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Geoff's Poetry at Smiths

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24.01.2022 Reminder for Wed 13 Nov Michael Sharkey (Castlemaine, Vic) + K.A. Nelson & Jen Webb (CBR) will be reading. University House, ANU at 7pm

23.01.2022 Hello supporters of Poetry at Beyond Q, formerly Poetry at the House. Beyond Q in Weston is now our home. I’ve talked to Simon Maddox, the owner of Beyond Q, and we’ve decided because of the coronavirus to suspend Poetry at Beyond Q until at least Wed July 8 when the American poet, David Mason, is due to read along with Michael Thorley and Sandra Renew. It’s possible this and later readings may have to be cancelled too. I’ll keep you posted. I’ll post the original schedule so you can see what you’ll be missing out on and what you might still get to hear. I hope to run the cancelled readings next year at approximately the same time. Thanks again for your support, all the best, Geoff

23.01.2022 Congratulations to those manuscripts selected for 2021. Another big year ahead.

20.01.2022 Poetry at Beyond Q: The next reading is on Wed Mar 11 at 7 It will feature a tribute reading for Gwen Harwood’s centenary by three well-known local poets, P.S. Cotter, Penelope Layland and Russell Erwin. The main reader (in the second half) will be Jessica L. Wilkinson from Melbourne. See below. Thanks to those of you who attended the first reading of the year at Beyond Q bookshop on Wed Feb 12. Simon Maddox, the owner of Beyond Q bookshop, has assured me that the sound prob...lems we had from the kitchen last time will be solved by then. For those of you who haven’t been yet I’ll point out that Beyond Q is esentially an ideal venue for poetry. It has cabaret seating, the opportunity to eat inexpensively beforehand at the same tables we listen from and an in-built sound system. There will be a more restricted menu from now on featuring only dishes which can be prepared quickly and noiselessly. Orders at the kitchen will close 15 mins before the reading begins and we’ll aim to have dishes cleared before the reading begins. The mains are still only $15, You can BYO at a ‘corkage' of $5 a bottle. Non-alcoholic drinks can be purchased, including coffee though not during the performance. Beyond Q is in Weston Arcade,11 Brierly Street, Weston. There is plenty of parking behind the venue as well on Brierly Street. I look forward to seeing you there. There is no need to book but it would cheer me up if some of you let me know - Geoff Jessica L. Wilkinson is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, and the founding editor of RABBIT: a journal for nonfiction poetry. Born in 1982 in country Victoria, Australia, she holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of Melbourne and has published three books of poetry: marionette: a biography of miss marion davies (Vagabond Press, 2012), which was shortlisted for the 2014 Kenneth Slessor Prize, Suite for Percy Grainger (Vagabond Press, 2014) and Music made visible: a biography of George Balanchine. In the growing field of 'poetic biography', Wilkinson is both a pioneer and innovator. Her three full-length collections take as their subject matter the historic twentieth-century figures of film actress Marion Davies, the musician and composer Percy Grainger and the choreographer, George Balanchine. As Wilkinson shows, the wall between history and imagination is often porous; apparitions frequently cross, slippages occur. These crossings and slippages, these transgressions of the boundary between 'fiction' and 'non-fiction', and their consequences for notions of objective truth and absolute knowledge, are what animate and drive these texts. For Wilkinson, who brings to her work the creative and critical sensibilities of both poet and scholar, it is not enough to ask who and what, but also, and often more importantly, how and why.

