reeling and writhing

you are invited: Lisa Gorton, Hotel Hyperion (Giramondo: 2013)

Giramondo Publishing warmly invites you         
to the launch of Hotel Hyperion
the new collection by Lisa Gorton

to be launched by Kate Middleton
on Thursday 9th May
6:00 for 6.30 pm
East Elevation
351 (the red door) Lygon St
Brunswick
rsvp@giramondopublishing.com

(From the media release):

By turns intimate and grand in scale, Gorton’s new collection of poems features snow domes, storm glasses, museum display cases, an ancestral home and the air-locked rooms of a mythical space hotel: all images which contains worlds within worlds, rooms which open onto other rooms.

Hotel Hyperion is a baroque collection, playing with notions of inward and outward space, constructing its intricate perspectives with a restrained delicacy.

The title sequence is set in the future, in a space hotel where a collector gathers artefacts for a museum recording the history of space settlement. It also recalls Keats’ great poem, ‘The Fall of Hyperion’.

Lisa Gorton’s first collection Press Release won the Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry; she is the author of Cloudland, a novel for children, and an editor, essayist and reviewer.

100% Books By Canberra Artists is now open

An exciting exhibition showcasing artist's books across the field: from fine press to street press, made by 20 Canberra artists who don't think of themselves as 'book artists'. Opening at 6pm on Thursday 11 April at the Watson Arts Centre (with guest speaker Peter Haynes), the show runs until 28 April, 


...Canberra has a long and prolific history of artistic book production, encouraged and inspired by our rich array of cultural and creative institutions. There is a vibrant community of artists here who use the book form to explore and extend their broader practice, whether it be printmaking, sculpture or any other medium.

Contact the Watson Arts Centre for details of events related to the exhibition (a zine fair and children's day have been planned): wcac@canberrapotters.com.au /02 6241 1670.

The Watson Arts Centre is on Aspinall Street, Watson ACT and is open 10am to 4pm, Thursdays to Sundays.

Works by GW Bot, Patsy Payne, Tanya Myshkin, Franki Sparke,  Dianne Fogwell, Nicci Haynes, Jan Hogan, Antonia Aitken, Bernie Slater, Ingeborg Hansen, Shellaine Godbold, UK Frederick, Genevieve Swifte, Maryann Mussared, Murray Kirkland, Kirsten Farrell, Hannah Hoyne, Nick Stranks, Iona Walsh. The exhibition has been curated by Caren Florance.

a pile of stuff #31

It's up! as many already know, the inaugural Stella Prize longlist is out. Read all about the nominated books and their authors in more detail at the Stella Prize website.

A "digital version of passing notes in class" called Snapchat has been profiled in the New York Times. It allows messages and photos to be sent which self-destruct not long after they are opened. Via Bob Stein on if:book. 

At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Lili Loofbourow has mounted a case for Tolkien's Gollum having been lifted from Thelma, a novel by best-selling British female writer, Marie Corelli:

Given how extensive the parallels are between Sigurd and Gollum, it’s hard to understand how they could have gone unnoticed until now. Much as I’d like to claim credit for being an exquisitely sensitive reader, it’s almost impossible to encounter Sigurd without seeing Gollum. And yet no one, to my knowledge, has made the connection before. How is this possible, given that Corelli, Haggard, and Tolkien were all bestsellers?

Jessie Borelle reviews 99%, a five-minute podcast that punches above its weight, at the KYD blog.

Alison Flood got 99 comments on the splitting of infinitives at the Guardian blog recently. I haven't scanned them all to see if anyone else remembers Billy Liar's dictum on the matter though.

Finally, there is a very fine launch going on at Bennett's Lane, one of my favourite places, on Thursday 28th. Ilura Press is launching issue 11 of Etchings, evocatively titled Three Chords and The Truth and you are all invited for music, nibbles and readings. Go, then catch Cloud Atlas later in the evening.

