Enjoy a piping hot cup of mulled wine and spiced apple cakes while listening to some of the best contemporary poetry from around Victoria.

After closing on Friday 26 July, The Book Bird will be transformed into a book-lined lounge room where guests can relax and soak up verse by Emma Lew, David McCooey, Brendan Ryan, and Heather Cameron. Think candles and fairy-lights, the scent of oranges and cinnamon, blankets, and a toasty warm space.

ABOUT THE POETS

Heather Cameron is a poet, short story and creative nonfiction writer. Her work has been anthologised and published in literary journals. Heather has lived on the coast of Victoria for nearly the same number of decades that she lived in her birth country of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Her career has spanned 35 years in the healthcare and education sectors in both countries. She currently works across the Barwon South West of Victoria in cancer service development, and is completing her PhD in poetry at Deakin University.

Emma Lew lives in Melbourne. Her first collection of poems, The Wild Reply(1997), won the Mary Gilmore Award and was joint winner of the Age Poetry Book of the Year Award. Her second collection, Anything the Landlord Touches (2002), won the Victorian Premier’s C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry and the Queensland Premier’s Judith Wright Calanthe Prize for Poetry. A selection of German language translations of her poems by Mirko Bonne was published under the title Nesselgesang in 2008. Crow College: New and Selected Poems was published by Giramondo in 2019.

David McCooey‘s poetry collections have won or been shortlisted for six major literary awards, including the Mary Gilmore Award and the Queensland Literary Awards. His latest book of poems is Star Struck (UWA Publishing). His poetry has been widely anthologised, and it appeared in ten of the last eleven editions of The Best Australian Poems series. David is the deputy general editor of the prize-winning Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (Allen & Unwin). He is also a sound artist and composer. His latest album (in collaboration with Paul Hetherington) is The Apartment. He lives in Geelong.

Brendan Ryan grew up on a dairy farm at Panmure in Western Victoria. His poetry, reviews and essays have been published in literary journals and newspapers, including Island, Westerly, Antipodes, The Age, The Weekend Australian, The Best Australian Poems series (Black Inc) and Contemporary Australian Poetry (Puncher and Wattman). The author of six collections of poetry, Travelling Through the Family, (Hunter Publishers) was shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Awards. A new collection of poetry, The Lowlands of Moyne, was published with Walleah Press in 2019. He lives in Geelong.

HANDY INFORMATION

There is free parking behind The Book Bird, off First Street. As this is an after-hours event there should be ample bays available.