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QPF Artists Bios
Marisa Allen is a songwriter, musician and performer. Better known as the front woman for the band Bremen Town Musician she had her first book of contemporary poetry Fire in the Head published in 2007 through Outsider press, edited by David ‘Ghostboy’ Stavanger. She has been published in Cottonmouth (Western Australia), Tsunami street press (Queensland), performed regularly at Outsiders poetry nights, QPF 2007 and has been a feature artist on 4ZZZ radio The Siren’s Call that showcases local women writers, songwriters, poets and musicians, she also had a stint editing local folk stories in Reykjavik, Iceland for guided tourist walks around the city. It seems she can’t stop writing, and always has her pencil sharpened, just in case.
Elizabeth
Bachinsky is the author of three collections of poetry, Curio
(BookThug, 2005), Home of Sudden Service (Nightwood, 2006), and
God of Missed Connections (Nightwood, 2009). Her work was nominated
for the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 2006 and the Bronwen Wallace
Award in 2004 and has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, and
on film in Canada, the United States, France, Ireland, England, and China.
She is an instructor of creative writing at Douglas College in New Westminster
where she is Poetry Editor for Event magazine. She
lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Robert
Bos was born in Amsterdam and learned English after coming to
Australia as a school boy. He went on to major in English and German literature
at the University of Queensland. He worked among Indigenous people in
North Australia for 20 years and now lives on the Sunshine Coast. The
quest for identity and community, relationship with the land, the Aboriginal
presence and the search for a meaningful spirituality are themes
which pervade his poetry.
Janice Bostok has been a pioneer in the field of Japanese poetry forms since the early 1970s. She has won many competitions and awards.
More recently she has begun ‘value-adding’ to her work by crossing into other areas of creativity. Sumi-e is the Japanese art that becomes ‘Haiga’ when illustrating a poem. ‘Renga’ is the joining of linked verse, written by two or more writers.
Many years ago it is believed Janice was involved in writing the first 36 verse renga written in English in Australia; and with Jacqui Murray produced the first 100 verse renga in English: Stonewashed Moon; which is illustrated; in sumi-e style by Janice and Jacqui, each in unique ways which blend comfortably.
Bremen
Town Musician are a three piece with Marisa Allen (The Foghorns
~ USA/Iceland, Spuni ~ Iceland) on violin/vocals, Arron Bool (Winterville
~ Melbourne) on guitar/bass and Dave Bell (Claire Whiting, Transbalkan
Express ~ Brisbane) on drums/percussion who deliver a live performance
of gritty songs and beautiful instrumentals and improvisations. Playing
an eclectic mix of experimental blues with a spoken word element at times
accompanied only by a single violin creates mesmerizing performances that
has attracted audiences locally and internationally.
Bremen Town Musician offer audiences a unique show with a set of songs from their recently released independent album No One is Holding a Gun to Your Head (Songs to Run To) "howling poetics can at once filigree and soar with the assurance that nothing will be lost once they return from above and ... Allen's vocals are comparable to Corin Hardy (Sleater Kinney) ... and is of the ilk of Bat for Lashes". (Paulie Stone Rave Magazine)
BURN
Writers Collective is a twenty something strong collective of
young and emerging writers, media makers, performers, dramatists and cultural
raconteurs dedicated to generating opportunity for their peers in the
writing and publishing industry. BURN represents the new wave of literary
talent and direction arising out of Queensland and is a group already
making their mark on the national arena. Since forming in 2008 BURN has
developed a reputation for subversive and entertaining performance. In
2009 BURN will once again head up Writing – The Fringe Festival
a three day program of innovative, cross platform writing related activity
to coincide with the Brisbane Writers Festival in September.
Brianna
Carpenter remembers her childhood and the times she used to play
Barbies whilst listening to Elton John. Ever since then Brianna has been
fascinated by song writing and has developed through other musical influences
such as Jamie Cullum, Ben Folds Regina Spektor and Bic Runga. Brianna
now creates a mix of Folky Alternative Pop
Even though she was born completely deaf in one ear this has not stopped Brianna’s drive to compose. Brianna began song writing at the age of 13 and after writing her first real song 'The Web' people started to recognize her talent. Her stage pursuits have also stretched into musical theatre, acting and pantomime, which proved to be a great way to gain invaluable lessons in stagecraft.
Brianna is not from an overly musical background but believes her creative flair has come from her Mother, who is a fashion illustrator and artist. Brianna and her Mother design a lot of the outfits that Brianna wears onstage and work together to create the artwork for her albums and stage design.
