Shoalhaven Poetry Festival 2007

Shoalhaven Poetry Festival 2007 will be held in August 2007. Click the link to go to the program.

Or keep an eye out by going to Blusterhead and choosing the Festivals link.

Winners!

Poetry Postcard Award

The people have spoken!

Cecilia White's 'The love letter' was the winner of the 2006 Poetry Postcard Award. A cheque for $250 is speeding her way.
Some great entries from some great poets and visual artists.

Grand Archer Poetry Cup 2006

There were 26 entries for the Cup. The cheering was wild. The poems ditto.

...and the winner was Madeleine de Gabriele who will her have name inscribed on the perpetual trophy. She also received a copy of The best Australian poems 2005 donated by the publishers (Black Inc.) Madeleine continues the tradition of the Cup being won by locals (previously: Mik Steinmetz and Riche du Plessis). Runner up was Sue Westaway who also received a copy of The best Australian poems 2005. Winner of the Poetry Mug was Maree Teychenne who received an enamel mug with the words 'Poetry Mug' crudely scratched upon it.

All over bar the cleaning up

The festival is over. It was great to hear so much great poetry (you can still see some on the walls of the Shoalhaven City Art Centre Green Room in the ARTLANGUAGE exhibition and at the Postcard Exhibiton at the Tea Club), but everyone has gone home: poems read, coffees drunk, dophins observed.

Here are some pictures ... not great, but they give you an idea.

Sandra Thibodeaux (Darwin) reading at the Tea Club on Saturday night:

















Heather Matthew (Victoria) and Les Wicks (Sydney) at the Favourite Poem in the library, Friday afternoon:













Some of the Tea Club crowd on Saturday night (we ran out of chairs but we found elsewhere to sit):













Louise Wakeling (Sydney) reading at the Sunday morning Poetry Breakfast at the Promenade Cafe, Huskisson:
















Anthony Bennett (Armidale, NSW) in the Courtyard of the Shoalhaven City Art Centre, Saturday afternoon:













Jen Saunders putting up the Poetry Postcard Exhibition at the Tea Club - the scene of the Friday night reading and the Big Bash Reading and Grand Archer Poetry Cup.













Chris Mansell and Malcolm Utley and the postcard exhibition at the Tea Club:













Nik Broadbridge and Bon Saunders warming up for the Saturday night at the Tea Club:

A contemplation on a favourite poem

Shoalhaven City Library, Friday 9 December

Marian Devitt

For me 'St Kevin and the Blackbird' [by Seamus Heaney] is about love, selflessness, ecology, divinity, contemplation and radical action. I was raised a Catholic so I encountered saints early on in life. I’m not a church going Catholic now but I am a product of my conditioning and I know too that once the religious self is activated it’s almost impossible to deny or remain indifferent to and it’s this self that responds to this poem. St. Kevin and the Blackbird speaks to me on many levels and keeps revealing itself with each reading and each contemplation and I consider that the most significant and enduring quality for a poem to have.

Here are some of the things I love about St. Kevin and the Blackbird. I love the title because it lets me know immediately I’m in for a story and I love a story. I love the accessibility of the language. I know immediately what the poem is about. It’s a simple language artfully employed that embodies complex thoughts and feelings and this complexity provokes all sorts of thoughts and feelings and multiple layers of meaning for me. I love the rhythm and musicality of the piece. Irish/English is musical and rhythmic in a way that I respond to on some almost genetic level. I love the ordinariness of the saint’s name ... Kevin ... it’s such a common Aussie name.

I love the way this poem begins with ... ‘And then’ ... It’s a wonderfully bold and welcoming beginning that instantly offers a gateway into the image of Kevin kneeling in the narrow confines of his cell with his arms stretched out, ‘stiff as a crossbeam’. Of course the Catholic in me is instantly alerted to the reference to Christ and Christ’s ultimately selfless act in the crucifixion. So within a few lines I’m already experiencing some depth and resonance.