Art Auction for Gay Hawkes at fortyfivedownstairs on Tuesday 26th February

Moira Finucane will compere a fundraiser event at fortyfivedownstairs on Tuesday evening to assist artist Gay Hawkes, who lost her home, studio and all her work in the recent fires in Tasmania.

The sounds of Rachel Guy and gypsy group Vardos will accompany the event. Over 40 artists have donated works including Jacqui Stockdale, Barbie Kjar, Simon Cuthbert, Sally Curry, Naomi Howard, Eve Howard and Archibald winner Sam Leach...

For donations or for those who are unable to attend and who wish to place a bid please contact us on 03 9662 9966 or  info@fortyfivedownstairs.com

More information here.

Prepare The Cabin For Landing: Alan Wearne is ready for take-off tonight at Collected Works

Apologies for not broadcasting this sooner, 

but Alan Wearne's new book of poems,

will be launched tonight at Collected Works bookshop by Owen Richardson.

6pm-8.30pm.

1st Floor, Nicholas Building,

37 Swanston St, Melbourne.

Giramondo & Collected Works Bookshop invite you to the launch of Alan Wearne's new collection of poems, PREPARE THE CABIN FOR LANDING. The launcher will be esteemed Melbourne book reviewer Owen Richardson. 

We quote from Giramondo's blurb :

"Wearne is Australia’s poet-moralist, a master of its idioms, the recorder of its pretensions, and the scourge of its big-noters, con-artists and crooks. In ‘The Vanity of Australian Wishes’ he pays tribute to Samuel Johnson and Juvenal, ‘who knew that combination of bemusement, annoyance, anger and despair to which your country can drive you, though always aware of its entertainment value and dramatic potential’.

The collection includes an affectionate portrait of three Melbourne high school teachers in the early 1960s, and a saga which records the destinies of their pupils, satires on the world of finance and drug-dealing, literary academics and the libertinism of baby-boomers, and seven new poems based on Australian pop songs.

Alan Wearne’s verse novels The Nightmarkets and The Lovemakers received major literary awards; his recent collection, The Australian Popular Songbook, won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry. He is the publisher of Grand Parade Poets, and teaches poetry at the University of Wollongong."

For further information do not hesitate to contact Kris Hemensley at Collected Works on 9654 8873.

Stay informed of further events and new stock at this brilliant, unique poetry bookshop by following it on Facebook. 

Kris Hemensley, the bookshop's founder, also writes about poetry,his work and life here.

for a shining moment, this blog is provisionally sublime

 

At Gallerysmith, in North Melbourne, Dena Kahan is exhibiting, with an opening tomorrow night (October 12) from 6-8 pm. 

Paintings are already on display, however, and will be so till November 3rd (CORRECTION - not the 1oth as I mistakenly posted earlier on).

The show carries the evocative title, The Provisional Sublime.

Larger images can also be viewed here.

UPDATE: Having seen this last night, I resolve to return. It is a stunning exhibition. The subjects of these oils are from the Glass Flowers Collection at the Harvard Museum of Modern History.

Kahan's interest in the Glass Flowers collection , however, is optical rather than botanical, and reflects a longstanding fascination with the qualities and nature of glass. Glass was used to create these models so that they might be exactly reproduced and perfectly fixed in time and place. Yet, in these paintings, the order and perfection of the display is subverted: ambiguities of space and reflection undermine the clear containment and neat taxonomy of the museum case. (Gallerysmith notes).

The exhibition was also reviewed in the gallery roundup in last Saturday's Age:

DENA KAHAN: THE PROVISIONAL SUBLIME
THEY are life-like, life-size and always in bloom. Made by father-and-son German artisans from 1887 to 1936, the glass flowers (more than 3000 in total) are one of the biggest attractions of the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Step in Dena Kahan, whose paintings have long dwelled on the assemblage of glass in museums and the way the medium reflects and refracts. Kahan takes the Harvard models with their accurate anatomical sections and faithful flower parts and plays up their optical tricks. For a start, she makes them much bigger, which also serves to emphasise their transparency and how — for all their scientific truth — they reflect and dissolve into all that is around them. Then Kahan also plays up the museum context — with vast but hazy interior spaces — so that you will never be fooled that these shimmering, gauzy exotic plants might actually be growing.