19.01.2022 K.A. (Kerrie) NELSON, SHANE STRANGE AND MICHAEL SHARKEY are reading on WED NOV 13 AT 7 PM (Graduate Lounge, University House) K A Nelson began writing fulltime in 2011 after winning the Judith Wright Poetry Prize. She has been widely published, shortlisted and anthologised since then. Her first collection, Inlandia, was published by Recent Work Press in 2018. Shane Strange is publisher at Recent Work Press, and Festival Director of the Poetry on the Move festival in 2018 and... 2019. He has worked at the International Poetry Studies Institute at the University of Canberra and is part of the organising commitee of That Poetry Thing - a regular reading at Smith's Alternative. He’s also a lively presenter of his own work. Michael Sharkey lives in Central Victoria. He has written and published poems, reviews and biography. He edited the Australian Poetry Journal from 2014-16. In 2018, he edited Many Such as She, an anthology of poems written during and after World War I by twenty-five women poets in Victoria. The poems are accompanied by brief biographies of the authors. Bookings via [email protected] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-sharkey

19.01.2022 Introducing our other featured reader for Mon 24 Aug, Saba Vasefi. Saba is a multi-award winning journalist, academic, poet and filmmaker. Her poems have appear...ed in a variety of journals including Transnational Literature, Wasafiri Magazine of International Contemporary Writing (UK)and Australian Poetry Journal. She is the recipient of NSW Premier's Multicultural Medals in Art and Culture, an Honorary Brave Rising Star Award for her courageous writing on the gendered impacts of seeking asylum, and The National Council of Women Award for her academic research. She is pursuing a PhD in exilic feminist cinema studies, teaches at Macquarie University, and writes for The Guardian on the rhetoric of displacement and narrative of refugees incarcerated in the Australian detention regime. Here's a sample of Saba's work to get you excited for Monday: her powerful poem 'The Portable Home', commissioned by Red Room Poetry earlier this year. https://redroomcompany.org/poem/saba-vasefi/portable-home/

19.01.2022 GET OUT YOUR DIARY for the later readings this year: Mon May 10 Judith Beveridge (Syd) + Sarah Rice Mon Jun 7 Bronwyn Lea (Bris) + Subhash Jaireth Mon Jul 5 Alex Skovron (Melb) + Paul Hetherington Mon Aug 2 Jennifer Harrison (Melb) + Jen Webb... Mon Sep 6 David Mason (US/ Tas) + Lesley Lebkowicz Mon Oct 4 Stephen Edgar (Syd) + Melinda Smith Mon Nov 1 Alan Wearne (Melb) + Paul Magee Mon Dec 6 Dennis Haskell/Annamaria Weldon (Perth) + Lizz Murphy Admission: $10 waged, $5 unwaged, paid with online booking or collected in cash if venue not already full just before the reading starts at 7.00 p.m. at Smiths Alternative Bookshop 76 Alinga St Civic (Melbourne Building). Max 48 people. Bookings with online payment via https://www.smithsalternative.com . Readings start at 7pm and will finish by 9pm at the latest. There is no open mic. See more

19.01.2022 Judith Beveridge + Sarah Rice on Monday next: 10 May The next in Geoff's monthly readings will feature Judith Beveridge from Sydney and Canberra's Sarah Rice. Judith Beveridge is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Sun Music: New and Selected Poems which won the 2019 Prime Minister’s poetry prize. She has also been awarded the Christopher Brennan and Philip Hodgins Memorial Medals for excellence in Literature. She was poetry editor for Meanjin from 2005-...2016. Her work has been studied in schools and universities and has been translated into several languages. Sarah Rice is a widely published Canberra poet and visual artist interested in the intersection between word and image. Her poetry collection Fingertip of the Tongue (UWAP) was shortlisted in the ACT Publishing Awards. Sarah won the inaugural Ron Pretty Poetry Award, the Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize, and co-won the International Writing Ventures, and Gwen Harwood Poetry Prizes. Sarah was shortlisted in the Montreal, Tom Howard, Drake-Brockman, CJ Dennis, New Millennium, Fish, Axel Clark, Michael Thwaites, and Overland poetry awards, amongst others. Entry $10 / $5. ONLINE BOOKINGS VIA SMITHS ALTERNATIVE CALENDAR RECOMMENDED See more