In 2004 Brianna traveled to Europe to experience other cultures and take herself out of her comfort zone. She traveled to 13 countries alone at the age of 19. She was inspired by many crazy characters from her journeys and has been writing and gigging in Australia ever since.
2005 saw Brianna shortlisted into the top 10 of the Australian Spirit of Youth Awards along with Kisschasy, Wolf & Cub and Princess One Point Five. 2006 saw Brianna shortlisted to top 5 for the Queensland RockIt awards and in 2007 Brianna was placed 3rd in the Barsoma Singer Songwriter Search. Later in 2007 Brianna was selected as a member of the Top 12 for popular television show Australian Idol. She was not really “Idol” material but showed the public that she was a songwriter.. Her first performance was a version of Regina Spektor’s 'Fidelity'. This was unnerving to the judges as most of them had never heard the song. This proved to Brianna that the show and judges were “old”. It was fortunate for Brianna that her song 'Jacqueline' was played frequently throughout her time on the programme and the response from the public was fantastic. Brianna made the most of the opportunity and it was delightful to see something new and refreshing on what is generally a television programme with very little originality.
2008 was a busy one for Brianna. After leaving the life of television behind Brianna wanted to continue songwriting and see where it could take her. As a result of this newfound fame she was invited to be the Ambassador for the Statewide Butterfly Appeal Charity Fundraiser for the Hear and Say Centre. The Butterfly Appeal works to raise funds to help profoundly deaf children learn to hear and speak. Brianna wrote a song especially for the Charity called “Hush” as she was so inspired by the work that they do. Brianna’s song 'Jacqueline' was also chosen as a finalist for the Qsong 'People’s Choice Award' which is a tremendous achievement as the awards are very highly regarded in the Australian Music Industry. 'Black Keys' and 'Lies' have also seen Brianna through to the final 5 of the Pop category in the 2008 Musicoz Awards.
Now that 2009 has rolled around, Brianna is already being recognized for her songwriter potential being shortlisted to receive an Apra Professional Development Award with the announcement made in March. This year promises to be an exciting one as Brianna prepares for a busy year of performance opportunities, film clips and the launch of her first official single 'Jacqueline'.
Brianna also just completed her Bachelor of Popular Music degree at the Griffith Conservatorium of Music. To add to the demanding workload Brianna independently funded her debut album Harlequin. Her producer, Brendan Anthony has recorded a range of artists throughout his career including INXS, Midnight Oil, Wendy Matthews, Jimmy Barnes and more recently George, Wheatus and The Ten Tenors. The album is the result of almost 10 years of Brianna’s songwriting and she is definitely an artist to keep an ear out for.
Santo Cazzati is a spoken word artist. The son of Italian immigrants to Australia, he emerged from past lives as a classical concert pianist and avant garde jazz musician to teach at an elite Melbourne private school which must remain anonymous in order to protect those concerned. He performs in a range of styles, from fast rhythmical delivery to slow atmospheric meditation, often with a strong world music influence and critical ironic distance. A fixture on Melbourne's grass roots poetry scene, his feature performances have included:
The Dan Poets at Dan O'Connell Hotel
Spinning Room
Wordplay Collective at Blue Velvet
Melbourne Writers Festival
Overload Poetry Festival
Northern Notes Darebin Writers Festival
Melbourne Poets Union
Eltham Courthouse Readings
Babble Poetry Slam
The Drunken Poet
O'Sullivan's Poetic Justice
Idgaff
He is a frequent winner of Babble Poetry Slam and won second prize in Melbourne Slam 2008.
Angela
Costi is the author of three collections of poetry: Dinted
Halos (chapbook, Hit&Miss Publications, 2003), Prayers for
the Wicked (CD, Floodtide Audio, 2005) and Honey and Salt
(Five Islands Press, 2007). Honey and Salt was shortlisted for
the Mary Gilmore Prize 2008. Her poems, performance text, essays and stories
have been widely published, broadcast and produced, including in the US,
UK, Greece and across Australia. For example: Sojourner (Boston),
wanderingdog (UK), LiNQ and Radio National-ABC.
Costi is a graduate of Law/Arts (Melbourne University 1991), Professional Writing and Editing (RMIT 1997) and a 1993 recipient of a travel award by the National Languages and Literacy Board of Australia to study and undertake an Ancient Greek Drama program in Greece.
In April 2009, she was funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and Vic Arts to travel to Japan and work on an international collaboration involving her poetry, Japan-based Stringraphy Ensemble and an Ancient Chinese musical instrument known as the Sheng.
