The Guardian reviews KING LEAR

King Lear’s unreasonable expectations drive Shakespeare’s plot. After abdicating in order to “unburden’d crawl toward death” Lear expects the fawning and flattery that only power can procure to continue undiminished. It doesn’t, and his suffering begins.

Geoffrey Rush on playing King Lear: 'What's to like? His parenting skills are appalling!'

The actor tells how, after years making a mixed bag of films, he and director Neil Armfield brought ‘the greatest play in the English language’ to Sydney

Read more

Sydney Theatre Company’s production, which closes its 2015 season, is weighted by high expectations too.

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Blake's Birthday

Happy Birthday, William Blake, November 28, 1757

(From www.poets.org): William Blake was born in London on November 28, 1757, to James, a hosier, and Catherine Blake. Two of his six siblings died in infancy. From early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions—at four he saw God “put his head to the window”; around age nine, while walking through the countryside, he saw a tree filled with angels. Although his parents tried to discourage him from “lying,” they did observe that he was different from his peers and did not force him to attend conventional school. He learned to read and write at home. At age ten, Blake expressed a wish to become a painter, so his parents sent him to drawing school. Two years later, Blake began writing poetry. When he turned fourteen, he apprenticed with an engraver because art school proved too costly. One of Blake’s assignments as apprentice was to sketch the tombs at Westminster Abbey, exposing him to a variety of Gothic styles from which he would draw inspiration throughout his career. After his seven-year term ended, he studied briefly at the Royal Academy.
_____________________________
Blake’s description of a holographic universe, 200 years before we knew about holograms (from Auguries of Innocence):

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour”

THE WHITE ROOM POEMS
by Anne Kellas
is to be launched by Robert Cox

Date: Wednesday 16 December
at 5:30 p.m.

Venue:  Hobart Bookshop

22 Salamanca Square

Hobart

Published by Walleah Presshttp://walleahpress.com.au/

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Kings Cross Shorts 2016 START NOW!

Kings Cross Shorts 2016 - $1,000 minimum 1st Prize

Kings Cross Arts & Cultural Festival Inc (“kxacf”) has announced that as a result of a generous donation from a benefactor, the minimum first prize for Kings Cross Shorts 2016  will be $1,000 cash.

The Kings Cross Shorts 2016 winner will be announced during the week long Kings Cross Festival to be staged by kxacf in November 2016.

The basic rules for the film competition are:
* Film of 5 minutes duration
* Theme – “Kings Cross”
* Shot on location in 2011 postcode suburbs ( Potts Point, Elizabeth Bay, Rushcutters Bay and Woolloomooloo) and/or suburb of Darlinghurst
* Not previously exhibited
* Entry fee per film - $15

Entries will close mid October 2016 and a screening and award presentation night will be held in mid November 2016.

Further details will be announced as soon as possible.

The organising committee for the film competition headed jointly by Shane Briant and Magdalena Stamos are determined to bring additional sponsors on board to increase the prize pool.

START  SHOOTING Now!

 

kxacf2016@gmail.com 

http://us11.campaign-archive1.com/?u=1e5a2df0b92cf69931c7a113f&id=54d1f59543&e=ba3eca2377
  

Rainer Maria Rilke Quote

 

Rainer Maria Rilke speaks for us all: “You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the hour of the new clarity.”

Paris climate talks won't beat dangerous global warming but they will try to build a vehicle that can

 

Since Kyoto, the world has changed drastically.

As Australia’s lead UNFCCC negotiator Peter Woolcott pointed out last week, back in 1992 there were only three developing countries on the list of the world’s 12 biggest greenhouse gas emitters. Now there are seven.

China has replaced the US as the major global emitter and geopolitical power has shifted towards Asia.

So we need a new deal. COP21 in Paris is the culmination of years of work to get that deal done. This time, all countries are being asked to sign it and because the process works on a consensus approach, all parties need to agree or the deal dies.
The Climate Institute’s Erwin Jackson, who routinely attends UNFCC meetings, offered me a neat summary of how much further advanced the process is heading into Paris than at previous meetings.

At Copenhagen we had a draft agreement that was 200 pages long. At Kyoto it was 80 pages. At Paris, it’s 50 pages.

But there has also been a fundamental change in how the UNFCCC is trying to canvas agreement.
At Kyoto and at Copenhagen the UNFCCC was trying to impose targets to cut emissions from on high. This time the target-setting has been done by the countries themselves – a bottom-up approach.

READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE AT http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/nov/26/paris-climate-talks-wont-beat-dangerous-global-warming-but-will-try-to-build-a-vehicle-that-can?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+AUS+v1+-+AUS+morning+mail+callout&utm_term=139651&subid=7413251&CMP=ema_632

The Wilderness Society's PHOTO OF THE MONTH

IMAGE: Whale watching off Moreton Island, Queensland | Angela Schweikert

For a chance to see your own wilderness photo in the next issue of Wild News, email it to images@wilderness.org.au by Friday, 15 December with your name and short description. Good luck! Read the terms and conditions.

'MIST' by Henry Thoreau

Mist

                                      

Low-anchored cloud, Newfoundland air, Fountain-head and source of rivers, Dew-cloth, dream-drapery, And napkin spread by fays; Drifting meadow of the air, Where bloom the daisied banks and violets, And in whose fenny labyrinth The bittern booms and heron wades; Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,— Bear only perfumes and the scent Of healing herbs to just men’s fields.   Henry David Thoreau

Wallace Stevens' SUNDAY MORNING turns 100 years old

 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/251528?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Poetryfoundationorg+Newsletter&utm_content=Poetryfoundationorg+Newsletter+CID_e8e09d40a217e1b1c00d712f57e9303c&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=Matisse#guide

Tegan Bennett Daylight on Joan London

 

When I remember being a child and reading, I think first of sunlight, which I was always manoeuvring to be partly, though not wholly, in. This sunlight is always linked to quiet, to stillness. The sense of movement around me, but happening at a distance – my mother talking on the telephone (her voice louder as she strayed to the very end of the cord), or my sister using her sewing machine – the sort of movement that envelops you but allows you to be alone. The psychotherapist and writer Adam Phillips, referring to D. W. Winnicott’s essay ‘The Capacity to be Alone’ (1958), says that ‘the goal for the child is to be alone in the presence of the mother. For a long time this has seemed to me to be the single best definition of reading’.

Perhaps the best definition of good writing is the kind that recreates this safe aloneness, this suspended awareness of the self, this being lost but at the same time attached. We adult readers can go a long time between books that have this effect, and still be entertained and even inspired by what we read. But if we are lucky, every few years a book or a writer will appear that brings this sense back – a book that makes us feel as though that stillness in the centre of movement has been both captured and, in the act of reading, reproduced.

 

READ MORE AT http://www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/golden-age-joan-london/

SNO120 - Exhibition of Non Objective Writing to 13th December

from Southerly's desk

 

The most excellent Toby Fitch has been Southerly’s Poetry Reviews Editor for the past five years. He’s commissioned, edited, and organised all the poetry reviews you read in the journal and online. But now, Toby is off on new adventures. He will begin as Poetry Editor at Overland Journal, taking over from Peter Minter, in 2016. He will also help judge Overland’s Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets. We’ve loved him, we’ll miss him, and we wish him all the best.

 

Thank you, Toby!

Commonwealth Bank Test squad named for Adelaide

Cricket Australia’s National Selection Panel has named a 13-man squad for the history-making Third Commonwealth Bank Test against New Zealand, to be played under day-night conditions at the Adelaide Oval.


The squad is:
Steve Smith (c)             NSW
David Warner (vc)            NSW
Joe Burns               QLD
Josh Hazlewood            NSW
Nathan Lyon              NSW
Mitchell Marsh            WA
Shaun Marsh               WA
Peter Nevill                ;NSW
Steve O’Keefe              NSW
James Pattinson              VIC
Mitchell Starc                NSW
Peter Siddle                 VIC
Adam Voges                 WA
The squad includes West Australian batsman Shaun Marsh. He replaces the injured Usman Khawaja who injured his left hamstring in the second Test match in Perth and is likely to be unavailable for Australia’s next two matches.
National Selector Rod Marsh said: “Shaun was unlucky to miss out on the squad for the first two Tests and since then has scored consistently in Sheffield Shield, so we believe he deserves this opportunity.”
New South Welshman Stephen O’Keefe has also been included in the side as an extra spin-bowling option.
“We have opted to include an extra spinner in the squad for Adelaide as we are unsure what conditions we will see there. Stephen was included in our squad that was to go to Bangladesh and if he should get an opportunity we think he will make the most of it.
Victorian paceman James Pattinson joins the squad following the retirement of Mitchell Johnson.
“James has made a good return to Shield cricket following his injury and has earned this re-call.
“He has worked incredibly hard and we are confident that he is ready to perform at Test level if selected.”
The squad will assemble in Adelaide on Sunday afternoon.

