Picture: Joel Deane

Cover image for Magisterium
San Francisco, February 2001

IPAA annual writing seminar

"It was Joel Deane, perhaps, who provided the seminar's most thought-provoking speech, concluding with 10 points for good speechwriting. Read, think, debate, he said, and the march towards meaningless, detached and decayed public language will be defeated." - Institute of Public Administration Australia News

"Sometimes poetry is profound and worthy of our attention – sometimes it says perfectly, what we wish to say or how we feel. Please indulge me with an example;

If there is anything to be learned, it is this.
What matters most is that
we love this life we are leaving
and are unafraid of the next.

"From the poem 'Requiem', by Joel Deane, from the collection Magisterium.

"Why does death make such fantastic poetic fodder? Schlomo? Any thoughts? Oh … so I’m on my own for this one … Hmm. I guess these lines speak to me because death is not portrayed as a gaping hole of darkness, that nobody escapes and we all should be bowel-movingly terrified of, but as something which is not to be feared, but acknowledged as an inevitability."

- Ecce potestas casai

Australian Scholarly Publishing is bringing out my second collection of poetry, Magisterium.

I'll be out and about in Victoria for readings ... and the launch. (I see the book's already available online.)

• 8.30pm, Monday, June 16: Featured reader at Passionate Tongues Poetry, Brunswick Hotel, 140 Sydney Road Brunswick, cnr. Weston Street. (The other featured reader is Petra White.)
• 6.30pm, Wednesday, June 25: Book launch of Magisterium by Michael Gurr at Collected Works Bookshop, Level 1, Nicholson Building, 37 Swanston Street, Melbourne.
• 2pm, Saturday, August 30: Featured reader at The Dan Readings, The Dan O'Connell Hotel, Canning and Princes Streets, Carlton.
• 3pm, Sunday, September 21: Featured reader at Castlemaine Readings at the Albion, the Albion Hotel, Castlemaine.