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Les Murray is undoubtedly one of Australia’s greatest living poets – and an international literary legend.The New Yorker has described him as ‘now routinely mentioned among the three or four leading …
Studying a book or film can be a short-cut to consigning it to boredom. But our Texts in the City series – a gift to students, their teachers and lifelong learners – brings the VCE English and…
Most of the news we hear about publishing these days is pretty grim, to say the least … it’s all about bookshops closing, sales plummeting and jobs being lost. So, it’s especially nice to hear the…
Pip Smith is currently poet-in-residence at The Lifted Brow. She has had her poems and stories published in HEAT, Meanjin, Voiceworks, Going Down Swinging, Island and Pan Magazine, and also runs…
As a bonus to celebrate our AMERICA series, here’s a video-only interview with American poet, novelist and writer of short fiction Ron Rash. He discusses his decision to properly explore writing as a…
It’s unusual for a new collection of poems to have an introduction. They often appear in a collected or selected poems, serving to frame a writer’s life and work; but I don’t recall seeing an…
We’ve recently welcomed our second round of Hot Desk Fellowships, supported by the Readings Foundation, to the Wheeler Centre.We bid a sad farewell to our first round of fellows: Luke Ryan, Mel…
The first event ever to run at the Wheeler Centre was a Debut Mondays session, and two years On, we’re just as committed to fostering new talent.Whether it’s meeting Australian literature’s newest…
In this special video-only edition of Texts in the City, the Wheeler Centre’s Jenny Niven looks at Collected Poems of Gwen Harwood with Chris Wallace-Crabbe – writer, Australian Poetry chair and…
In this globalised world, we’re increasingly drawn to stories from other places; talesthat immerse us in faraway cultures. And where better to find our stories than in fellowUNESCO Cities of…
Icelandic author Sjón is a rock ‘n’ roll renaissance man. He writes poetry, pens lyrics for Björk, wrote a whale-watching ‘splatter film’, and won the Nordic equivalent of the Man Booker for his…
Who tells the story of a country? What story does a country’s national literature tell about its people and its identity? Is there such a thing as Australian literature at all?Australians are…
As 2011 ends and 2012 begins, we’ve invited our resident organisations to consider the year gone by and to share their plans for the year to come.Australian Poetry has had an exciting inaugural…
The literary world has always been riddled with controversy. There’s a couple of controversies doing the rounds that we found of interest for what they say about about a new anthology of American…
Liao Yiwu is a Chinese poet, novelist, musician and screenwriter currently living in exile in Germany because of government suppression of his work in China. Imprisoned for four years following…
Poetry’s fortunes in the wider world can seem grim at times but for lovers of poetry – its writers and readers – the form is more often than not little less than an obsession. As such, the poetry…
Sudanese rapper and writer Emmanuel Jal is a child of war. The internationally acclaimed hip-hop star is celebrated for his electrifying concerts and albums, songs written about his homeland and his …
Next year’s National Poetry Festival is to be held in Darwin from 10 to 13 May. The festival will be held in conjunction with Wordstorm, the Festival of Australasian Writing, which will kick off on 1…
Last week we reported on the betting frenzy surrounding the lead-up to the announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The frontrunner was the Syrian poet Adonis, although there were serious…
The Wheeler Centre joins forces with Australian Poetry to celebrate the release of the latest Australian Poetry Journal with a night of readings and discussion. Coinciding with the publication of…
Emilie Zoey Baker is an award-winning poet and spoken word performer who has performed and been published nationally and internationally. In this Lunchbox/Soapbox polemic, she energetically responds …
Lunchbox/Soapbox is a simple idea: an old-fashioned Speakers’ Corner in the middle of the city, in the middle of the day.At the Wheeler Centre we’re keen to showcase our writers as thinkers and as…
By Lisa DempsterIn addition to being a celebration of all things literary, one of the most exciting things about Melbourne being a UNESCO City of Literature is the potential for us to connect with a …
Image of a Lego WB Yeats via Dunechaser/Flickr Poetry – even poets don’t always like it. Marianne Moore, a major 20th-century American poet, wrote a poem, appropriately…
Australian Poetry has announced plans to produce an anthology of poems by its members. The Wheeler Centre resident organisation is planning to make the publication a annual event as part of the…
Iconic Australian literature doesn’t come much more iconic than For the Term of His Natural Life, the quintessential convict tale. We remember its author: journalist, poet and novelist Marcus…
Never supping on oysters and Moet,writers earn very little (and know it),but while it might take ages,to earn from your pages,spare a thought for the struggling poet.Each month at the Wheeler…
Going Beyond the Couplet, acclaimed Victorian writers Craig Sherborne and Cate Kennedy sit down together for a conversation exploring the points of commonality and difference in their respective…
Every day this week we’ll be publishing reviews of each of the Premier’s 21 titles shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. These reviews are not written by professional reviewers…
Advertising agency George Patterson/Y&R are claiming to be the first to create a poem in the form of a website URL. The poem was devised to promote the Byron Bay Writers' Festival, which begins…
In ‘A Defence of Poetry’, an essay written in 1821 and published posthumously in 1840, English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley defined poets as “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”. Since then…
Sydney Opera House 1975, image by Gregory Melle, via Flickr Sydney is appointing a city poet to sing the virtues of the city in verse. For $20,000 over 12 months, the poet …
