Fellowship of Australian Writers

poetry@fedsquare

Poetry@fedsquare is curated by the creative director of World Poetry, with the support of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW ) and fedsquare management.

It is held in the alcove of Jolimont expresso café each second Saturday of the month, from 2 to 4pm.

It is a FREE event where the audience comes specifically for it, and/or where a passing audience also stops to hear the readings before continuing their exploration of Fedsquare.

The program is designed to be inclusive by showcasing established poets as feature readers, as well as present writers who are not yet known, in the open reading component of the program.

Generally, there are 2 feature readers, and up to 10 open readers in each program.

The feature readers are allocated 15-20 minutes to read/recite a body of poetry of their choice.

The open readers (up to 10) are allocated 5 minutes each.

 

Date	Readers	Open Readings
14 November 2009	Society of Women Writers Vic Inc. Read own poetry	No
12 December 2009	Readings from the Poetica Christi Press publication- reflecting on melbourne – Melbourne through the eyes of some of its poets and artists	Yes
13 February 2010	1 - Mariano Coreno- reads own poetry 2 - 'Razia Ross' reads – Cate Kyne	Yes
13 March 2010	Janna Hilbrink reads - Jetteke van Wijk & other poets to celebrate international women’s day	By invitation only
10 April 2010	Enza Gandolfo/Kevin Brophy/ Dominique Hecq	Yes
8 May 2010	Mike Heald & students from the creative writing course @Unimelb	Yes
12 June 2010	Sally Morrison reads own work	Yes

 

 

NOVEMBER 2009

Profiles of Society of Women Writers Vic Inc.

Feature readers:

Kristin Henry:
Kristin is a well known poet and teacher of poetry. She has many publications to her credit. Kristin has been very supportive of the Society of Women Writers.

Rebecca Maxwell:
Rebecca has been writing for a long time, mostly poetry and children's stories.
Her work has been shaped by famous poets such as Judith Wright, Tom Shapcott, Emily Dickinson and Kenneth Slessor.
Rebecca is interested in expressing her mode of perception and extra sensory perception.

Tricia Veale:
Tricia is a retired scientist, Parasitologist, who also has a great interest in literature.
She has many publications including poetry, stories, scientific articles and seven books of both science and poetry.
Tricia is very enthused in exploring the rural area and the scientific mind and expressing this in her work.

Quite a number of members of the Society of Women Writers will be attending and supporting us with their readings.

Tricia Veale.
B.Sc., M.Sc., B.A.(Hons)., Dip.Ed.  Parasitologist.
President: Society of Women Writers Vic Inc.

 

 

FEBRUARY 2010

Mariano Coreno

Mariano Coreno’s first four volumes of poetry Gioia straziata, Pianto d’amore, Ricordanze and Sotto la luna, are characterized by a Leopardian-like sentimental pessimism and present reflections on love, death, the meaning of life, anguish, time fast passing. These volumes are dominated by a search for an unfindable equilibrium, a vain attempt to resolve the enigmas posed by life and little is explicitely stated about themigrant condition although Pianto d’amore marks the initial introduction of images with Australian referents: “[everything in life] Is all bitter / like the voices of Aboriginals / lost in time” (“Triste distacco” [Sad parting] Coreno, Pianto 15). In Vento al sole Australian themes and engagement with the existential condition of the migrant become predominant, a discourse continued in Yellow Sun, a collection of Coreno’s English poetry (including some Italian poems from the preceding volumes rewritten in English) which is in large measure the result of the substantial encouragement given to Coreno by Judith Wright. It is also in this volume that

Coreno’s social themes begin to emerge. In the development of Coreno’s poetry Australia initially represents spiritual marginalisation, isolation, a life experience that is melancholic, destructive and fatal. This theme begins to take shape in “Emigrato” [Migrant] (Coreno, Ricordanze 21 and is developed in “Australia” (Coreno, Vento 25) where there is some hint of the possibility of finding acceptance even though in the final analysis the diasporic  condition is no less agonising than the experience of love since for Coreno migration  represents exile. Forced to live far from his native land it is only in the idealized memory of a pre-migration past that it is possible to find some inkling of happiness (“Ritorno” [Return], Genovesi 165) even though the reality of life in the native land was one of endless suffering, a life without hope that offered poverty as its only element of merriment (“Ciociaria,” Coreno, Ricordanze 17). The humble migrant who exchanges his “sweat / in the patience of the day / for a secure future /among the uneasiness of foreign roads” (“Emigrante” [Migrant], Coreno, Vento 16)has to confront a land that cannot offer a sense of belonging or spiritual satisfaction.

 

MARCH 2010

Jetteke van Wijk (1967 -)

From 1997-2008 Jetteke was stationed in Jerusalem as a war correspondent for several Dutch newspapers and a Belgian one and also for Radio Netherlands, the Dutch international radio station.

The poetry she wrote during this period is a stark reminder of what it means to live, day in, day out, in a war zone. The language is direct and simple, because what she has to say deals with fundamentals.

