This is such a great birthday greeting. I have to post it. It's my birthday today and it's Agnes Varda's, Emperor Renzong of China's, American rapper Big L's and Laurie (greetings sender) Duggan's birthday today too.
Thirtieth of May - enjoy the day.

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                               Vale Michael Callaghan

Michael Callaghan, the artist behind the iconic If the unemployed are dole bludgers, what the fuck are the idle rich?, has died at his home in Exeter. In 2009 he was the recipient of the Nugget Coombs Creative Arts Fellowship. Michael was a founder of Redback Graphix in Wollongong and spent some years making brilliant posters in Sydney at the Tin Sheds, Sydney University's art workshop.

Back in 1978 I wrote and worked on a film, Cattle Annie,
directed by Gill Leahy in which Michael played a street punk -

       PB, Michael and Doco on location,1978 (photo by Micky Allan)

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Next Tuesday in Adelaide :

australian experimental art foundation
& Dark Horsey Bookshop present:

THE LEE MARVIN READINGS
Convened by Ken Bolton

The new writing performed
Every Tuesday in May
Dark Horsey Bookshop
EAF, Adelaide
7.30 for a prompt 8pm start.
Price $5

TUESDAY May 22

LEE MARVIN IN AN EVENING WITH LOU COSTELLO
Aidan Coleman * Kerryn Goldsworthy *
Steve Brock * Pam Brown *

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Shearsman Books has just published a collection of Laurie Duggan's wonderful notational poems from his various strayings to diverse places.

The publicity :
The Pursuit of Happiness collects shorter poems written during and after the composition of Crab & Winkle, and concludes with 'The Nathan Papers', an earlier and longer work written in Australia. The poems address the state of the art and the state of the nation, investigating the spaces left for pleasure in this new dark age. As anthropological investigations, they shift from Robert Creeley, burgers and South African wine on Charing Cross Road to images of Santa Claus in Anglo-Greek Paphos and Japanese tourist signs in the Brontë country.

Tony Baker's blurb:
Duggan’s poetry has the virtue too that it never "abandons the local". Like Paul Blackburn . . . he builds his work out of what he finds in, on or about the premises.

The cover painting, Flight from reason, is by the Australian-born Modernist painter Stella Bowen.

To read a sample poem and for ordering info click here.

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