rising from the ashes

I love this picture: me in the Atrium at Federation Square during the 2009 Emerging Writers Festival, screaming - SCREAMING poetry (confronting poetry) at people passing by.
Under normal circumstances I'd probably be arrested.


taken for granted

Have had my head stuck in a grant application, which is due this coming Friday. It's interesting to realise how much I take my own art practice for granted. I've always thought I couldn't be competitive in grant terms. I suppose this is partly because if the odd gap into which my spoken word falls. In the case of a lot of literature grants, the emphasis is on product: you get a grant to write, or work on a book, or research for a book. On the other hand, in the case of performance grant, you are competing against trained actors. And am not an actor, I am an oral storyteller. Hence the difficulty.

The grant I'm applying for is through the City of Melbourne ArtsHouse program. The grant application asks for supporting material, and it's been amazing how many reviews, both informal and formal, of my spoken word I've been able to locate on and offline. I have my head down for the rest of the week with this, and really have my fingers crossed it will come through.


aural text

I have signed on to be a poetry reviewer for RRR's show Aural Text starting November. I'll be talking the poetry scene, what's out, what I've been reading, with host Alicia Sometimes and her soon-to-be-announced new co-host on a monthly basis


gil scott heron is on parole

My first full poetry collection Gil Scott Heron is on Parole will be published by Picaro Press (who published my chapbook Original Skin in 2008), and will hit shelves sometime between December 2009 and February 2010. It will contain many of the poems first broadcast via this blog - so thank you to all you blogites for your invaluable feedback, and for keeping me producing!


black lazarus

A second section of my novel manuscript Black Lazarus (which was selected from over 200 manuscripts for the Overland Novel Search, but is no longer being published by Overland due to funding and other issues), has been accepted for publication. Along with the extract being published next month in Page Seventeen, a full chapter will be published by Harvest Literary Magazine. I won't say much about this, except that it's an honour to be having sections of my novel appear in both publications, and a real shock that such a controversial section of the manuscript has been chosen for publication by Harvest. The section in Harvest is set in a Black Panther Squat in Brixton, London around 1969. You'll have to buy the issue to find out more.


There are also some mutterings going on in respect of securing a publisher for Black Lazarus. This book may yet rise from it's ashes.