnie Concert Band. All welcome, just turn up!
14 October Sunday 10am – 4pm. Venue in BURNIE t.b.c. “Putting the Mystery into History and creating a Passion for the Past” – a TWC writers’ workshop with visiting author and writer in residence, Mike Lefroy. The workshop is aimed at new and emerging writers with stories – both fiction and non-fiction - to tell to children.
The cost of this workshop is only $33 for TWC members and $69 for others. Be quick to book your place. Contact the TWC on 6224 0029 or email admin@tasmanianwriters.org then post your cheque or phone through with your credit card details.
14 October Sunday 10am – 4pm in the Meeting Room, Salamanca Arts Centre, Salamanca Place, Hobart. “The Shape of Story”: A TWC Writing Workshop with visiting Canadian author, and writer in residence, Deirdre Kessler. The cost of this workshop is only $33 for TWC members and $69 for others. Be quick to book your place. Contact the TWC on 6224 0029 or email admin@tasmanianwriters.org then post your cheque or phone through with your credit card details.
18 October Thursday at 5.30pm, the Hobart Bookshop, 22 Salamanca Square: Launch of Coral Tulloch's Sydney Of The Antarctic. All welcome - free event.
19 – 21 October, Marysville VIC The National Screenwriters' Conference hosted by the Australian Writers' Guild and with the generous support of Film Victoria, the 2007 National Screenwriters' Conference - Holding Onto Your Vision - provides a unique opportunity to bring together Australia's leading screenwriters and industry professionals. Covering film, television and new media, the conference is designed to foster creativity, innovation and success. Case studies and in depth conversations with local and international guests; craft sessions on writing skills and processes; managing creative partnerships; negotiating the marketplace and the 'business' of writing; pitching and micro mentoring opportunities; and discussions on industry developments and the writer's place within them. Website http://www.awg.com.au
20 October Saturday 5:00 - 6:30pm. Lenore’s Sweetwater Café 45 Hampden Rd, Battery Point. Poetry & Politics Fundraising event featuring Tim Thorne, Anne Collins, Julianne Green & Susan Austin.
Susan Austin, local poet and community activist, is standing for the Socialist Alliance in the Hobart seat of Denison in the upcoming Federal elections. Help raise money for her election campaign and hear some fantastic political poetry and beautiful harp ...
Entry $15 / $10 concession, including delicious snack platters.
Coffee and soft-drinks will be available to purchase.
21 October 2pm Fullers Bookshop, 140 Collins St, Hobart – You are warmly invited to the launch of James Charlton's new poetry collection So Much Light, by James Charlton (poetry editor, Island).
21st October 2.00pm Sunday Fullers Hobart – James Charlton
The launch of James Charlton’s new poetry collection, So Much Light, from Tasmanian publisher Pardalote Press.
24 October Society of Editors (Tasmania) Inc. FREELANCE LUNCH
After an extended break our freelance lunches are making a comeback. They’re a great way to network, share your editing gripes and, most importantly, relax.
All members of the Society of Editors (Tasmania) Inc are invited to come along to the New Sydney Hotel, Bathurst Street, Hobart, at 12.30pm on Wednesday. We will be upstairs in one of the private rooms (numbers will dictate which room we are allocated). For queries and bookings please contact Caroline Mordaunt (6229 5335 or c.mordaunt@trump.net.au ).
25 October Thursday at 5.30pm, the Hobart Bookshop, 22 Salamanca Square: Terry Whitebeach launching Annette Sumner's From Woburn Sands To Sandy Bay: The Journey Continues. All welcome - free event.
25th October Meadowbank Estate – 11am Show Day - A Fullers’ Event.
The Hartz Piano Trio will be in concert - tickets available at Fullers.
Adults $25, Student $15, Concession $20, Family (up to 4 adults) $80, Children free.
26th October Friday at 5.30pm, the Hobart Bookshop, 22 Salamanca Square: Monica McInerney's new book, Those Faraday Girls, will be launched.
27 October Society of Editors-Tas ACCREDITATION WORKSHOP
The Society of Editors will hold a workshop on the accreditation process for members on Saturday -- details on time and venue will be available soon. (check out more snippets from their e-newsletter further on in this listing, the example exam & answers are really worth downloading –Liz)
4 November 3-5 pm, Republic Readings at the Republic Bar & Café 299 Elizabeth St, North Hobart; Pardalote Press 7th Birthday Celebrations (includes the normal open section).
Pardalote Press will be hosting the Republic Readings with featured guests, Ian Johnston (Singing of Scented Grass), Gina Mercer (Handfeeding the Crocodile), Karen Knight (Under the One Granite Roof), and James Charlton, and interludes from the poets from Watersmeet haiku group.
This is to celebrate the seventh anniversary of Pardalote Press publishing Tasmanian poetry. Pardalote is also offering big discounts on all its current titles - you can find details at http://www.pardalote.com.au
18th November Paul Ham - 2.00pm Sunday - A Fullers’ Event.
Noted author Paul Ham will speak about his book “Vietnam: The Australian War”
All welcome, rsvp appreciated.