18.01.2022 GEOFF’S POETRY AT SMITHS MON SEP 7 JENNIFER HARRISON (MELB) and OODGEROO NOONUCCAL CENTENARY TRIBUTE... with readings from her work by poets K.A. Nelson, Judith Nangala Crispin and Paul Collis (Introduced fly Geoff Page and MC’d by Martin Dolan) Jennifer Harrison (born 1955) published Michelangelo's Prisoners in 1994, She lives in Melbourne and is employed as a child psychiatrist. Her books include: Mosaics & Mirrors: Composite poems. (Black Pepper publishing, 1995) Cabramatta/Cudmirrah. (Black Pepper publishing, 1996) Dear B. (Black Pepper publishing, 1998) Folly & Grief. (Black Pepper publishing, 2006) REVIEW REVIEW Colombine, New & Selected Poems. (Black Pepper publishing, 2010) Anywhy Black Pepper publishing, 2018 With Kate Waterhouse, Motherlode; Australian Women's Poetry 1986-2008. (Puncher & Wattmann, 2009) ISBN 978-1-921450-16-7 Oodgeroo Noonuccal (originally Kath Walker) 1920-1993 was the first Australian Indigenous writer to publish a book of poetry (We Are Going (1964). Like her friend, Judith Wright, Oodgeroo was an activist as well as a writer. At this distance we can see her work is not only political but also an important part of a generation of Australian poets which included Gwen Harwood (1920-95) Rosemary Dobson (1920-2012) and Dorothy Hewett (1923-2002). She once described her own work as sloganistic, civil rightish, plain and simple but, as this reading will show, it was also much more than this. All three readers on this tribute program, K.A. Nelson, Judith Nangala Crispin and Paul Collis, have strong connections with Aboriginal people. Paul is a Barkindji man from the Darling River whose first novel, Dancing Home, won the David Unaipon Prize in 2016. ZOOM LOGIN DETAILS Topic: That Poetry Zoom 7 Sep Time: Sep 7, 2020 06:30 PM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney Join Zoom Meeting https://www.smithsalternative.com/e/that-poetry-thing-69369 Meeting ID: 883 1874 8137 Geoff Page

17.01.2022 Saba Vasefi + Geoff Page Acclaimed poet, film-maker and activist Saba Vasefi will join us via Zoom from Sydney, while the multi-award winning poet and critic Geoff Page joins us (at 7pm) to launch his new bilingual Mandarin-English book of selected poems, Codicil (Flying Islands Press). Three poems from Codicil will also be read in their Mandarin translation by Stephen Huang. Presented by the Where You Are Festival with the support of the ACT Government.... -------- Topic: That Poetry Zoom 24 Aug Time: Aug 24, 2020 06:30 PM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83181921017 https://www.swf.org.au/writers/saba-vasefi/

17.01.2022 Geoff’s Poetry at Smiths 2020 on ZOOM Mon Aug 3 MIKE LADD (Adelaide) + Anita Patel & Andrew McDonald Mon Sep 7 JENNIFER HARRISON (MELB)+ Oodgeroo Noonuccal Centenary (K.A. Nelson, Judith... Crispin & Paul Collis) Mon Oct 5 LISA BROCKWELL (Northern NSW) + Moya Pacey & Adrian Caesar Mon Nov 9 (second Mon) CASSANDRA ATHERTON (MELB) + Victoria McGrath Mon Dec 7 PHILIP NEILSEN (Brisbane) + Mark O’Connor & Maggie Shapley Physical Admission: $10 waged, $5 unwaged (20 people only, paid online in advance via Smiths Alternative Calendar) 7.00 p.m. at Smiths Alternative Bookshop 76 Alinga St Civic (Melbourne Building). https://www.smithsalternative.com/performance-information-1 Zoom readings will start at 7pm and will finish by 9pm at the latest. Log on information will be sent shortly beforehand. Technical enquiries to [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/groups/1694111874134524/

