Monday, April 15, 2024
My Poetry — Online & On Air
Friday, February 02, 2024
GRAND POETRY INDEED SATURDAY FEB 3
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
RAINBOW SUITE
When you look out the kitchen window and see a distinctive golden glow to everything, that you can't quite describe and find yourself thinking it's the exact gold — pink-gold/brassy gold/amberish gold/slightly blood tainted gold as — and take your own word for it and dash outside and sure enough! The neighbouring land is a rainbow spot. This is possibly the longest bow I've seen stretching from neighbour on the left to neighbour on the right, some distance. I haven't heard who got the pot of gold.
(Speaking of gold, there is bound to be a tube of paint with just the right name ... ) More views with and without in the changing light. And now for some haiku — I hope.
Sunday, October 22, 2023
TEXTURED EARTH — CANBERRA TO YASS
Sunday, September 24, 2023
SPRING POETRY BINALONG TO THE ACT
Getting back into the spring of things-poetry with A Brush with Poetry today at 2 pm and That Poetry Thing tomorrow night.
Saturday, August 19, 2023
EAT THE STORMS
Delighted to be included in the latest Eat the Storms podcast edited by Dublin’s Damien Donnelly, tomorrow 5 pm Irish time (2 am Australian EST). Of course, as a podcast it can be accessed any time after on most platforms. Also featured: Roisin Smith, Simon Maddrell, Roger Waldron, Isabela Basombria Hoban. Isabella’s book Rain Love Death Poets will have its Irish launch at the Ennistymon Book Town Festival Saturday August 26 - see you there Isabela.
Thursday, August 17, 2023
ANCIENT OAK PILGRIMAGE
The fairies oblige us but only up to a point ... We collect presents on the way. Ruby thinks my one sycamore (?) leaf and two blackberries is a bit sad compared to her colourful selection of meadow flowers and leaves.
It’s a ten minute walk but as the forest is in full summery glamour it’s maybe a half hour or more before we find what we’re looking for. Up this track then that track. Brambles, leafy carpets, low young limbs, a bounding squirrel. Walk along that outer edge of the forest. Find another track from another direction. Peer into the forest for the distinctive shape, peer in for the surrounding pole markers. Google Maps telling us we are one minute away every time we check. Aroona — giftless (hands and head full of clues and phone maps) — eventually picks a lime green leaf. Bingo (the fairies are happy). Before us, the Belvoir Oak! Part of Ireland’s living history. All the more magnificent for its ageing. (500 years.) The front half of its eight metre girth broken away, the remaining half carved and etched, cloaked with lichen, ivy and ferns — AND — I’ve just read — a rare fungus. It’s thick foliage surprises me — I thought it was mostly beyond that. There are new acorns.
Thank you fairies — but you did it again. Sent us in the wrong direction afterwards, again — tampered with Google Maps, again — teased us with incorrect advice from walkers, again. Brought us out at the lock gates this time, yet another half hour from the entrance we used. At last, sound advice from extremely fit extremely sweaty forest runners. (The trainer can run the forest in the dark!) We are confident. Still somehow go slightly off course. At least it’s a main road this time. Wth a hotel. Coffee, chips … taxi to our car …
Our first pilgrimage to the Belvoir Oak — it only took three attempts to find the actual tree — was in January 2022, mid-winter. I’ll see if I can find that post — also our first encounter with the fairies!
Maybe the fairies just wanted us to have the extra scenic views?
I said I’m fine but next time I see a log I’m sittin for a bit — and even better — a tree stump appeared! With wood creature.
Links that may be of interest:
Belvoir Oak nominated for Tree of the Year —
https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2023-08-15/belfast-tree-nominated-for-tree-of-the-year
Woodland Trust —
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/tree-of-the-year/
Tuesday, August 15, 2023
DUNCAIRN AUTHOR SPECTACULAR
Such a great night at Duncairn
Centre for Culture and Arts in North Belfast (Friday, August 11). Fascinating
novelists Michelle Gallen, Tony Macaulay, Michael
Magee read from their books and took questions from the audience, expanding
on points raised and talking about their experiences as authors and living in
Belfast. Also me. Chair, Marnie Kennedy (Reader in Residence) clearly knew all our
books intimately, asking interesting questions herself and facilitating the
whole event superbly.
The Duncairn is a 174
Trust strategy. Established in 1983, the Trust is celebrating forty years of building
peace and promoting reconciliation.
I was honoured to be invited into the program and fully
enjoyed meeting the other authors and the audience. I especially appreciated
the response to my poem War Zone Tours which, in part,
looks back at my own experience of the Troubles and later as a migrant watching
the Troubles from a safe distance. (The tour aspect is from another country
altogether.).
