THE BIG READ : August 19th,'11

Dear Friends, A year ago Collected Works Bookshop was faced with an uncertain future as we digested implication of the large rent rise (unforeseen as we sought new 4 year lease). The support we received from our poetry community (writers & readers) was fantastic! The Christmas Benefit (December, '10), organized by Friends of Collected Works, was a huge & positive interjection (dollars & cents, morale, energy). Our programme of book launchings + readings have sustained this momentum. But a new problem, or a new context for the problem, has emerged. Turning around the public perception of the collapse of bricks & mortar book trade in the wake of the Borders/A & R crash is the new challenge. It is fortuitous, therefore, that the McBryde/Harrison/Smeaton "BIG READ" is just around the corner. Please see here first announcement of the programme:

You are Cordially Invited to

A Poets’ Benefit Event for Collected Works Bookshop

featuring

jordieALBISTON, connieBARBER, tonyBIRCH, lynBOUGHTON,
eddyBURGER, m.a.CARTER, jenniferCOMPTON, alisonCROGGON, danDISNEY, megDUNN, michaelFARRELL, susanFEALY, wendyFLEMING, leeFUHLER, claireGASKIN,
luisGONZALEZ SERRANO, timHAMILTON, libbyHART, lynHATHERLY, susanHAWTHORNE, kristinHENRY, andyJACKSON, KOMNINOS, michelleLEBER, geoffLEMON,
LISH, rayLIVERSIDGE, earlLIVINGS, kerryLOUGHREY, myronLYSENKO, bronwynMANGER, emilyMANGER, felixNOBIS, anthonyO’SULLIVAN, k.f.PEARSON, PI O, judithRODRIGUEZ, josephineROWE, robynROWLAND, gigRYAN, kerrySCUFFINS, tomSHAPCOTT, steveSMART, jennySTRAUSS, fionaSTUART, peterTIERNAN, lyndonWALKER, chrisWALLACE-CRABBE, ceciliaWHITE, petraWHITE, laurenWILLIAMS

plus

jenniferHARRISON (reading dorothyPORTER)
kenSMEATON (reading malMORGAN)
ianMcBRYDE (reading barbaraGILES)


FRIDAY, AUGUST 19th, 6:30 for 7 pm
__________________________________

at Collected Works Bookshop,

1st Floor, The Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston St., Melbourne
(corner Swanston St. and Flinders Lane)

Free Admission for all, the only prerequisite asked is to please buy a book or three to keep Collected Works thriving and alive!


Complimentary Wine & Nibbles Provided Inquiries : Collected Works 9654 8873

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COLLECTED WORKS BOOKSHOP EVENTS CALENDAR

For friends who arent Facebook friends --given that the Collected Works Bookshop's Facebook page has in recent weeks become our information board --herewith the February, 2011 Calendar:

Saturday, 12th February, '011, from 2pm; Paroxysm Press presents annual Adelaide/Melbourne connection. Featuring launch of Teri Louise Kelly's 4th book, TheAmerican Blow Job, with readings from Jenny Toune, Kerryn Tredrea, Hop Dac, Kristy Love, Shane Jesse Christmass. At Collected Works Bookshop, lvl 1, 37 Swanston Street, City, (enqu., Kris , 9654-8873) ALL WELCOME

Monday, 14th February (yes, it's St Valentine's with a difference), 4.30 for 5pm; Anne Elvey's chapbook, Claimed by Country (from Chris Mansell's Press Press), launched by Kate Rigby, with special guest Betty Pike. RSVP, aelvey@tpg.com.au; enqu. Kris, 9654-8873. At Collected Works Bookshop, lvl 1, 37 Swanston Street, City. ALL WELCOME

Saturday, 26th February, from 2pm; Ray Liversidge launches Tasmania's famous Famous Reporter (# 42), the latest issue of Ralph Wessman's unique magazine of poetry, review, poetry commentary, news. Readers to be announced. If you're not heading out of town to the mag's Guildford event please catch it previous day at Collected Works, lvl 1. 37 Swanston St ., City. ALL WELCOME. (enqu,, Kris , 9654-8873)

oOo

Previously mentioned event featuring Mark Tredinnick book launch & reading is probably going to take place at the end of May. Watch out for announcement.
The March calendar of events is taking shape, and may have three events. At this stage the one definite gig will feature Robert Lloyd, reading poems, singing songs, on Wednesday the 23rd.
We're hoping also for a June or July reading & possible launching (if we can get copies of the book) by Kevin Hart.
WATCH THIS SPACE!
And check out the Collected Works Bookshop Facebook page...

