Chamber Poets continued to delight visitors from near and far at the Woodend RSL on Saturday October 8 and featured Castlemaine poet Ross Donlon.
Since the previous month’s invitation to songwriters, the October event enticed more musicians back among the poets in the Open Section.
Ross Donlon’s reputation as a consummate performer was enhanced with his smooth delivery, his conversational tone in his reading, and his selection of subject matter, whether light or heavy. He moved the audience to laughter and to introspection.
The afternoon was book-ended with the quirky and entertaining music of the resident band, Black Forest Smoke, who played a few more of their ‘almost love’ songs.
“Spending the afternoon at Chamber Poets is both engaging and relaxing,” member Kat Buttigieg says.
“I enjoy meeting other like-minded creatives and learning more about different types of poetry. If you are a writer or lover of words, it is a must see.”
For the upcoming event on November 12, Melbourne-based poet Peter Bakowski will feature. An avid traveller and self-confessed lover of the world map, it is not surprising that Bakowski has crossed the globe and been writer-in-residence in Rome; Paris; Macau; Suzhou (China); Battery Point, Tasmania; Greenmount, Western Australia; and at the Broken Hill Writers Festival.
Bakowski has devoted his life to being a poet and has earned a living from it for decades. He even does house visits, where he goes to people’s homes and reads to a small group of people for about an hour.
“My aim as a poet is to write clear and accessible poems, to use ordinary words to say extraordinary things,” Bakowski says.
“No matter how many books I write in my lifetime, they will all be about what it’s like to be a human being.”
His poems continue to appear in literary magazines worldwide and have been translated into Arabic, Bahasa-Indonesian, Bengali, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin and Polish. Bakowski’s latest work and his eighth full-length poetry collection – Our Ways On Earth – was published this year by Recent Work Press.
Poets and musicians are warmly invited to the November 12 event from 1pm at the Woodend RSL. Entry is a $5 or $10 donation at the discretion of the attendee.