Afterwards a couple of us (daughter Aroona and a lovely
friend) went to Cassidy’s where the service is still of the days when my (late)
husband Bill was a barman/manager — orders taken from and back to your table, payment
and change at your table, orders remembered for the next round, everything a
pleasure — you just can’t wait to go back again. At the end of the night —
after last orders — I’m introduced to a local: this is Lizz she’s a poet;
response — an on the spot rendition of a poem he wrote when he was eighteen
years old. It gave a particular and powerful insight to the Troubles.
Photo (top): Tony Macaulay (left), Michelle Gallen, Michael Magee, me wearing a light shade and host Marnie Kennedy.
Photo (below): My first ever reading in Ireland.
Sunday, August 13, 2023
READING AT SCRIBES BELFAST
SCRIBES AT THE DUNCAIRN 2023
I’ll be reading tomorrow night at Scribes at the Duncairn with Tony Macauley, Michael Magee and Michelle Gallen, 7 pm, Duncairn Arts Centre, Duncairn Avenue, Belfast. I’m excited. These authors sound awesome. I’ve started reading them with Michelle’s novel, Factory Girls — hilarious, dark, hilarious from page one. I’m excited. My first poetry reading in Belfast. Thank you to Marnie Kennedy (Chair). More information at www.theduncairn.com
Later in the month I’ll be talking in the Ennistymon Book Town Festival in Co Clare.
Photo: in the upstairs theatre of Duncairn Centre for Culture and Arts, North Belfast (for a performance by John Spillane)
Saturday, August 12, 2023
ZINE FEATURED IN AXON JOURNAL
I’m so pleased to have an e-zine published in the Axon: Creative Explorations — Text/Page/Art issue edited by Caren Florance. It’s just a 12 pager talking briefly about my creative process involving collage and found text, and responses in poetry followed by responses through small paint on canvas works. It features a series of the latter. Hope you like some of them.
Climbing Back up your Own Silk Screen is one of five downloadable zines. There are also essays, photo and visual essays, essay-poems, stories, poetry, memoir and images by about thirty writers and artists. Go there.
[Breaking in a new iPad so no images yet and some dubious editing.]
Sunday, May 28, 2023
MUSIC POETRY RECONCILIATION
BRUSH WITH POETRY TODAY!
C'mon — it's warm in the car and warm in the venue ... there's wine ... there's coffee ...
Another open mike and it's on today. A Brush with Poetry this afternoon 1.30 for 2.00 pm (or arrive when you can). It's warm as toast and so is the welcome and Café hosting. Bring a poem (or a song) or just come to listen. It's serious, it's fun, it's moving. Something for everyone. Bring a friend. New and experienced very welcome to share the open mike. Binalong poets, Yass poets, Canberra poets and other neighbouring regions. It's in The Hive at the back of Café on Queen, Queen Street, Binalong. Enquiries to Brush Coordinator Robyn Sykes robynsykespoet[at]gmail[dot]com Emcees are Robyn with Greg Piko.
Above: Robyn introducing the popular Janne Graham from Canberra. Below: 1. art & text with Kate O'Connor (Binalong), 2. Sandra Renew winner of the ACT Writers Notable Awards for Poetry 2021 for her collection It’s the sugar, Sugar (Recent Work Press), 3. Jenny McCallister and John Ward — haiku, song and music.
BIG OPEN MIKE: A POETRY THING
Sunday, April 23, 2023
BEFORE THE QLD POETRY FESTIVAL
There I am. Me and a big sky.
Sunday, March 26, 2023
GIDDY-UP FOR POETRY IN BINALONG
Gallop in to A Brush with Poetry this afternoon 1.30 for 2.00 pm (or arrive when you can). Bring a poem (or a song) or just come to listen. It's serious, it's fun, it's moving, it's a bit silly, it's bush, it's contemporary, it's story, it's bloody good poetry. Something for everyone. Bring a friend. New and experienced very welcome ... poets/performers that is as for the friends that's up to you. It's in The Hive at the back of Café on Queen, Queen Street. (This is a photo of the Binalong Mechanics Institute this morning — not to confuse you — just to show you a typical Binalong day. There's a time when that might've been me! Seriously.)
I'll tell you about the amazing Jacqui Malins installation Wrack and Salvage later. Today is the last day. Take a trot (groan) over the Belconnen Arts Centre if you can't get to Binalong. Cheers.
Saturday, March 25, 2023
WEEKEND ART & WORD FEST - NOW
Wednesday, March 08, 2023
ROVING POETRY PERFORMANCE