Friendly Street Poets

Friendly Street Poets will be launching three books at the

Adelaide Festival’s Writers’ Week

Saturday 3rd of March at 5pm

EAST STAGE, Pioneer Women’s Memorial Gardens

The first book is NEW POETS 17,edited by Thomas Sullivan, features three manuscripts: Fence Music by John Pfitzner; Gunyah Healing by gareth roi jones and Sliding Down the Belly of the World by Rachael Mead.

The second is the Single Poet volume, edited by Thomas Sullivan, is entitled Urban Biology by Professor Ian Gibbins. The front cover image above is “Parched”, a finalist in 2011 Waterhouse Prize, by artist, Judy Morris [www.judymorris.net.au]. The judge of the publishing competition which this manuscript won was Heather Taylor Johnson, who said of  Ian’s manuscript:

“Urban Biology takes nature and places it in a Petri dish and, in doing so, places poetry in a kaleidoscope. More than thirty years of zoology, pharmacology and human body spill onto the pages of this focused and often quirky collection. Ian challenges readers to open and expand their minds while delighting in new words, new creatures and new rhythms. This is an exciting poet who may well dazzle Australia.’

The third volume, edited by Judy Dally and Louise McKenna, is the 36th FSP annual anthology entitled: Flying Kites.The poems are selected from all the poems read at all official FSP meetings throughout South Australia. The editors tell us:

“In some ways poems are our kites. We write them and we fly them in the public sky so that people can admire their beauty and grace. They are a message to all who care to look up and read them. Some of them fly easily and carry on the wind. Some of them flop and fall to the ground. When a poem lifts and sustains flight, it is an exhilarating experience”

We invite all visitors to South Australia during the Adelaide Festival and all our many members, friends and lovers of fine poetry to come along to this launch and hear a taste of each book.

Be exhilarated, be dazzled !

If you are still here on Tuesday 6th March we hope you will come and visit our FSP City meeting at the South Australian Writers Centre in East Rundle Street (on the way to a late night at the Fringe perhaps?). Ian Gibbins is our Guest Poet. You can read your own poetry and risk being selected for publication in next year’s annual anthology or just sit back with a glass of wine and listen. Entry fee which includes annual membership and is $5 concession / $6 employed people. Once inside wine and juices are free.

All our books are published by Wakefield Press and we thank them for their excellent production skills and support of poetry in this state.

Thank you to the South Australian government for their continued support of the Arts in this state. In particular their ongoing support of Friendly Street Poets Inc, of our publishing and development programs through a grant from Arts SA.