ROBERT GRAY AND PETRA WHITE READING AT COLLECTED WORKS!

Collected Works Bookshop's first poetry event of Spring is on Monday, 4th October, when we host Robert Gray & Petra White. It's an honest to goodness reading not a launching but hopefully a swag of Robert's older title, New & Selected Poems, will arrive in time to supplement his most recent, the prose memoir, The Land I Came Through Last (Giramondo, 2008). We will also have copies of Petra's second & recent collection, The Simplified World (John Leonard Press, 2010).
Let's fill the Shop!

time : 6 for 6.30
wine & nibbles : YES!
address : level 1, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, City
enquiries : tel 9654 8873

*

Ray Liversidge's reading/launching advertized in the M P U newsletter, POAM, for October 14th at Collected Works, has been postponed until November 11th. More information closer to the date.

BLOOMSDAY, 2010

On Wednesday, 16th June, around midday and until 2, please join us at Collected Works Bookshop, for our annual Bloomsday celebration.
For anyone who hasnt attended before, we simply read from the book, James Joyce's Ulysses, in turn, around the room. We are mostly enthusiasts & readers of Joyce. No special license required!
After Kris Hemensley's introductory remarks, the actor James Howard will offer a little drama to begin proceedings.
There will be nibbles & tipples.
Everyone is welcome.

VENUE : Collected Works Bookshop, level 1, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000
INFORMATION : tel. 03-9654-8873

MOK MAGAZINE 40th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION!

RICHARD TIPPING

PRESS RELEASE

Mok: a magazine of contemporary ink & paper

The influential poetry/art magazine Mok (issue 5), first published in Spring 1969, is being re-issued in a limited edition to celebrate its 40^th anniversary. Mok will be launched in Melbourne at Collected Works bookshop at 2.30pm on Saturday December 5^th, with a poetry reading and discussion including Kris Hemensley, Richard Tipping, John Jenkins, Rob Tillett (TBC) and a tribute to Vicki Viidikas.

Mok 5 was published offset in an edition of 1000 copies at the price of "40c or yr soul". The magazine has large pages (278 x 215mm) with striking black and white page design, combining some memorable poems and experimental writing with bold photographs and graphics.

Mok was the first of what became a wave of alternative magazines in the late 1960s, introducing new ideas of what poetry could be. The fifth issue was national in reach, with the co-editors in Adelaide (Rob Tillett) and Sydney (Richard Tipping) attracting contributions from across the country. This was “when Adelaide / Melbourne / Sydney took a formal step towards the New Australian Poetry we felt in our bones!" as Kris Hemensley has written.

The re-issue is 100 numbered copies, laser printed on xxxxx paper. Scanning and design have been supervised by Warren Taylor at The Narrows, collaborating as co-publishers with Richard Tipping's Artpoem press.

Mok 5 anniversary 40^th re-issue

2.30pm Saturday 5^th December 2009

Collected Works

Level 1 Nicholas Building 37 Swanston Street Melbourne, VIC 3000

Phone: (03) 9654 8873

Richard Tipping phone 0415 292 939

Press Release - further details

1969 was a dynamic year, with American cultural politics impacting hard. The Vietnam war was growing increasingly unpopular, astronauts landed on the moon, the Woodstock festival and its musics played as “the great '60s insurgency of hippies and revolutionary socialists startled and alarmed the cosy world of corporate calm and suburban slumber”. The Yippies arrived, regenerating urban communities with cooperative zeal. Mok was connected to new American poetics through correspondence with magazines such as The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle. Mok was also a part of alternative culture in the 'Festival City', Adelaide, through the rock band Red Angel Panic (the editors were musicans)- and the co-operative café Geranium where poetry was performed with music and written on the walls.

The production of Mok 5 in Adelaide grew from a wide range of collaborations. Richard Tipping sent poems and ideas from Sydney, while Rob Tillett typed out all of the copy on an electric typewriter (very advanced for the time) and worked on production with a small offset printery. The layout and design was influenced by Marshall McCluhan's The Medium is the Massage, and put words and images together in dynamic relationships.

