Saturday, December 03, 2022

POETRY — IT'S ALL CONNECTED




















It’s All Connected: Feminist Fiction and Poetry
has just arrived from Spinifex Press. It looks luscious! 

Edited by Pauline Hopkins it features new work by almost forty writers including Dianne Bell, Merlinda Bobis, Susan Hawthorne, berni m janssen, Renate Klein, Primila Venkateswaran, Patricia Sykes and the late Jordie Albiston. 

My poem The Poet is inspired by a painting of the same title by artist and poet Lily Prigionero. It was a challenge posted by The Ekphrastic Review in July 2021. While my poem didn’t get selected for that journal — you can read the twenty or so wonderful selections here — I am thrilled that this more developed version was accepted by Pauline for her anthology. 

Lily’s painting took me on a journey through time and place, covid and caring. The Canberra café I write about as opposed to the café in the painting, is Café 2615 in Belconnen, where I would frequently spend a few hours while my late husband Bill was on dialysis (three times a week). Under the veil of the pandemic this normally hectically busy café was surreally quiet, emphasising our changing world. 

Anyway, this is my reading for tonight and I’m so looking forward to it. Pauline Hopkins’ own piece Paige will stay with me ... forever ... you will find it on page 195. 

You can order It’s All Connected from all good bookshops and from the Spinifex Press online shop

PS There is a little more about that day in the café and a seed of the poem in this post from 2020.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment