Ruby Street

It's a busy November for me, as it turns out. As well as marking and administrivia stress outs, I'm dancing poetry around Australia, even in the current home town. First up, because it's confirmed, and it's, urrm, first up, I'll be reading in Adelaide at the first Lee Marvin reading for November alongside David Mortimer, Heather Taylor Johnson and the maestro, Ken Bolton himself. So, that's Tuesday 3rd, November at Dark Horsey, the usual 7.30pm for 8pm. The full Lee Marvin November program , a pretty tasty one for the beginning of the summer season, is as follows: November 3rd  Jill Jones  •  Heather Taylor Johnson  •  Ken Bolton  •  David Mortimer November 10th   Cath Kenneally  •  Naomi Horridge   •  Gretta Mitchell  •  Shannon Burns November 17th   Jelena Dinic   •  Mike Ladd  •  Alison Flett  •  Peter Goldsworthy November 24th   Francesca da Rimini...

One thing I have missed, and will miss, living here in Adelaide is the physical presence of poetry 'stuff', the talking, reading thing. I am surrounded by books of poems, in my office at home and my office at work but that's not quite enough, I am finding. There are poets on line. There are poets I know, a flight or two away. Poetry things, poetry 'stuff' happens here - quite obviously - but it does not seem to synch with my stuff, with how I get with poetry. This is not a criticism or, if it is, it is a self-criticism. In recent times I've been somewhere else to talk poetry (Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland) but can't, quite, get to what's here. I'm too much of an alien, an east-coast klutz, with no history here. I am in the midst of accepting that.

And as you may have picked up from the interview mentioned below, or other sources, Dark Bright Doors has gotten a shortlisting in the NSW Premiers Literary Awards for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize , along with quite an array of other Australian poetry books. The business is now in the lap of the gods but I will get across to Sydney to toast whatever happens with the other poets. To poetry!

Finally, the trans-Tasman digital bridge has been finished. Brought to you by the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre ( nzepc ), it is the culmination of two symposia, a call-out for work and a lot of organising behind the scenes. The Digital Bridge organisers, Pam Brown, Martin Edmond, Brian Flaherty and Michele Leggott, invited contributions to build a digital bridge between Auckland and Sydney as poetry symposia took place in each city in March and September 2010. Yours truly was there at both symposia. In June 2010 the first part of the bridge was launched which included more than 50 creative works, as well as a collaborative digital poem, audio from the Auckland Uni sessions and pix. The Auckland side of the bridge has now been joined to the Sydney side which contributes around 60 creative works, as well as another digital collaboration, as well as more audio talks, video readings, photos, and texts of papers and commentary. The organisers say: "We present here the ...

I'm off to Sydney tomorrow to take part in, and taste the harbour-side salt of, the Sydney Writers Festival . I'll be involved in the following events, so would be great to see any of you who'll be around, at one or more of them: Late Nights at Number One Thursday, 20 May 2010 9:30 - 11:30 pm At Number One Wine Bar , Goldfields House, 1 Alfred Street, Circular Quay, Sydney Enjoy a drink or bite and listen to Jill Jones, Lionel Fogarty and Pasha Malla read their poetry at the Quayside wine bar, Number One. Your host: Patrick Muhlen-Schulte. Poems To Share Friday, May 21 2010 6:00 - 7:30pm Heritage Pier, Upstairs Pier 2/3, Hickson Road Walsh Bay Eleven Australian poets – Kate Fagan, Lachlan Brown, Adam Aitken, Lindsay Tuggle, Greg McLaren, Elizabeth Allen, Fiona Wright, Joanne Burns, Judith Bishop, Andy Quan, Keri Glastonbury (plus a surprise guest - hint, hint) – come together to celebrate the work of the Red Room Company . The audience is seated at tables with poets, to hea...

Adam Aitken was at my Sydney launch and, lo and behold, has blogged some of his cool pics of the event. Thanks, Adam.