Rob Tillett writes that: “Offset was a new toy and we fooled with its potential (probably a bit much, as some of the text is too small and the layout's a bit erratic). Some of the pics were originals, but others were lifted from various sources (unacknowledged, as 'property is theft' etc etc). However, it broke new ground. The mag was assembled and bound by the Holocaust drama group's members and associates on a big table at the old Jam Factory. Some of these luminaries helped with the actual production and layout, too, in the spirit of 'contemporary dissolution and intemperance'. At the launch party we had music by the Red Angel Panic, a barbecued pig on a spit and a lightshow room in the basement.”

Poets in Mok 5 include Kris Hemensley, Vicki Viidikas, Charles Buckmaster, Nigel Roberts, Garrie Hutchinson, John Jenkins, Jacques Moncrieff, Toy Dorgan, Simon Bronsky, billbeard, Jonny Goodall, and the co-editors Richard Tipping and Rob Tillett.

Richard Tipping's poem Soft Riots / TV News was first published in Mok 5 and has been constantly in print ever since through anthologies, the latest being The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, edited by John Kinsella (Penguin, 2009).

“Of the 57 contibutors to Mok, 34 currently appear in AustLit despite the contents of the Mok magazines not yet having been included in the AustLit database.”* * Sabrina Caldwell

Richard Tipping was 19 years old and Rob Tillett 20 when Mok 5 was published in September 1969. The magazine was completely self-funded and independent, and relied upon street sales to return its costs. Whereas the first four issues (in 1968) had been printed with a Gestetner roneo machine (with a screenprinted cover, in a run of 300 copies), the 5^th issue leapt into offset printing with its graphic possibilities and a large print run of 1000. Unfortunately, although the edition sold out, it was hard to keep the finances together - and Mok 6 remains in manuscript. Richard had connected with many poets in Sydney through moving there from Adelaide in early 1969, and both editors were frequent visitors to Melbourne as the half-way point on this pendulum swing between cities. In 1970 Richard returned to Adelaide to continue studies at Flinders University, and edited several issues of a broadsheet called Mok Up included in the student newspaper Empire Times.

***

“Richard Tipping, born late in 1949, and co-editor of the underground Mok magazine, uses typographic innovations, headlines, concrete poetry, shapes like tears, humour, satire, radical politics, lyricism and irony. (…)

The student revolution has more fish to fry than straight politics. Perhaps one of their greatest strengths is that they refuse to separate the components of living. Poetry is a kind of demonstration too, against the philistines, and admass culture; a great raid on the inarticulate by a generation brainwashed by McCluhanism. 
In a country like this it's doubly important, where the tribe's dialect is overdue for a big dose of purification.”

Dorothy Hewett, Poets Alive in Westerly No. 4. December, 1971.

www.austlit.com/a/hewett/1971-dh-west.htm

*

“The beginnings are back in 1968 when the poets chose to ignore the Australian literary scene: (…) the influences and catalysts were elsewhere. The most important thing it did was to stop the need for a poetry license in this country. If the poets could not find someone to publish their work (and they didn't really bother trying), they published themselves: they took the mystique out of publishing; it was no longer the light at the end of the tunnel, no longer the great success but just part of the process of poetry and from that the poem became a living thing: an inter-reaction between poets became possible. Any predictions must be optimistic.”


Robert Kenny

Introduction to Applestealers, 1974

www.austlit.com/a/=surveys/1974-rk-ap.html

RT 15.11.09

SUSAN SCHULTZ READING AT COLLECTED WORKS BOOKSHOP

ALOHA TO SUSAN SCHULTZ!

We welcome the poet, critic and editor, Susan Schultz, to the Melbourne leg of her short Australian tour. She will be reading at Collected Works Bookshop, on Wednesday, November 18th, '09, 6 for 6.30, accompanied by Michael Farrell and friends (Bella Li, Sam Langer, Aden Rolfe, Jal Nicholl, Joshua Comyn, Jacek Pakula, Claire Gaskin).
Many of us know Susan Schultz as the editor of Tin Fish magazine and publications. She is a prof at University of Hawaii, author of collections published by Salt (UK) amongst others, and editor of The Tribe of John : Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry (Alabama, '95).

A great meet and greet occasion at the poetry hub of the City of Literature! Further enquiries, Kris Hemensley, 9654-8873.
Collected Works Bookshop, level 1, Nicholas Building, corner of Flinders Lane and Swanston at 37 Swanston Street, Melbourne.