Professor Timothy Clark is one of the world’s most respected art historians. Professor Timothy Clark is also TJ Clark, poet. He talks to Antoni Jach about his dual intellectual lives, their points…
Professor Timothy Clark is one of the world’s most respected art historians. Currently the Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of York, he is also the author of a series of books on…
When she was 14, Fatima Bhutto huddled in the corner of a closet shielding her baby brother while shots rang out in the streets outside her home. Those shots killed her father and continued the…
Liao Yiwu, photographed in Cologne last year, via Wikipedia Meet Liao Yiwu, an author and musician from China’s Sichuan province, which borders Tibet in central China. In h…
Lord Byron in Albanian dress, by Thomas Phillips, 1813, collection of the British Embassy, Athens, via Wikipedia The History channel’s website has a neat feature: a…
In the US, National Poetry Month is drawing to a close. Does its timing have anything to do the famous first line of TS Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’? Not according to Wikipedia, but we have our…
There has been much speculation about social media’s potential in bringing about social change. The discussion has been brought to the fore by the upheavals sweeping the Arab world. As previously…
In the 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, the eponymous hero – a brilliant poet with an extremely large nose – improvises romantic poetry to help his friend seduce the woman they both love. With an…
Today is World Poetry Day. To mark the occasion, we found this list of the 10 best American poems, this story of an animated screen adaptation of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, we swooned at this…
Wheeler Centre resident organisation Australian Poetry has launched its own iPhone app. The app aims to be a one-stop shop for Australian poetry: “We would like to list all leading Australian poets, …
A banner that reads ‘Leave!’ during protests in Tahrir Square last month in Cairo. Image via WikiCommons While the ripples of a 24-year-old Tunisian grocer’s
Last night the Wheeler Centre hosted the launch of Australian Poetry. The event’s evocative title, ‘A Thousand Sails’, was taken from a poem by Chinese-Australian poet Ouyang Yu, who used the image t…
Chris Wallace-Crabbe calls poetry an ‘often quiet art’, though a large community of Australians read, write, and are passionate about the form.Join us, as we launch Australian Poetry, a new national …
From July to October 2010, Iowa City poet David Morice set himself a daunting task: to write a 100-page poem every day for 100 days. Entitled ‘Poetry City Marathon’, the poem was written as part of e…
There are many writers who have found literary fame late in life. None, however, can match the late-career bloom that is Toyo Shibata. At the age of 99, she’s become one of Japan’s bestselling…
From Catullus to Shakepeare, Auden to Dickinson, poetry has long struggled to understand love. To celebrate the publication of Love Poems by Dorothy Porter, readers including Richard Gill, David…
Music writer Mark Mordue When I think about poetry, about my need to read it and reflect on it and even express the odd poem here and there as if there were a more pure or …
Novelist Andrea Goldsmith shared her life with the late Dorothy Porter Dorothy Porter was known for her brilliant performance. She studied acting in her teen years and…
“Lyrics don’t mean anything! Like ‘Rama-lama-ding-dong’ or ‘Give Peace a Chance’!” – Homer SimpsonThe Edsels released, “Rama Lama Ding Dong” in 1958 which became a national hit, but surely not…
Berlin’s appetites in writers is certainly eclectic. From reportage to satire to slam poetry, this video introduces us to slam poet Bas Bottcher, radio reporter Carsten Beyer and social commentator W…
Les Murray’s latest, Taller When Prone Poet Les Murray is favourite Australian in the race for the Nobel Prize according to British bookmakers Ladbrokes.The bookies put…
Ian Johnston is the eminent translator of ancient Chinese poetry and philosophy, published in Hobart, Hong Kong and New York. Barry Hill is the celebrated poet and historian who has won numerous…
In partnership with RMIT, the Australian Poetry Centre is bringing a poet in residence to the Wheeler Centre.The program will mean that poets have the opportunity to write but also be available for …
In 1999, Ian Johnston retired from his work as a neurosurgeon in Sydney where he had spent the previous 25 years. He moved to South Bruny Island to live a life of relative seclusion and to devote…
Hill was born in Australia and educated in Melbourne and London, where he worked as a psychologist and a journalist (The Age and the Times Educational Supplement). He has been writing full-time…
Cordite editor David The latest issue of Australian online journal Cordite is asking its readers to become re-mixers by offering them the chance to download the…
Australian Poetry Centre invites you to the launch of the 2010 APC New Poets Series: A Question of Translation by Ann de Hugard, The Weeping Grass by Michelle Leber, Sundecked by Rachael…
Peter Porter, one of Australia’s finest writers, died earlier this year at the age of 81. To commemorate his lifeand remember his work, the Wheeler Centre and the Australian Poetry Centre pays…
Peter Porter, one of Australia’s finest writers, died earlier this year at the age of 81. To commemorate his life and remember his work, the Wheeler Centre and the Australian Poetry Centre paid…
The passing of Peter Porter in April created an absence in Australian poetry that many are still mourning.His obituary in the Guardian quoted Porter’s poetic maxim from the 1960s “What I have…
In the wake of the eruption of Iceland's volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, the Guardian features Carol Ann Duff's poem Silver lining.
Les Murray reads from his new volume of poems, Taller When Prone.
Poet Ted Hughes is to be recognised with a permanent memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, the Independent reports. Ted Hughes…
… which our hearts long to harmonise."Ezra Bix, author of Dancing in the Lifeboat and serial poetry slam winner, recites What have you done to nurture the nation’s soul Wayne McBicep?January 2010 at…
Craig Sherborne, poet and author of the memoirs Hoi Polloi and Muck reads his poem Ash Saturday. January 2010 at the Wheeler Centre.
