This year Red Room Poetry is running their third annual National Poetry Month. How excellent is that? I don’t know how successful it is at reaching its goal of increasing “access, awareness and visibility of poetry in all its forms and for all audiences” but sometimes you just have to hang in there and build recognition. Poetry Month runs throughout August.
They are offering similar events and activities to last year with their 30in30 daily writing competition with prompts from Red Room commissioned poets, poetry ambassadors, online workshops, showcases, a community calendar, and more. Do check their page, for events that might interest you.
National Poetry Gala … and more
This year they also, they said, returned their National Poetry Gala to celebrate Red Room’s 20th anniversary. It was held, unfortunately, on 4 August! It was emceed by Benjamin Law, and was held at the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s new venue near Sydney Harbour Bridge. It featured some of Australia’s “finest contemporary poets” including Jazz Money, Sara Saleh, Freya Daly Sadgrove (NZ), Rebecca Shaw, Red Room’s 2023 Fellow Charmaine Papertalk Green, and this year’s Stella Prize winner, Sarah Holland-Batt.
There was also to be a musical performance by First Nations choir Mudjingaal Yangamba and the current Minister for the Arts, Tony Burke, was a special guest.
Also to commemorate their 20th anniversary, Red Room has published a poetry anthology titled A line in the sand: 20 years of Red Room Poetry. Its introduction is by Ali Cobby Eckermann, and it contains “over eighty pieces from leading poets and public figures in a retrospective that covers twenty years of the best commissioned Australian poetry”. They include writers I have heard of, and some of whom I’ve read, though not always their poetry, like Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Tony Birch, Dorothy Porter, Eloise Grills, Sarah Holland-Batt, Jazz Money, Omar Musa, Bruce Pascoe, Maria Tumarkin and Uncle Archie Roach AC. Tomorrow night, Tuesday 8 August, they are holding an online showcase via Facebook. The event is free but you need to book.
Meanwhile, if you missed the National Poetry Gala, you might be interested to know that the Victorian Poetry Month Gala has not been held yet. It is scheduled for 17 August at the Wheeler Centre. The host is a poet-playright I haven’t heard of before, Izzy Roberts-Orr, and the event will feature, says the promotion, “new work from a dazzling line-up of poets working across forms – from spoken word and performance to music and multimedia”. I don’t know many of the names those I do include Andrea Goldsmith reading unpublished poems by Dorothy Porter, and Eloise Grills whose book big beautiful female theory has been shortlisted for several literary awards this year. There is also a mention of “a collaboration” between journalist and author Erik Jensen and musician Evelyn Ida Morris. For other state and regional showcases and galas, check Red Room’s Showcases page.
These are just three of many events – online and live – scheduled during the month. If you are interested, check out the Community Calendar which lists events from across the country.
Do you attend poetry events – of any sort?
Whispering Gums 
There was a time, maybe 25 years ago when Milly and I were really taken with the Fitzroy (Melbourne) scene and would eat in Brunswick St – oh how I miss Brunswick St! – and go to shows at pubs or the Universal. We saw Gillies and DAAS of course but also, just once, a poetry event at a pub on Alexandra Pde featuring PiO. That’s it, my only experience of live poetry.
I have made a note though to purchase Sara Saleh’s new novel and poetry collection, both out soon.
PiO would have been great to see, Bill … would you go to more poetry events if the opportunity arose?
Brunswick St is great isn’t it, and the whole Fitzroy scene is still pretty lively I think, but we don’t go down that way now that our kids have moved a bit north. The live music scene in particular is what attracted our son to Melbourne.
I had to stop and think about DAAS, for a moment, but I’m guessing you mean the Doug Anthony All Stars? How great to have seen them.
The 1990s were a great time for comedy (sorry, I don’t know about poetry) with shows like Australia You’re standing in it on tv, and Gillies and Peter Cook putting on live reviews. I don’t remember all we saw now – DAAS and Gillies a number of times, Wendy Harmer, Topp Twins (I was onstage with the Topp Twins). Also, took Milly’s mother to see a play with “Mrs Sullivan” who affected a terrible American accent.
I attend poetry readings (mostly on zoom, now) and I sometimes invited friends to a tea and poetry reading, where we make an afternoon tea with sandwiches, scones, and sweets and then afterwards we sit around and read poems out loud for an hour or two.
Zoom poetry sounds great Jeanne. I would like to try to attend some that are on this month.