16.01.2022 Poetry at the House final reading for 2019: Robyn Rowland (Torquay, Vic/Ireland), Paul Cliff (CBR) and Kathy Kituai (CBR). All are lively readers of their own work. Don’t be distracted by rival attractions of less substance! Robyn Rowland is a dual citizen of Ireland and Australia. Her most recent books are Mosaics from the Map (Doire Press), Line of Drift (Doire Press) and This Intimate War Gallipoli/Çanakkale 1915 (Five Islands Press). The latter also has an en face transl...ation in Turkish by Mehmet Ali Çelikel. Paul Cliff is a Canberra poet and editor. His most recent books are A Constellation of Abnormalities (Puncher & Wattmann, 2017), which won an ACT Publishing Award in 2018, and Canberra Light (Recent Works Press, 2019). Kathy Kituai is a diarist, poet, editor and facilitator of Limestone Tanka Poets. She has published five collections of tanka (most notably Deep in the Valley of Tea Bowls (IP 2015) as well as three free verse collection. Her poetry has been published in Japan, UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand, Scotland and Australia. Fellows Lounge in University House at 7pm on Wed Dec 11. Admission $10/$5conc. Bookings at [email protected] but you can also just rock up with impunity. Food available from 5.30 at the brasserie. The reading finishes at 9. *http://robynrowland.com/

15.01.2022 Reminder about tomorrow night's exciting event. More details will be posted.

15.01.2022 Message from Geoff: Hello, I’m just letting you know that I’ve accepted the kind and timely offer of That Poetry Thing at Smiths to join their program for the rest of the year on what is normally the first Monday of the month ie. Aug 3, Sep 7, Oct 6, Nov 9 and Dec 7 Because of Covid-19 the program will mainly be on Zoom. We’ll post the details you need in order to log on a few days beforehand as they come to me from that Poetry Thing at Smiths. Watch this space and set asid...e those Mondays at 7pm. The schedule for the rest of the year is posted separately. As you’ll see there have been some changes from the earlier one. Understandably, not every poet wants to Zoom. I hope those poets who declined the offer to Zoom can be on the schedule for a live reading next year when (hopefully) the virus will (perhaps) be less concerning. There’ll be no open mic (unlike other events at That Poetry Thing). The interstate poets will perform via Zoom. Some Canberra-based poets will perform live from Smiths Alternative (such as Anita Patel and Andrew McDonald on Aug 3), others prefer to use Zoom. For those who would like to be physically present at Smiths, there will be space for up to 20 people, with appropriate physical distancing. Details of how to book for Smiths ($10 entry by credit card only) will be circulated before each event. I’d like to thank Simon Maddox too for his hospitality at Beyond Q which has now, alas, gone out of business and the string of other venue owners all the way back to Cafe Neruda in 1994! All the best, Geoff https://www.smithsalternative.com/performance-information-1

13.01.2022 This afternoon at Poet's Corner:

10.01.2022 Melinda Smith and Owen Bullock are reading with Mark Tredinnick at Poetry at the House (University House, Acton) this coming Wednesday 9 October. 7pm, come early to eat, Fellowes Bar. See post below for more details.

09.01.2022 Poetry at Smiths tomorrow Here are details of the first night of the series’ new Zoom program on Monday 3 August from 7.00 pm. It will feature Mike Ladd (Zooming in from Adelaide), as well as Anita Patel and Andrew McDonald (live at Smiths Alternative and on the web through Zoom). Mike Ladd ran Poetica on ABC Radio National for two decades. He has published nine collections of poetry and prose and has experimented with poetry as video, in street installations, and in live per...formance with musicians. Anita Patel’s collection, A Common Garment (Recent Work Press), was published in 2019. Her work has been published widely. Andrew McDonald is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Night Music (2017). Forthcoming are prose writings in Glossary, and poems in And Now This. For those who would like to turn up to Smiths Alternative (76 Alinga St Civic) and see Anita and Andrew live (and Mike on a big screen), limited bookings are available online at Smiths Alternative (click on the highlighted text): $10 waged, $5 unwaged. It will all be Covid-safe - hence the limited numbers. For everyone else who is interested, you can join us through Zoom by clicking on https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86183574272 The Smiths booking link is: https://www.smithsalternative.com//geoff-page-presents-693 If you have already got Zoom set up, the link should let you join from 6.30 on on Monday night. Otherwise the link will prompt you to set up Zoom on your system. Any further technical questions could be addressed to [email protected] That Poetry Thing at Smiths will be running their own program on every other Mon of the month. PS Thanks again to our sponsors Smiths Alternative, Collaery Lawyers, University of Canberra and Kosciuszko Wines