Gallerysmith is at 170-174 Abbotsford St., North Melbourne, and open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am-5pm.

Eleanor Hogan's book on Alice Springs launched this Monday

Note also that Eleanor Hogan's Alice Springs, the latest in a series of books on Australian cities published by NewSouth Publishing, will be launched at Readings in Carlton on Monday night.

Eleanor kept the popular blog The View From Elsewhere during her time in Alice and has drawn on her experiences there in writing this account. She also wrote for Sarsaparilla, a space some of you might remember.

Hogan’s uncompromising narrative is based on her experience living in Alice Springs between 2005 and 2010 to work as a policy officer in Aboriginal services. Looming large is a disparate population. Some residents are non-Indigenous expats from capital cities who have relocated to ‘make a difference’ as part of the town’s welfare economy. Others are the Aboriginal recipients of this welfare, many of whom Hogan shows to be living in serious disadvantage born from dispossession, and made even more difficult by seemingly unending cycles of alcohol, violence, poverty, bureaucracy and exploitation.

These depictions are not based on idle impressions, but are supported by a public servant’s eye for statistics and policy documents and a journalist’s skill in interviewing prominent community members. Lives led in this place of extremes are difficult, but are cross-cut with the pleasures of community that exist in regional centres, and the importance of sport, art, friendship, family and culture.

A tough portrait of life in a beautiful but harsh landscape of contradictions, Alice Springs is as much a series of general questions about living ethically as it is Hogan’s memoir of being an outsider looking in.

Alison Huber, Readings.

Here's a review at The Australian, and an extract from the book at Inside Story.

 

go down and swing at the Toff

Melbourne Writers Festival would not be complete without a lavish and swinging event from prominent multimedia journal GoingDownSwinging, a Melbourne institution of over thirty years' standing of avant-gardedness:

TICKETS HERE - $25  gets you in, gets you a copy of the journal.

Issue #33 features a full-colour collaboration between Cate Kennedy and artist Simon McEwan, a stunning commissioned essay from straight-talking theorist Briohny Doyle, and a radical new design from Santangelo and Hall. It will take you from Thailand to rundown apartments in Minneapolis to the depths of the ocean to a run-in with Czech border guards. Andre Dao contemplates Catholicism and mourning, Paul Adkin looks at 9/11 translated by Edgar Allan Poe, and Michael Trudeau leaves you speechless with his take on aimless masculinity.

 

Highlights of the accompanying CD include Tom Waits' iconic theme from The Wire, covered by Darwin soul stars Sietta; alongside hip-hop artist Mantra and a spellbinding performance from Felix Nobis; as well as new work from Joe Dolce, PiO, Emilie Zoey Baker, and The Bedroom Philosopher.

 

Issue #33 will be launched on the closing night of the Melbourne Writers Festival. The launch will showcase some of Melbourne’s best spoken-word artists; introducing brand new performances from the acclaimed Cate Kennedy, blues-soaked Benezra and Frente singer Angie Hart, who responds to a special performance from spoken-word legend Adam Gibson.

 

and you thought the Olympics were over! NAAAAAH

Hey there, hoopla, daughter's circus is in town again. It's that fringey time of year...

I have enjoyed all of Maddy's posters so far, but I really love the retro look of this one, designed by Rena Littleson.

Facebook has the details.

Fringe has the tickets.

Be there quickly, as the venue is cosy 

Olympik Phever is performed by Madeleine Tucker, and was developed by Madeleine Tucker and Danny Cisco: 

It's the middle of the Olympics and bespangled entertainer Madeleine Tucker has been given her big chance to shine, filling in as the presenter for a late night Olympics TV special. With interviews, live ads and musical numbers, she’s set to cram in as much high-quality entertainment as she can!

Not one for sports fans, this colourfully kitsch extravaganza will pay surreal homage to the faded world of variety television, with catchy songs and segments galore!


TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW now NOWW noooowww
 

If you can't make it to the show, you might like to take in some of Maddy's videos at her blog. (Look for Rodney The Goblin.) 

a pile of stuff #27

Some not so fresh stuff. Slow blogging is slow, as we might say on Twitter.

Putting Shakespeare's First Folio on line during the Olympics means you have to "Sprint For Shakespeare". Via Corsair Books on Twitter.

A very attractive way to document train readings, and also to present potential readers with the library's holdings. Via Karen Andrews (@Miscmum) on Twitter.

When I find a typo in a piece of work that''s already sent out...

Introducing Spineless Wonders Audio, along with a bunch of links to other Australian fiction recorded online. 

Cabaret writer-performer Michael Dalley's new show, Mademoiselle, will finish at fortyfivedownstairs on the 19th of August, so be quick.

If you haven't seen my tweet already, here is Bill Murray doing more stunts for Poetry House. Here he reads Wallace Stevens, with some reverence. Rather delightful.

There's a party at Collected Works, you're all invited

Giramondo Publishing

warmly invites you

to the launch of the 

new poetry collection by

 

Michael Farrell

open sesame

to be launched by Alan Loney

poet and bookmaker

on Thursday 2 August

6 for 6.30 pm

Collected Works Bookshop
Level 1, 37 Swanston Street

Melbourne

Michael Farrell is highly regarded for the unique rhythms, and the gestural and comic qualities of his poetry. His poems set language, syntax and punctuation in motion, heightening the expression of wonder, drama, attitude: or simply relishing the richness and resonance of each new word situation. His new collection, open sesame, includes sonnets derived from Edna St Vincent Millay (‘saints & or’) and from the British police drama The Bill, a sestina on John F. Kennedy set in a laundry, an improvised parody (‘et tu supermarket’), an Oulipo poem (‘debit of a pirate kino’), and four long poems on friendship. The book concludes with a series of collage poems, including one which takes its cue from the legendary Phar Lap.  

Michael Farrell is the winner of the 2012 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. An earlier version of open sesame won the Barrett Reid award for a radical poetry manuscript. 

http://www.giramondopublishing.com/open-sesame

 Enquiries: aliceg@giramondopublishing.com

I did hope to get to this but I will not be spared, unfortunately.

The launches at Kris Hemensley's Collected Works are inviting affairs. Take another poetry lover along, and be prepared to succumb to the temptation of purchasing something special - there are some amazing books there.

 

Australian Book Review's new office is open on Saturday

As you may or may not know, Australian Book Review is moving from its Richmond premises to a new cultural hub in the revamped J.H. Boyd Girls High School in Southbank, as we speak. An opening junket is planned.

Here is the news:

On Saturday, 7 July – between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., ABR will take part in the City of Melbourne’s official launch of Boyd.

We hope that many Melburnians will come along and visit our office upstairs. We’ll be presenting a series of readings each half hour.

Readers will include Joel Deane, Lisa Gorton, Elisabeth Holdsworth, and Chris Wallace-Crabbe.

It should be a memorable day.

speaking of emerging writers...Chris Meade and others report

It is such a pleasure to see video making its way into reportage from the truly excellent Emerging Writers' Festival - three cheers for director Lisa Dempster who has been packing her video camera every day. Here's Chris Meade from if:book London (who clearly packs a camera as well), interviewing Lisa earlier this week (taken from his blog BookFutures.)
Meade has another video at that post, and earlier on the blog has reported on the Bloggers' Brunch and the festival. The very fine discussion at the Brunch on digital publishing and writing futures is still open for latecomers (you will see me promising to come back if you get to the end of it...obviously I didn't quite make it.)

Meade is posting more videos later this week, so clearly the festival made a good impression. Go EWF team.

