1. 09:06 14th Feb 2013

    Tags: Collected WorksKris HemensleyAlan WearnelaunchGiramondo

    Prepare The Cabin For Landing: Alan Wearne is ready for take-off tonight at Collected Works

    Apologies for not broadcasting this sooner, 

    but Alan Wearne’s new book of poems,

    will be launched tonight at Collected Works bookshop by Owen Richardson.

    6pm-8.30pm.

    1st Floor, Nicholas Building,

    37 Swanston St, Melbourne.

    Giramondo & Collected Works Bookshop invite you to the launch of Alan Wearne’s new collection of poems, PREPARE THE CABIN FOR LANDING. The launcher will be esteemed Melbourne book reviewer Owen Richardson. 

    We quote from Giramondo’s blurb :

    “Wearne is Australia’s poet-moralist, a master of its idioms, the recorder of its pretensions, and the scourge of its big-noters, con-artists and crooks. In ‘The Vanity of Australian Wishes’ he pays tribute to Samuel Johnson and Juvenal, ‘who knew that combination of bemusement, annoyance, anger and despair to which your country can drive you, though always aware of its entertainment value and dramatic potential’.

    The collection includes an affectionate portrait of three Melbourne high school teachers in the early 1960s, and a saga which records the destinies of their pupils, satires on the world of finance and drug-dealing, literary academics and the libertinism of baby-boomers, and seven new poems based on Australian pop songs.

    Alan Wearne’s verse novels The Nightmarkets and The Lovemakers received major literary awards; his recent collection, The Australian Popular Songbook, won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry. He is the publisher of Grand Parade Poets, and teaches poetry at the University of Wollongong.”

    For further information do not hesitate to contact Kris Hemensley at Collected Works on 9654 8873.

    Stay informed of further events and new stock at this brilliant, unique poetry bookshop by following it on Facebook. 

    Kris Hemensley, the bookshop’s founder, also writes about poetry,his work and life here.

     

  2. 14:28 9th May 2012

    Tags: launch

    warm winter words from Puncher and Wattmann’s latest

    A. Frances Johnson’s latest book of poems is published by Puncher and Wattmann,

    and will be launched

    by poet and critic Justin Clemens

    at Bella Union bar,

    Level 1, Vic. Trades Hall, cnr. Lygon and Victoria Streets, Carlton

    this Friday May 11th, 6 for a 6.30pm start.

    “No-one, in the long history of the Australian ‘bird poem’, has written about birds like this. Johnson’s poetry is metaphorically rich, sharp as a pin, funny, and emotionally devastating. It demands attention” - David McCooey.

    A. Frances Johnson is a writer and painter living on the Bellarine Peninsula, and a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. Her paintings have been exhibited in Australia and overseas, and her poetry has appeared in many anthologies including Motherlode: Australian Women’s Poetry 1986-2008 and Best Australian Poems 2009, 2010 and 2011.

    Her compelling 2007 novel Eugene’s Falls retraces the wilderness journeys of colonial painter Eugene von Guerard. Her poetry collection The Pallbearer’s Garden was published in 2008.