BLOOMSDAY 2009 + COLLECTED WORKS' AUTUMN REPORT

Farewell Autumn, welcome Winter! April & May have come & gone! We'd better advertise Bloomsday then, the annual June 16th celebration falling this year on the Tuesday, which will be the next event at the Shop. In recent years, the profusion of Bloomsday events elsewhere leads us to concentrate our reading into the lunch period, midday til 2.30 or so. All James Joyce fans welcome!
The Autumn report, begun late March, was put to the side while I composed The Divine Issue (published in April), and though I took up the former again in early May, I was then wonderfully diverted by correspondence flowing from TDI as well as revisiting the same period's literary material, some of which research accrues now as its Addendum.
Had I been better organized I'd have flagged the two May events, namely the launch of Mary Napier's spoken-word CD, Open Thoughts, on the 15th, and the tribute reading for Dorothy Porter on the 28th.
A major distraction has been Loretta's health glitch (--an irregularity detected via breast screening which led to needle biopsy and then surgery for breast cancer; disappointingly this is a continuing story with further though smaller surgery in the offing)... On the day Dorothy's tribute took place at Collected Works, Loretta was having her operation at the Peter Mac. What I called 'exquisite irony', Jenny Harrison (who, with Gig Ryan, curated & catered the Tribute) named a 'symmetry' in which Dorothy was linked to Retta & all women touched by the illness. There was never a thought to cancel the event; Retta would have been appalled. She was certainly at the shop in spirit just as all her well-wishers were with her at the Peter Mac...

Disaster & disease affect everyone; the poets die the same kind of deaths as everyone else. Today I've read a notice posted by Lorin Ford on the Overload Nation poetry site concerning the death of Andrea Sherwood. We catch our breath, then breathe again... Geoff Eggleston, Dorothy Porter --mourned & celebrated by their families & literary communities in December... In February the fires came. Entire hamlets, towns disappeared. Family & friends were burnt out &/or killed. Young poet Ella Holcombe's parents perished in Kinglake. The subsequent memorial service at Montsalvat, attended by Melbourne poets in solidarity with Ella, was also a grieving for that whole community... In Redesdale, Robert Kenny faught for his house for ten minutes before abandoning it to save his own life. His academic work-in-progress was backed-up at La Trobe University but library, archives, art work & studio are all gone... From Berlin the shocking news of artist, print-maker Julia Harman's tragic & untimely death --she was Tim Hemensley's first serious partner, and felt that however separated by distance in life, & then by his death, she was always with him, and now she is I guess... Concentric circles of all whom one considers family. A good friend of the Shop, Tim Sheppard, died on the 11th March after illness. A great devotee of poetry, especially the 1st World War British poets, he also wrote poems although a collection never saw light of day...
For the poets, as I'm fond of saying, t'was always so. All of this in the midst of life. And life goes on (--and it does go on despite the traumatisation of survivors --so well and still do I recall the experience of 6 years ago when the fact of my son's death was like an imposed nakedness upon me -- worse : I felt skinned, scourged of my skin, wearing only the fact of his death, feeling as I stood there in the world that only I knew the catastrophe and no one could see what I was feeling)... Some of the life that goes on, for the poet, involves the readings & launches, gatherings of the clan... For the Melbourne poet these are all around town, constantly, if the handbills or emails I see are any indication.

