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.

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.

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.