There’s enormous tenderness in this poem and what more tender an image can there be than the Blackbird’s trusting misapprehension of Kevin’s arm for a branch and the warmth of his cupped palm as a safe place to nest. How small would a bird be, that could fit in the palm of your hand and begin to lay its eggs? I love the sheer improbability of this image. There’s a profound tenderness in the way Heaney encourages us to experience what Kevin experiences, when Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked/Neat head and claws. Such a vulnerable, intimate, image of a bird and I think then of the birds that ‘neither reap nor sow’ but trust in man’s ability to exercise awareness and respect for them. This Blackbird unwittingly trusts man to honour and respect it and this is where the ‘deep ecology’ of what might be considered Kevin’s almost insane gesture, begins to work for me. I’m suddenly back in this century and thinking about an exploitation of animals and birds that means we’re now faced with world wide pandemics because those species haven’t been honoured. We mass produce animals and birds in unhealthy and unsustainable ways and are now paying the consequences. I understand that some of this exploitation is because of poverty. What else would drive a culture to eat diseased birds except a lack of plenty. But a lot of our exploitation is just greed. When I think about overpopulated, struggling economies I can’t help but think of the contrast with first world economies and the waste they generate and the diseases and physical conditions that are the result of too rich diets and obesity.

I’m suddenly thinking in Kevin’s world there would have been a lot of space between villages and settlements, a lot of room for nature to prevail, a lot of space in which to contemplate your place in the eternal network. I can’t help then but reflect on the conurbation of settlement that I’m now a part of in this very beautiful part of the world and then I’m thinking about all the roads that connect this conurbation, all the cars and the hurrying too and fro and the consumption of fossil fuel while crazy old Kevin’s still there with his arms stretched out. I think back to the sense of right proportion I had when I lived in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory and the ratio of people to land was in favour of land, although that magnificent country is rapidly degenerating due to feral animals and weeds and a lack of will to do anything much about the problems. When I think of what’s elapsed between Kevin’s century and this one I have to conclude we now preside over an environmental stewardship gone badly wrong because our apprehension has been of animals and birds and the natural world as resources, as something for human consumption, as feeding our needs, not theirs. That’s where this poem takes me because Kevin, in this simple act, achieves a selflessness I think we are fast becoming detached from but in this radical act Kevin finds himself linked into the network of eternal life and is moved to pity. And I think the word ‘pity’ as it’s used here has more of a sense about it of empathy and responsibility and stewardship, than just feeling sorry for something. So Kevin has to make a decision. Does he withhold support from the bird, does he terrify it and break it’s eggs or does he commit to helping this bird’s progeny survive. It’s not even a species he’s helping survive, although it could metaphorically be read as that. But I think the point is that it’s just one small creature and not the grand gesture at all. We’re talking humility and service here, not high profile PR for charitable deeds that make you feel good. And this section of the poem ends with a wonderful example of that clear, beautiful, considered language, artfully employed in the line, Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown. I’ve read that line a lot and think this is a perfect example of an economy and beauty of words, with a rhythm that’s integral to the meaning. And the image also transcends the world of nature, because I think hatching and fledging are something every parent must understand. I think about the sacrifices people make for the people they love, which might pain them, which might offer no reward but are undertaken anyway. It’s a line that also for me echoes the alliterative tradition of poets like Gerard Manly Hopkins, As kingfisher’s catch fire/So dragonflies drawn flame, and by this stage of the poem I feel deeper now in the realm of what divinity might truly be about. I could venture also into the imagery of birds as souls ... there’s a whole speculation about that I could find in the poem as well ... but Heaney then snaps me back along all the tangents this whole improbable, crazy image has taken me on ... back through history and folklore and legend and mystery and the lives of the saints back into his present and he does this with another ‘And’ beginning ... and since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow’ and with that he connects me with the poem by inviting me to join him in the work of the poet ... he invites me to imagine like a poet does (and how Kevin has contemplated and imagined) so I’m starting to find myself linked into this network of eternal life too ... in fact Heaney then urges me travel back through time again and Imagine being Kevin. To do that thing of putting oneself in another’s place and somehow I feel this is another radical act in today’s world of winners and losers and focussing on what you want and going for it. Here Heaney is asking me to imagine another’s position, to imagine Kevin’s pain and possibly, Kevin’s gain. I read an article last weekend on Nabokov’s infamous novel Lolita and came across these comments on evil in that article that I think bear some relation to this capacity to imagine the other. In this article William Empson in his study of the poet Milton says, ‘It is literature's ability to take us into the mind world of another that is its differentiating power.’ Further on in the article the Israeli novelist Amos Oz agrees with him too: ‘I believe that imagining the other is a powerful antidote to fanaticism and hatred ... I believe that books (or poems) that make us imagine the other may render us more immune to the ploys of the devil, including the inner devil, the Mephisto of the heart. Imagining the other is not only an aesthetic tool. It is, in my view, also a major moral imperative.’