Benedict Coyne (aka Benna Zenabomb/Benedict Joseph)
Winner of Qld State SLAM poetry 2008 and Brisbane (1) heat
at Tongue n Groove
Performed at ICON creative summit twice in front of many hundred of evangelical
Christians on 27th and 29th November (www.iconcreative.org).
Performed in National Grand SLAM at Sydney Opera House December 2008
Finalist at Woodford Word food SLAM 2008/9
Co-feature poet at Speed poets in October 2008
Performer at open mics including Speed poets and Kurilpa poets.
Grand finalist in the Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup 2008
MOFU - Currently beginning a band with Darkwing Dubs and others (currently) called 'Mofu' - poetical-schmuppetry-krafty-krumpin-humpty-dumpty-hip-hoppery-catch-rye-slyway-robbery.
Darkwing
Dubs (Scott Sneddon) has been performing hip-hop for over five
years. After joining M.A.S. in 2003, he quickly established himself as
a charismatic front man and skilled MC and Producer.
While a member of M.A.S., Dubs supported:
The Herd, Hermitude, Cog, Apsci, Morganics, Dogg Pound, Bone Thugs N Harmony,
The Coalition Crew, Bias B, Muph n Plutonic, The Serenity and Rainman.
Since leaving M.A.S. at the beginning of 2008, Darkwing
Dubs pursued the Poetry Slam scene in QLD. Taking out the Chermside heats,
and earning a spot in the QLD final held at the State Library.
He has since performed Poetry and Hip-hop at:
Queensland Poetry Slam 2007 and 2008
‘Outsiderz’ @ Tongue and Groove 2007 and 2008
Queensland Poetry Festival 2008
Woodford ‘Word-food’ Slam 2008
City Cyphaz 2008 and 2009
Collaborating with fellow Hip-hop artist and Poet, Benna Zenabomb, Darkwing Dubs has had rave reviews including:
"Darkwing Dubs & Zenabomb take a sci fi twist to the unlit sparks and torch the space between The Cramps swallowing Sage Francis and where every comic book villian with three feet finds a beat and starts to dance. Hip hop sonic word twisters for the bent generation, boyyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz." - Ghostboy
For a list of this years Poetry and Hip-hop performances, please visit his website:
Jayne
Fenton Keane is the author of three poetry books, three poetry
radio plays, two poetry websites and a spatially dispersed interactive
poetry installation. She is a tutor of Creative and Digital Writing subjects
at Griffith University and holds a PhD in spatial poetics. JFK is the
recipient of several major national awards, scholarships and fellowships,
including a Research Fellowship at the Ornithology and Bio-Acoustics Laboratories
at Cornell University and poetry residencies at the National Science and
Technology Museum in Taiwan, the Rimbun Dahan Artists' studio in Malaysia
and the CGH Earth Hotel group in India.'
Zenobia
Frost is a poetic adventurer, hat fetishist and protector of
apostrophes who (when she remembers to) coordinates the seriously frivolous
Ruby Fizz Society, which promotes local performance art and encourages
cross-discipline creativity. Her poems have appeared in Going Down
Swinging, Small Packages, Stylus, Mascara
and Voiceworks, and her first collection, The Voyage,
was published by SweetWater Press in May of this year. She hopes to one
day make the perfect cup of tea.
Geoff Goodfellow’s writing career spans twenty-five years. His poetic observations of working class Australian culture feature in his nine books, most of which have gone into multiple print runs. His Poems for a Dead Father was short-listed for the 2002 Age Book of the Year Award. His most recent book Punch On Punch Off has almost sold out of its first print run of 5,000 copies.
Geoff has performed nationally on building sites, in factories, jails, rehabs, schools, colleges, universities, and a wide variety of interesting and unusual places.
He has travelled extensively on reading tours including Cuba, USA, Canada, UK, Europe and China, appearing at literary festivals and often taking up positions as writer-in-residence at various institutions. His career has included bouts as writer-in-residence in a diverse range of places from York University in Toronto to Yatala Labour Prison in Adelaide.
On 1st February 2008, Geoff was diagnosed with cancer of the throat. He has recently completed a manuscript detailing this experience. Waltzing with Jack Dancer: a slow dance with cancer is a narrative of survival.
AF
Harrold is a poet and performer who has been puzzling audiences
with his words for quite long enough. He’s an Englishman who can
confuse people of all nations and all ages. he does things that are not
quite normal and gets paid for it. He is a popular poet on the stage and
on the page, has a number of books available which, along with more information,
can be found at www.afharrold.co.uk.