I love your friends’ poetry afternoons. My reading group has had poetry nights two or three times, at which we all bring a favourite poem or two and read it out. They have been enjoyable evenings, and it’s probably time for another one. Hmm, maybe my group could make August a poetry selection in future.
That’s lovely!
It’s great isn’t it.
You are a tireless supporter of all things poetry, ST (I should really say “all things literature”), and never fail to draw our attention to August’s poetic direction.
But alas !, I am a philistine when it comes to text rendered poetic: I can write doggerel (and will do so to prove such boast), but have committed to memory only one real poem – Rupert Brooke’s The Jolly Company – and the rest is Hilaire Belloc and Lewis Carroll ..
I haven’t committed many poems to memory either M-R. And the couple I have like GMH’s Spring and Fall, I often miss one line! But so many lines from poetry come to mind throughout life … do you find that?
Yes, I do: but owing to the influence of my father in my early life, they are mostly from (as previously noted) Lewis Carroll and Hilaire Belloc, as well as Norman Lindsay, A.A. Milne and Edward Lear.
Still, school did manage to instill some lines from the romantics and the immortal bard. But that’s it. Poetically-inclined I ain’t. You might say “I am but mad north-north-west” .. [grin]
The immortal bard is certainly one that few of us baby boomer types can shake, given our education, eh. (I think you are on the cusp of babyboomerdom, but what’s a couple of years!) Hamlet and Macbeth are the two that often come to my mind.
AA Milne. Yes! He’s another one who often springs to my mind. I think there’s nothing wrong with Carroll, Belloc, Lear etc. My father’s main contribution to my poetry education was Banjo!
I forgot you have never read The Magic Pudding (to your shame !) owing to your slightly weird dislike of personified animals. Your life is forever limited, woman !!! 😀
Oh you make me laugh MR … you noticed that I left Lindsay off my reply. I wondered if you would. You’ll be pleased to know that in our recent decluttering I did keep The magic pudding edition my parents gave the kids. You never know, I might read them to the grandkids.
If you undertook such a delightful chore you might come to realise the joy to be found therein, ST !! – AND the very quotable poetry !
Ok … I believe you! It’s not so much animals talking as the fantasy. Still, I really liked Here be Leviathans, so …
I would love to know what a first nations choir sounds like! I was under they impression that a choir is a very Western form of singing, but honestly it was just an assumption.
That’s interesting Melanie. Maybe a formal char is, but singing in choirs has become a really big positive force for good in Australia and have sprung up amongst almost every group you can imagine including homeless choirs. Music is big in First Nations communities here so this is one reflection of that.
As a 9 or 10-year-old I was “forced” to stand up in front of the class and recite The Snow Flake by Walter la Mare. It scarred me for life!
Oh poor you fourtriplezed … many people talk fondly of the days of learning poetry by heart, but having to then perform for your class is another whole level isn’t it?
Dare I ask, do you still know the poem?
I could always recite the first few lines, but as I got older it slipped from my memory. Then a couple of years back, I actually found a compendium of Walter la Mare poetry called Come Hither: A Family Treasury of Best-Loved Rhymes and Poems for Children. I reread The Snowflake and it came flooding back. As I write I am trying to recite it again, but I am failing lol.
I am an admirer of the music John Cale and Louis Tillet who have both used Do not go gentle into that good night in their music. I had no idea that it was a poem when I first heard it via Cale and then when I heard Tillett use it I had to look it up. I suspect I am more in tune with raging against the dying of the light than melting filigrees at this point in my life.
I follow Red Room on Insta and every year I think I will take the time to work some of their writing prompts. I still haven’t of course, but there’s always next week…next year!!
I do too, Brona – they are so interesting looking.
I do not attend poetry events, of any sort, but what I need is to take a class on how to GET poetry. There must be a knack to it, or something, because I just don’t get it. Or I didn’t. I actually read one the other day that sort of clicked with me and that made me think all hope was NOT lost for me and poetry. Maybe I just need to learn something about poetry with my brain before I can feel it with my soul? IDK.
Funny thing is, I once won 3rd place in a poetry contest when I was a kid. It was a poem about my love for MATH. Bwaaa haaaa haaa!!!!
Did I hear that you sold your house??? Congrats!!!!
You did … so we are happy and relieved. Now to finish setting up our new home!!!
I think hearing poetry goes a long way to helping understand it, so poetry events might be worth attending. And, of course, as with prose there’s a wide variety of poetry from the very accessible to the very inaccessible, though I guess different people will have different opinions on accessiblity. I have been known to miss the point.
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