Liz Winfield's news roundup

2007-10-14T12:22:00.001+11:00

Source: Liz Winfield's October email newsletter

Early October 2007

Hi Literature Lovers,

Republic Readings
Details

The September Republic Readings celebrated National Poetry Week in style with great readings from 5 poets: Louise Oxley, Stuart Solman, Karen Knight, Lyn Reeves & Esther Ottaway (the latter 3 poets were guests at the Queensland poetry festival in mid September and did Tassie proud). These readings were followed by the Hobart Poetry Pot which doubled as the Southern Tassie heat for the National Poetry Slam. Congratulations go to Christiane Conesa-Bostock who won the competition, and to the two other place-getters, Diane Briggs and Mary Jenkins. These 3 poets will be representing Southern Tassie in the final heat in Launceston at the end of this month. Thanks are extended to Cameron Hindrum for organizing the Tassie National Poetry Slam Heats, and to the Hobart Bookshop for providing book prizes for the Republic Readings and a book voucher for the pot winner. Christiane will be awarded a plaque as winner of the Hobart Poetry Pot at the December Republic Readings, meanwhile the Pot will go back on display at the Hobart Bookshop with its new inscription.
The October Republic Readings will be of great interest to prose writers as the Eastern Shore Writers’ Group will be hosting the arvo. They’re a diverse, talented bunch and I’m sorry to miss it, but I’ll be in Lonny for the Tas Poetry Festival.
I’d like to give a plug here for a ‘poetry continuation’ one-day workshop I’ll be giving for Adult Education on Sunday 25th November. This workshop will have some good exercises to extend your writing style, some work on writing in traditional forms and some room for editing.
There’s lots of info in this mail-out, make sure you don’t miss out on the great web-sites section; there are some real finds. I wish you all the best for the coming month,
Liz.

Institute of Professional Editors (IPED)

2007-10-14T12:14:00.000+11:00

(Source: Liz Winfield's email newsletter, plus Anne Kellas)

Institute of Professional Editors (IPED)

Some members of the Society of Editors (Tasmania) Inc. were among Australia's leading editors who banded together over the past years to form this professional body for editors. Their inaugural international conference was held in May this year at Wrest Point:

IPED conference papers

To access some of the fascinating, funny and controversial conference papers presented at the IPEd Conference in Hobart, visit
http://www.tas-editors.org.au/conference/conference2007.htm

One of IPED's initiatives is the accreditation of editors. Read more about this in the eTextpert section below.

Society of Editors (Tasmania) Inc. (SOCED)

eTextpert
Below are excerpts from eTextpert, the monthly email newsletter of the Society of Editors (Tasmania) Inc., September 2007. For more information about the Society of Editors visit
http://www.tas-editors.org.au To subscribe: For the time being, send an email with ‘Subscribe’ in the Subject, and address it to etextpert@tas-editors.org.au

Society of Editors ACCREDITATION WORKSHOP

The Society of Editors (Tasmania) Inc. will hold a workshop on the accreditation process for members on Saturday 27 October -- details on time and venue will be available soon. "We recommend that before attending the workshop members download the sample exam at http://www.iped-editors.org/node/85 and have a trial run, then compare their answers with the ones posted." The sample exam and answer sheet/marking guide will be discussed there in detail at the workshop. The workshop will give you the opportunity to:

share with peers your experiences of sitting the sample exam
express concerns or make suggestions to the Accreditation Board delegate
talk to your committee about professional development/education opportunities that would further help you prepare for the exam.
State assessors will also be available to offer advice and answer any queries you may have.

UPCOMING SOCED EVENTS: FREELANCE LUNCH
After an extended break, SOCED's freelance lunches are making a comeback. They’re a great way to network, share your editing gripes and, most importantly, relax. All members are invited to come along to the New Sydney Hotel, Bathurst Street, Hobart, at 12.30pm on Wednesday 24 October. "We will be upstairs in one of the private rooms (numbers will dictate which room we are allocated)." For queries and bookings please contact Caroline Mordaunt (6229 5335 or c.mordaunt@trump.net.au ).

Technology Bytes from Liz Winfield's October newsletter

2007-10-14T12:12:00.002+11:00

The Sydney Arts Management Advisory Group (SAMAG) recently presented a seminar with some great, user-friendly pointers for those who may find some technical challenges considering their IT requirements. Presented by Stuart Wilkins, who runs an IT consultancy company for small to medium-sized companies, the workshop untangles computer jargon and covers topics such as whether to buy or rent computers; laptop vs desktop; and information on warranties, internet service providers, software and security. A summary of the workshop is now available in PDF from the SAMAG website.
Download the summary here [PDF] http://samagorg.sitesuite.ws/files/july_seminar_summary.pdf
Thanks to the Regional Arts NSW e-Bulletin for this piece of info and for some of the competition & opportunities listings, to subscribe (free) go to: http://www.regionalartsnsw.com.au/subscribe.html
(Source: Liz Winfield's October email newsletter)

2008 Independent Publisher Book awards

2007-10-14T12:12:00.001+11:00

2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards

Entries are now open for the twelfth annual Independent Publisher Book Awards. The "IPPY" Awards contest is among the largest and most recognized book awards event in the world, and all independent, university, small press and self-publishers who produce books intended for the North American market are eligible to enter titles copyrighted or released in 2007. To enter, visit http://www.independentpublisher.com/ipland/v4/IPAwards.htm

Digital copyright: update from Liz Winfield

2007-10-14T12:11:00.001+11:00

Digital copyright

Australian businesses are being urged to take up a new licence to meet their digital copyright legal obligations. Australian copyright management company Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) has introduced the Copyright Access licence to support legal copying by businesses. Licence funds collected are on-paid by CAL to authors and publishers for the use of their published material. More information on Copyright Access is available at http://www.copyright.com.au

Source: Liz Winfield's October email newsletter