WESTERN AUSTRALIA: PERTH POETICA
I promised some news from Western Australia last time... and here’s something from the brilliantly named EMPOWA, Inc. (“emerging poets of Western Australia”), which is extraordinarily together. They even have a mission statement and a vision statement. Get this: “EMPOWA Inc will seek through the sharing of the poetic process to enable all people to experience a deeper articulation of their lives and the world in which we live: that we will seek to act in an atmosphere of mutual support, consideration, love and respect for one another and all those we work with and that we will seek to communicate with others though publishing, workshop development, performance and sharing our vision of what poetry can be.” What oft was thought but not written down in a public statement. For EMPOWA poets and events, check out the Poetry Downunder Web site.

EMPOWA got themselves together last year, and got some funding from Arts WA and the Community Arts Network so they could put on ten events they called Perth Poetica. They launched it in October… heavy clouds, sudden cold and rain slanting in from the west – not what they’d dreamed, especially as the venue they had chosen was the Soundshell at Stirk Park in Kalamunda. You’d reckon they’d be pretty safe with the weather… it had been the driest year on record in a town that is green enough, but not your sub-tropical lush number.

Poets and poetry lovers, though, will put up with anything and a decent crowd turned up to enjoy music from Elena B. Williams, the poetry of Mike Williams, Dennis Greene, Mal McKimmie and Jan Teagle Kapetas. And of those who came, a dozen performed their own poetry in the open sections (included Gail Willems, Pat Darby, Dick Alderson, Gordon McNish, icar daedelaus and Aminah Hughes among others). When the rain really set in the audience wrapped themselves in rugs and crammed onto the stage of the Soundshell itself. They make them tough in the west. There will be more Perth Poetica events to look out for at the All Saints Literature Festival in March this year.

LINES ACROSS THE LAND
On the first weekend in December, forty writers from the far-flung regions of the state (and being almost half the continent, when they say “far-flung” in WA, they mean it) left their drought-stricken farms and towns and went to the University of WA for a series of seminars and some networking. On day two the poets took over… as poets will. Jan Teagle Kapetas and Mal McKimmie from EMPOWA hung up their banner, argued about where the microphone should be and launched into the second performance of the Perth Poetica events… the country writers grabbed their plastic boxes of conference food and found seats under the shade of the eucalypts while the city Sunday lunchtime crowd wheeled in babies, tied up their dogs and threw themselves on the grass to listen.

First up was guest poet, Maureen Sexton, with poems of family life, her disabled daughter, lesbian love affairs, etc. (It’s reported that some of the older farmers blanched a bit but regained their colour when she read a few poems that made them laugh.) Several new poets from the country (reading for the first time) talked of their love of the land and other phenomena that you cannot escape in the deep country. Kay Walley, a new Aboriginal poet, read two poems and after a break, another six country poets stood up. Claudette Mountjoy had everyone laughing at her take on being the greenie wife of a timber cutter.

I’m told the poetry was eclectic, the performers more (or less) accomplished, and the audience loved it all (if the buzz of conversation in the breaks and the wild applause says anything). Keep an eye out of the launch of EMPOWA: Issue 2 in March (includes the work of Dennis Greene and Sarah French with 37 other emerging WA poets).

WALKING ON WATER & LUNCHLINES’ WAVES
The Walking on Water (WOW) readings are a regular monthly event in Perth. The last for 2001 was at the WA Rowing Club – described as a “spiffing venue.” They always like to encourage new writers, so there is an open section or two. Invited performers this time were Michele Drouart and the singer/songwriter Aminah Hughes. This reading, however, featured an in memoriam performance of the work of the late Yusuf Peter Bladen-Pryor. His first major work, The Old Ladies at Newington, won the prestigious Commonwealth Jubilee Literary Contest for Long Poems in 1954. Five other books were published under the pen name Peter Bladen. (Dennis Greene’s “In Memoriam Peter Bladen-Pryor” appears elsewhere on this site; it was awarded 2nd place in the December 2001 InterBoard Poetry Competition.) Bladen-Pryor’s most recent publication was Millefleurs (a collection of a thousand sonnets). This reading was a special event. (For information about WOW contact Marion.) Lunchlines’ Waves in association with WAAPA radio (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) has celebrated its final Lunchlines for 2001. This is a great idea… open spots available on arrival at request! Yes! They also have mini competitions and prizes. (Info from Simon Horabin.)

CANBERRA: CAFE BAZAART
Café Bazaart, Canberra’s long-running poetry series, is relocating again. Organised by poet Geoff Page, the readings started at Café Neruda in 1993, then Café Chats in 1998 and now, Café Bazaarts. Canberra being a civilised sort of town, the new café like the old will serve meals before the reading and coffee and wine between sets. Poets already lined up include poetry icon Les Murray, Robert Gray, Kate Llewellyn, Geoffrey Lehmann, Jan Owen and John Tranter… all out of towners, but there’ll be some high quality locals on the bill as well (Geoff among them, we hope).

SYDNEY EVENTS
The Exile and Refuge reading was held in the often used Gleebooks venue in November. The International PEN Sydney Centre commemorated the many writers through history who have been driven from their homes to find sanctuary in other lands, from the exiled Roman poet Ovid and the ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan to others more recently. They wished to draw attention to the global refugee crisis and the plight of persecuted writers who are among those currently in detention in Australia or elsewhere, hoping for asylum and the freedom to write. The readers included distinguished Chilean playwright and novelist Ariel Dorfman, Henry Lippmann, journalist Dai Le who came to Australia from Vietnam as a boat person, photographer Xio Xian Lui who left Beijing after Tiananmen, Paula Abood speaking for Iraqi refugee women in Australia, as well as actor Ruth Cracknell, poet and novelist David Malouf and Anne Summers for Sydney PEN. This was a particularly sensitive reading, politically for Australian writers, many of whom are acutely aware that the Australian’s government’s attitude to refugees is far from appropriate.