Jeffrey
Harpeng is an Australian poet whose work found wings while living
in New Zealand. There it was condensed in haiku, picked up the dance time
of sonnets and found the many horizons of renga and haibun. His most recent
writing fetish has been linked haibun, and tanka-prose.
Those published to date are, Quartet – A String of Haibun (Post Pressed 2008), a collaboration with Patricia Prime ( New Zealand ), Diana Webb (UK), Jeffrey Woodward (USA), Four Tellings – A Haibun Sequence (Post Pressed 2009), a collaboration with Owen Bullock (NZ), Beverley George (Aus) and Joanna Preston (NZ). The latest collective project Between Words, is a collaboration with Patricia Prime, Bob Lucky ( China ) and Jeffrey Woodward. It is a tanka-prose sequence, and appears in the Spring 2009 Modern English Tanka.
Since
1986 Janet Jackson has sculpted in English, seeking poems
that work whether declaimed loudly or whispered in the mind.
Janet featured at the inaugural Missing Link Festival (Perth 2008), the 2006, 2007 and 2008 WA Spring Poetry Festivals and 2007 and 2008 Melbourne Overload Poetry Festivals. She has featured at many readings, performances and slams and can be heard at all the places in Perth where poets gather.
Her poems have been published in many print and online magazines and anthologies, and she has self-published three chapbooks and her own website, Proximity.
Her first collection, Coracle, was published in March 2009.
Janet is the convenor of The Line Mine, an online community promoting poetry events in Perth, and the organiser of the Perth Poetry Club.
Noëlle
Janaczewska’s plays, libretti, lyrics, monologues, spoken
word, poetry, essays, gallery and on-line explorations, and radio scripts
across drama and non-fiction, have been performed, published and broadcast
throughout Australia and overseas.
Recurring themes in her work are the history and philosophy of science, colonialism and its legacies, narratives of migration, and the exploration of language. Her radio feature Let’s Go Brazil won an AWGIE Award in 2006, as did 3 of her radio dramas in 2005, 2001 and 1999. Noëlle’s play Songket, produced by the Griffin Theatre Company/Sydney Opera House, won the 2002 Griffin Playwriting Award and the 2001 Playbox-Asialink Playwriting Competition. Recent works include: Eyewitness Blues for the BBC; The Hannah First Collection, 1919—1949 (Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art); Disappearance (The Border Project); There’s Something About Eels … and Pitch Black, both for ABC Radio National in 2008; Taisho Chick (Art Gallery of NSW); Fearless N (Theatre Kantanka/Sydney Olympic Park); the Movie Extra Award-winning Duet With A Dictionary (Short & Sweet 2008, Movie Extra 2008) Mango Season (song lyrics for atyp Wandering Angels/composer Nigel Ubrihien) and Mrs Petrov’s Shoe, winner of the 2006 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award.
Alongside performance, Noëlle has published poems, essays, monologues and short pieces in many anthologies, arts journals and on-line magazines, including: Scan, HEAT, Southerly, Imago, Voices and RePublica. The poems she wrote for Kathryn Millard’s film Travelling Light feature on the soundtrack CD produced by the ABC in association with Toi-Toi Films & Universal Music Australia, and in 2006 Wayzgoose Press published her long poem Dorothy Lamour’s Life as a Phrasebook. Find out more about Noëlle’s work at www.outlier-nj.blogspot.com and www.noellejanaczewska.com.
John
Knight is founder and manager of Post Pressed, an indie publisher
of verse, fine arts and academic books since 1995. (Check them out at
www.postpressed.com.au) An accomplished and internationally
recognised haijin, he is a foundation editor of Paper Wasp, an
Australian journal of haiku. He also served as poetry editor of Scope
and Social Alternatives for a number of years. His published
verse includes Wattle Winds: an Australian haiku sequence (Paper
Wasp, 1993), From Derrida to Sara Lee (Metro Arts, 1994), Extracts
from the Jerusalem Archives (Sweetwater Press, 1997), big man
catching a small wave (Post Pressed, 2006) and Letters from an
Asylum (Sudden Valley Press, forthcoming). His verse and haiku have
been published widely in journals and anthologies in Australia and overseas.
In a previous life John Knight was an Associate Professor in The School
of Education, The University of Queensland, with a particular interest
in policy studies and social and literary theory. His work has been widely
published in books and journals in Australia and internationally. After
his retirement he worked in a mentoring relationship with doctoral students
at QUT.
Angel
Kosch is a Brisbane based multi-skilled artist , currently a
core member of Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble - appearing most recently
with them as an actor and singer in Food of Love – a Shakespeare
Cabaret . In 2002 she self-published a book of poetry, photography and
fragments called ‘Standing on the Road – from old bit of paper’
which was recognised in the Queensland Writers Centre magazine ; Following
the release of her collection She was interviewed for a thesis on self-publishing,
and she has recently started to compile another collection of short stories,
poetry and photography.
