Poetry Sydney and Macquarie University are thrilled to present N E W S : Poets from the North . East . West . South; a collaborative venture that celebrates the work of poets, poetry and the literary arts. Participants support the work of students from four universities in Sydney and greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

The significance of the project on innovations on the partnerships that pools the capacities and resources of Macquarie University and The Knox Street Bar. Rooted in mutual respect and collaborative openness, these partnerships have been roundly embraced by the curatorial team responsible for each of the compass events.

The events are staged in a live streaming venue, Knox.live, at the Knox Street Bar in Chippendale. Curated by Dr Michelle Hamadache, Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Literature and Language, Macquarie University.

Ambitious in scope, engaging in diverse media poetry from performance, video poetry and animation. The events in equal parts will stage provocative and playful work that challenges and emotionally resonates.

Each event will be held live at Knox.live and also live-streamed. Poetry pod-parties are encouraged to tune-in and share-in the live-stream across the country and internationally.

There is a special 2 for 1 $20 tickets.
Please note that venue capacity is limited and preticket sales is recommended.

Meet the curator:

Michelle Hamadache is the Director of Creative Writing, and teaches English Studies and Creative Writing at Macquarie University. Michelle writes fiction and creative non-fiction, and is working on a history of Resettlement Camps in Algeria during the Algerian War for Independence from France (1954-62). She was an editor at Southerly until 2018 and is now Managing Editor at Mascara Literary Review, a bi-annual literary journal interested in the work of the contemporary migrant, Asian Australian and Aboriginal writers.

Meet the poets in order of appearance:

Pip Smith was named a 2018 Best Young Novelist by the SMH/ The Age for her debut novel Half Wild (A&U, 2017), and won the inaugural Helen Ann Bell award for her first collection of poetry, Too Close for Comfort (SUP, 2013). Her children’s picture books, Theodore the Unsure and To Greenland! are published by Scholastic Australia, and she occasionally has new poetry and short fiction published in Australian literary journals. Link: pipsmith.net

Rico Craig is a writer, award-winning poet and workshop facilitator whose work melds the narrative, lyrical and cinematic. His poetry has been awarded prizes or shortlisted for the Montreal Poetry Prize, Val Vallis Prize, Newcastle Poetry Prize, Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize and University of Canberra Poetry Prize. Bone Ink (UWAP), his first poetry collection, was winner of the 2017 Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2018. Since 2012 he has worked as Storyteller-in-Chief at the Story Factory, designing and facilitating creative writing programs for young people, and teacher development programs for adults. His most recent collections Our Tongues Are Songs (2021) and Nekhau (2022) are published by Recent Work Press.

Aspiring novelist Rose Kennedy is an emerging Sydney writer of contemporary memoir, short stories, and spoken word poetry. Rose is an unflinchingly devoted syrupy-storyteller, coffee-spiller and anecdote-excavator from all corners of her loud and hungry life. Although she has backpacked the world, she finds her home on the page.

Performance poetry:

Steven Durbach, aka Sid Sledge worked as a scientist doing genetic research on bacteria and viruses from 1995-2008 before turning to art fulltime. Upon emigrating to Australia, he worked as an artist drawing on his knowledge and insights from the study of evolutionary theory to see what story that could tell in the arts. His principle media are drawing; kinetic sculpture and drawing animation. He has recently taken on a more research-based performative approach where during installations, performances and residencies, primarily at science institutions and other non-art spaces, he uses an experimental approach to engage the audience and evolve his work. Link: http://www.sidsledge.com/

DATSON HUGHES is a collaboration between sound artist, poet, songwriter and musician Geoffrey Datson and Annette Hughes, author, songwriter, musician and cultural producer. Our joint practice emerges from long immersion in Australian visual, musical and literary culture, selecting and combining forms to produce multi-disciplinary multi-media work. While our individual careers reach back into the late seventies, our collaboration is relatively recent, with our strongest work emergent in the last ten years. DATSON HUGHES has been touring solidly up and down East Coast, Australia and since 2018, spending two 6 month stretches in Europe touring and collaborating and participating in various artist in residence projects. We geared up for our 3rd European tour when Covid descended cancelling all our 2020 projects. Now based back in Sydney, we are performing again, working towards the release of their latest studio album, Now and Forever. Link: https://www.datsonhughes.com/

Poetry Sydney acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land where we live, create, meet and work.

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Contact the host of N E W S : Poets from the North . East . West . South