Update: I did say others - here is Andrew Wrathall at Fancy Goods, the Bookseller & Publisher blog, with a terrific wrap of events up to Friday 28th. The weekend is still to come...hoping to get to hear Jill Jones tomorrow, and see Derek Motion pick up the Overland Poetry Prize. That's my Saturday.

there will be one week in September we want to remember

It is a busy busy town we live in now, with our centre on wheels of books and writing.

I saw the great man, Colm Toibin, last week, and thoroughly enjoyed all he had to say about writing in general - not so much what he politely supplied in answer to questions on his latest book, as I had read an awful lot of that kind of thing already. (Keep an eye on this link as there will be a video of the evening at some point (YES, THERE IT IS now).  Also keep a very keen eye on LiteraryMinded for Angela's upcoming interview.)

However, as anyone who listened to La Throsby last Friday can attest, whatever he has to say about writing is like gold. I have been thinking all weekend why that might be so - he is very quick, I think, to respond concisely to any questions about craft and clearly has plenty of insight into his own work, which is not always something available to writers, or something they are happy to share . I was interested to hear that it was reading the work of Alistair McLeod that brought him to the realisation that it would be good to revisit Ireland as a subject for his fiction.

News that came to hand with Throsby's interview is that Toibin's limited editions press, Tuskar Press, picked up The Slap and is running hot with it in the UK at present. If you start listening to the Throsby interview at the 48-49 minute mark, you will find out why.

Meanwhile I am insanely jealous that the Sydney crowd got to hear a whole Catalan song from him at SWF (thanks to Charlotte Wood for that news), but it serves me right for being too mean to go up there.

I am very close to rocking up to hear Louise Swinn, indie publisher extraordinaire, interview Peter Carey (Le Carey?). So I guess this rambling introduction is a way of letting you all know that the Wheeler Centre's second programme for the year is up on the site, in the email box, et cetera. The coverage the Centre is aiming at is impressive - not all things I would necessarily attend, but still, something for everyone there, as Michael Veitch used to tell us so long ago.

Things of note include Richard Flanagan's mix tape (though I am being a bit silly there as of course I'd rather hear him talk about writing), a night of erotic fan fiction which has been borrowed from SWF (worth seeing just to hear Marieke H.'s contribution really), Kate Jennings in conversation with Hilary McPhee, a night celebrating Chekhov, conversation between Jennifer Byrne and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a lecture from no less a personage than Jonathan Mills on the state of the arts, a visit from Fatima Bhutto and, finally, the promise of a week in September where the judges of art get well and truly rolled.

A WHOLE WEEK. The critics must be nervous already.

writers are emerging all over Melbourne this weekend...so be there

The Emerging Writers' Festival is kicking off in Melbourne this weekend, with the official opening tomorrow night at BMW Edge (at time of writing, there were a couple of tickets left to this.)

The First Word is …
A celebration of writing, writers and the word.

A night of performance, comedy, spoken word and burlesque.

The official opening of the 7th Emerging Writers’ Festival.

The First Word is …

Dance, comedy, readings and…

The Call to Arms – the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s unique keynote address, this year delivered by romantic fiction writer Toni Jordan.

The Glory of Love – Craig Schuftan.

Love Vs Angst, what makes a better writer? – top writers Josh Earl, Kate Mclennan and Michaela McGuire battle for supremacy in our 2 Sides of the Coin debate.

For a bunch of fascinating events this weekend, scroll down that page, or click here for the full and burgeoning program of festival events over the next nine days.

If you're struggling to get to everything you want to, check out the EWF Online program to see what you can do via your modem. The festival events are, as usual, very moderately priced - and of course, the online program is completely free.

Let the games begin...

 Red Gallery's exhibition program this month includes an interesting group show, Strange Nature, of photography and painting, which opens on Wednesday evening.

This exhibition of new paintings and photography takes a trip into a world where the natural and artificial have seductively merged.

In Dena Kahan’s painting, 19th century glass models of plants and marine life are re-created as surreal objects, more like part of a fantastic landscape than scientific tools in a museum case.

In his studio, Peter Lambropoulos makes “unreal” worlds specifically for the camera. He does so by transforming banal everyday substances into the extraordinary. Micro-sculptures encrusted with crystals are presented as hallucinatory visions.