Collected Works' Autumn season kicked off on the 12th March with the first of two new poetry collections published by Barry Scott's Transit Lounge : Kent McCarter's In the Hungry Middle of Here (--launched by Jenny Lea, whom I dont think I've seen since I dropped in on a Meanjin/Overland cricket match on the Domain Oval in South Yarra --early 90s? --I'm not sure whether she was playing or barracking but we chatted at tea in amongst the trestle tables & eskies --and what a dynamo was Meanjin's skipper, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, clapping for attention, darting hither & thither in the field when he wasnt bowling --but that's another story!), & Jennifer Mackenzie's Borobudur (launched by Tim Lindsey from the Asia Law Centre) on the 20th. Good attendances for both, more local poets at McCarter's, lots of Asian Studies people at Mackenzie's.
It's a truism in the Melbourne writing & performance community now that with the scene's current proliferation there are always going to be new names, poets one hasnt previously encountered. Blurbs from Gig Ryan & CWC for McCarter underlined my ignorance. Conversely, my blurb for Jenny Mackenzie attests a long acquaintance with author & family punctuated for the times she lived in China.
I remember twenty years ago Jennifer thinking of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights as a potential publisher of her Borobudur project. This must have been canvassed around about 1985 since that was when Robert Kenny's Rigmarole Books withdrew from the fray, having to decline such new writers as Brian Castro as well as foreclosing what had become a new writing stable including John Scott, Anna Couani, Ken Taylor, Ken Bolton, Chris Barnett, Ania Walwicz, John Anderson, Laurie Duggan, Walter Billeter, Kenny himself & yours truly. Who knows how it might have developed had personal & financial conditions played out differently? Rigmarole might now still have been the major small-press in Australia that one or two publishers in North America survived sufficiently long to become over there. But then again, gaps are inevitably filled and the culture is always changing, implying different aesthetical & political imperatives for different times. Rigmarole in the mid to late 80s would have been a natural home for Borobudur. While congratulating Jenny Mackenzie's tenacity and sighing with her At last, at last, one realizes it was more the case of putting something aside than of battling for twenty years; even so, twenty years is quite a hiatus.

A note now on Tim Lindsey's comments (overwhelmingly in the poet's favour)... Inevitably it was an Asian Studies/Foreign Affairs appreciation of the book as a cultural-political object --that is, Mackenzie's poem was read as a long overdue Australian translation of a classic Javanese story subsuming crucial aspects of that tradition, a belated but worthy act reflecting Australian recognition of the antiquity & authority of an important geopolitical neighbour.
Lindsey's pitch was not uninteresting --indeed, in the context of an exotic literary publication, his political & economic language was an instructive counterpoint. However, as I quipped to him later, I'd contend Indonesian-Australian relations, as with East-West relations in general, are a two-way street. Interesting that Australian ignorance of Javanese epic is supposedly indicative of an Australian know-nothing arrogance which will marginalise us in the future; yet the lay observation of the Asian neighbours' voracious appetite for Western popular forms, from democracy & personal freedoms to t-shirts & rock & roll, is unmentioned. Actually, Western translation of Asian literary & religious classics is the typical form of the Anglo-European interaction with Asia over a very long period, and as fast as we gobble up their elite texts so do they our popular ones.
It also occurred to me last year, after meeting a Singaporean poet & academic, that his expertise in modern British poetry, from Hardy to the present, surely curries our conception of the post-colonial! Furthermore, the considerable East-West collaboration of artists & writers, including Australian & Asian, in my opinion significantly corrects the postcolonial ideological cliche. I offered Tim Lindsey the examples of Sandy Fitts (whose View from the Lucky Hotel (Five Islands Press, '08) has won this year's Anne Elder Prize for a first collection) & Jane Gibbian (Ardent is her first full collection, published by Giramondo Press, '08) as Aussie poets redeeming quality collaboration from their trips to Vietnam. I also mentioned to him Cathy O'Brien's description of her meeting in Vientiane, Laos with an Australian colleague's partner, the Iraqui poet Basim Furat, residing there after a spell in New Zealand where, according to Mark Pirie, he had impressed the local scene. They may well collaborate in the future. For me a tiny but interesting example of the hybridization increasingly possible in global culture.
Of course, violent displacement is also increasing & is one obvious explanation of such unlikely crosscurrents. Yet let's recall Ford Madox Ford's witty definition of English culture, against the xenophobia of his day, as the happy result of "successive periods of unrest amongst the Continental peoples".
_________________________________________________________
Kris Hemensley
March/May/June 4 '09

ANNOUNCEMENTS : APRIL, 2009 EVENTS AT COLLECTED WORKS BOOKSHOP

Alan Loney points out to me that the wrong date's up on Poetry & Ideas for his book launching in April. He's right! We'd originally arranged for the 11th before we realized it was bang in the middle of Easter. The rejigged event is for April 18th, Saturday, 2 for 2.30, when Marion Campbell will do the honours for Alan's collection, Day's Eye. Please correct your diaries. Everyone welcome.

So too this coming Friday evening, April 3rd, when we'll have John McLaren, fresh from his big night out at the University, where Morag Fraser launched his biography of Vincent Buckley, speaking in favour of Geoff Page's anthology, 60 Classic Australian Poems (published by University of New South Wales Press). Gather at 6 for 6.30-ish start.

