TURNS OUT sometimes poetry CAN make something happen. At the end of week of flood and war and loss, Poetica Bondi (Miriam Hechtman) and Poets Out Loud (Sarah Temporal) have announced an open mike reading for flood relief this coming Thursday 10 March at 7pm. Bookings essential, because the event is ticketed and the tickets go to the relief of people affected by the catastrophic floods that hit Lismore and Murwillumbah and places further north.

Join a rallying cry for freedom—featuring Ai Weiwei, Mario Vargas Llosa, Katia Petrowskaja, Yevgenia Belorusets, Irina Bondas, Timothy Garton Ash and others—in Berlin this Sunday 6 March. or follow the live feed. A cry for Ukraine, a cry for all freedom, a refutation of the violence and disregard for human liberty and dignity enacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The event is auspiced by the Berlin International Literature Festival, whose guest I was in 2018. I stand with these writers in making this protest.

Join me and Marcelle Freiman at an evening of poetry at the Sydney Jewish Museum to launch Mike Leibowitz’s first book of poems, Looking In. 6pm, Thursday, 7 April 2022. And my first reading from my forthcoming book, A Beginner’s Guide (May 2022).

HAPPILY, I AM a guess of the Santiago FIP (International Poetry Festival) this year (2021) ; sadly, due to the difficulties of international travel, I will appear this year only by video. Here is the video. Many thanks to Noelia Ramon for that—and for the translations, which she reads here. And to Javier Llaxacondor for the invitation. Catch me live from Santiago in recital 10, Saturday 11 December.

The northern launch of my fourth poetry collection, Walking Underwater (September 2021), takes place at the Gallery by Bacaro, in the Tweed Regional Gallery, Murwillumbah, on Thursday 9 December (6:30 to 9:00). The event is the December feature for Sarah Temporal’s Poets Out Loud. Honoured to be her guest, and to be launched by Adam Van Kempen, Chair of the Byron Writers’ Festival.

https://poetsoutloud.org/event/poets-out-loud-gallery-december/

My poem “Why You’re Here—In Case One Day You Need to Know” articulates a lyric philosophy of schooling oneself in oneself by noticing how country does it, and doing the good (to a piece of the world and to those you love and in your work) that only you can do, by becoming the being that only you can be—no matter who they want you to be and how they try to stop you. It’s in my next book, A Beginner’s Guide, and it was Blair Mahoney’s poem of the day this past Wednesday on Medium.

You’re here

To fall back all the way, if you can,

Into the beauty you arrived with, the

Beauty you cannot quite convince

Yourself you carry, for the world

Is often ugly when you look there

For yourself. And you’re here to die

Back out of others’ bad ideas of who

You are and what they reckon you’re

Worth.

Part two of Indrani Perera’s interview with me for her podcast series Pocketry goes live Tuesday 10 August 2021. We talk about inspiration and the uses and difficulties of competitions, the importance for poetry of the world beyond identity, self and all the human world. And birds. Thanks Indrani.

Can the lyric save the earth? James Laidler’s conversation with me about my poem “Litany: an Elegy,” which he has made into a stunning video poem.

Listen in to Indrani Perera’s interview with me about the craft of poetry and the politics of the lyric on her Pocketry Podcast

Love is how we close the distances down, while keeping our mind and our heart open. Love is a profound generosity, a radical and uncompromising kindness, a stance of immaculate affection. It may be most of what we mean by the Divine, and poetry, the art of connection, is its first language. Vessels of Love, a project of Poetry Sydney invited a bunch of Sydney poets to post a video of a love poem, along with their thoughts on the nature of love. My poem, “The Godwit Shores” and my thoughts (see some above) are up on 11 February. A dress rehearsal for Valentine’s Day.

The third series of my online poetry masterclass, What the Light Tells, begins Monday evening 16 November (Australian East Coast Summer Time) and runs, through six sessions, till the week of Christmas. A second stream runs on Wednesday mornings, from 18 November (Tuesday evenings, from 17 November, in the US and Canada). Register now at my website while places last.

In a culture that does not believe in endings, how will we deal with heartbreak? Stephen Jenkinson plaintively asks in this interview I found in my research. His answer: “less heart.” More pills. More shrillness, I’d add, and shaming and ghosting and outrage, more self-righteousness at what barely counts. Instead of what poetry practises and might teach one to perform—the transfiguration, through an attention to the lyric of one’s words and actions and days, of pain into beauty, of loss into love. Hear him speak of this and the wisdom of time in conversation with me Tuesday evening (AEST)/ Tuesday morning Ontario time, 20 October 2020.

Enrolments are now open for the third edition of my online poetry masterclass, What the Light Tells—run over six weeks from 16 November 2020. Register now.

We live inside a climate catastrophe; we find ourselves becalmed inside a contagion that is killing our elders; we inhabit an epidemic of loneliness. And it could be poetry, that tender ancient code and mode, we need to buoy us. To recast life’s exquiste spell.

Brian Walters, barrister and poet, talks with me about poetry and the conservation of the wild at a special evening event, part of the conference of the Australian Environmental Law Association, on 1 October 2020.

My poem “Walking my Name Back Home,” which features in my forthcoming collection Walking Underwater, has just been published in The Secular Heretic.

“Words can alter, for better or worse, the chemical transmitters and circuits of our brain, just as drugs or electroconvulsive therapy can” (Jerome Groopman). In conversation with crime writer Ann Cleeves tomorrow night at 6:00pm (Sunday 13 September, Eastern Australian Time), I’m going to ask Ann about the healing power of words—writing them and reading them—and of literature, in general. This is in the wake of a recent donation Cleeves has made to kickstart a bibliotherapy scheme in the northeast of England, where she, like her detective Vera Stanhope, lives. We may also consider the therapeutic power and innate divinity of places and birds. Our conversation is part of BAD, the Sydney Crime Writers Festival, run this year on zoom. Get your tickets at badsydney.com.