Jetteke has been back in Amsterdam now for a year, but has returned to Jerusalem a couple of times to report on the latest in that interminable conflict. 

Janna Hilbrink was born in Holland and came to Australia at age fifteen. After graduating from Adelaide University she taught English literature, German and French for over a decade.
Throughout several career changes she has maintained her interest in language teaching and in translation. In 2004 she joined forces with Lella Cariddi to establish the “In Other Words” festival of poetry in translation.
 
Currently she is active on the committee of the Melbourne Shakespeare Society, translator of the works of two contemporary Dutch poets and is in the midst of organising The Languages of Love, a World Poetry sponsored event which features love poetry from several cultures and which is to be held on St Valentine’s Day 2010 at Northcote Town Hall.

 

APRIL 2010

ENZA GANDOLFO

Lecturer
School of Communication and the Arts  / Victoria University  / Creative Writing
Academic Qualifications PhD – Creative Writing Victoria University /
Master of Arts - Creative Writing /Victoria University
Associate Diploma of Arts (Professional Writing and Editing)     R M I T
Graduate Diploma Women’s Studies / Deakin University
Diploma of Education University of Melbourne
Bachelor of Arts  University of Melbourne
Awards
    2008 Swimming, shortlisted ABC Fiction Award
    2003 Lucia’s Story, Short listed for Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Unpublished Manuscripts
    2001 Varuna Writer’s Centre Manuscript Development
    2000 Australian Government Postgraduate Scholarship 2.
    1998 Gandolfo, E 2000 ‘Sicilian Portrait’ Tirra Lirra vol.10 no.3-4  2000  This short story was ‘Highly Commended’ in The Age Short Story Competition,.  
    1998 Varuna Writer’s Centre Fellowship   
  

KEVIN BROPHY

Associate Professor Kevin Brophy is a poet and novelist. He has had ten books published. From 1980 to 1994 Kevin Brophy edited the small press literary journal Going Down Swinging. His poems and essays have been anthologised in Best Australian Poems 2004, 2006 (Black Inc.), The Road South (Five islands, 2007), New Music: Contemporary Australian Poetry (Five Islands 2001), Family Ties: Australian Poems of the Family (Oxford 1999), My Secret Life (Melbourne Festival of Poetry 1999), Daughters and Fathers (UQP 1997) and other publications. His book, Creativity, was shortlisted for the NSW Premiers Nonfiction Literary Award. Kevin Brophy is a regular reviewer for Reading Time, the journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia, and contributes Book Notes for the Council of Adult Education book Reading Groups. He has been awarded Australia Council for the Arts writers grants in 1974, 1986 and 2005. He has been awarded Arts Victoria project grants in 1996 and 2003.
Publications
Books
•    Mr Wittgenstein's Lion (Five Islands Press, 2007)
•    What Men and Women Do (Flat Chat Press, 2006)
•    Explorations in Creative Writing (Melbourne University Publishing, 2003)
•    Portrait in Skin (Five Islands Press, 2002)
•    Creativity: Psychoanalysis, Surrealism and Creative Writing (Melbourne University Press, 1998)
•    Seeing Things (Five Islands Press, 1997)
•    Replies to the Questionnaire on Love (Five Islands, 1992)
•    The Hole through the Centre of the World (Simon & Schuster, 1991)
•    Visions (Angus & Robertson, 1989)
•    Getting Away With It (Wildgrass, 1982)
Recent publications
•    'Writing PhD's: Integrational linguistics and a new poetics for the PhD', TEXT vol. 11, No. 1, April 2007 (http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/text/)
•    'How to read a poem', TEXT vol. 11, No. 1, April 2007 (http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/text/)
•    Three poems in Blast, issue no. 4, 2006
•    "Peculiarities and Monstrosities: Consciousness, Neuro-Science and Poetry" in Creativ e Writing: theory Beyond Practice (editors: Nigel Krauth & Tess Brady) Teneriffe: Post Pressed, 2006
•    "Repulsion and Day-Dreaming: Freud writing Freud" in New Writing: The International Journal for the Theory and Practice of Creative Writing (forthcoming)
•    "The Dead" in Agenda vol. 41 n. 1-2
•    ''Man-Moth' and the flame of influence: a poet reading poetry' in Westerly vol. 49, November 2004
 