Jan Parker’s photographs offer viewpoints on nature and the alchemy of light. Through analogue and digital processes, she conjures up uninhabited and often myopic landscapes, cryptic in their placement but also referencing the actual work of the eye.

Other artists exhibiting at  Red Gallery this month include Sarah Gully and Amelia Lackman. So, plenty to see, along with my friend Dena Kahan's paintings of glass models of flowers and invertebrates from the Blaschka collections at Harvard and Cornell Universities. Last year, she exhibited paintings of scientific marine models from UK collections at Red Gallery, and further works on these beautiful subjects are in the offing. Enjoy.

body of water - Fifi's exhibition launch tonight

This will teach me to skip posts saying "I have been busy". Particularly where artists are concerned. Ow, Ow.

 

red dress floating

My blog friend and fine painter and photographer, Fiona Dobrijevich Edmonds, launches her exhibition, body of water, tonight in Darlington, Sydney.

It is at Sheffer Gallery at 38 Lander Street until the 22nd of May.

There are more samples of her work on the blog, but I strongly urge you if you are lucky enough to be in Sydney to go and see it for yourselves. I wish I was going, I have left it too late and now have other things on. Damn, damn, damn.

A Peace Of Wall in Hosier Lane

Yes, I was critical of the lack of news feeds on the new Literary Magazines Australia site, because the following is the kind of news I like to pull down in my feeds.

Martin Hughes, publisher at Affirm Press, invites you to several events supporting the publication of Peace Of Wall, a book of street art from East Timor:

Our motivation for publishing Peace of Wall is to engage a new audience in their plight, to invite people to consider this tiny and fragile country wedged – in more ways than one – between the giants of Indonesia and Australia. I love the idea of a city like Melbourne, so savvy in its appreciation of street art, learning about East Timor in this light, and people have responded really enthusiastically.

We’re bringing over three young artists – Etson, Alfeo and Zito – from Dili this week, to participate in a week-long programme of events we hope will create enduring links between street artists here and in East Timor. (Etson’s visa was delayed while he awaited clearance for TB, which in itself paints a fairly vivid picture of the differences between these neighbouring nations.) The cultures are so different that putting them together in one medium is bound to create some fizz. I’m looking forward to seeing what they make of each other’s work – the stylised scene in Melbourne compared to the more rudimentary, descriptive and political-charged art from East Timor.

Events include:

Saturday 8 May at 5pm
Painting a wall in Hosier Lane, followed by the opening of Chris Parkinson’s Exhibition at the Until Never Gallery.

Tuesday 11 May at 7.30pm

official launch of Peace of Wall – Street Art from East Timor Southpaw Bar, 189 Gertrude St, Fitzroy (with a live painting by the lads and music by East Timorese musician, Gil Santos)

Thursday 20 May

Restoration of East Timorese Independence Day.

For more information, drop Affirm Press at line at info[at]affirmpress.com.au.

it's (all) news to me 27.04.10

The Emerging Writers' Festival program for 2010 is up and at 'em, so go and see what you will be attending towards the end of this month. Thanks to a website revamp under the eagle eye of new director Lisa Dempster, it's a lot easier to see what's going on this year at this incredibly well-priced festival, and I will be posting later on the week on events that have caught my eye.

This is now fairly old news, but... the graffiti artist Banksy had a film opening in the US on the 16th of this month. 

Fresher news comes via Bob Stein of a new article by CraigMod on e-readers, Embracing The Digital Book, following up on his widely read piece on books and the iPad last month.

Most of the news this Tuesday centres on that celebrated member of the linkerati, George Dunford. George has very graciously blogged his Big Issue profile of Anna Dusk at Hackpacker, and has a few remarks on the future of graphic novels up at Readings, where I found out that Paul Auster's City Of Glass also exists as a graphic novel. By the time this is posted I reckon a copy will be on its way to me, thanks to Visa.

