To see some photos from the MCA talks on Sunday 28th June click here and for information about the event, read on -
today’s young appreciators
(my dream a drink with John,Pam & Vicki)
Elizabeth Allen on Vicki Vidiikas
Tim Wright on Pam Brown
Keri Glastonbury on John Forbes
In this event, three young Australian poets will pay homage to the work and influence of three major poets who were working in the 70s and beyond, and who feature in the exhibition.
Elizabeth Allen is a Sydney bookseller and poet. Her essays and poetry have been widely published in Australian magazines and journals. Her chapbook, Forgetful Hands, was published by Vagabond Press in 2005.
Vicki Vidiikas was a well known poet around Balmain in the late 1960s. Her experiences in the heady world of dope and sex in Sydney and India were the materials of much of her sharp, knowingly sapient poetry. She took chances in both her life and her writing. Vicki's 1974 collection of prose pieces, Wrappings, revealed her as one of the most talented poets of the decade. She died, at the age of 50, in 1998.
Keri Glastonbury is a poet and lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle and is the poetry editor of Overland magazine.
John Forbes was a true original. Although his output was modest it was intense, deft and often funny. His poems probe Australia's cultural and political place in the world, often via art. He founded Surfers Paradise magazine. Forbes' considerable influence and the 'luminous hum' of his brilliant poetry is greatly valued in Australian poetry. He died suddenly, at the age of 47, in 1998.
Tim Wright collaborates on editing When Pressed, an online journal,(whenpressed.net), and writes an occasional blog (swimswam.wordpress.net)
Pam Brown's first poetry book appeared in 1972, her sixteenth, Authentic Local, is due out in 2009. She has been active in publishing, screenprinting, rock music, theatre, film and the web. A stalwart of that disorganised band, the leg-pulling opposition in Australian poetry, Pam was poetry editor of Overland for five years and is now associate editor of Jacket magazine.(jacketmagazine.com)
Vicki Vidiikas in 1974
John Forbes, mid-90s
John Forbes, poem & video art at MCA, 2009
Pam Brown, four books at MCA, 2009
Micky Allan : draft print for cover of Pam Brown's 'Country & Eastern'
Avoiding Myth & Message:
Australian Artists & the Literary World
Free entry
Museum of Contemporary Art
Circular Quay,
Sydney
Sunday June 28, 2.30pm
Scroll down to the previous post for the MCA event on Sunday June 14th and to see photos from it click here
10 comments:
It's kind of sad how what was once vibrant living DIY street culture ends up co-opted and ossified in the same sterile boujwah gallery environment that it once so vehemently attacked, don't you think? Still, way of the world, I guess.
hello Mr Squires,
maybe if you live long enough someone always puts you in some kind of box
no one 'attacked' contemporary art museums in my day - they didn't exist here in Australia
Laszlo Toth attacked the Pieta but that was hardly 'contemporary'
See you there I hope,
nothing sad to say,
Pam
I wish could get there, Ms Brown. I have been looking at lots of photos of poets from the '70's. That one of Vicki Viidikas is archetypal. I am sure there was one of you too, in a similar pose, defiantly sexy would be the term perhaps. And the men all looking tough and equally defiantly sexy, like they had just come in from fixing their motorbikes. I like Mr Adamson's haircut, it's a pity I am gone too baldy to emulate it. As for boxes, there shall be none for me, instead a simple burial at sea,
Pam - the cover for Country & Eastern is wonderful. Are there other examples of Micky Allan's artwork?
I mean apart from the one at the bottom of the page here!
Hi Jeff,
you can see more of Micky's work here
http://www.mickyallan.com/
Pam
You know another thing I really like about your generation of poets, Ms Brown. The way you wove each other into your work, mutual mythologising, I call it. I might see if I can get a bit of that happening in Contemporary Australian Poetry. Haha, honestly no irony, hope you are having as much fun as I am.
Mr Squires, esquire,
In an earlier generation in the 60s, didn't the NYNY poet Frank O'Hara call it 'personism'? (with his witty tongue lightly resting against his cheeky cheek).
Ms Brown
Looks like Paul is making good on his word here already.
I will got down fighting to get out of any box if I live past one hundred, guns & all.
good on you then
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