Friday, May 27, 2011

May 2011

This is what one happy customer - Josie - had to say about the May reading with Andy Jackson and Marian Spires:

Thank you so much for yesterday - an absolute triumph. My friend Bev and I will be there again - our treat to selves once a month! I was a little too bold reading yesterday given the quality of so many others, but as I said to Bev on the way home - it is an inspiration to write more! My preference is prose, but we'll see. Your singing was extraordinary and Marian's work... well it was to be expected... just *wonderful*. As were so many of the other readers' works. What a wonderful thing to find that we have this so locally! 


Thanks Josie.

Thanks too, to Andy, who was feeling less than well on the day, but came along to read anyway. You're a star. So glad you did!

NOTE EVERYONE
Next month we're going to start at 2.30pm. Our cafe, it seems, is becoming more popular with the local lunchtime set who love a chinwag with their nosh. Make a note now so you don't forget.










Sunday, May 1, 2011

Andy Jackson and Marian Spires

The next Stopping all Stations event will take place on Saturday May 21 with Andy Jackson and Marian Spires. As always we'll have an open section where you can read whatever you like as long as you can do it in less than five minutes! And of course there will be LUCKY DOOR PRIZES.

Put the date in your diary now.

Marian Spires is a poet, writer and teacher who explores the internal landscapes of personal and cultural myths with concrete language. She has performed her poetry on radio, television, at festivals and featured at poetry events. Her first collection, red angels rising, was published by Woorilla (2004).

In 2009, she won the Melbourne Writers Festival Poetry Idol Award and used her prize money to travel to Europe to view the original canvases and walk the landscapes where Vincent van Gogh painted. Her verse novel about van Gogh called Knowing Vincent (Picaro Press) was launched at the 2010 Melbourne Writers Festival.

Andy Jackson's poetry explores the emotional, cultural and political dimensions of embodiment and identity, and has been published in many print and on-line journals, including Heat, Going Down Swinging, Island, Blue Dog, Mascara and Stylus.  He has performed at the Australian Poetry Festival in Sydney, Queensland Poetry Festival, and the Newcastle Young Writers Festival.  His poem Secessionist won the 2008 Arts ACT Rosemary Dobson Award for an Unpublished Poem.  He was an Emerging Writer in Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in Perth in 2010, and he is currently the Librarian for Australian Poetry and the co-convenor of the La Mama Poetica series of readings.  His first full-length collection of poems – Among the Regulars  - was published by papertiger media in 2010.  This year, he will be an Asialink resident at the University of Madras in Chennai, India.