There was a great, if exclusive, reading by Adam Aitken, M.T.C. Cronin, Kate Fagan and Peter Minter at a Metissage Conference at the University of Sydney’s Women’s College – a nice place to read with good acoustics, a quality audience (i.e., they listened) with a good attention span given the amount of wine they had put away in the hour between the conference and the reading. Margie Cronin’s reading was apparently spot on.

Poet Brooke Emery has been organising readings in the studio of the late Brett Whiteley. Whiteley was a poet’s painter and loved poetry himself – especially Rimbaud and Baudelaire. His upstairs studio walls are still scrawled with quotations from T.S. Eliot. These are afternoon readings are on the last Sunday of each month… a generous open selection with a democratic first-come, first-read system. The atmosphere is relaxed, friendly and supportive – young and old, novices to widely published, performance poets or page poets. There’s one featured guest before the open section – there’s been Andy Kissane and Pam Brown among many others.

Since 1990 the Live Poets have published books and had readings in a variety of venues on Sydney’s North Shore. They felt like they were being very adventurous at the start… all the readings (and there were a great many of them) were on the other side of the harbour, mostly in inner city venues. But Danny Gardner, who had organised Words With Chow in a north London Chinese café, and Sue Hicks, who had been part of a group of poets and musicians called Black Columbus based at the University of Birmingham, took the readings over to the other side very successfully. They’ve had many new names come from their readings (regardless of their age), Vera Newsom among the best loved and known.

While the Whiteley studio is an inner city venue and considered pretty cool because of that (and other things), it’s often difficult to establish readings on the outer edges of these big cities. Trevar Langlands, a long time broadcaster, is the organiser of the Campbelltown Poets at the Pub. It’s a Monday night reading, a rare time but sometimes the best... no one books a dinner party for a Monday night. The audiences can be an unknown quantity – welcome to the world of poetry – but they’ve got themselves a good following. Trevar started this series because most of the Sydney readings seemed to be in the inner city or even on the North Shore (well, there was one...) and most of the considerable number of poets who lived closer to the demographic centre of Sydney wanted a say. Take the power, baby!

HOBART (TASMANIA)
Hobartians get out every Sunday to the Republic (pub) Readings in North Hobart. The Republic is a pub with a social conscience: there are no gaming machines, for a start (rare in Aussie pubs, alas). One of the publicans is a writer who encourages other writers to take over the place – Tasmanians and all sorts of interstate and international visitors rock up here.

At the Hobart Bookshop in December there was a gathering for the launch of one of the influential Tassie literary magazines, Famous Reporter. This is cause for celebration. Ralph Wessman has been running this mag forever (it probably seems to him)… it’s a Tassie magazine, but contributions come from all over (look for poetry by Ken Bolton, Margaret Bradstock, Eric Beach, Bill Fewer, Jill Jones, Anne Kellas, Cath Kenneally, PiO, Lyn Reeves, Les Wicks and Ouyang Yu. The launch was really just another excuse for a reading (hosted by Caroline Dean) and a celebration. Why not?

VICTORIA: SEND VISPOCARDS
The same sort of thing happens in Victoria as in New South Wales… people in the inner city think that they are not only the centre of the city but the centre of the universe. It’s true though that over the years some of the most dynamic and innovative works have appeared first in these city venues… or at least were noticed first in these inner city venues… but it’s not all capital city! Words at the Wintergarden in Geelong has been going for yonks and they’ve had just about everyone who’s lived in Victoria – Dorothy Porter, Philip Salom, Jordie Albiston and a bunch of other locals – it’s many of them in the audience in fact, which makes it a place you can have a longer and more intense sort of read, because the audience knows what it wants – and it’s poetry.

Of course I would say this … being a regional gel myself (now). I’ve been up to tricks as well, organising a reading at The Tea Club in Nowra which featured Deb Evelyn, Jen Saunders and Jennifer Dickerson among others (including me and Alan Wearne, who recently published The Lovemakers). All for no money (but the glory, the glory!)… although we did get some presents from the South Coast Writers Centre. There was a full house… noses pressed against the windows.

The Tea Club is a great venue and Riche du Plessis and I are organising the opening of our new (probably small to begin with) poetry festival on May 3/4/5 this year. It will begin with a reading at the Tea Club surrounded by an exhibition of visual poetry postcards… I WANT YOURS: visuals/poems on one side, message and address on the other. Minimum size DL… but, hey, do what you like, be original. The plan is: we exhibit there for a week, move the exhibition to other venues (easily portable compared to some other exhibitions) and then, in the end, sell the collection as a whole to help fund the 2003 Festival. (Send postcards to: Chris Mansell, P.O. Box 94, Berry NSW, 2535 Australia before 15 April 2002.) Other things in the festival: book launches, a jazz poetry cruise and a big camp-out reading… we’re setting on the beautiful Shoalhaven River that Arthur Boyd made so familiar to the world with his paintings. Highlight of Saturday night at the festival will be an anarchic (I hope) Archer Poetry Cup, less formal than a slam (can you imagine?) and in the indigenous form of poetry performance cups. Why ‘Archer’? Nothing to do with archery. Archer won the first of the most famous horse race in Australia (the Melbourne Cup, for which the whole country, no exaggeration, stops). And Archer was a local horse. Seemed appropriate. Send me original postcards only. And sooner rather than later. Please.

Chris Mansell