ANNOUNCEMENT : BOOK LAUNCHINGS, March 2009

There are three events at Collected Works bookshop in March, namely :
Thursday, 12th March, Kent MacCarter's collection of poems, IN THE HUNGRY MIDDLE OF HERE, published by Barry Scott's Transit Lounge Press, will be launched by Jenny Lee; and on Friday, 20th March, Jennifer Mackenzie's epic poem, BOROBUDUR, also published by the enterprising Transit Lounge, will be launched by Tim Lindsay. Both book-launches are scheduled 6 for 6.30 pm.
RSVP info@transitlounge.com.au or tel- 03-9332-7847
On Saturday, 21st March, 2 for 2.30, Adelaide's Paroxysm Press are launching two novellas. We will post more details later. If previous Paroxysm events are anything to go by, for example last year's 10th anniversary anthology, this launching/reading will fill the room!
April's itinerary is taking shape, including Geoff Page's new anthology (published University of New South Wales Press) to be launched on Friday the 3rd by John MacLaren, and a new collection from Alan Loney to be launched by Marion Campbell on Saturday the 11th. Final details tbc soon.
Needless to say, all event are catered with plonk & nibbles, and everyone is welcome!
Support local presses, writers & writing at Collected Works bookshop
n o w !

A RAIDER'S GUIDE : ALL WELCOME!

On Thursday, 1st May, 08, at the Bookshop, Giramondo Books, distributed by Tower Books in Australia, in conjunction with Collected Works, presents the launching of Michael Farrell's new collection, A RAIDER'S GUIDE. Justin Clemens will do the honours. Time : 6 for 6.30; Venue : Collected Works Bookshop, Level 1, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, Melbourne [adjacent to the Victorian Writers Centre & Retro Star Clothing]. Enquiries & rsvp, Kris Hemensley, 03 9654 8873.
We've hosted a spate of book launchings over the past few months, including THE BEST AUSTRALIAN POEMS 2007 (published by Black Inc) in November, with Peter Rose, this year's editor, m/c-ing the proceedings; Paul Kane's A SLANT OF LIGHT (published by Anthony Lynch's Whitmore Press, Geelong), launched by Chris Wallace-Crabbe, in January; Ouyang Yu's collection of prose, ON THE SMELL OF AN OILY RAG : Speaking English, thinking Chinese and living Australian (published by Wakefield Press, Adelaide), launched by Rodney Hall, in February; CROAK & GRIST (published by Paroxysm Press, Adelaide), featuring the short stories of Shane Jesse Christmass & Hop Dac, presented by Daniel Watson, kicking off March, followed a fortnight later by another Whitmore Press event, the double launching by Philip Salom of THE PALLBEARER'S GARDEN by A. Frances Johnson & A TIGHT CIRCLE by Brendan Ryan; Stuart Armstrong's THE MYTH OF OPHIUCHUS (published by Rebus Press), launched by Garth Madsen, at the end of March; and in April, two books published by Salt (UK), John Mateer's ELSEWHERE, launched by yours truly, & Javant Biarujia's POINTCOUNTERPOINT : New and Selected Poems, launched by Dmetri Kakmi.
These launchings represented one of the busiest periods of the Bookshop's recent history. There's a business angle of course : as the bricks & mortar bookshop continues to be threatened by the internet, we need the occasion of the book launching to attract people through the beaded curtains. The event reminds old friends that we're still in existence and introduces new people to the Shop. Good turn-outs, good sales boost the Shop's morale as well as its coffers! We continue to pay our bills, order new titles, and so the show (nearing 25 years) goes on! The launchings are also our contribution to Melbourne's poetry culture. Collected Works is the poets' bookshop after all : our original sub-title was "Writers & Readers" (replaced many years ago by "Poetry & Ideas"). Different manifestations of the scene gather, accessible to the readers, the poetry lovers. Poetry is read & discussed, the wine flows, people mingle.
Our events are part of Melbourne poetry's public weave, sharing the stage with Readings bookstores, the Melbourne Poets Union events held next door at the Victorian Writers Centre, the Australian Poetry Centre's events at the Glenfern mansion in East St Kilda, the St Kilda Eco-centre readings, and the regular gigs at such venues as La Mama, Passionate Tongues, the Dan, Babble & many, many others.