Rosemary Nissen-Wade

Oh,  how exciting that Poets Out Loud, our Murwillumbah group started by the enterprising performance poet Sarah Temporal , is now happening via Zoom. It's on the third Thursday of the month, 7-9pm Sydney time. Details at their facebook page . Tonight we not only had interstate poets as well as locals participating, we also had international poets, one from Sri Lanka and two from the USA. We get used to visual applause (waving our hands in the air) and having little chats via text behind the scenes. What we lose of the energy of a live performance – I mean with everyone at the same venue – we make up for in the intimacy of close-ups, and the convenience of being able to meet, and even travel far to do so, while staying in our own homes. Sarah is still doing the hosting, with her usual warmth and efficiency. At any event that she runs, you know instantly that you're among friends. We are allowed to include stories, so this time I read  a short piece of autobiography  tha

Luckily I'm mostly an online poet. Social distancing is not required on social media. All the usual poetry groups and communities are still operating. Currently I'm mostly at  Poets and Storytellers United , for the very good reason that I'm officially its Coordinator these days – albeit with a wonderful, smooth-running, no-fuss team who don't need a lot of coordinating. I occasionally look at what's happening at dVerse ; and I'm thrilled that the archived imaginary garden with real toads is reactivating temporarily, with daily prompts for the 'poetry month' of April. Then there are the facebook groups. I'm the admin of Haiku on Friday and Tanka on Tuesday (not that they need much administration) and I sometimes look in on Found Haiku, Erotic Haiku , and NaHaiWriMo (National Haiku Writing Month). Above all there are my own poetry blogs where I share the latest work – which you'll find under the tab My Poetry Blogs at the top of the pag

Created by Kenneth Smeaton, recording Melbourne poetry history. In this episode I'm featured, reading what was once my most famous (or notorious!) poem.

They started with me! (Pardon my excitement.) Enterprising young poet  Sarah Temporal has just organised a new series of monthly poetry readings in Murwillumbah NSW where I live (and she lives). They began last Thursday with a varied and exciting program of two featured readers (me and Matt Hetherington ) and lots of brilliance in the open sections. Here I am in full emote on the night: And these are the poems I read, the first two from my book Secret Leopard,  the second two much more recent, from my blog The Passionate Crone : The Day We Lost the Volkswagen During a momentary lull in her head, the poor old thing lost her grip. The boat she was towing towed her instead ponderously down the slip. backwards into the water. For a swirling moment she almost floated, she thought of setting sail. But her bum tilted, her britches bloated — she was heavy in the tail — and the sly seaweed caught her. I thought even then she might make a try (she se

Oh, how exciting! I just got in the post the anthology "Jumble Box" edited by  Michael Dylan Welch , drawn from last year's NaHaiWriMo (National Haiku Writing Month – which is actually international). That happens every February but there aren't always books resulting. I tend to wander away to other things between Februarys, so I was a bit late to realise it had been issued, but very glad to have it now. It looks and feels beautiful, with lovely artwork by fellow-Taswegian Ron  Moss, and of course lots of excellent haiku. I'm especially chuffed that the three of mine included are all one-liners: a form I much admire and seldom even attempt myself. Back in January 2007, just over 10 years ago, I decided to try and teach myself to write haiku. I discovered that I had a lot to learn!  It's wonderful to have come from those first clueless attempts to having work selected by a respected editor for an international collection such as this. "Jumbl

The dVerse online community of blogging poets, in which I sometimes participate, has just published this beautiful new anthology of 104 poets from all over the world, who also share their work in that community: It's available from Amazon North America  and Amazon Europe . And yes, I am delighted to tell you I have two of my own poems included. We weren't invited to choose poems to submit to this anthology. Instead the editors selected from poems already shared with dVerse during a specific time period. I was surprised at which ones of mine were chosen: probably not among those I would have submitted if asked, even though I am fond of them. But tastes differ. Though I had not considered them my best work, I'm very glad that the editors valued them more highly, so that these particular poems now get much wider exposure than I would have given them. (They are At Mariner's Café and My Home River . ) These days I usually prefer ebooks to paperbacks, but this

Environmental fairy story by Andrew E Wade. The fairies need Tim's help. Their home in the old-growth forest is in danger of being logged for timber. Can Tim convince his father, the manager of a sawmill, to stop old-growth logging in the forest, and save the fairies?  But Tim also needs the fairies' help. He desperately wants his father and classmates to believe his story about Jorell being a real-life fairy. Can Jorell help Tim be believed? Andrew's environmental story for children, also loved by adult readers, has just become an e-book. It is something he wanted to do with JORELL, shortly before he died, but we ran out of time. I'm glad to finally make it happen. The cover artist, Tom Giffin, suggested a different cover design from the paperback. My favourite book designers, Delaina and Kristin of Content X Design , worked with that suggestion to realise it professionally.  I published it on Smashwords which makes it available in all the variou