“After holding more than 300 readings and publishing over 70 books, it’s time for a fresh look at the great record of Friendly Street and its role in Australian poetry.

The long-awaited update on the history of Friendly Street will be launched on Sunday 2nd of March in the West Tent at Writers’ Week. Peter Rose, editor of the Australian Book Review, will usher Best of Friends: the first thirty years of the Friendly Street Poets into the world in the now traditional Friendly Street book launches function during the Adelaide Festival of Arts.” MORE… (Friendly Street Poets)

All the best to editors Kate Deller-Evans & Steve Evans. I know they’ve put a hell of a lot of work into this project over the past couple of years. Wish I could be there! 

Kate, Steve & the infamous Clive James launching Friendly Street’s Another Universe in 2004. 

I mentioned leaving school at lunchtime in my last post. It’s still haunting me. Apparently it was broadcast on Final Draft, Radio 2SER FM Sydney just before Christmas. Surfing the net I discovered it as a podcast and found myself in bed this morning in Himeji listening to myself from a radio program I hadn’t realised existed on a Going Down Swinging CD originally recorded in my study in Cherry Gardens, South Australia from an idea that came to me one lunchtime in suburbia. But then, life is full of inexplicable synchronicities, isn’t it? I can feel a poem forming…     Portrait of The Poet by The Artist Himself, Holding His New Cell Phone Backwards 

         On the old website, one year ago today:  Maggie Ball’s review (on Compulsive Reader) of micromacro is very gratifying:  “micromacro is an easy to read collection which presents a light, gently spaced series of poems that appear simple as they cover the Australian terrain and glide over current affairs. Look closely however and the poetry is sharper, more intense and deeper – using cutting humour and painful structures to illuminate, radiate and open the mind to other people’s pain, to the pain we cause ourselves, or to the “rosetta stone” beneath our feet.” . MORE..         …