Wagga Wagga

I'm enjoying my time up here in Wagga. Got to talk to 80 school kids the other day about poetry, ghosts, and how we go about generating ideas...

One of the kids came up to me afterwards and said... will you write about us?" hmmm...

Now check out the posts below for links of what workshops/readings I'm doing up here and when. About to head down to the Write Around the Murray Fest" tomorrow. Should be fun.

Booranga

Looking forward now to my residency at the Booranga Writers Centre which kicks off on the 28th of July until the 11th August. I’ve just done an interview with a journo from the Daily Advertiser in Wagga, which is good publicity for the reading and the workshops I’m running. Hope to meet lots of Waggarians. Or is it Waggarites?

http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/arts/humss/booranga/index.html

And the Write around the Murray Festival will be fun in Albury. I’m doing a workshop on Performance Poetry at the Albury Library/Museum. See the link below…

http://www.writearoundthemurray.org.au/

My interview on ABC’s the Book Show must be coming up soon too. So tune in at 10am... you just might hear me yacking. They aired the interview with emerging writer Kate Mulvany the other day, so it won’t be long before I am on. I’ll post the link for you here soon…

Now before I fly out to Wagga I’ll be getting to the launch of the latest Blue Dog which is publishing my poem Anxiety. That will be at the Australian Poetry Centre at Glenfern, St Kilda on the 27th … so come along if you are in the area. It goes from 5:30 to 6:30pm.

Catch you later... I'm going for a bodyboard now in the rain cause I'm writing a poem about surfers/surfing. New writing territory for me. I'm lovin it.

Plus, Go Cadel!! Hold your nerve in those Alps.

welcome/the homecoming

Well here it is.

Finally ditched the Telstra blog. Was doing my head in. Couldn't handle it any longer.

A friend of mine just bought me a hardcover copy of The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury, illustrated by Dave McKean. It’s a beautiful book about Halloween/a haunting. How come I didn’t know about this before? I’ve read it through once and will need to sit with it for a while now. There is a strangeness to the language which is not easy to swallow but altogether captivating, the reason I will keep coming back to it.

Short stories are built (among other things) upon language use and the art of revelation. It’s as simple and as difficult as that. If you’ve got those two working for you then you’re on your way I reckon. Singing My Sister Down by Margo Lanagan comes to mind here… one of my all time favourites.

I’ve had a few short stories published but plays and poems have been my strength to date. I can see the time coming though when I get back there… tempted by prose amid a desert of sales!

Some lines from The Homecoming…

Silently she stood stiff as a great loaf of nile bread…

Their laughter was a cave of winds…

Uncle Einar, last of all, kettledrummed the air as he descended, laughing at some half-remembered death, perhaps his own, until he lay in the longest box of all…