I’ll be back in Sydney this May for the following events at the Writers' Festival. 1. Poets Paint Words at the Wharf Paintings from the Newcastle Region Art Gallery and the poems they inspired will be projected in the Heritage Pier Cafe during Sydney Writers’ Festival. The poets include Robert Adamson, Judith Beveridge, Judith Bishop, Michael Brennan, Luke Davies, Kate Fagan, Michael Farrell, Jane Gibian, Keri Glastonbury, Robert Gray, Martin Harrison, Ivy Ireland, Jill Jones, John Kinsella, Anthony Lawrence, Kate Lilley, Peter Minter, Les Murray, Dorothy Porter, Jaya Savige, John Tranter and Mark Tredinnick. Paintings from the Newcastle Region Art Gallery collection include Arthur Boyd, John Brack, Grace Cossington Smith, Grace Crowley, William Dobell, Margaret Olley, John Olsen, Gloria Petyarre, Imants Tillers, Albert Tucker, Brett Whiteley and Fred Williams. Poets Paint Words is curated by Peter Minter and Lisa Slade, in conjunction with Sydney Writers’ Festival. When: Thursday,...

I'm off to Sydney next week for a few days, including the reading at The Loft (see post below). Maybe will catch up with folks - but also 'things to do while visiting home', archival and disposal. And touch-ness, of course. Last time Sydney looked strange, hills, valleys. And a kind of wetness. Too large and too small at the same time. I had to re-read it. Took me a day at least. (I said all that below, but I'm reminding myself, being someone in train.)

The Loft Readings present Jill Jones Kate Fagan Fiona Wright Thursday 13th November UTS Studio (NOT The Loft) 6.30for 7pm 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: berndt.sellheim [@] uts.edu.au The Loft Readings could not continue without the support of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, and generous funding from The Literature Board of The Australia Council for the Arts. Kate Fagan is a poet, songwriter and editor whose publications include The Long Moment (Salt), Thought’s Kilometre (Tolling Elves, UK) and return to a new physics (Vagabond). She is a former editor of the US-based journal of innovative poetry How2 . She is from one of Australia’s pre-eminent folk music families, The Fagans, and her album Diamond Wheel (MGM) won the National Film & ...

The future often seems like the past, but it isn't. I am leaving town soon. Tonight at the rise of the hill, the black sweep of a bat, the skreek. Now the wind is up, the chill is in. I feel that my bones are made of sandstone and mildew, that Sydney feeling. What will I make of the dry, and the desert? All around me is transport: trains, planes, dogs out walking. The past was never the future, something you can only earn. What have you forgotten, now you are seated and staring at your hands?

Sometimes it's easy to write while travelling, and sometimes it's hard. This time wasn't easy. I made some notes with the old pen and paper, but it was intermittent. And I blogged very little. That was partly due to relying on free hotel internet access, which usually blocked sites such as Blogger, having to deal with non-English keyboards, and waiting for other guests to finish their emails. Now I'm back and writing still seems hard. I do wonder what is going on, as I actually have a lot to do. I'm still slightly jetlagged. For the first day back Australia seemed too blue and sunny and green, the sky too high. Our garden was lushly overgrown and covered with purple jacaranda flowers. The money looked strange. Now it's wet and cold and tonight on the train there were two people speaking French and another lot speaking Hindi. That seemed more like it. I'll get slowly back into it.

Over the last day and a bit I've been thinking about the villages of Sydney. It's common to think of the urban spread as something either amorphous or monolithic, when it isn't. Inner city types sneer at the burbs and 'westies', certain people won't cross the Bridge either way and everyone else thinks North Shore and eastern suburbs types are up themselves. (I was born on the North Shore, in case you were wondering.) This is all partly because I have family on my mind. I was having dinner with friends last night over in Paddington - on the sports ground side, meaning we had to make our way through Sydney Swans supporters to get there (Swans won, by the way). At one stage of the evening we were speaking of Manly, a suburb I've never lived in but where my parents had a second-hand bookshop for many years, and which I managed on week days for quite a while. But one of my friends remembered it clearly. 'The Manly Book Exchange,' he said. Indeed. These da...