Heaney offers us no answers ... but does share his pondering with the reader ... is Kevin in an agony of sacrifice? Wouldn’t you be Heaney seems to ask. Then Heaney describes the totality of Kevin’s physical experience with a series of ordinary prepositions that take us throughout Kevin’s body, from his neck on out down through, his hurting forearms, another example of sound and rhythm and meaning fusing into one.

There’s a line here that I don’t really understand yet, Or has the shut-eyed blank of underneath/Crept up through him?’. I’m still contemplating what that might mean ... I think it’s something to do with a living but impassive earth and yet not understanding it doesn’t frustrate me ... it doesn’t feel obscure and exclusionist. Rather it feels mysterious and intriguing. I’m comfortable with mysteries and happy to keep coming back to the poem until this line does reveal itself. When it does, I think a whole other otherness will be opened up.
Is there distance in his head? What a wonderful phrase for the experience of transcendence. Now Heaney offers us a Kevin transformed, Kevin in a state of transcendence, Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river’ and again the world of love and selflessness is connected to the natural world. The implication I draw from that is, if we can find ourselves mirrored in the natural world it is possible we could also experience this transformation and transcendence ... because there’s something in the creation and wonder of the natural world for me that is closer to divinity, than the mire of religious bureaucracy and exclusion and hypocrisy.

Kevin’s prayer is almost an anachronism these days, To labour and not seek reward, ... a truly unconditional aspiration of love. How does this fit in today’s world where we’re constantly exhorted to live our dreams and create our own realities. What about everyone and everything else? Is Kevin’s prayer then a radical reformation ... his own desires subsumed to the needs of a creature that he may never domesticate, that might not respond to him in any way that’s emotionally fulfilling, a creature he just values and loves in and of itself because it’s such a superb creation. And the question is posed, of course, whose creation is it.

In the final stanza there’s the ultimate expression of Kevin’s transformation through prayer and selflessness. Kevin has forgotten self, forgotten bird, and on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name. So Heaney asks me to consider the possibility that Kevin has freed himself from the mire and I’m left with a contemplation of how unaware I can be of this world I take for granted, how preoccupied I am a lot of the time with the things I think I want and need, how carelessly I consider what I do and don’t do, how disconnected I can be from the network of eternal life and wonder is this a self more imprisoned than one forgotten?

A poem like this can make me pause and contemplate and bring myself back to a sense of my own insignificance, that doesn’t dishonour myself, but rather corrects an imbalance by honouring, however briefly, whatever other forms of consciousness there are. And sometimes, in doing this I’m able to arrive at a feeling of awe, if not exactly transcendence.

I hope you enjoy this poem too, whatever your religious or spiritual beliefs and that you might be persuaded to seek out more of the poetry of Seamus Heaney if you don’t know his work already. I think he’s a most accessible poet. By the way you can look Kevin on the internet, our latest network for feeling connected. I think it would be a wonderful outcome of this festival if the conversations about poetry and creativity and meaning were to continue until the next festival ... because so many of the really good poets in their acts of imagination and contemplation and creation make us pause and reconsider our place in the world and what balance we bring to that position. Poetry can be a stimulus for contemplation and discussion and the sharing of meaning and insight. Who knows ... a madman like Kevin might just be a source of inspiration for an old/new way of looking at the world and what we do in it and what legacy we leave behind.

Shoalhaven Poetry Festival 2005

The smallest festival in the world is on!

Put this in the diary: 9, 10, 11 December 2005
Where? The Beautiful Shoalhaven - Nowra and Huskisson

Program at December 6, 2005

ARTLANGUAGE EXHIBITION AT THE ARTS CENTRE, Berry St, Nowra
open Tuesday - Sunday 10-4pm
beginning 8 December
Put together by Ruark Lewis

FRIDAY 9 December 2005
2.00 pm My Favourite Poem
Shoalhaven City Library, Berry St Nowra
Come! Hear what the Panel of Poets favourite poems are; contribute your own favourites!

Official opening of the Festival at Meroogal
5.30 - 8pm
Welcome to country.
Official opening
Reading: Writing from the Garden
MC: Jen Saunders
With local and visiting readers in the delightful surrounds of the Meroogal Garden.
Bring your rug and recline on the lawn.