George ran a couple of panels at the Wheeler Centre's graphic novels events on the weekend. And introduced me to Oslo Davis last Thursday at the Emerging Writers' Festival launch, to which I swear I went to support my blog friend-the-director, not to meet graphic arts heroes. It is not news, either, that Oslo's Sunday cartoon for the Age, Overheard, will soon appear as a book. One of the finest Christmas presents you could buy.

The calendar at the Wheeler Centre now includes full details of the Deakin Lectures for 2010, focussed fairly and squarely on climate change (there was a splendid two -page spread on this in the Saturday paper as well):

Curated by Professor Tim Flannery, we’ve gathered 30 of the best people addressing the climate problem now. These aren’t the usual suspects spouting fixed positions. At the Deakins you’ll hear from practitioners, from fresh informed voices with practical experience of achieving emissions reduction. These are people working to innovate in policy, business, finance and new technologies to help create a brave, new, low emissions world.

Finally, for those of us who haven't already seen Curious Pages,  here's what John Williams at the Second Pass had to say about the blog on 'recommended inappropriate children's books' earlier and later this year.

Shaun Tan at the Wheeler Centre this weekend

via wheelercentre.com

Where else, I ask, will you get to hear Shaun Tan give a free keynote address on graphic novels and attend a weekend of graphic storytelling related events?
At the Wheeler Centre on the Anzac Day weekend, that's where.

Saturday sees a bunch of panels led by luminaries of the art such as Bruce Mutard, Nicki Greenberg, Tan, Dylan Horrocks and Oslo Davis, while on Sunday there are some very reasonably priced workshops with practitioners such as Bernard Caleo, of Tango fame.

I'm only providing a couple of links today - I would love the Wheeler Centre to provide 'one link to rule them all, one link to find them' - somewhere in that calendar AND Thank you for your comment, Mim, for THERE IT IS NOW!! and doesn't that look a lot better. I like that.  I'll just begin at the beginning, and You can scroll down to find the rest.

you will be distracted by all the dazzling activity, and buy books

SOOOO much going on in the City of Books that my head reels. I told my son I wasn't buying any more books, except for him, and it was an awful lie.  For just look at these nice new things:

1. Puncher and Wattman's latest anthology of poetry, Out Of The Box, a contemporary collection by gay and lesbian writers edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones, is to be launched at Hares and Hyenas on February 2 by Christos Tsiolkas and Kathleen Fallon. Jill has details on her blog, Ruby Street, and links to an interview with Scott Patrick Mitchell at OutinPerth.

The new anthology Out of the Box is the brainchild of Michael Farrell and Jill Jones, arguably two of our nation’s most exciting queer voices. Together this poetic duo have brought together an impressive number of poets, among them the likes of David Malouf and Dorothy Porter.

‘We wanted a book that presented poetry being written now which is why, by-and-large, the poets are represented by relatively recent work, explained Jones of the process behind creating Out of the Box. ‘It is quite consciously not historical, nor even a survey of the last 20 or 30 years. We hope much of it is fresh, with just a dash of older work.

You can buy Out Of The Box at bookshops, or online here and here.

2. Karen Andrews is busy putting the finishing touches to a fine anthology of blog writing over at Miscellaneous Press, with a stellar lineup of contributors. That makes three, not two, books I will soon buy (see no.6). I am indeed a God-awful liar about my bookbuying.

And there's more, as they say when selling steak knives, though not all of it for sale.

3. The Wheeler Centre has put more programming online, some of it as far ahead as May.

4. Submissions are being accepted for the sixth Sleepers Almanac, until February 12. And it will also be released as an iPhone app.!

5. There is an impressive stream of independent publishing news from the Australian small press cooperative, SPUNC, whose membership is growing steadily. Their RSS feed is a very good thing to be keeping your eye on, you know you want to.

6. The latest Lifted Brow, no. 6, which looks fabulous, was launched with a themed party last week at the Bella Bar at Trades Hall. I didn't quite make it there, but I believe it was a hoot.

