BRUNSWICK ARTISTS' BAR // FREE ENTRY // 6PM

CATASTROPHES returns on Sunday 30th January, 6pm, at the Brunswick Artists’ Bar. Join us for another devastating evening of catastrophically intimate readings & sounds, with poetry from Melinda Bufton and Shari Kocher, music from Paul Dornau, and MC’ing from Claire Francesconi. 

"CATASTROPHE AND CREATION ARE TWINS" ~ Barbara Max Hubbard

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Melinda Bufton’s latest book Moxie won the 2019 Helen Anne Bell poetry prize. Moxie traverses the office landscape of our collective psyche, restlessly moving between the interior monologue of daily ruminations and epic-like catastrophic career narratives lying in wait. Kate Lilley says, "This book is the business! Smart-mouthed, pussy-bowed, funny/not-funny. Pitch perfect ‘filthy snippets’ of office lore and career advice.” Melinda holds a PhD in feminist poetics from RMIT, and her previous collections are Girlery and Superette. 

Shari Kocher’s newest collection Foxstruck and Other Collisions is a spellbinding, fierce, and gorgeous collection of poems, deeply indebted to erudite traditions and working with profound environmental consciousness. Her work dazzles. Amanda Johnson writes, “Shari Kocher writes poetry of incandenscent power…Sweep away the snow and one arrives without preamble at the stoop of myth and memory.” Shari’s previous collection is The Non-Sequitur of Snow and her honours include the Peter Steele Poetry Award, the Venie Holgrem Environmental Poetry Prize, and listings in the Judith Wright Poetry Prize from Overland and the Newcastle Poetry Prize. 

Paul Dornau is the guitarist and leader of Johnnie and the Johnnie Johnnies and Tek Tek Ensemble, an international mini orchestra. He straddles cumbia, surf rock, benga, dangdut, soul, tarantellas, rancheras, and 20s swing. Zulya Kamalova says, “Paul Dornau is an inimitable.” He joins us to play a few songs from his bogglingly global back catalogue of the fine, the weird, and the devastating. 

Claire Francesconi is a French ex-patriot and language teacher living in Melbourne. Her role as Master of Ceremonies will include readings of poems by her father, the French contemporary surrealist poet Michel Francesconi, with French-to-English translation help from Joan Fleming and Dom Czapla. 

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FREE ENTRY - First in Best Dressed

BRUNSWICK ARTISTS' BAR, downstairs of the BRUNSWICK BALLROOM, 314 Sydney Rd, Brunswick 

Delicious food menu on offer 6 nights a week.