Julie Maclean is a great poet with a great blog. Reading her website has introduced me to both her work and a lot of interesting journals and websites that have published her work. This month she’s kindly featuring me and some poems from tropeland. I appreciate your generosity Julie! Please have a look at juliemacleanwriter.com
I’ve been so busy preparing to launch the latest collection I haven’t had time to update the blog! The launch took place last Thursday 25th June at the South Australian Writers’ Centre. About 80 people came to help celebrate with me and hear Amelia Walker MC and Steve Brock, Mike Ladd and me read excerpts from tropeland. I also played a couple of traditional Japanese tunes on the shakuhachi to accompany poems about my dad and Japan. Thanks to everyone who came and bought my book, my amazing co-presenters, Ingrid for setting up and Lyn and Matt for helping to serve the food and wine, Ana for selling the books and Martin Christmas for the photos. 
Thanks Coriole,Shingleback and the Blackwood Wine Club for providing the excellent wines. I hope the sales interstate and overseas are as healthy as the launch!
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Once again special thanks to Martin Christmas for the brilliant © photos.
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The problem with literature is that someone somewhere decided to divide it up into classifications called genres. Sometimes what you write doesn’t fit existing genres. I began Bo Peep in 2012 when we were living in Japan for the second time. It took a couple of years to refine it into the Japanese horror tale that it is now. You could call it a long prose-poem or flash fiction, possibly. I submitted it all over the place but poetry sites may have thought it too long and perhaps it was too brief for short-fiction publishers. Fortunately I found Verity La – an Australian-based site which is attracted to edginess and blurring the genre divides. Bo Peep now has a home. Thanks Verity La. Read it HERE
I spoke a while back about my involvement with Bimblebox and Words for Birds. Julia Wakefield-Houghton has collected the bird poems composed and read by local writers as a series of Radio Adelaide mini- podcasts (each is only 3 minutes long.) A few of my poems are scattered through the collection: The Owl Speaks, starlings and Sparrow in an airport.
Have a listen – there’s an excellent diversity of voices and styles. Hear HERE!
The images on the Words for Birds banner are reproduced from handmade prints by Barbara Zietchick and Tina Moore, two of the artists in the ‘Winged Messengers’ print exchange which was exhibited at the Hahndorf Academy during the 2015 Adelaide Fringe Festival.
Apart from my last post this poor blog has been much neglected for almost six months. I’ve continued to write and publish but I’ve been distracted and obsessed by painful osteo-arthritis in my knees. This culminated in the total artificial replacement of my left knee six weeks ago. I’m hoping that the worst has passed! So over the next few months I’ll let anyone out there know about my recent literary output.(Or struggles. Or lack of output.)
Please feel free to comment so I know I’m not talking to myself.
Perhaps this is relevant: ‘my poetry blog‘ was published in the November 2014 edition of Red River Review (US.) The February edition had my friend David Adés – another longtime Friendly Street colleague – as Featured Poet.