Based on two beautiful The Poet's Voice events, we've been working on a book of special and significant words from across this vast continent: Words to Sing the World Alive. ‘But it’s on the tongue where this language sings the world alive. Any one word can feel like a story, a narrative in small syllables. An arrangement of breath where my
John Clarke was a great friend of The Poet's Voice. Here, we remember his wonderfully wicked reimagining of Dante's 'Purgatorio' created for our 2013 MWF event 'Purgatorio: Australia Today' - a creator battling their way through the baffling world of funding. It is typical of John that while debunking funding nonsense he also captures the hellish deep structure at play. Classic
Emily Ballou mesmerised at Purgatorio: Australia Today with her poem on the fragility of our environment, bringing our gaze to a group of nesting swans beset by mottled tourists. Read her poem in full below.
Maria Tumarkin muses on writing to the theme, Purgatorio: Australia Today...
What a thrilling commission it is to be pushed against Dante’s ‘Purgatorio’: to be asked to get lost in a work of such head-spinning power and scope, and to find a way to respond. I loved being asked to take serious risks – how often does this happen?
Here's Omar Musa's introduction to Anne Sexton...
I first came across Anne Sexton's poetry ten years ago. I was in second year university, in a creative writing course in Canberra that I considered pretty useless. The one good thing that came out of it was a friendship with a Finnish girl
So… there’s a drunken uncle at every wedding. And at this fancy occasion, it’s a shambling Old Drunkard of Letters.
Poetry as necessary? Many would scoff at this and say it may be true that we need stories but poetry? No. And yet the evidence is there: with an exchange of vows, people often seek out the right poems to complete their statements; at the anniversary of 9/11, Billy Collins’ The Names played a role no speechmaking could fill;
A great deal of recent poetry history is captured in the lives and work of Bei Dao in China and Eliot Weinberger in the USA. Both have challenged accepted literary forms. Both have situated themselves as engaged citizens within the landscape and demands of the imagination.
Our Lovers in Trouble readers shared some reflections on Dorothy Porter and her work. Here are their thoughts:
Craig Sherborne: Love poetry rare in Australia ‘Australian poetry has been dominated of course by rural poetry. Bush poetry. Pastoral and anti-pastoral poetry and nature poetry. Love never really got a look in. When it came to intimacy between people, elegies, death poetry
The Poet's Voice Director, Ellen Koshland, on poetry selection for Lovers in Trouble.
It was quite a journey to choose the poems for Lovers in Trouble. The process was enormously enriched by Andrea Goldsmith’s suggestions.
Human rights lawyer and memoirist Fethiye Çetin spoke alongside a stellar cast, including Ma Jian, August Kleinzahler and Amanda Lohrey, at our Poetry of Rebellion session at the 2010 Melbourne Writers Festival.