Poetry Alive ends this year's program @ SSG for 2024 and you are invited.
Poetry Sydney is thrilled to have the conveners of Poetry Alive, Harry Laing & Nicola Bowery of Geemonga present their much revered poetry events for the final poetry instalment at the Stanley Street Gallery program for 2024.
PS Cottier
Louise Carter
Harry Laing (Emcee)
Hard not to see the doom of civilisation in these rectangular-marked hells these battery farms for four-wheeled hens.
from Underground car parks in V8
(collection by PS Cottier and Sandra Renew)
Blueness a gas flame in that hot summer
and sunlight abundant, abundant
in the blue time of brightness that stretched upwards and through us forever
a bright blue thread through our hearts and heaven.
from Golden Repair
activewear, activewear…
the sweat the pant the jog the joy
the power of the lycra’d thigh
here they come, they’re puffin by
flush with purpose elbows high…
from Too Much of a Stretch
Door admission includes refreshments. We recommend an early attendance to ensure your spot.
$15 (conc. available)
For more information please contact:
mail@stanleystreetgallery.com.au
or
phone: 0456 049 540
David Brooks: The Door
| The other side of daylight
3pm Saturday 28 September
A quarterly poetry program at the Stanley Street Gallery in Darlinghurst.
I’ve been known to say in the past that poetry ‘has its back on emptiness’, and that it’s this that gives it its resonance, like an echo-chamber gives resonance to the strings of a violin or cello or guitar. But I don’t think I’d say it that way anymore. For a start I no longer see it as emptiness that poetry has its back to, or at least no longer see emptiness as the only possibility. It could also, for example, be a fullness from which we’ve been holding ourselves back, or allowing ourselves to be held back.
For a great many poets, lyric poets especially, this echo chamber is the unconscious, the deep psyche, a kind of personal, or perhaps universal, underworld. Remember that the Greek ‘god’ of poetry was Orpheus, who visited the underworld to try to bring his dead wife back into the world of light and life, and whose poetry – song – after he failed, was enriched and empowered by his grief at the loss of her. But for many others – and increasingly for me (not that I think we must make a choice) – it’s the World beyond what we might call the human bubble, and all the wonder and strangeness and promise of and in that World beyond, that humans tend to turn their backs on in all their all-consuming busyness. This wonder and strangeness and promise is pretty much what I mean by ‘the other side of daylight’ of my new collection’s title.
And animals, of course – non-human animals, our relationships with them – are one of our entry-points.
David Brooks
David Brooks has produced numerous works of fiction, literary history and criticism, philosophy, and written increasingly in the service of animal rights and advocacy, but began with, returns to, and lives with poetry. Along with fifty new poems, his recent collection, The Other Side of Daylight: New and Selected Poems (UQP, 2024) contains selections from his previous five volumes, representing the work of almost fifty years. Born in Canberra in 1953, Brooks spent his earliest years in Greece, where his father was an immigration attaché to the Australian embassy, and was subsequently educated at the ANU and the University of Toronto. He has taught Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia, the ANU, and the University of Sydney, where he is now an honorary associate professor. From 1999 to 2013 he ran the university’s graduate writing program, and from 2000 until 2018 was co-editor of the journal Southerly. He lives, and writes full-time, in the Blue Mountains, with rescued sheep, and spends a short time each year in his wife’s native Slovenia. He has edited the poetry of A.D. Hope and R.F. Brissenden and, with Bert Pribac, translated the poetry of Srečko Kosovel (‘the Slovenian Rimbaud’). In 2015/16 he was awarded an Australia Council fellowship for services to Australian and international literature. Amongst works forthcoming in 2024 are Alec, a memoir of A.D. Hope, Ice Storm (a suite of sixteen essays on Slovenian subjects), and Essay on Rights of Non-human Animals.
Proceeds from the cost of admission, or any donatable amount will go towards David’s nominated charity, Warrumbungle Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation.
Notes on Reciprocity a group show curated by Claire de Carteret.
