2025

Reminder – CHRONICLE: a celebration of Friendly Street Poets’ first 50 years

As part of our 50th year, FSP invites all our poets to contribute to CHRONICLE: A celebration of Friendly Street Poets’ first 50 years..

We want to know what it means to us all to have had Friendly Street Poets as a meeting place
and forum. The things you remember. The people. The oddities. The events or social
movements that have shaped Friendly Street Poets. The highlights and lowlights.

What we’re looking for is your memories in short vignettes, poetry or prose to a
maximum of 500 words.

The more contributors the better.

We are aiming to launch the book at the December 2025 City Meeting of FSP.… Click for more

Reminder: Sunday 4th May – Poetry and Music at Milang

Sunday 4th May 2025
Sign-in from 1:30pm for 2:00pm start

Milang Lakeside Butter Factory
22-23 Daranda Terrace, Milang, SA 5256.

As part of History Month, Jude Aquilina has organised a poetry and music event at the historic Milang Lakeside Butter Factory.

Read a poem for the Poetry Slam (2 minute limit)
$250 PRIZE MONEY!

$10 entry fee for the Competition or read for free at the Open Mic.

Come along and enjoy the day supporting regional poetry and music events.

Click here for more info about the event and venue.

Poem of the Month – March 2025 – Helen Hutton

The Poem of the Month for March 2025, selected by 2025 Anthology editors Val Braendler and Ben Adams, is Cold Case by Helen Hutton. The commended poems are Taking the Master Class by Nigel Ford, 3 x H20 by Bruce Greenhalgh and Ends and Soapbubbles by Avalanche.

Cold Case
Helen Hutton

i
Night is crisp as a nurse’s bib
and the bench seat in the old Holden
cold and narrow like an ambo’s gurney …
there’s me – look – pressed against the passenger door
      no handle,       no window winder      no escape.
He strokes the column shift
sweat glistens on the ginger hairs
on the back of his hand, saliva pools
in the corner of his mouth …
No need to sit over there, city Sheila.… Click for more

The Poetry Laboratory

Tuesday 13th May 2025
7:15pm for 7:30 start

Brookside Cellars Community Arts Centre
17 Moore St, Tranmere (off Glynburn Rd), SA 5073

$5 entry
Cash only, includes refreshments

An evening when great poetry and great poets are put under the microscope. Come along and be entertained, informed and even make your own poetic contribution.

Our first evening will feature a presentation by that poetry force of nature, Avalanche, on the life and work of ee cummings (that’s right, no capital letters).

Following this will be an open mic opportunity to read a poem or two, either cummings’ poetry or your own inspired by/about/relating to cummings and his work.… Click for more

Celebrate History Month with music and poetry at Milang Lakeside Butter Factory

Sunday, 4th May, 2025
1:30pm for 2:00pm start

Milang Lakeside Butter Factory
22-23 Daranda Terrace, Milang, SA 5256.

$10 entry fee to read
Free to listen

Guest poets:
Nigel Ford & Jude Aqulina

Milang and District Community Association and Friendly Street Poets are proud to present the inaugural Milang Poetry Slam and Music event at the historic Milang Lakeside Butter Factory,

What better venue to soak in history than the Milang Lakeside Butter Factory, which was established in 1893. Enjoy a relaxed afternoon listening to music, and poetry about the past, at this newly restored historic site on the shores of Lake Alexandrina.… Click for more

Poem of the Month – February 2025 – Erica Jolly

The Poem of the Month for February 2025, selected by 2025 Anthology editors Val Braendler and Ben Adams, is Remembering Mark Twain by Erica Jolly. The commended poems are Another Day at the Home for Incurables by Cary Hamlyn, glance by Billy-Jack Johnstone and The Soul’s Code by Inez Martinez.

Remembering Mark Twain
Erica Jolly

This story comes from
Back Matter – the archives
of Lapham’s Quarterly
‘Philosophy’ Volume VIII,
No. 3 Summer 2015.
 
You warned us all
about the temptation
to vice and corruption
in your satire The Gilded Age.
 
Plutocrats – all hungry –
finding immense riches
in technical advances
after the Civil War.… Click for more

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