Angel is a singer/songwriter and has been writing and singing since she
was about 6. In 2005, she co- wrote and produced a combined ep Humidity
with Gene Miller and Moses Jones. As a visual Artist/photographer, Angel
has had a number of solo exhibitions, the most recent being ‘tell
me your secrets’ in November 2007.
Angel has a long history of community work and social and environmental activism, and this passion for life imbues her driving force of artistic chaos.
Anna Krien is a past winner of the Val Vallis Award for an unpublished poem. She splits her time living and writing in Melbourne and Brisbane. She has a penchant for skeletons, particularly of the domestic kind, and is currently working on a friend to allow me to dig up her seven childhood rabbits.
Bronwyn Lea is series editor, with Martin Duwell, of The Best Australian Poetry Series (UQP). Her books of poems include Flight Animals (UQP 2001) and, more recently, The Other Way Out (Giramondo 2008).
A
native of the US, Kent MacCarter's adopted home is now
Melbourne. Graduating from Melbourne University with a Masters in English
Creative Writing in 2006 completed an arc that started with degrees and
an early career in Financial Accounting. His first collection of
poems, In the Hungry Middle of Here, is now out after appearing
for some years in Australia and international journals and papers. Place,
sounds of place, textures of place and hungers for place are strong themes
throughout the first collection.
Maurice
McNamara has been involved with the Melbourne spoken word scene
for a number of years. His writing is casually lyrical, funny but serious,
and aims for a spare contemporary feel. His book, Half-Hour Country,
has just been published by Small Change Press (Brisbane).
Paul Magee studied in Melbourne, Moscow, San Salvador and Sydney. His first volume of poetry, Cube Root of Book was published by John Leonard Press in 2006. It was shortlisted for the Innovation Award in the 2008 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, and highly commended in the Ann Elder and Mary Gilmore Awards. Paul writes original verse, but also works with translation. He is currently finishing off Chapter Twelve, a single chapter book of verse structured around his translations from the Latin of Spinoza's Tractatus Politicus. Paul is also a cultural studies academic, with abiding interests in idleness, boredom, stagnation and revolution. His first theoretical book, From Here to Tierra del Fuego, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2000. He is currently working on Towards the Centre of Ignorance: Poetry and Politics in the Early Twenty-First Century.
Mofu and the Crepe Paper Kalishnakovs is a poetical collaboration project by Darkwing Dubs and Benna Zenabomb, plus a few imaginary friends. Dubs and Benna have been haunting the local Brissie SLAM poetry and spoken word scene since they realized tofu sandwiches wouldn’t keep them windswept and interesting forever.
Darkwing Dubs has been performing hip-hop for over five years and has been busy performing his sci-fi superhero poetry and hip-hop at such infamous dodgy underground dungeons such as:
Queensland Poetry Slam 2007 and 2008
‘Outsiderz’ @ Tongue and Groove 2007 and 2008
Queensland Poetry Festival 2008
Woodford ‘Word-food’ Slam 2008
City Cyphaz 2008 and 2009
‘2 Loud in the Library’ Youthweek 2009
‘Acoustics on Sunday’
Benna is a relatively new fish in the Brisbane/Nth NSW
SLAM scene, but he’s been quick to gobble up the competition. With
a debut at the Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup 2008 where he busted
his way into the grand final, followed by a takeover of the Queensland
Poetry Slam 2008, representing the smART state at the Sydney Opera House
(no, he did not have intimate relations with Cameron Daddo, that youtube
video is still unproven).
Since moving to Brisbane he’s been scribing words on eye-wall-windows
at infamous clandestine K-Rhyme scenes such as:
Speedpoets
Contraverse
Kurilpa Poets
Woodford ‘Word-food’ Slam 2008
These two word nerds can be found blowing bubbles of blurbs amongst the herds at QPF this year. They will be performing a show they wrote last night and any feedback is appreciated, as they will be performing it again for your mum in the morning.
Rob
Morris is a Brisbane writer with a strong interest in poetry.
An experienced performer, he has published, six collections of poetry.
He co-edits, and largely finances, small packages a pocket-sized
poetry magazine and has written also on popular music and culture. His
work has been published widely and he has been an invited guest at The
Queensland Poetry Festival: spoken in one strange word, the 2008 Woodford
Folk Festival, The Riverbend Books Readings, Readings at The Republic
(Tasmania) and Speedpoets to name a few. His latest collection So
Much Weather was released through Small Change Press in 2007. He
is currently writing a book of humorous poems for children, and a prose
novel entitled Letters for Joe.