8pm- later Reading by local and guest poets & dinner
Launch of the Poetry Postcard Exhibition
at the Tea Club
[It's a good idea to book beforehand for dinner]


SATURDAY 10 December 2005

11.30 Poetry workshop
$10 Meeting Room, Arts Centre, Berry St, Nowra
To book email: shoalhavenpoetryfestival@gmail.com
sooner rather than later to avoid disappointment

12 noon Meroogal tour: The books of Meroogal $7 full/$3 concession

Launches 12 noon
including Ann Nugent launching the new issue of Blast magazine
Courtyard, Arts Centre, Berry St, Nowra

ARTLANGUAGE
Launch by Warren Burt: 2pm
Green Room, Arts Centre, Berry St, Nowra

Courtyard Music and the Blackboard Readings
Music in the court yard, featuring George Royter and Geoff Bolton
Open mike readings. Put your name on the blackboard on the day and give us five or six minutes of your best stuff.
From about 3.30pm until 5.30pm
Courtyard, Arts Centre, Berry St, Nowra

Evening:
Beginning 7.30 pm Big Poetry Bash with music by Venn.
including The Poetry Cup MC by Tim Thorne
Have a delicious dinner!
Tea Club, Berry St, Nowra

Party

SUNDAY 11 December 2005

8.30 am - 10.30 am Breakfast reading at Huskisson including Deb Evelyn, Colleen Duncan, Alison Thompson

11am READING CRUISE on spectacular Jervis Bay.
Departs Huskisson after the breakfast reading.
Announcement of people's choice winner of the Poetry Postcard Competition.


All festival:

POETRY POSTCARD EXHIBITION at the Tea Club open all Festival.
Vote for your favourite postcard. The People's Choice will win $250.

ARTLANGUAGE exhibition
The Green Room, Arts Centre, Berry St, Nowra
Put together by Ruark Lewis
Daily 10 am to 4 pm from 8 December

A NOTE on the ARTLANGUAGE EXHIBITION FROM RUARK LEWIS...

I have selected 13 Artists who use a variety of new media.

The participating artists - Lucas Ihlein, Arlene Textaqueen, Sophie Coombs, Jackie Rose Lisa Kelly Franz Ehmann Robert Pulie Ron Adams Ania Walwicz Pam Aitken Amanda Stewart Deborah Kelly Kenny Goldsmith

RATIONALE for the exhibition ARTLANGUAGE
The artists in this exhibition have a common thread which is language, visual and performed. In recent years visual artists have increasingly used strategies and
devices related to the written word. This has seen the text enter the visual world in more immediate ways. This might be what we come to call the text in the space-in-between. For in this exhibition I want to look at artists who conceptualise the placement of
language inside the ordinary world – and in this way who function as conceptual poets.
&
Some consider the contemporary artist has already abandoned the mystery of rendering things purely visual. Others insist for vaguely aesthetic reasons that language and script and linguistic values are not primary visual codes. There is a belief that by actually speaking into the visual form the artist is no longer keeping the object of art sufficiently mute and mystical. Others see language as a traditional avant-gard or experimental tool. That text has established a new process where the visual surface becomes an alternate surface to publish on.
Artists have utilised the book-as-art for a very long time. Writers have certainly formed their words visually as concrete poems since the ancient times.
&
In this exhibition called ARTLANGUAGE we look to a visual world outside of the restricted format of the book. Perhaps our reasoning is more direct - that the work of art is visual poetry and a switch of author’s hierarchy will be instituted. Some of the work speaks more clearly than others and is more sustained in duration. Certain works hint at spoken word or part or full verbalisation - teasing the audience to the brink of recognition. Perhaps the visual-writer is more like a musician,
that their objects are played by the audience like instruments - or that the performance nature of
the visual communication is un-closed and lifted or loaned from the stately art of poetry.
&
The threads these artists demonstrate can also be seen as being auto-biographic documentation. A number of the works are social commentaries rendered as comic satire, others are faux serious and epigrammatic. Several of the artist’s work incorporate writing that is developed using complex and dialectical relationships involving cognitive solutions. The decision for some he artists
to work with direct or indirect references to writers of the classic modernist movements of the last century, makes for the type of quotational distance of homage
or eulogy. In other areas the artist makes condensed the ideas and processes of thought, and
this results in autodidactic forms. Artists might also configure a form that shapes as
concrete abstract systems. Other people employ writing&images as
a setting off points in long streams of performative actions. Going further, the artist that works with script may make it operate like a score. Writing becomes a plastic thing to be manipulated, or physically stretched across the photographic lens or the microphone to construct an abstract sequence of distortions.

for for information please contact me via email ruarklewis@iinet.net.au
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there are images available of exhibition works
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and audio and moving image
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full biographical information on all the artists are available

Pictures

Richard Tipping












Ruark Lewis












Sandra Thibodeaux












Tim Thorne












Irene Wilkie












Chris Mansell












Margaret Bradstock












Anthony Bennett













Jennifer Dickerson