Riverbend Poetry Series - Tuesday 23 June

Queensland Poetry Festival, QLD Writers Centre & Riverbend Books are proud to present the final Poetry on the Deck event for 2009. Join us on the Riverbend deck as we showcase five of the local artists performing at the 2009 QLD Poetry Festival. Performing as part of this QPF showcase are multi-skilled artist, Angel Kosch (Standing on the Road); winner of The Dream Ain't Broken chapbook competition Nicola Scholes (Dear Rose); one of Australia's finest exponents of the Japanese forms haibun and tanka, Jeffery Harpeng (Quarter Past Sometime); poetic adventurer and protector of apostrophes, Zenobia Frost (The Voyage); and experimental writer and musician, Marisa Allen (Fire in the Head).

Date: Tuesday 23 June
Location: Riverbend Books, 193 Oxford St. Bulimba
Time: Doors open for the event at 6pm for a 6:30pm start
Tickets: $10 available through Riverbend Books and include sushi and complimentary wine.

To purchase tickets, call Riverbend Books on (07) 3899 8555 or book online at www.riverbendbooks.com.au.

The first two events this year have been hugely successful, so book early to avoid disappointment!


About the Poets

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.


Nicola Scholes won the inaugural Small Change Press “Dream Ain't Broken Chapbook Competition,” with her collection Dear Rose..., to be launched this year. She also won the inaugural Love Poetry Hate Racism open mic competition in 2007. Aside from winning inaugural things, Nicola has had her poems published in The Broadkill Review (USA), Colloquy, Cordite Poetry Review, The Courier-Mail, dotlit, Hecate, holland1945, The Mozzie, Nineteen-O-Splash (NZ), Poems in Perspex: Max Harris Poetry Award 2007, Ripples, Social Alternatives, SpeedPoets, and Stylus Poetry Journal. Her drawings and poems for children have appeared in Cherububble. Nicola has also been involved in Brisbane community theatre for more than ten years. She has performed in plays with Villanova Players, and St. Luke's Theatre Society. She is currently studying a PhD on representations of the maternal in Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, at the University of Queensland.

Jeffrey Harpeng has recently had his third co-operative writing project, a tanka-prose sequence, published in the Spring 2009 Modern English Tanka. Earlier co-compositions were Four Tellings – A Haibun Sequence, with Beverley George (Aus), and Owen Bullock, and Joanna Preston ( New Zealand ), and Quartet – A String of Haibun, with Patricia Prime ( New Zealand ), Diana Webb ( UK ) and Jeffrey Woodward (USA). He is currently completing a second collection of haibun.

Zenobia Frost is a poetic adventurer, hat fetishist and protector of apostrophes whose debut collection, The Voyage, was recently launched by SweetWater Press. In her writing, Zenobia aims to highlight those common enchantments that are often overlooked. Thus, The Voyage is a whimsical journey on (generally) calm seas with a crew of curious creatures and a compass that points to whichever shore offers the best cup of tea. Zenobia’s poems have found homes in such Australian journals as Going Down Swinging, Small Packages, Stylus, Mascara and Voiceworks, and she has recently performed at the Queensland Poetry Festival, Contraverse and Under a Daylight Moon.

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 show '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.