Sheish
Money (aka Simon Sheehy) Sheish is the engine room of SpeedPoets.
He spends his days writing and recording his descriptions of urban landscapes
and hanging around street corners listening out for prayers. His first
book Another Rock Pig was released in March 2007.
Journalist,
historian and poet Jacqui Murray has been writing haiku
for more than 20 years. Although she was mentored by Haiku Masters in
Japan, Jacqui believes haiku is now more at home outside the land of its
birth. In part this is because of haiku’s brevity but, with its
emphasis on man’s place in the natural world, haiku is also perfectly
attuned to a 21st century of climate change and privation. Its brief glimpses
into nature’s beauty and startling insights into the human condition
provide fresh starts and scope for optimism. Jacqui’s haiku is often
firmly rooted in the Australian landscape – such as that around
the Byron Shire where she now lives.
Neil
Murray is one of Australia’s most respected singer/songwriters
and has enjoyed a solo career since 1989. He has released ten albums Calm
& Crystal Clear, These Hands, Dust, The
Wondering Kind, Going The Distance, About Time
(a 2CD retrospective compilation) Spoken, 2Songmen - live
in Darwin and the latest Overnighter.
The songs on these albums - from the rollicking 'Good Light in Broome', the prayerful 'Native Born', the work ethic of 'Big Truck', the roots groove of 'Long Grass Band', the endurance of love in 'Over the Moon' and 'I Can Go On' or the journeyman monologues of 'Lights of Hay' and 'Where my people go' collectively describe an inner landscape to the heart and soul of Australia.
His work doesn’t shy from social commentary, neither is he preoccupied with it. His art is driven by a sense of conscience, justice and honesty. For Neil Murray, any truth gained is always liberating.
Neil Murray first appeared in the early eighties as a founding member of the pioneering Warumpi Band which over three albums (Big Name, No Blankets, Go' Bush and Too Much Humbug) and twenty years of performing helped to make contemporary indigenous music heard in mainstream Australia.
Those who have read his novel Sing for me Countryman or poetry book One Man Tribe, or listened to his spoken word CD - Spoken or seen his play King For This Place would know of his affinity for the land and respect for indigenous culture.
In 1995, Neil Murray was awarded the APRA song of the year for 'My Island Home' originally written for the Warumpi Band and re-recorded by Christine Anu. 'My Island Home' has become something of an unofficial anthem and featured in the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
Neil Murray performs regularly at festivals and live music venues in Australia and overseas. He has also performed as one half of a duo known as 2Songmen - fellow songwriter and contemporary Shane Howard being the other half.
Neil Murray’s latest album Overnighter is out through ABC Music.
Sophia
Nugent-Siegal is a young poet whose interest in mythology, art
and history is woven into work with a contemporary focus and edge. A
3-time national award winner in the Taronga Foundation Poetry Prize, and
winner of the FAW Young Poet of the Year and Mavis Thorpe Clark awards,
Sophia's. first book, Oracle, provides a fresh, sharp insight
into the continuing resonance of the Classical world. Recent projects
include a collection based on illuminated manuscripts of medieval texts
from an exhibition at the Melbourne State Library in 2008.
Geoff
Page, b.1940,is an Australian poet who has published eighteen
collections of poetry as well as two novels, four verse novels and several
other works including anthologies, translations and a biography of the
jazz musician, Bernie McGann. He retired at the end of 2001 from being
in charge of the English Department at Narrabundah College in the ACT,
a position he had held since 1974. He has won several awards, including
the ACT Poetry Award, the Grace Leven Prize, the Christopher Brennan Award,
the Queensland Premier’s Prize for Poetry and the 2001 Patrick White
Literary Award. Selections from his work have been translated into Chinese,
Hindi, German, Serbian, Slovenian and Greek. He has also read his work
and talked on Australian poetry in Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Norway,
Sweden, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech
Republic, Austria, Hungary, Singapore, China, Korea, India, the United
States and New Zealand.
