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You are invited to celebrate
a new poetry collection

by PAM BROWN

to be launched by
ANNA GIBBS

3pm
Sunday 28th April

at
Parkview Hotel
corner Mitchell Road & Harley Street
Alexandria

everyone welcome

Home by Dark is published by Shearsman Books
Click here for further information

How to get to Parkview Hotel
Mitchell & Harley, Alexandria
transport & map click here



Pam Brown's work is fearless, acutely observant, witty and wry. She delights in the curiosities of the the everyday, in notational sprezzatura, in the penetrating encapsulation of layers of time, chance and meaning with her twists of lexicon, diction and line break. This is a work of quotidian consternation, breaking through from irony to sheer fondness and painful shadows. She sees askew - and Home by Dark has its own poignant look at decades, bodies, and changes. Pam Brown is a wonderful writer, one of the scintillating wizards of Oz poetry.
                                              Rachel Blau DuPlessis

                                ___________________________

Pam Brown's Home by Dark is plainly beautiful: a subtle, moody daybook, warding off darkness and 'counter-revolutionary' boredom. Brown's engaged intelligence and light touch draws us into the flows and eddies of 'a poetry world' where 'everything is providential,/or not'. Reserved and intimate, swift and immersive, these poems are 'right here', in the midst of precarity: 'strike another match, go start anew'.
                                                                                                     Kate Lilley




Last night, Sydney-based sound poet, Amanda Stewart, and Jaap Blonk, who's visiting Australia from the Netherlands, made an exceptionally wonderful performance of theirs and others' energised and complex sound artistry (including Jaap's presentation of Kurt Schwitters''Ursonate'). The well-attended private function was held at Nick Shimmins' warehouse home a.k.a. 'The People's Republic of Camperdown'. It's difficult to find highlights to talk about when performances are so good that everything works - no stumbles, no slips, no technical mishaps. The unique part of the evening though was the finale when Amanda and Jaap presented a series of improvised pieces as a duet. They both were, in a word, fantastic.

For a photo album of no-flash grainery click here




New Steamers : Volume 4
Thanks Sam Langer & friends


Covers: details, paintings by Amber Wallis

click on the contents pages to enlarge & read the happy lists:


steamereditorATgmailDOTcom




I'm going to Apollinairesville for a week or so

My wineglass splits its sides with laughter



Le dromadaire
Avec ses quatres dromadiares
Don Pedro d'Alfaroubeira
Courut le monde et l'admira.
Il fit ce que je voudrais faire
Si j'avais quatres dromadaires.

The dromedary
With his four dromedaries
Don Pedro d'Alfarubeyra
Traveled the world and marvelled.
He did what I would do,
If I had four dromedaries.



On the seventh day I rest
I laud laziness






Portraits of a Mardi Gras - this pocket-size booklet was published anonymously as a response to police brutality at the first Gay Mardi Gras parade in Sydney in 1978. It's not in the current exhibition at the pop-up Mardi Gras Museum. It's a book of monochrome drawings by Frances Budden. Handwriting was of-the-times, part of a feminist lo-tech aesthetic. The drawings were included in an impromptu protest exhibition at Watters Gallery in East Sydney in 1978. You can view scans of the entire booklet here.