08.01.2022 Our poets for this coming Wed 12 Feb, 7pm at Beyond Q, Weston: Steve Evans teaches in writing craft and literature courses at Flinders University, Bonetown (1994), his third collection, was shortlisted for the John Bray Poetry Award in the 1996 and he has won numerous other awards. Luminous Fruit and a selected works, Useful Translations, were released in 2003. His sixth collection, Taking Shape, was launched at Adelaide Writers’ Week. He has recently published a collection o...f short stories Easy Money (Serum Press) and will have another poetry collection later this year. Sarah St Vincent Welch is a Canberra based writer, editor, writing teacher, and image maker, known for her short fiction about the lives of women and girls. In 2016 she wrote a poem a day for Project 366, an international poem-centric online project by poets, visual artists and translators. She has worked with writers living with disability and mental illness and facilitates community creative writing projects. She has lectured and tutored at the University of Canberra. Her heart belongs to two cities, and she has worked on novels based in both Sydney and Canberra. Open is her first book Luke Whitington has travelled extensively and has been published in Dublin journals, anthologies and the Irish media, as well as in Australian journals and anthologies, including Australian Love Poems 2013 and The House is Not Quiet and the World is Not Calm (2014). He has read his love poems in Florence with Sarina Rausa, a lead soprano with the Florence opera company, singing her arrangements of his poetry. Luke divides his time between Italy and his cattle farm near Braidwood. His recent collection is Of Figs & Prosciutto (Ginninderra Press). Catch a meal beforehand around 6 at the Beyond Q cafe.

06.01.2022 Our readers for Rosemary's Corner (L-R): Geoff Page, Sarah St Vincent Welch, Suzanne Edgar, Caren Florance, Lesley Lebkovicz, Melinda Smith and Maggie Shapley

03.01.2022 Special message from Geoff for Feb 12 2020: Sadly, University House (which treated us handsomely) has had to close for several months owing to hail damage and its need for renovations. Happily, Simon Madox, owner of the Beyond Q Bookshop in Weston Creek, has offered to accommodate us in the meantime. In many ways, Beyond Q is an ideal venue for poetry. It has cabaret seating, the opportunity to eat inexpensively beforehand at the same tables we listen from and an in-built sou...nd system. It can accommodate us comfortably and I recommend many of us eat there on the night to show our gratitude (and save money the mains are only $15), We can BYO at a ‘corkage' of $5 a bottle. Non-alcoholic drinks can be purchased, including coffee (of which they are very proud). The address is Weston Arcade,11 Brierly Street, Weston. There is plenty of parking behind the venue as well on Brierly Street. Weston Creek is really quite close to northern Canberra via various expressways etc. Do not be deterred. I look forward to seeing you there. There is no need to book but it would cheer me up if some of you let me know you’re coming. The first reading is on Wed Feb 12 and will feature Steve Evans (Adelaide) plus Sarah St Vincent Welch (Canberra) and Luke Whitington (Braidwood) PLEASE SHARE! All the best Geoff See more

03.01.2022 'To End All Wars' anthology reading next Monday Oct 7. K A Nelson reading. Since winning the Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets in 2010 K A N...elson has published her work widely in Australia and had poems anthologised several times. Recent Work Press published her first collection, 'Inlandia' in 2018. Read the beginning of prize winning 'Chorus of Crows,' here and click on the link to read the rest. When she saw Top Camp (humpies made of corrugated iron/slabs of bark people and dogs living together children discharge running from nostrils/ears like sewage seeping from the broken pipes next door) she didn’t wince. She learnt to overlook the rubbish caught on broken fences blown by westerlies that brought the dust and the haunting sound of crows through every crack. https://overland.org.au/previous-i//prize-poem-k-a-nelson/

02.01.2022 Our first two poets - on the screen and in the flesh: Anita Patel and Andrew McDonald