Among his more recent books are:
A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Australian Poetry (UQP
1995)
The Secret ((William Heinemann Australia 1996)
The Great Forgetting [with Bevan Hayward Pooaraar] (Aboriginal
Studies Press 1997)
Bernie McGann: A Life in Jazz (Kardoorair Press 1997)
The Scarring (Hale & Iremonger 1999)
Collateral Damage (Indigo 1999)
Darker and Lighter (Five Islands Press 2001)
My Mother’s God (Picaro Press 2002)
Day by Day: Selected Poems of Salvatore Quasimodo translated
with R.F. Brissenden and Loredana Nardi-Ford (Indigo 2002)
The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets [editor](Indigo
2003)
Drumming on Water (Brandl & Schlesinger 2003)
Cartes postales (Picaro Press 2004)
Freehold (Brandl & Schlesinger 2005)
Agnostic Skies (Five Islands Press 2006)
Europe 101 (Picaro Press 2006)
Eighty Great Poems from Chaucer till Now (UNSW Press 2006)
Lawrie & Shirley:The Final Cadenza:A Movie in Verse(Pandanus
Books 2007)
Seriatim (Salt 2007)
Bahn Dance (Picaro Press 2007)
Long White Cloud & Indian Pixels (Picaro Press 2008)
60 Classic Australian Poems (UNSW Press 2009)
Like
most Australian kids, Adam Phillips first heard rhyming
poetry in the classroom as a young student and quickly took a liking to
the stories and style of the famous bush bards Banjo Patterson and Henry
Lawson.
Later, he would pen a range of tributes in classical rhyming style for his family and friends to mark milestone occasions before writing about his early passion in life, sport. He became in-house poet at Tattersall’s Club in Brisbane performing monthly poems to members about notable sportsman in attendance such as Wally Lewis, Michael Voss and Wayne Bennett.
Having walked the Kokoda Track in 2003, Adam wrote ‘A sunset short’ which paid tribute to the fallen Australian soldiers in the Second World War. He performed this at charity functions and on live radio.
Adam has spent the past three years travelling on and off and in between a stint working in the United Kingdom, he has managed multiple excursions to India and Nepal as well as further pilgrimages to Morocco and Mexico. Upon returning, his quest to learn more about his own country has taken him from the Eureka Stockade battleground in Ballarat to the penal past of Tasmania and the red dust of Uluru.
Adam’s poetry calls upon his love of classic Australian bush poetry to address the stories and the topics of our time.
Felicity Plunkett’s manuscript Vanishing Point won the 2008 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize and is forthcoming with UQP. She is an Honorary Research Consultant at the University of Queensland, where she teaches literature and poetics, and a widely-published reviewer. She has a PhD from the University of Sydney. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies including Best Australian Poetry 2008, The Best Australian Poems 2008, Heat, Southerly and Blue Dog, and was awarded Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prizes in 2006 and 2007.
When
Fiona Privitera was 5 yrs, she tore the book from her
mothers hands and defiantly stated that she could "read it on her
own"’. She has been reading and writing ever since. Her poetry
has been published in anthologies and literary journals both in Australia
and overseas, most recently in The Stinging Fly ( Dublin ). Fiona
has graced the stages of poetry events around the world, and previously
performed at the Queensland Poetry Festival in 2003 and 2006.
Ynes Sanz has 2 published poetry collections: Lady with Weasel, and Talking Poetry Blues. Other work can be found scattered across cyberspace. Ynes won the Vallis award in 2005 with her Quandamooka Suite. She has also written Fanny the Flying Housewife & other stories, a collection of 40 poems for mad and magnificent women. On her desk at present: the start of a tongue-in-cheek whodunnit set in 1960s Brisbane and the 36,000 word illustrated autobiography that she is putting together for her old mate 'Tahiti Jim'.
Her blog is at www.commonshrew.blogspot.com.
Nicola Scholes was born in Cheshire, England, in 1975, and came to Australia in 1986. She has been writing poems ever since she was a young girl. Lately, her poems have appeared in places including, The Broadkill Review (USA), Hecate, Poems in Perspex: Max Harris Poetry Award 2007, SpeedPoets, and Stylus Poetry Journal. Nicola performed at Queensland Poetry Festival in 2008, and in 2007, won the open mic competition at Queensland Poetry Festival event 'Love Poetry Hate Racism'. Nicola is currently researching a PhD on representations of the maternal in Allen Ginsberg’s poetry at the University of Queensland.
Nathan Shepherdson is the son of painter Gordon Shepherdson. He was the winner of the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize in 2004 and 2006. In 2005 he received the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Award for an unpublished manuscript. As a consequence of that award, his first book, Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror was published by the University of Queensland Press. At the 2006 Queensland Poetry Festival he was the recipient of the Val Vallis Award and in the same year was awarded the Newcastle Poetry Prize. His most recent collection, what marian drew never told me about light was published by Small Change Press in 2008.
