September 2011

Our September event provided a wonderful afternoon of poetry with Michelle Leber and Vicki Thorton featuring. The open section also offered an amazing array of talented readers.

Vicki Thornton and Michelle Leber

This month Saturday September 17 at 2.30pm we have another fantastic line-up with Michelle Leber and Vicki Thornton our featured readers.

Vicki Thornton is a writer of fiction, non fiction and poetry, and lives in the Dandenong Ranges. She has four children’s readers (Thomson Nelson and Oxford University Press) and the Last Days of Summer (Ginninderra Press), her short story collection, was published in 2007. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications including Divan, Page Seventeen, Tamba, Poetrix and Polestar. She is proud to have a poem in the AP Dear Dad anthology, now in it’s 2nd edition.

Michelle Leber is a coastal poet living close to the beaches of Port Philip Bay, with a special interest in myth, birdlife, botany, habitat and art. She was born to Slovenian parents who had migrated to Australia, has been involved in the Melbourne poetry community for over 20 years and in recent years has performed her work locally and interstate. Her poetry has been published in newspapers, journals and anthologies, including in The Best Australian Poems series in 2009 and 2010; it has been showcased as electronic banner text at Federation Square and has travelled on trains (under the Moving Galleries project). Her poem about the artist Ellis Rowan was commended in the Rosemary Dobson Prize. In 2009, Michelle received a writing residency at the Varuna Writers’ House in the Blue Mountains of NSW, and in 2010 she became one of four poets published by the Australian Poetry Centre. There were over 200 attendees at the launch of her first poetry collection, The Weeping Grass. 

August

Everyone who attended the August event was treated to a feast of poetry as Robyn Rowland - who dragged herself out of her sick-bed to be with us - read from her latest collection, Seasons of doubt and burning: New and Selected Poems. Our open readers provided a richness and diversity you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere. A great afternoon indeed.

Next month, Saturday September 17, our features will be Michelle Leber and Vicki Thornton.

Robyn Rowland

Stopping all Stations is back on track for our August event with guest feature Robyn Rowland. Put Saturday August 20 in your diaries now as this is definitely one you don't want to miss!

 
Robyn Rowland is third generation Irish-Australian, and has also been reading and teaching in Ireland for 28 years, where she lives part-time in Connemara. She has published seven books of poetry. Silence & its tongues (Five Islands Press, 2006) was runner up for the 2007 ACT Minister’s Judith Wright Poetry Prize. Her new collection Seasons of doubt & burning: New & Selected Poems (Five Islands Press, 2010) covers almost 40 years of publishing. These poems show growth from open simplicity to a rich, resonant maturity. Their hallmark is deep honesty and emotional accessibility.

‘Her poems are richly wrought, sensuous, full of passion and restraint. They're luminous and earthy at the same time and open the reader's ear to hear the silence of the lost. In these difficult times, she's the poet I'm looking for: 'an angel she could be, or hope in flight'.  Lorna Crozier, Canada

'In this passionate volume, Robyn Rowland’s sensuous imagery is crafted by a fine intellect; the music of her lines vibrates in the memory’. '   Robert Adamson, Australia

Robyn’s work has been awarded a number of prizes. She has read her poetry in Portugal, Ireland, the UK, the USA, Greece, Austria, Bosnia, Serbia, Turkey and Italy, where, along with Canada and Japan, she has been published. Her poetry featured often on Australian national radio’s Poetica and The Spirit of Things. Robyn is known for her moving readings, available on her CDs, Off the tongue and Silver Leaving - Poems & Harp.

John  Nettles, the BBC actor (Midsomer Murders and Bergerac), who recorded Sir John Betjeman, has named Robyn as ‘among the first rank of poets’, impressed ‘by her use of language, control of verse and wonderful delivery’. Her accent, he said, ‘gives an added piquancy to her delivery’ and the poetry is ‘extraordinarily moving, wonderfully insightful’ with ‘a control of language I haven’t come across since, well, TS Eliot. Like Dylan Thomas and Betjeman, you have to hear her yourself. She is the voice.’

An Honorary Fellow, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Robyn was Deputy Chair of the Board of the Australian Poetry Centre (2007-2008). Previously Professor of Social Inquiry and Women’s Studies at Deakin University, she retired in 1996 after breast cancer and burnout. She was made an Officer in the Order of Australia for her contribution to higher education and women's health in 1996.

NO event in July!

Just a reminder, everyone, that there is NO event this month.

Extra time to come up with something to read in the open section in August when Robyn Rowland will be featuring!

Happy writing.

Carole

June 2011

Here's some snapshots from our June event with feature readers John Jenkins and Ray Liversidge. Thanks to all the open readers who helped make the afternoon so successful. Lovely to have my old school friend, (old as in long ago!) Ursula, visiting all the way from Mallorca. She's pictured trying very hard to pick her own ticket number for the lucky door prize. Which she did. And you can see she didn't cheat!

AND notice Ray and I wore matching boots for the occasion!

(Sorry, Alex, no photo of you this time as you had your eyes firmly shut.)

REMEMBER NO EVENT IN JULY.

Robyn Rowland  August 20.

John Jenkins and Ray Liversidge

Time to put Saturday June 18 in your diary for the next Stopping all Stations event. Don't forget we are starting half an hour later this time in the hope that some of the cafe's regular lunchtime clientele will have finished their noisy noshing on (thanks MM).

See you at 2.30pm for John Jenkins and Ray Liversidge.

John Jenkins lives in Kangaroo Ground, at the edge of the Yarra Valley. He has written, co-written or edited 23 books. He has won the international James Joyce Foundation Suspended Sentence Award (2004) and the National Shoalhaven/Artsrush Prize for Poetry. His verse novel, A Break in the Weather was short-listed for the FAW Christina Stead Award. His most recent book, Growing Up with Mr Menzies was named in Australian Book Review as her poetry book of the year by Morag Fraser. John has co-edited anthologies of short fiction, The Outback Reader, and Soft Lounges and published a collection of his travel stories, Travelers’ Tales of Old Cuba.

 Ray Liversidge has written two books of poetry, Obeying the Call and The Barrier Range. In 2010 his poems appeared in Triptych Poets: Issue One and his chapbook The Divorce Papers was also published. His verse novel The Barrier Range was adapted for stage and performed as Seeking Fabled Waters at the 2010 Melbourne Writers Festival. He was also a guest at the 2010 Tasmanian Poetry Festival. He is the winner of the 2010 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize. A new book of poems based on the lives of dead poets will be published either later this year or in early 2012. Ray has his own website at www.poetray.wordpress.com.