Category: News

This post is some kind of announcement. Either of my own gig, someone else’s or of various other events.

Tim Hamilton @ The Spinning Room!

What: The Spinning Room! Hosted by Jon Garrett and Anthony O’Sullivan.
Who: Me!
Where: ET’s Hotel, 211 High St., Prahran
When: 8pm, Tuesday, 14th April
How: (…much?) Entry is free, but we do encourage the purchase of raffle tickets as the proceeds, as ever, go to the feature. Besides, the raffle prizes are good! There will be books and wine!
Why: Because I have new stuff! Because I have old stuff! Because the open stage is really good! Because the Spinning Room is a fantastic gig!

Reading: “The Yale Anthology of Twentieth Century French Poetry” – edited by Mary Ann Caws
Listening: “The Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes” – Elvis Costello

Tim Hamilton vs. The Year Of Poetry

Sorry it’s taken me so long to post, dear reader. Many things are on the proverbial boil here and I hope to be a touch more active online. In short, here’s things that have happened in the absence of posting.

  1. Work continues apace in organising the Overload Poetry Festival, the line up is looking rather exciting with a sprinkling of interstate and international guests coming to perform. I’m currently hard at work updating the website and hope to have it up and running soon.
  2. I clocked in a new record for submitting poetry to a journal. Discovery of submission deadline to angst, selection, more angst, worrying about what to send, final angst and tidying of submission to clicking send in under an hour.
  3. On Sunday I attended the first of six workshops in The Year of Poetry, run by Peter Bakowski. As a result, I will be attempting to write one poem per week! Hopefully I’ll have them up here..for better or worse.

Reading: “A Handful of Dust” – Evelyn Waugh
Listening: “Weapon” – Matthew Good Band

Wordplay

I had the good fortune to attend the kick off for 2009 of Wordplay, the monthly gig hosted by Geoff Lemon which has now moved to the more spacious surrounds of the Dan O’Connell in Carlton. Given recent sad events it was also turned into a fundraiser for a poet who had suffered and lost in the recent bushfires.

We were entertained by the spiritual and thoughtful Simon Cox, Joelistics (musician and rap artist with TZU) got us moving, we were blown away by the picturesque story telling of Eleanor Jackson and beguiled at the end by the work of Kevin Brophy.

Go check out their website, listen to the mp3s of previous gigs, download a copy of the Wordplay mag that they’ve just launched. It’s all worth your time.

Post Passionate Tongues Review

Well, that was a lot of fun. Thank you to everyone who came along to the gig.

Ozlem, as expected, was amazing, particularly poised for someone who was performing at her debut headline gig.

I was happy with how my new work came out. I had decided to do one of the new ones in response to something I had heard in the open stage, and it felt a lot better than I thought. Needs a bit of work, perhaps, but certainly held it’s own.

This is mostly for my own recording, but my set list was:

1st Set
Thirteen Hours Into Summer; Sad Bleak Sky; That’s Chiroptera To You Mr. Lawrence; Supermarket Queue; In Memory Of Boris Pasternak (by Denise Levertov); Observing Denise Levertov Remember Boris Pasternak; Inauguration; In The Absence
2nd Set
Dr. Frankenstein; Dust Revisited; Ballard Days; Eulogy For The Polaroid; Extracts From The Kama Sutra Of Sleep; Go; 21 – The World

Reading: “District & Circle” – Seamus Heaney
Listening: “Save What You Can” – The Triffids

Swings and Roundabouts

a sliver of my libraryThe bad news is that my rejection notices increased by one.

The good news is that while I was trawling my poetry collection, I found two issues of mod_piece that I had work printed in!

The extra good news is that I seem to have come close to finishing three pieces in a week! I’m not sure that that has happened before, I’m rather thrilled. I dread the idea of not having something new to read, let alone something new to read at a feature. So three poems at once is excellent. I think one may not be a performance piece, but that’s fine.

I hope you are having a decent Australia Day (in whatever way you celebrate it, if applicable). I was traditional, I drank beer and got sunburned at a BBQ. The oldies, it would seem, are the goodies. Meanwhile it’s late here, and I’m close enough to the Showgrounds to hear the Prodigy closing the Big Day Out. It’s also hot enough that sleep isn’t going to happen for a while to come, so it’s not like the noise levels are going to be a problem.

Australians on the Indiefeed podcast!

I was delighted to discover that the Indiefeed Performance Poetry podcast is interviewing and featuring work by three Melbourne poets currently in the US. Alicia Sometimes, Emily Zoe Baker and Sean Whelan have all just appeared on the list. If you don’t listen to Indiefeed, I highly recommend it to lovers of poetry. As a podcast it can be handled through programs like iTunes or you can download individual episodes from the Indiefeed website.

More about Alicia, Emily and Sean can be found by following their links here!

Reading: “District And Circle” – Seamus Heaney
Listening: “This Year’s Girl” – Elvis Costello

Tim Hamilton @ Passionate Tongues

My first poetry feature of the year will be at Passionate Tongues!

What: Passionate Tongues! Hosted by Michael Reynolds.
Who: Me! I will be headlining with Ozlem Baro. This is her first feature (I believe). I have heard her read at Spinning Room, I suspect this won’t be her last.
Where: The Brunswick Hotel, 140 Sydney Rd, Brunswick (cnr. Weston Rd.)
When: 8pm, Monday, 2nd February
How: (…much?) Entry is free, but we do encourage the sale of raffle tickets as the proceeds get split between the features for the evening. Besides, the raffle prizes are good!
Why: Because I have new stuff! Because I have old stuff! Because Ozlem is really good! Because The Brunswick Hotel has bad album sleeves adorning their walls and good beer adorning their bar!

Reading: “Just Your Everyday Apocalypse” – Amelia Walker (which I got the last time I was at PT!!)
Listening: “Apparitions” – Matthew Good Band

Kevin Brophy in the Guardian

I was thrilled to see Australian poet (and patron of the Melbourne Poet’s Union) Kevin Brophy is featured in the Guardian’s Poem of the Week. Link here.

Reading: “Penguin Modern Poets 17 – David Gascoyne, W.S. Graham, Kathleen Raine”
Listening: “Everybody Has To Eat” – The Triffids
Playing: GTA IV and 2 games of futsal this evening.

Red Lobster

Now I knew of David McLauchlan’s tireless work behind the camera, and his marvellous record of the Melbourne poetry scene that airs on Channel 31 on Thursday nights. For one thing, it’s hard to miss a chap with a proper TV camera asking you to sign release forms after you’ve read.

However, it took a conversation with a colleague at work who saw me on the show (I can’t get Ch. 31 where I live), followed with more talking to fellow poets to discover that not only does the show have a website, but the website has video! He recently put up the Candy Stripes gig that I was part of and you can see it there, along with a bunch of others, some of which include me and a plethora of other magnificent poets.

Red Lobster. Channel 31, Thursdays at 11:30pm or see the website!!

Reading: “Cultural Amnesia” – Clive James
Listening: “Strategy” – Something For Kate