Poetry Workshops with Wakefield Press

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Poetry lovers join us for two consecutive Sundays of poetry in the beautiful book-lined offices of Wakefield Press.

In week one, Jude Aquilina will provide an introduction to writing poetry, followed by Rachael Mead who will immerse you in landscape and writing about place. The following week, Sharon Kernot will take you into the world of verse novels and Mike Ladd will show you how to edit your poetry.

Places are limited to 12 participants, and the cost is $200 for four workshops, across two full days: Sunday 10 February and Sunday 17 February 2019.

Email Gary at publisher@garronpublishing.com for bookings and inquiries.

Ling Toong Reviews Jones & Hamlyn

In Jill Jones’s collection, The Quality of Light and Other Poems, ageing, mortality and memory are intensely private experiences that expand like ‘the nerve system of creeks leading into / the Torrens, or the oily wash / of Sydney Harbour’ to planetary dimensions, enfolding animals, city roads, streets, flowers, plants, bees, the skies and the galaxy into the rich particulars of its vast realm. Jones’s superb collection reinvigorates poetry as a quality of illumination amidst all kinds of opacity, sparking affective and rhythmic conversations between literature, politics, ecology and cosmology. Her poetry engages and enacts what T S Eliot called the ‘auditory imagination’, ‘the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling’. Deftly elliptical, suggestively insistent, and exuberantly introspective, The Quality of Light articulates the pleasurably enigmatic rhythms, tones and cadence of urban and modern existence.

Cary Hamlyn’s second collection, Ultrasound in B-Flat and Other Poems, sketches everyday sightings, objects and experiences; to name a few, the eponymous ultrasound, a lovers’ quarrel, a Burmese train journey, Siamese fighting fish, a dying pelican, sunflowers, night. The stand-out piece in the collection for me was ‘Rozelle Boarding House for Sailors’, which cleverly engages the conspiratorial atmosphere and architecture of the haunted boarding house to convey the sense of the resurrection, renovation and reclamation of histories through storytelling: ‘In each single room their lives unwind, / each a story spun within a story – / as if every old tragedy or joy / were reinvented by the next man,/their thousand lost ships/still silently listing under our beds.’ The story of masculinity here is a poignant and complex one; the voiceless anonymity of the lives of the drowned sailors distances and abets their poetic (re-) construction, thus carrying with it an expressively equivocal force…

http://cordite.org.au/reviews/toong-hamlyn-jones/

 

 

Cordite Review

‘Poems and chapbooks sometimes feel like relics of a past time. But these three books show just how alive, diverse, and thriving contemporary Australian poetry is, even in South Australia alone. Reading from these simple, affordable chapbooks reminded me that poetry can be for the masses and still be thought-provoking and boundary-pushing, especially when the books are written by poets who know what they are doing and where they want to take their readers.’

We were delighted to read Alex Kostas’ excellent review of Peter Goldsworthy’s ‘Anatomy of a Metaphor’, Jill Jones’ ‘The Quality of Light’, and Heather Taylor-Johnson’s ‘Thump’. Thank you Alex and Cordite Poetry Review.

You can read the full article here…

 http://cordite.org.au/reviews/kostas-goldsworthy-jones-johnson/

 

 

Review of Cartoon Snow

Wonderful review of Aidan Coleman’s Cartoon Snow by Alexis Lateef in Cordite Poetry Review. “Coleman has not lost his touch for singular metaphors. As he deconstructs the role of such metaphors in this exceptional chapbook, these poems invite us to question our perceptions of reality, heightening our understanding of what we often need the world to be, even if only as ‘tricks on paper’.”

http://cordite.org.au/reviews/lateef-coleman/

Aidan's Cover

 

Writers’ Week Poetry Reading

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As always, we’re looking forward to the poetry reading at Writers’ Week.

Each year Adelaide Writers’ Week hosts a poetry reading with Peter Goldsworthy. The event is intended to pay homage to the event’s long association with poets and to celebrate contemporary poetry.

This year’s poets include Manal Younus and Nelson Hedditch, and our chapbook poets Alison Flett, Rachael Mead and Rob Walker.

The readings will be followed by a book signing.

https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/…/writers…/poetryreading

 

The Quiet Blue World Review

Rachael's Chapbook Cover

A wonderful review of Rachael Mead’s The Quiet Blue World and Amanda Joy’s Snake Like Charms has been published in Cordite this week.

Pete Hay says of Rachael’s chapbook, ‘This is a fine small collection… one that does the chapbook format proud – tightly themed, resonant and democratically accessible.’

You can read the whole review here