Joy Elizabeth’s Fragile Friday
26th March
Joy Elizabeth’s new collection is a joy indeed–her beautifully wrought, understated moments resonate calmly with the richness and the glorious mess of life. Cameron Hindrum
Fragile Friday is an insightful, provocative book that deserves front row seating. Joy embraces life and is not afraid to write about the highs and lows with raw and yet joyful emotion, in poems that are charged, brave and edgy; poems that cut straight to the heart. This is a poetry gathering that women in particular will want to revisit and share for years to come. You will want to gift this book to the people you love and say, “Read this. Please”. Karen Knight
Joy Elizabeth’s Fragile Friday will be launched by Nancy Corbett, at 6.30 pm during the official Festival Launch, which will be followed by Friday Fun at the Festival, with Rachel Berger, where Joy will also be one of our guest poets reading. 6.30 pm, Friday the 26th March, Ben Lomond Room, Best Western Motel, 3 Earl St, Launceston.
Jane William’s Points of Recognition
27th March
Points of Recognition is a collection that is concerned with what it means to be alive, to be connected to others: friends, family, strangers. It celebrates difference and diversity of lifestyle and cultures with exuberance, affinity and rapport. The title is taken from Williams’s prize-winning poem, ‘3 Points of recognition’. ‘Empathy’ was the theme of that year’s Australian Catholic University Prize for Poetry and, in fact, empathy is the hallmark of Williams’s writing, and of this book. Interspersed between the poems are haiku, another genre in which Williams excels. Points of Recognition is a book of wonder, born of the poet’s wonderings that contains within it, not just the wonder that is curiosity and genuine interest in life, the planet, perfect strangers, human longings and foibles, but also wonder in the sense of awe that we should be a part of it all. Lyn Reeves, Vice-President, Australian Haiku Society
Jane Williams’s eye and ear are trained to human idiosyncrasy and foible, and to the endless possibilities that are held within a life. In her ineffable compassion and in the ringing rhythms of her long syntax this is poetry that speaks to the ear and the marrow. Sarah Day
Jane Williams book to be launched by Kristen Lang at the Phoenix Bar and Restaurant, 63 Brisbane St, Launceston, on Saturday 27th at 2 pm.
Nancy Corbett’s The Longest Conversation
27th March
Nancy Corbett is a novelist, memoirist and poet. She is a proud two-time winner of the coveted Launceston Poetry Cup (2016 and 2019). Born in Canada, she has traveled widely, lived in many places and now calls Tasmania home, finding constant inspiration in the island’s stunning environments and communities of creative people. Her lifelong passion for poetry, a profound love of the natural world and her interest in the complexities of human experience find expression in The Longest Conversation.
Nancy Corbett’s book to be launched by Joy Elizabeth at the Launceston Poetry Cup, The Workers Club, 66 Elizabeth St, Launceston, Saturday 27th March, 2021, from 6.30 pm.
Kristen Lang’s Earth Dwellers
28th March
The crags do not notice if I have come from stone or am becoming stone or am merely part of the weather.
The Anthropocene – what can poetry do in this epoch in the Earth’s history defined by human impact? With its immersion in powerful wilderness landscapes, Earth Dwellers challenges our human-centredness by embracing perspectives which set the intimate delicacy of life forms against time scales that go back millions of years. These are deep-breath poems, full of touch and awareness, consolidated by their commitment to the ecologies that envelop us. Asked where we come from, the poems speak not of nations or tribes but of mosses, mountains, oceans, birds. And asked where we are going, the poems refer not to rockets or recessions, but to the biome and our relationships within in.
Kristen Lang’s poetry is alive with the constant back and forth between the tiny and the immense, between the human and the many-dimensioned other than human. These beautifully crafted poems reveal a profound, delicately self-effacing talent gifted with a finely tuned sensitivity. Peter Boyle
This is rich, strong and vital work, full of concise, finely conceived and surprising images, its macro lens as extraordinary as its telescopic one, offering a deep wisdom, an engrossing meditation upon our profound interconnectedness, the world and all its history alive in Blake’s proverbial grain of sand. David Brooks
Kristen Lang moved from Melbourne to regional Tasmania as a child. She now lives in mountainous country in north-west Tasmania. In her writing, she celebrates ecological continuity. Her collection of poems and photographs Let me show you a ripple was self-published in 2008. In 2017, her poetry books SkinNotes and The Weight of Light were published by Walleah Press and Five Islands Press, respectively. The latter was longlisted for the 2019 Margaret Scott Award. Earth Dwellers is Kristen’s first book with Giramondo Publishing. Kristen was a Tasmanian Poetry Festival guest poet in 2008 and 2017.
Earth Dwellers will be launched by Ralph Wessman, at 11.30 am, Sunday 28th March, during the Festival’s City Park Sunday Session, Pioneer Lobby, Albert Hall, Cimitere St, Launceston.