You want me to do WHAT?

I'm one of the members of this panel at the Emerging Writers Festival today.

You want me to do WHAT?
So you’re published and now you’re expected to give readings, go on radio, appear in public, sign books and talk about your work. But you’re a WRITER! These writers talk about the promotional side to their work – tips they have picked up about speaking in public, how to perform your work well and the art of the soundbite.
With — Natasha Campo, Katherine Charles, Declan Fay and Sean M. Whelan. Hosted by Daniel Ducrou.

Yarra Room.
Melbourne Town Hall.
12.30pm.

Dog's Tails at the Dog's Bar Tonight!

Damn, I've been a little slack with this whole blogging thing lately.
Anyways.
Tonight I'm pretty excited about this gig. It's a reasonably new Storytelling weekly event in St Kilda. Curated by two wonderful peeps by the names of Chris Flynn and Josephine Rowe.
Also reading with me will be Chloe Jackson-Wilmott.
54 Acland Street, St Kilda.
8pm
Free Entry!
This gig had a profile piece in The Age this week so I reckon it will be a full house, so be early if you want to get in!

Sean M Whelan & the Interim Lovers gig tonight!

As part of their April residency the lovely Genevieve & Jezebel have kindly invited us to support them.
Also appearing are Sainthill.
We'll be performing Softly & Suddenly in full. A poetry and music response to Lewis Carroll's 'Hunting of the Snark.'

Read You Bastards IV

I'm performing tonight at a wonderful event called Read You Bastards. It's at the Empress Hotel in North Fitzroy.
Here's their blurb on it below. Be great to see you there. (please disregard my misspelt surname in the poster.)

Part six of Read You Bastards, our April edition, delivers guest readers: Michaela McGuire (Apply Within, The Age) and Sean M Whelan (Tattooing the Surface of the Moon). Erik Hecht (Insititut Polaire) will sing your little socks off too.

As always we are open mike, so bring your delicious dishes of poetry, short fiction and non fiction to read to us bastards.

The mike is yours for up to four minutes, in between you might enjoy our saucy second hand door prizes, beer and tantalising bar food.

So please, come read, you bastards.

Candy & High

My visual 'poem' contributed to the G.P.S. site (that's Global Poetry System) has been chosen as a feature poem. I really dig this concept of uploading poetry wherever you may find it.
Check it out here http://gps.southbankcentre.co.uk/poems/972/one_thing_leads_to_another
And contribute something yourself. Melbourne is under-represented! (Especially for a City of Literature.)

Babble returns to Bar Open

Going Down Swinging #29 launched tonight!!

Very excited to be performing for only the second time with my smoking new band, The Interim Lovers tonight!
We'll playing Softly & Suddenly from start to finish, plus a new composition, A Ghost in The Golden Sheep Massage Parlour.
All this for the launch of Going Down Swinging #29. My favourite Aus Lit Journal. Also performing is the most definitely soon to be ultra famous Josephine Rowe, plus the super charming Andy Jackson and Chris Flynn, along with the dazzling Maxine Benaba Clarke. And more! As usual the debonair Michael Nolan will be hosting the night.
This will be a corker!

Notes From The Underground - A Revolution in Words

Very excited to be performing tonight at my favourite venue in Melbourne, the lushly decorated Forum.
Notes From The Underground is part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival and features some very talented writers on the bill. Including Alicia Sometimes, MC Mantra, Telia Neville and one of my newest collaborators, the wonderful Michelle Dabrowski.

Featuring at Wordplay tonight!!

I'm very pleased to be featuring at what is one my favourite regular readings in Melbourne. My good friend Geoff Lemon puts a lot of work into curating these events and the big audiences who attend these readings, (always 100 plus) are testament to that.

Here's what Geoff has to say about this one...

This is not quite the final Wordplay - there are still two more after this. But it is my last one before I take off to South America. And given I've breastfed and hand-raised this baby for the past three years, I've taken the egomaniac liberty of giving myself some stage time to say farewell.

But for the healthy proportion of you who think I'm a knob, there's far more reason to come down given the starpower wattage of everyone else on this line-up. This is beyond stellar. This is interstellar. Like Stanley Kowalski. We have:

PEZ
This Melbourne MC has had a meteoric rise to fame over the last 12 months, with his Festival Song becoming by far the biggest Australian hip-hop hit since 2003. It's had 2.6 million plays on Myspace alone, as well as getting hammered on national radio. Pez is a cunning and passionate lyricist, with a well-established fondness for the a cappella side of hip-hop. The first time I saw him play, he was rapping a cappella to 6000 drunk dudes from the main stage at Pyramid Rock. And he was good enough to make them love it. I think he can handle us.

FELICITY WARD
Another quick rise to stardom, this time in the field of comedy. Felicity Ward's Ugly as a Child Variety Show was a huge hit at the last Melbourne Comedy Festival, and now she's just got back from a successful assault on the massive Edinburgh Fringe (a festival, not a hairstyle. "For God's sake get rid of that Edinburgh fringe, Felicity!" This year alone she's appeared on Spicks and Specks, Good News Week, and Thank God You're Here. She will make you laugh in all the right places and cringe in all the wrong ones.

SEAN M. WHELAN
We love this guy. With his winding, gently spoken stories of a world just a bit more surreal than our own, he's entranced thousands over the years. Sean is the co-creator of the massively successful Liner Notes series (their recent Thriller gig sold out the Toff). He created the brilliant poetry/rock crossover with The Mime Set, and is back in that field with new project The Interim Lovers. Wonderful.

GEOFF LEMON
This guy talks a lot. Seriously. On the plus side, you get at least twelve months off after this. To celebrate, I'm going to perform my least-performed poem, the epic hymn to wasted ravers, dodgy ecstasy-fuelled fashion, and hilariously misspent youth that I call Point Me to the Gods. Bring your phat pants. And something to chew.

