Major Australian poets - Western Writers' Centre readings at Gort

galway | arts and media | event notice Thursday September 03, 2009 16:38 by Fred Johnston - Western Writers' Centre, Galway - Ionad Scríbhneoiri Chaitlín Maude westernwriters at eircom dot net Canavan House, Nuns Island, Galway. 0872178138

Gort Library is teh venue for major readings with music

The Western Writers' Centre - Ionad Scríbhneoiri Chaitlín Maude - Galway, and the Australian Poetry Centre are proud to present a reading by two of Australia's finest poets. Robert Gray and Alison Croggon, at Gort Public Library on Friday, October 23rd at 8pm. Admission is free. There will also be music.

"All our thanks to Teresa in Australia and Eileen at Gort Library,"says Fred Johnston, writer and the Western Writers' Centre's Director, " who facilitated these important readings. Gort is increasing event by event its literary reputation, and we still have the 'Forge at Gort festival in Spring.' "

Allison Croggon

ROBERT GRAY was educated in a country town on the north coast of New South Wales. He trained as a journalist, and since then has worked in Sydney as an editor, advertising copywriter, reviewer and buyer for bookshops. His first book of poems, Creekwater Journal, was published in 1973. Gray has been a writer-in-residence at Meiji University in Tokyo and at several universities throughout Australia including Geelong College in 1982. He has won the Adelaide Arts Festival and the New South Wales and Victorian Premiers' Awards for poetry. In 1990 he received the Patrick White Award. With Geoffrey Lehmann, he edited two anthologies, The Younger Australian Poets and Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century, and he is the editor of Selected Poems by Shaw Neilson, and Drawn from Life, the journals of the painter John Olsen. After Images is his latest collection of poetry; his memoir, The Land I Came Through Last, appeared last year. His awards include New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry for Selected Poems 1963-83, The Adelaide Festival of the Arts Award, 1990 - Patrick White Award, Victorian Premier's Literary Award - C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry for Certain Things

Born in 1962, ALISON CROGGON is one of a generation of Australian poets which emerged in the 1990s. She writes in many genres, including criticism, theatre and prose. She is Melbourne theatre critic for the national daily newspaper, The Australian, and keeps a blog of theatre criticism, Theatre Notes, for which she was won the 2009 Geraldine Brooks Critic of the Year award.

Her poetry has been published widely in anthologies and magazines in Australia and overseas, and her work has been nomiated . Her most recent collection, Theatre, came out last year with Salt Publishing. Her poetry has won the Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes, and been shortlisted for Victorian Premier's Poetry Prizeand the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. In 2000 she was the Australia Council Writer in Residence at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge (UK).

Alison Croggon is also the author of the acclaimed young adult fantasy quartet, The Books of Pellinor. The first volume was nominated in two categories in the Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction in December 2002 and named one of the Notable Books of 2003 by the Children's Book Council of Australia. The series has since been released to critical and popular acclaim in the US, the UK and Europe. Alison has written and had performed nine works for theatre, with operas and plays presented at the Melbourne and Perth International Arts Festivals. She was one of a thousand Australians invited to Canberra in April 2008 for the Australia 2020 Summit, where she was a member of the Creative Australia discussion. She was poetry editor for Overland Extra (1992), Modern Writing (1992-1994) and Voices (1996) and is founding editor of the literary arts journal Masthead.

Details and booking: Marvelle Maguire (Administrator) and Fred Johnston at 087.2178138 or 091.564822 - westernwriters@eircom.net

The readings are facilitated by The Arts Council.

Robert Gray