Fresh off the Press! THE OPPENS REMEMBERED

 

NOW PUBLISHED.

Thank you University of New Mexico Press for The Oppens Remembered: Poetry, Politics, Friendship.

Neil J (BRiLO) Pattinson Book Launch on Friday 27th November 2015.

 Indifferent Publications and the Viable Human Mob present

BOOK LAUNCH at BASSENDEAN BOOKshed,

celebrating the launch of Cartoon & Conspiracy Theory

by Neil J Pattinson on Friday 27th November 2015

from 6pm (formalities at 7pm). 

 

The venue is 55 Broadway, Bassendean –

if you disembark train at Bassendean, take the street

that leads off the side of the BWS liquor store. 

That street is called Broadway, walk no more than 10minutes

and you should be there.

 

Join in celebrating Neil J (BRiLO) Pattinson’s first poetry book. 

RSVP to popcultpoet@gmail.com

Decomposition as a Spiritual Value in Poetry by Dobby Gibson

from American Poetry Review, November / December 2015


Language is inherently under pressure, even this sentence. There’s the restriction of time, the constrictions of page space. There are the limits of understanding. “The thing itself always escapes,” Derrida wrote. And yet, an utterance’s ultimate inability to fully represent the mysterious source material of its existence can reveal other layers of meanings, which ripple outward from a speech act in ways the speaker doesn’t always control.

I’m just beginning to describe a quality within poetry I’m going to call decomposition, something we as poets can not only identify, but cultivate. For what is a poem other than a tantalizing glimpse at meaning dissolving, a ceremonialized “experience of almost” slipping through our hands? “A word is elegy to what it signifies,” wrote Robert Hass in his most famous poem, “Meditation at Lagunitas.” The very material of our art—words—are mortal. Linguists predict that at least half of the world’s 6,000 or so languages will be dead and forgotten by the year 2050.

READ ON HERE

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FREE Westerly/ECU Workshop

Gerry Mulligan/Chet Baker Tribute

Jessica Wilkinson Reading Friday 13th

Antonio Sanchez - Internal War (BIRDMAN OST)

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KEN BOLTON and PAM BROWN Launch

You are warmly invited to celebrate

two new poetry collections

from Vagabond Press

KEN BOLTON & PAM BROWN

 

with

Amanda Stewart

Chris Edwards

Ken Bolton

Pam Brown

3pm

Saturday 5th December

at

Parkview Hotel

corner Mitchell Road & Harley Street

Alexandria, Sydney

everyone welcome

For further information

from Vagabond Press

click here

 

How to get to Parkview Hotel

Mitchell & Harley, Alexandria

transport & map click here

The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize NOW OPEN

Poetry Prize guidelines

The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets is proudly sponsored by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation

Major prize: $6000
Second prize: $2000
Third prize: $1000
The judge for the 2015 competition is Overland’s current poetry editor, Peter Minter, and Overland’s incoming poetry editor (to be announced).
Competition closes 11.59pm, Sunday 15 November 2015. Winners will be announced in Overland 222, autumn 2016.
Entry conditions

1. The award is open to poets who have had no more than one solo collection of their work commercially published: that is, by a publishing house with commercial distribution.
2. Entrants must be citizens of Australia or New Zealand  or have permanent resident status in Australia or New Zealand.
3. Poems must be unpublished (including online) and not under consideration by other publishers.
4. Poems that have won or are under consideration in other competitions are not eligible.
5. Selection will be made by Overland’s current and incoming poetry editors.
6. The judges’ decision will be final.
7. The winning poems will be published in Overland.
8. All submitted poems may be considered for publication in Overland.
9. Entries must be submitted electronically via the Overland submittable system.
10. An entry fee of $12 for Overland subscribers and $20 for non-subscribers will be charged. It is possible to become a subscriber and simultaneously enter the competition at a special price of $56.
11. The name of the poet must not appear on the manuscript (including the header or footer) since all poems will be considered anonymously.
12. Poems must be no more than 80 lines.
13. Multiple entries are permitted, though a separate fee applies to each poem.
14. The competition closes 11.59pm, Sunday 15 November 2015.
15. Winners will be announced in March 2016. Subscribe to the Overland email bulletin to receive announcements as to the results.
16. The major prize is $6000, second prize is $2000 and third prize is $1000.
17. Please ensure you are satisfied with your poem before submtting. Poems that are withdrawn and subsequently resubmitted will incur a second fee.

Enter the 2015 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize.

haiku

spring storms -
even the roses in a vase
lose their petals


- Andrew