Drawing from the text ‘on weaving a basket’ by anthropologist Tim Ingold and lyrics from Lauryn Hill’s album, ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’, the exhibition is interested in the relationship that grows from spending quality time with material, exploring mutuality in processes of art making where, “mind is not above, nor nature below; if we ask where mind is, it is in the weave of the surface itself” and in this sense brings attention to how ideas don’t always happen in our heads, they are not strictly cognitive; intuition and serendipity are precious forces and we are situated in an ecology of material and the possibility of reciprocity in this is beautiful.
Natalia Tevino: Stanley Street Gallery Poetry Program – Saturday 1 June
Four female poets with representations of home, sharing explorations of poetry in two languages with English as an additional language, and the dominant literary form in publishing. Lead by visiting Mexican immigrant author, Natalia Trevino, who was raised in Texas and is professor of English and Mexican American Studies.
Natalia positions our cultures, languages, and sense of home have been watered down, erased, or under threat. She will share stories of women, motherhood, cancer, love, and the feminine divine in her bicultural, bilingual and award winning poetry.
Natalia Treviño, was born in Mexico. She has authored VirginX and Lavando La Dirty Laundry, which has been translated into Albanian and Macedonian. She works as a professor and her awards include the Alfredo Cisneros de Moral Award, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the Menada Literary Award. Her poetry appears in a variety of journals including Bordersenses, Acentos Review, Plume, and Xóchitl Cuicatl: Floricanto Cien años de poesía chicana/Lanx. Her prose appears in Mirrors Beneath the Earth: Short Ficon by Chicano Writers,and most recently in Lanx Poecs: Essays on the Art of Poetry. She has just been inducted to the Texas Institute of Leers. Her third book of poetry, Socorro, is forthcoming from Flowersong Press. https://www.nataliatrevino.com/
The Stanley Street Gallery Poetry Program is held on the first Saturday, of every third month. Please save the following dates:
3pm Saturday 7 September 2024
3pm Saturday 7 December 2024
Dr. Beatriz Copello is an award-winning poet, she writes poetry, fiction, reviews and plays. The author’s books are: Women Souls and Shadows, Bemac Publications, Sydney. Meditations At the Edge of a Dream, Glass House Books, Interactive Publications, Under the Gums Long Shade, Bemac Publications, Sydney. Forbidden Steps Under the Wisteria. A Call to the Stars (Also translated and published in China and Taiwan). Titles published by Ginninderra Press include: Witches Women and Words (2022); No Salami Fairy Bread (2023) and Rambles (2023). In Spanish: Poetry Renacer en Azul. Play: El Encuentro y mi Esencia
DEFNE is a queer Turkish-Australian multidisciplinary artist with a style that’s definitely hers and a creative career that fuses her infinite interests. She graduated with distinction in a Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing & Theatre) & Fine Arts (Photography & Graphic Design) from UNSW in 2023. DEFNE is the Creative Producer for Word Travels and Creative Director of West Side Poetry Slam, a hybrid event based in Parramatta. She has been published in UNSWeetend & Tharunka and featured across Story Week, ‘23 Adelaide Writers’ Week, Art Gallery NSW, UNSW, Enough Said and Bread & Butter Poetry Slam. She’s performed her own show of poetry & song “DEFNE Opens Up” at Flight Path Theatre, Marrickville. DEFNE is always up to some creative mischief, whether writing songs or shooting shows. She’s a self-reclaimed drama queen. The world is her runway as she finds ways to overrun it with connection through shared vulnerability and revolutionary intimacy.
Stanley Street Gallery presents Andrew Sullivan’s solo exhibition Back to Zero.
Andrew Sullivan is a renowned Sydney based painter known for creating idiosyncratic works that hold meticulous detail and a wicked sense of humour. Creating complex still lives and portraits, perhaps for his own amusement or for the viewer – Sullivan’s tableaus are rousing narratives that mirthfully weave memory, melancholy and history. Each piece possesses a unique personality, inviting viewers on a journey through time and prompting contemplation on deeper levels.
Sullivan holds an extensive artistic career, a National Art School graduate and the 2014 winner of the Sulman Prize, he has also been a finalist in numerous prizes such as the Archibald, Blake Art Prize, and The Mosman Art Prize. His work is held in private collections nationally and internationally.