On top of this, it is nice to know, isn't it, that Tom Keneally thinks it is just as well that the new writers' stamps are self adhesive or else he would be licking David Malouf's and Peter Carey's arses. I feel much wiser now, myself. (Going to buy the stamps too, for sure. The early Carey one has a great retro feel about it.)

All a bit too much for this blogger - I am looking forward to quieter distractions, but more anon.

while walking one day on the lower south side...

Strolling in South Melbourne last night, digesting dinner prior to taking in the Christmas instalment of this show, in which a family member got a few shots at the mike, I came across an exhibition in the process of being put together, which I was permitted to inspect briefly: a lovely thing to be able to do on a quiet spring evening.

The exhibition is a group show opening tomorrow night - the people in the gallery were busy attaching large framed glass prints to the roof by chains, so they could hang loose and be backlighted (the production method is being patented by artist Chris Gillard.) I also saw delicate giclee prints of botanical subjects in reds and blacks, some long, narrow landscape oils which whisper of clotted Cezanne, and beautiful fabric and wire sculptures of sea creatures. I can't do justice to one set of oil paintings which were abstract in tone but captured light and water and waving textures - I think this is one of them here, but there were more. 

 

                

                            

wire viper fish sculpture by Cristina Metelli.

                                                                                         Grass by Chris Gillard, photography in 4-colour separation on glass           

Natural Selection is at the greenwood gallery, 1 Hotham Street, South Melbourne, from 3-24 December. It features work by Llewelyn Ash, Patrick Christie, Pip Davey, Chris Gillard, Josef Marzi, Cristina Metelli, Anthony Vanderzweep, Nikai van Garderen, and Dolores Malloni.

The opening is Thursday night, December 3, 6-8 pm, and greenwood gallery is open 11-5 from Wednesday to Sunday.

sun comes up today on a city of books (live here on RW)

The Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas website is well and truly alive today: from Twitter there is news of the media launch this morning, and some programming is already up on the website, as well as a NAME, "The Wheeler Centre" - which is not as clunky as CBGBWI, I know - news of their opening for the masses in February, and other great things in the associated pipelines, including a Reading The City program next March.

I am hardly surprised to read that such a program is in the waters, as the State Library's Summer Read program has downsized itself for a snugger fit with local libraries (it's going online in early December, so keep an eye on that here.)

On first glance, this is a really nice looking website - I like the site map down the bottom. There will be news posted daily on the site from the "Dailies" section, which has an RSS feed? yes. You can also subscribe to Events from that page. Excuse me now, I've liveblogged a website (not the media event, I hasten to add - there are pics of that on Twitter) and I'm off to play.

*Later today - Michael Orthofer has heard the news, and spread the word, but also speaks of ANOTHER Wheeler Center, in Montana. Zut alors.

reading this week at Collected Works Bookshop: Susan M. Schultz

Kris Hemensley welcomes all to a reading by Susan M. Schultz, the editor of Tinfish poetry journal, at  Collected Works Bookshop on Wednesday evening this week. (Issue 17 of the journal is available free here from Tinfish Press , and 'centerfold' artworks from the last eight issues may also be viewed online.)

As is usual with the events at the most specialised literary bookshop in this city of books, a gang of other poets will accompany this distinguished visitor, including Michael Farrell. Here are the necessary details. Susan Schultz has a blog on her editing, academic writing and poetry, here.

the seventh 'page' from Page Seventeen is out today

Issue 7 of the evergreen anthology, Page Seventeen, will be launched today at Burrinja Cafe (part of the gallery) in Upwey from 1 pm.

Work from seventeen (heh) new writers is featured, along with stories and poems by Sean M Whelan, Emilie Zoey Baker, Graham Nunn, Maxine Clarke, Amelia Walker, Ashley Capes, Peter Farrar, Christopher Currie, and David McLaren. There will be a regular poetry gig, The Word Tree, to follow, and an invite with some cover art can be found here. Just so you can find it easily in the shops (scroll down), if you don't get along today.