Australian poetry now: land, country and environment

FRIDAY 14 DECEMBER at 5 p.m.

Desert, sea, bush, rainforest, pastoral lease, contested country: Australian colonial poetry of the land has a long and vivid history, riven by politics and romance in equal part. Decades after the influential lyrical, activist poetries of Judith Wright and Oodgeroo Noonuccal, a new generation of poets, compelled by urgent local and global ecological themes, is writing back to pastoral themes, re-thinking the colonial romanticisation of landscape. 

Three award-winning Australian writers, Emily Bitto, A. Frances Johnson and Anthony Lynch, will read their favourite Australian ‘nature’ poems and share examples of their own poems exploring notions of land and ecology. 

Join us before Christmas for a dynamic snapshot of Australian environmental poetry now!

Advance booking recommended (06 678 42 35/ [email protected]). Space is limited so people who have not booked will be welcome on a first come first served basis.

BIO NOTES: 

EMILY BITTO 

Emily Bitto is an Australian writer of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. She has a Masters in Literary Studies and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne. Her writing has appeared in various publications, including The Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin, Heat and the Australian Literary Review. Her novel,The Strays, was shortlisted for the 2015 Indie Prize and the Dobbie Award, and won the prestigious Stella Prize in 2015. The novel has subsequently been published in America, Canada, the UK and Portugal. Emily is the current recipient of an Australia Council residency in the BR Whiting Studio in Rome.

A. FRANCES JOHNSON 

A. Frances Johnson is a poet, novelist and painter, and is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne where she lectures in Poetry and Contemporary Eco-fiction. She is the author of a novel (Eugene’s Falls, Arcadia 2007) and three collections of poetry. In 2015, she won the Griffith University-Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize for ‘The Book of Interdictions’. Her most recent poetry collection, Rendition for Harp and Kalashnikov (Puncher and Wattmann, 2018) was shortlisted for the 2018 Melbourne Prize for Literature, Best Writing Award. She was the 2017 recipient of the Australia Council residency in the BR Whiting Studio in Rome.

ANTHONY LYNCH

Anthony Lynch is a Melbourne writer of fiction, poetry and reviews. His work has appeared in publications including The Age, The Best Australian Poems, The Best Australian Stories, Meanjin and Southerly, and been read on ABC Radio National. He is a frequent reviewer for Australian Book Review and The Australian. His short story collection Redfin (Arcadia) was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, and his poetry collection Night Train (Clouds of Magellan) was runner-up in the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. He works as a senior editor, and he is the publisher for Whitmore Press (https://whitmorepress.com), which specialises in poetry.