ANU Poets Lunch

Good News and fun times

I went to the ANU poet's lunch on Wednesday and had a great time listening to good poetry with good food, good wine and good friends. I've been contributing poetry there for the last ten years and the first Wednesday of every December has become a cherished anniversary.

This year's theme was first and last things. Next years theme will be poetic licence - I'm sure I downloaded one of those once, but I can't find it.

The poets lunch has been going since the 1970s and original poets included A D Hope. Anne Edgeworth, Philip Grundy and Geoff Page has been through three different incarnations.

Now about 350 of the poems have been put up on line, thanks to the ANU Emeritus Faculty. David Walker spent many hours populating the website.

http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/poets/index.html

Conflux blogs

Eneit has compiled an excellent list of blogs for Conflux 4 at the Australian Speculative Fiction Carnival at http://eneit.livejournal.com/163984.html.

We are now starting to dream about Conflux 5 - it's all about Dreaming. mmmmmm. First meeting of the committee was exciting in its possibilities. I'm rubbing my fingers together and not telling about some of the tasty ideas.

I'm currently listenning to Suzanne Vega's 'Small Blue Thing' - one of my favourite songs and re-reading Kim Harrison's excellent Hollow's Series. Rachael is a fun, complex herione -- a marvelous scatterbrained, adventurious witch. Her spell stirring is delicious. http://www.kimharrison.net/The%20Books.htm#The%20Hollows.

Conflux 4

For months I've been working as part of the committee for Conflux 4 - www.conflux.org.au - which took place in Canberra from 28 September to 1 October. It's been a great experience, largely because the committee were so easy to work with - positive and ego-free.

While I was putting together the progress reports and con book, I got to interview conference guests -- Kevin J Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, Grahame Joyce, Jonathan Strahan, Garth Nix, Kaaren Warren, Donna Maree Hanson, Simon Brown. All of them very talented, friendly people.

Oh, Conflux was good. All our hard work paid off in great fun. I met wonderful new people (Hi Keri), old friends, attending workshops and panels. If I have to choose what I enjoyed most, I couldn't say. Being on the panels was good - the podcasts are up on the Conflux website. Unfortunately for me, all three of my three panels started at 9 in the morning so I never did get to sleep in.

The food at the AUTHENTIC Regency Gothic Banquet was supurb (thanks to food historian Gillian Polack - the yummy recipes are at Gillian's foodblog at www.foodpast.com, our dedicated team of food testers (or do I mean tasters) and Rydges' enthusiastic chef). I loved watching the company and the costumes. I dressed up in empire style, with peacock feathers in my hair, a fan and a reticule (Regency handbag).

Terry Dowling launched Rynemonn, the long anticipated, final book, in his acclaimed Tom Rynoceross series available at http://www.coeurdelion.com.au.

So now I'm back at home, spinning my own stories.