Wordplay has been a phenomenon, and you've all been amazing in your support. So I'd love my final show to go off with a bang, and to see a giant sea of all your faces having a damn good time in the crowd. Forward the invite if you can, and try to think up at least one uncultured slob who you can drag along. Or just find a lost kandy raver in the Carlton Gardens and bring them.

It's been real.

Love.

Date:
Thursday, 08 October 2009
Time:
20:00 - 22:30
Location:
The Dan O'Connell Hotel (back bar).
Street:
Corner Canning and Princes Streets, Carlton (between Nicholson and Lygon)
Town/City:
Melbourne, Australia

Elemental. An extra show announced!!

Elemental, the show I'm performing in for the Melbourne International Arts Festival quickly sold out three dates. Which was brilliant news. But disappointing to those who were caught flat footed.
So I'm now very happy to announce that a fourth show and final show has been announced. This one will be on Sunday 11th April, 7.30pm.
Tickets are on sale right now!!
Hitch a ride to the cosmos on the back of a poet right here to book yourself a ticket and witness the unfolding of the universe as explained by four poets with some amazing help from video and sound artists galore.

In Between Words tonight!

Tonight is my third gig in a week! I've been too busy to blog on the previous gigs but once tonight is over I'll be posting a retrospective on Liner Notes 8, Softly and Suddenly (my new band project) and See What I'm Talking About.
But first tonight!
In Between Words is a double book launch for Beautiful Waste and Vagabond Holes, both published by Fremantle Press.
Beautiful Waste is a collection of poetry written by the late, great David McComb formerly of amazing Australian band, The Triffids. Vagabond Holes is a collection of essays and articles written about The Triffids.
This should be a very special evening indeed as performing will be Evil Graham Lee and Rob McComb, both former Triffids members. As well as Judith Lucy, The Blackeyed Susans Trio, The Single Mens Drinking Club, Kieran Carroll and myself! There's also a rumour that Mick Harvey of the Bad Seeds might even perform as well.
This is a free gig. Held at Bar Open, Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. Kicks off at 8. And both books will be available for sale on the night too.

Looking up from the Walker Street Tram Stop

Ghost Poetry Project Melbourne Launch in Pictures.

Here's some pics from the Melbourne Launch of the Ghost Project Poetry by Nathan Curnow at the Old Melbourne Gaol.

Angela Meyer has a done a terrific job of capturing the event in words so scoot over to Literary Minded if you'd like to read the lowdown on the night.





Emerging Writers Festival director David Ryding and Nathan Curnow.


The fabulous Emilie Zoey Baker


Angela Meyer and Nathan Curnow


Nathan reading in the Old Melb Gaol


Launcher Kevin Brophy.

The Ghost Poetry Project

Tonight I'll be attending the book launch of one of my favourite poets, Nathan Curnow. Nathan spent a year visiting Australia's most haunted sites, and then he wrote a book of poetry about it.
Nathan is a wonderful writer and performer, whose dedication to his craft I am in total awe of.
My friend Emilie Zoey Baker and I will be pouring the wine!
The venue is the Old Melb Gaol. Deets below.
Check it out.

Ten nights. Ten haunted locations. One terrifying adventure across Australia.

From a gaol cell to a lunatic asylum to a night in a haunted hearse, The Ghost Poetry Project is one poet’s attempt to find a language of guts and daring. A unique exploration of fear, courage, and the power of mystery and myth.

Launched by Kevin Brophy.
Published by Puncher & Wattmann.

Reading/Performance from Nathan Curnow
(assisted by Geoff Lemon)

The ten haunted sites:

The Chifley Suite, Old Adelaide Gaol, Picton, Monte Cristo Homestead, Fremantle Arts Centre, Richmond Bridge, Elvira The Haunted Hearse, Norfolk Island, The Quarantine Station and Port Arthur.

"This book must have the strangest-ever provenance of any collection of poetry in Australia. Only a vampire or a Nathan Curnow could have done this… These poems come drenched with the bloody and violent deaths central to the history of European occupation in this country. But they are not ghoulish or sensational. They are the real thing, both ‘transparent and completely solid’."

- Kevin Brophy

Words in Winter

I'm performing in gorgeous Hepburn Springs this weekend at the lush Palais theatre. Be good to get out of the city for the day.

TWO POETS AND ONE GUITAR

The poets: gifted local performers, Sean M Whelan and Lauren Williams

The Guitar: Internationally acclaimed gypsy guitarist Lulo Reinhard, has established himself as an outstanding reputation as a composer and guitarist. Lulo expresses his artistic personality in his gypsy influences,flamenco and latin jazz

Time: 8pm Venue: The Palais,111 Main Road Hepburn Springs. Cost: $25 Dinner/show $60.00 $25 Bookings essential 5348 4849

Jasmine Morning Bathroom Window

They flowered yesterday. Had to document. Now the bathroom smells of Jasmine every morning.

Under the West Gate Dreaming

Tram View

Never, ever

He knew their love
was born from literature
the day he realised
they had never, ever
spoken
on the phone.

Going Down Swinging # 28 launched tonight!!

I'm pretty excited to be performing at the launch of the latest issue of Going Down Swinging tonight. GDS is in my humble opinion the greatest lit mag in Australia. Always great content and edited by two of my favourite people, Lisa Greenaway and Klare Lanson. I'll be reprising my 'Static' piece especially commissioned by GDS. I'll be taking on the role of myself, the heart eating lion and Harvey Keitel!
Also performing is Chloe Wilmott Jackson, Quinn Stacpoole and the irrepressible Nathan Curnow.
The whole shebang is hosted by Melbourne's greatest MC, Mr Michael Nolan.