DR DOMINIQUE HECQ

Dominique Hecq attended the University of Liège, Belgium, where she completed two degrees with First Class Honours in English: a Licence in Germanic Philology and an MA in Literary Translation. With the help of a La Trobe University Scholarship, she came to Australia to write a PhD on Exile in Australian Fiction.
Dominique has taught in a wide range of subjects in the areas of Literary Studies, Creative Writing and Psychoanalysis in Australia and overseas. It might therefore come as no surprise that her work crosses borders. Her writing explores notions of sexual, linguistic and cultural identification. It is often experimental. Her research aims at bridging the gap between creative writing and theory: it teases out links between creativity and the psychoanalytic teachings of Lacan whilst examining ethical and political questions underpinning intercultural, feminist, and postcolonial issues. Her published work includes one novel, three collections of stories two books of poems and two short plays, one book on Freud written collaboratively, as well as articles on psychoanalysis, writing and translation.
•    Out of Bounds (re.press 2009)
•    Couchgrass (Forthcoming)
•    Noisy Blood (Papyrus, 2004)
•    Good Grief (Papyrus, 2002)
•    The Book of Elsa (Papyrus, 2000)
•    Magic and Other Stories (Woorilla Books, 2000)
•    Mythfits: Four Uneasy Pieces (Penfolk, 1999)
•    The Gaze of Silence (SideWaLK Collective, 1999)
•    With Russell Grigg and Craig Smith, Feminine Sexuality: Freud and the Early Controversies (Other Press, 1999)

Research profile:
Dominique Hecq's research interests are at the intersection of creative writing, psychoanalysis and pedagogy as well as genre theory and ethics.

Her major project, 'Uncanny Encounters: on Writing, Madness and Anxiety' is the first study to examine the relationship between writing, anxiety and psychosis within a Lacanian framework which is accessible to lay readers and professionals. The project sets into motion an innovative engagement between the fields of psychoanalysis and creative writing which is both theoretical and clinical by integrating clinical vignettes, pedagogical anecdotes, and literary illustrations in the discussion. The aims of this project are: to examine the complex correlations between anxiety and the onset of psychosis in order to determine the ways in which writing can be used in the prevention or treatment of mental illness and, conversely, how an informed handling of anxiety may benefit pedagogical practices in creative writing workshops.

"Lacan and the Poets: for the Love of Writing" offers an intertextual reading of the work of Jacques Lacan on the subject of love and power as expounded in his seminars on desire, transference, ethics, the four discourses and feminine jouissance.
This study shows that for psychoanalysis the literary object is both over-determined and under-determined and seeks to situate the forms of such contradiction and to analyze what she has called 'the (im)possible power of psychoanalysis' elsewhere.
Whilst the essays focus on particular aspects of love, these also focus on particular ways of articulating love with power in the work of writers whose work contributed to conceptual innovations in psychoanalysis. These writers include James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Paul Claudel, Georges Bataille, Andre Gide, Andre Breton and Marguerite Duras.

'Trials: Moral Panics from News Story to Fiction' is aimed at a wider audience. The project feeds into ongoing research in genre theory, and discursive practices as understood in psychoanalysis and politics.
It introduces the French concept of the fait divers in Australian critical discourse because it offers new insights into the construction of moral panics and into the media's role in this process and because it enables to suggest new strategies for reading and scrutinizing this phenomenon.
While having no direct translation in English, the genre does overlap with the news story proper not only in terms of narrative structure, but also reception, as prime product of a consumer society, witness the public's consumption of news items about the Cronulla riots, the trials of Schapelle Corby and Van Nguyen and the Falconio case, to take but a few recent examples.
The research so far shows that although the universality of the paradigm of the fait divers as constructed by the media owes something to its psychosocial and psychosexual underpinnings, it also owes much to its particular mode of propagation.
The project therefore focuses on the narrativity of the fait divers from news story to fiction in order to assess its aesthetic, ethical and cultural significance by unpacking the ways in which moral panics are constructed, maintained or deconstructed through varying modes of propagation (news story, biography, autobiography, 'faction', film and fiction).

 

MAY 2010

MIKE HEALD

Mike Heald was born in Grimsby, England in 1959, and his family emigrated to Perth, Western Australia, in 1972. He completed a PhD in contemporary Western Australian poetry in 1999.
He currently lives in Ballarat, Victoria, and teaches at Trinity College, Melbourne University.
Focusing Saturn
(First published by FACP in December 2004)
In Focusing Saturn Mike Heald continues his exploration of the natural world, shifting human relationships, the life of the body and the significance of everyday life. In this impressive third
collection, as with his last book, Heald once again achieves ‘a singular, individual feeling for the world’ (Martin Harrison, Australian Book Review) Fremantle Arts Centre Press are thrilled to announce that Focusing Saturn has been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier Awards.
Wendy Jenkins, Editor at the Press says:
‘It is great to see Focusing Saturn recognised in this way. Although Mike’s work has never been ‘showy’ it is slowly accumulating the readership and critical recognition it deserves.’
Judges’ Comments from the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards (Judith Wright Calanthe Prize for Poetry):
   

JUNE 2010

SALLY MORRISON

Sally Morrison originally trained as a molecular biologist before beginning her writing career in the 70s. She has written several works,  including her play Hag, short story collection I Am Boat, and novels Who’s Taking You to the Dance, Against Gravity,The Insatiable Desire of Injured Love, the award winning Mad Meg, and in 2009 AFTER FIRE-A BIOGRAPHY OF CLIFTON PUGH.

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