Rhys
Rodgers is a performance poet from Brisbane. In 2008, Rhys won
the Love Poetry Hate Racism open mic, was a finalist at both Nimbin performance
poetry world cup and Woodford slam and took home the SpeedPoets championships.
Rhys has performed in pubs, parks and poetry gigs around Australia on
his Just Enough Dangerous Tour. He has been invited to perform interstate
at the TiNA festival, running a workshop on imaginary friends. Rhys is
a fresh new voice with a unique style all his own, he enjoys watching
clouds, drinking tea and not wearing shoes. You can stalk him at the web
address: rhysrodgers.com.
Small
Change Press is an independent imprint, located in South-East
Queensland, founded by local poets, Graham Nunn and David Stavanger. Small
Change is committed to publishing poetry that brings together the best
elements of page and performance, via work that resonates with both the
reader and a live audience.
In 2009, Small Change Press ran the inaugural 'The Dream Aint Broken' Chapbook Competition, seeking original and inovative work from South-East QLD. As a result, they are excited to be launching the winning manuscript, Dear Rose by Nicola Scholes at QPF 2009, alongside the much anticpated debut collection half-hour country from distinctive Melbourne voice, Maurice McNamara.
For information on all Small Change Press titles visit www.smallchangepress.com.au.
Barbara
Temperton is an award-winning Western Australian writer. Her
poems, song lyrics, short stories, reviews and articles have appeared
in journals, newspapers, anthologies, have been performed live and broadcast
on radio. Barbara lives in Geraldton where she is employed as a library
officer and editor and moonlights as the poetry editor for Westerly.
Barbara has also worked on community writing and theatre projects and
as tutor in English and Creative Writing courses at the UWA – Albany
Centre, Edith Cowan University and Curtin University in Perth. Southern
Edge is her third collection of poetry, written for her MA at the
University of Western Australia.
Awards
Winner, South Perth Poetry Park ( Neil McDougall Park
): Panel poem On Finding White Feathers, 2008
Australian Premier’s Book Award Plaque.
Winner, Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, 2002
Winner, Tom Collins Poetry Prize, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife,
2002
Highly Commended, Tom Collins Poetry Prize, 1998
Second Prize, Tom Collins Poetry Prize, 1996
Winner, John Birch Award (Poetry), 1994
Commended, Tom Collins Poetry Prize, 1993
Short listed, TAG Hungerfod Award, 1993
Winner, Tom Collins Poetry Prize, 1992
Winner, Bobbie Cullen Memorial Poetry Award, 1992
Highly commended, The Lyndall Hadow Short Fiction Award, 1992
Highly Commended, Tom Collins Poetry Prize, 1991
Second Prize, The Talus Prize (Short Fiction), Edith Cowan University,
1991
Commended, Alan Marshall Award (Collection/Short Stories, 1990
Short listed, TAG Hungerford Award, 1990
Second Prize, NSW McArthur Regional Short Story Competition, 1988
Commended, Alan Marshall Award (Collection/Short Stories, 1986
Commended, Binalong Banjo Paterson Poetry Prize, 1986
Commended, Canning Literary Award, 1986
Commended, NSW McArthur Regional Short Story Competition, 1986
Winner, NSW McArthur Regional Short Story Competition, 1985
Books available from FremantlePress
Southern Edge 2009
Going Feral 2002
Jessika Tong grew up in a small pine village on the Northern Island of New Zealand and has spent most of her adult life in Central and South East Queensland. Jessika has appeared within various literary journals including Motherlode: Australian Women’s Poetry 1986 – 2008, Poetry Matters, The Age, The Australian Literature Review, The Westerly, Wet Ink, Tears in the Fence FourWnineteen, Mascara, Pendulum, LinQ, Poetrix, Polestar and Verandah22. Her first collection, The Anatomy of Blue was released in December 2008 by SunLine Press.
“What strikes the reader with Jessika Tong’s poetry is the vivid intensity of the imagery. There is something almost fevered about her use of colour and the physicality of her metaphors … She’s too good a poet to show her hand and leaves us wondering” (Antonia Hildebrand, 2009).
“Astonishingly powerful, her raw imagery says what is often left unsaid, or couched in more genteel terms. This poetry drives relentlessly into avoided spaces and territory that remains a wilderness. Confronting and irreverent.” (Roland Leach, 2008).
Jane
Williams is the author of three collections of poems and one
of short stories. Awards for her poetry include the Anne Elder Award for
her first collection outside temple boundaries (Five Islands Press), the
D.J O'Hearn Memorial Fellowship and the Bruce Dawe Prize. Her latest poetry
collection is Begging the Question (Ginninderra Press). She lives
in Hobart.
