Enduring Experimental Poets

Presented by un Projects together with the Melbourne School of Literature, this symposium ‘Enduring Experimental Poets’ celebrates three local icons of word art: Javant Biarujia (born 1955), t h a l i a (born 1952), and Catherine Vidler (1973-2023), who have each devoted decades to their unique projects, and who are all woefully omitted from accounts of Australian experimental art.

We live in an age when words are debased and the purpose of writing is in crisis. These three poet-artists have sustained endurance relationships with words. Join us as three expert speakers, Brendan Casey, Ella Skilbeck-Porter and A.J. Carruthers, introduce and detail their practice as unacknowledged elders with long histories in language and writing.

Javant Biarujia is the creator of Taneraic, an expansive private language, or langue close. He co-founded Nosukumo, a small publishing house, and edited the journals Carionflower Writ (1985–1990) and Taboo Jadoo (1989-1994). His recent publications include a Taneraic-English dictionary (2022), an Taneraic translation of Anaïs Nin’s House of Incest (2023), and a Polari translation of Arthur Rimbaud (2014). He lives in Naarm/Melbourne.

t h a l i a has established a poetic practice appropriating Pitman Shorthand, an obsolete secretarial notation system. As part of Collective Effort, t h a l i a was a co-editor of the worker’s little mag 925 (1978–1983), and a founding member of Australia’s Poet’s Union, as well as the founder of Thalia Publications. With her partner Alan Musgrove she has also completed an oral history project documenting Australian folk music. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne.

Catherine Vidler posthumously published Selected Visual Poems (SOd Press), a remarkable collection of some of her major visual sequences. She was the editor of trans-Tasman literary magazine Snorkel (2005–2018) and she published numerous books of visual and non-visual poetry. As Toby Fitch writes, ‘Vidler’s venturing into wordless visual poetry is, from my perspective, an attempt to make one the “earthy realities of corporeal existence” and “the disembodied ecstasies of the imagination,” because, as she wrote, they are one…’ Vidler died in Sydney in 2023, after a long struggle with cancer.

All are welcome to join! The venue is wheelchair accessible and this event is free to attend.

The un Extended Editor-in-Residence program is supported by the City of Melbourne and City of Yarra.