A 'ginko' is a Japanese word for a walk in a natural environment in which one writes poetry. Join poet, editor and educator Matt Hetherington as he takes you on a stroll around Bribie Island, showing you how observing details and writing the short-form poetry called ‘haiku’ can improve your craft. Whatever genre you write in, you will gain insight into the power of noticing what is most closely around you, and how the smallest things are often the most telling.
Matt Hetherington has been writing poetry and haiku for over 25 years, and has been an editor and teacher of creative writing and editor for over a decade. He has published three collections of poetry, and his work has been widely anthologised. He was co-editor of the Australian section of the first World Haiku Anthology, and has worked for the Australian Haiku Society for the last 15 years.
Please note: bookings are essential for this seminar. Places can be booked through Write Around Moreton Bay.
1 day ago ... C. K. Williams in Princeton, N.J., in 2005. He won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Credit Laura Pedrick for The New York Times.
CK Williams, Official Web Site. ... PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY PUBLISHED BOOKS CONTACT C.K. WILLIAMS. CK_Screen2; CK_Screen1; CK_Screen3; Screen4.
TWISTED FICTION Competition Closing Soon!
This is your final reminder for submissions to the Geelong Writers Inc. current writing competition.
And here are the rules again, just to help you to move from the couch to the computer, and get your TWISTY FICTION story in before the end of this month, that’s only four (4) daze away. Don’t be in a daze.
DUE – September 30th, 2015.
All stories selected will be offered publication in the 2015 anthology. Some light editing may be applied.
Only 1 submission per author.
Fiction of any genre e.g. science fiction, contemporary, historical, romance.
Suitable for any age group e.g. children, young adult, adult.
The story must include a twist of events in some way.
Please consider the wider audience to ensure your submission is appropriate and not offensive in any way.
Microsoft Word submission must not have any identifying features apart from the title.
Separate attachment for contact details page including email, address and phone number.
OPTIONAL - 120 word Biography included on contact details page. To be published in anthology if selected..
1500 words or as close to as possible. DO NOT GO OVER. You will void your submission!
Word count does not include the title.
Thanks for this one, Vic Bussey.
Who was Lady Day's true friend?
The submission deadline is approaching.
The Margaret River Press annual Short Story Competition is now open!
All writers, both emerging and established, are invited to submit a short story in a theme of their choosing. There is no minimum word count; however, there is a maximum count of 3,000.
This is a great opportunity as both shortlisted and winning short stories will be published in print and electronic format! The winning story will also be publishing as a feature in their annual collection, to be edited by Laurie Steed. Prizes also include cash, tickets to attend the launch of the collection and two weeks residency in Margaret River.
Entries close 14th of October 2015.
The story as attachment in "Word' without your name etc.
Separate attachment for contact details page including name, email, address and phone number and Author Biography of about 100 words (see note below).
Melissa, the Anthology, Editor wants a 1500 word limit for the Anthology as that allows more stories to be published and is reader friendly.
So for competition limit is 1500 words!
See how you fair with other Englishes - even your own!
After dark, as the poet wanders the streets of his city, incognito, observing everything—the crowded cafes and glimmering boulevards, the radiant windows and shadowy stairwells, the theatre queues, the barrow boys, the buskers, the organ-grinder at the pavement’s edge—by an act of the imagination he can magnify an aspect of himself or be another. Like a drifting soul in search of a body, the poet, whenever he chooses, enters the lives and characters of those around him.
About 20 years ago, as an aspiring Australian writer, I received a fellowship to attend a writer's colony situated near Saratoga Springs in upstate New York. The old mansion and surrounding bungalows known as Yaddo were established by American philanthropists over a century ago, as a sanctuary for writers and poets to press ahead with their work. Soon after I arrived I met a young poet called Elizabeth.
From time to time, readings from works in progress were held in the sitting room of the old, almost gothic mansion at Yaddo. I can recall Elizabeth reading some poems at a gathering of that kind. It was a friendly occasion but as there were only a handful of people in the room, I was soon reminded of similar readings in Australia - tiny gatherings where poets presented their wares to a small but dedicated coterie.
I have a photograph of Elizabeth reading at a microphone in an open sided marquee at Treasure Beach, Jamaica, with a glimpse of palm trees and turquoise sea in the background. I can well remember the smell of jerk chicken in the air and the throb of marimba drums from Jake's Hut nearby where most of the visiting writers were staying. The audience for Elizabeth’s reading was larger than at Yaddo, but still not very large.
I next saw Elizabeth a few years later. It was about 3 am on a Wednesday morning. I was in pyjamas at the time. From my home in Perth, like many others, I had tuned in to see the newly-elected President of the United States, Barak Obama, take the oath of office. After he had spoken, a reading was given by Elizabeth Alexander, Professor of African American Studies at Yale University. Elizabeth, the little known poet I had seen reading in an almost deserted sitting room at Yaddo, then in a tent near Jake's Hut in Jamaica, was now standing on a stage outside the Capitol building in Washington DC. She was reading her work to a world wide television audience of countless millions.
She and her fellow poets on that day turned inevitably to the themes that have always been of interest to a general audience – birth and death, love and passion, and a preoccupation with the past, for when we love life, we love the past, because the past is that much of the present which has survived in human memory. In Elizabeth’s case the outsider had moved inwards and momentarily come close enough to the centre of things to be influential, to mark the beginning of a new era, to shape the tone of times to come. But the duality in a poet’s nature and the timeless themes I mentioned a moment ago are always there, and they can have the opposite effect. As the end approaches, a poet who has been close to the centre of things may finish up on the margins, in a kind of exile, as yet again he or she dwells upon the past and a love of life. This brings me to the work of a contemporary Australian poet who worked in every corner of the literary world and found his way eventually to the centre of things—Clive James. Tonight is a fitting occasion to honour a great Australian writer who is now, by his own admission, very close to the end after a long and debilitating illness.
Hampstead Heath was a slush curry of dead leaves but lent itself to the creative meanderings of young writers … On a park bench, padded with newspapers, I sat shivering while a new kind of poem formed in my notebook. It was a poem I could understand. Until then most of my poems had been incomprehensible. Now they were becoming comprehensible, a transformation that would have allowed me to detect their sentimentality if they had not been so true to my feelings, which were sentimental.
But now, in recent years, having been right at the centre of things—critic, novelist, TV personality—Clive James has come back to poetry. The elegiac works in his recent book, Sentenced to Life, are particularly memorable as he reflects upon mortality and—to paraphrase T. S. Eliot—dwells upon things ill-done and done to others harm which once one took for exercise of virtue.
They all stretch out their hands to me: but they are too far away!
Nicholas Hasluck’s latest novel Rooms in the City (Australian Scholarly Publishing) concerns an Australian-born poet Robert Kaub who is recruited to an espionage unit in Athens during the Gallipoli campaign. His first published poem was in Westerly 9:1 in 1964.
Pixie Burke (nee Hale) passed away peacefully last night around midnight Perth time. Miles and Alice were by her side, and Charlie has flown from Hong Kong today to be with them. Look to The West Australian in coming days for funeral arrangements.
As she went through the Pearly Gates, St Peter said, Take those taps off! There'll be no tap-dancing on clouds!
In partnership with Brisbane Square Library, Queensland Poetry Festival's Co-Director David Stavanger presents two dynamic voices in this monthly performance & poetry event.
September is a very special COUPLET as it is co-presented with Brisbane Writers Festival and features an interstate and international guest, Andy Jackson (Melb) and Ivy Alvarez (NZ).