Judith Nangala Crispin is an artist and poet of Bpangerang descent. Her lumachrome glass prints are deeply rooted in the practice of honouring Country by way of memorialising animals and birds who have died. Judith is part of a three woman exhibition, Juno Gemes, Judith Nangala Crispin & Ana Pollak – Three Women Artists In Country, at at Maunsell Wickes at Barry Stern Galleries, 19 Glenmore Road, Paddington, NSW running from Tuesday 17 September until 29 September 2019. https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2019/09/14/gemes-crispin-pollak-exhibition-preview/
As part of the lead up to the exhibition Rochford Press is proud to have published Judith Nangala Crispin’s artist statement online.
Via Dolorosa. Artist Anne Graham, variety of media/found objects. 3 metres by 3 metres
Each year, for the past 12 years, the Nortmead Uniting Church have organised an anual exhibition based around the Stations of the Cross. The Stations of the Cross refers to a series of images depicting Christ on the day of his crucifixion and accompanying prayers. Commonly, a series of 14 or 15 images will be arranged in numbered order along a path and the faithful travel from image to image, in order, stopping at each station to say the selected prayers and reflections.
The curators at the Northmead Uniting Church each year approach 15 artists to produce work representing each station. As the curators state “We do not ask artists to participate because they are religious or not religious; they are always asked becuase we think they have the ability to address significant life questions through their art practice”.
The 2019 exhhibition, which ran from 8 April to 21 April at the Northmead Creative & Performing Arts High School, featured, as Station 4, Anne Graham’s Via Dolorosa. This Station represents Jesus meeting his mother as he carries the cross.
Describing the inspiration for the work Graham writes:
I have been reading the poems of Mohammad Ali Maleki, an Iranian poet who has been living in deention on Manus Island; he writes about many things but often about his mother and his dreams of being with her and losing her, he became a part of this work about a mother losing her son; his poems filled me profound sadness. The hands are for all mothers reaching out to their sons.’
“I saw a hand stretching out to me – it was my mothers hand”
from The Migrant Child by Mohammad Ali Maleki in Truth in the Cage Rochford Press 2018
When I Was Clandestine / Cuando Fui Clandestino by Juan Garrido Salgado, Rochford Press, 2019, will be launched by Steve Georganas MP as part of the World Festival Of Poetry and is a feature of the Bilingual Poetry Reading – Reader of the Month. This Thursday 13 June 2019 from 6.30pm at Chateau Apollo, 74 Frome St Adelaide, South Australia. RSVP here – https://www.facebook.com/events/432441780637525/
Come join us for the exciting Adelaide book launch of When I Was Clandestine / Cuando Fui Clandestino by Juan Garrido Salgado. The book will be launched by the Honourable Steve Georganas MP in the delightful devoted space of the Chateau Apollo. Musical performances by Chris Finnen, Lenin Marròn & Lazaro Numa. Food & Drinks provided by Roxie’s (Highly recommended. Yummm) Open Mic for bilingual reading throughout the night.
Juan Garrido-Salgado was born in Chile. He was a political prisoner under the Pinochet regime, but now lives in Adelaide (Australia). He has published six books of poetry and many poems in magazines in Chile, Colombia, Spain, USA and Australia. He translated into Spanish M. T. C. Cronin’s Talking to Neruda Questions (Respondiendo a las Preguntas de Neruda) which was published in Chile in 2005 by SAfo Ediciones. And translated a book of indigenous poetry (Mapuche) from Chile with Steve Brock and Sergio Holas published in Australia 2015.
This launch is a part of the World Festival Of Poetry and is a feature of the Bilingual Poetry Reading – Reader of the Month. Supported by Pablo Neruda Cultural Committee SA (Proceeds from the night will go to support Mapuche Political Prisoners in Temuko – Chile)
Tickets
$15/10 – On the door
RSVP and Rochford Press looks forward to seeing you there.
Looking for a gift for Mother’s Day. The don’t delay – order a poetry book from Rochford Press! There is a ever expanding list of titles to choose from and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping to disseminate some of the best writing in Australia today.
The End of the Line, the final collection of poems by Rae Desmond Jones.
Rochford Press is proud to invite you to the Melbourne launch for The End of the Line, the final collection of poems by Rae Desmond Jones.
The End of the Line will be launched by John Jenkins at the Dan O’Connell Hotel at 2pm on Saturday 27 April (as part of the regular Poetry@The Dan readings) with readings from the book by John Jenkins, Joseph Chetcuti, Gig Ryan and Robbie Coburn.
Rae Desmond Jones was born in Broken Hill NSW in 1941. The son of a miner, he left Broken Hill when he was 17 and moved to Sydney, where he discovered poetry and worked in a variety of manual occupations. Rae, together with John Edwards, established the legendary poetry journal Your Friendly Fascist in 1970 and his first collection of poetry, Orpheus With A Tuba, was published by Makar Press in 1973. Over the next 44 years he published twelve collections of poetry, two novels and a collection of short stories. Rae was also active in local politics becoming involved in the battle to protect Summer Hill from over development in the 1980s. He was elected to Ashfield Council and was served as Mayor from 2004 to 2006. Rae never stopped writing poetry and was working on the poems in The End of the Line during the last year of his life.
“The End of the Line is an animated collection, bristling with the varied perspectives, moods, and colours of Jones’ consciousness and ‘voice’. Jones was an impressive raconteur and his distinctive physical voice echoes through the pages. The poems shift easily from the social/political agora to the deeply personal, to contemplative, spiritual/cosmic dimensions. He investigates individual and terrestrial mortalities, and concepts of being. He can be playful, cheeky, bawdy, satiric, savage and biting – as well as reflective, passionate, lyrical and grave. Shadowy images inhabit the book’s atmosphere at times, but in the final poems there is a sense of achievement – of abundance and joy: ‘Harvest the glow’. This is a vivid book. In ‘To prepare a course of poetry’ Rae advises – ‘ Porridge should be avoided'”. – Joanne Burns
“Rae Jones was one of the great characters of the Inner West. His commitment to safeguarding the built environment led him from being an activist to becoming Mayor of Ashfield Council. Rae’s poetry reflects the eclectic and progressive nature of the community where he lived, as well as his passion for politics. It canvasses a range of topics including family, friendships, history and the state of the world”. – Anthony Albanese
“Like most poets of worth there is an identifiable template to a Rae Jones production, but within its quite necessary bounds, what a variety! And in this book, with much of it concerned with his and our mortality, this variety continues. Heart-on-sleeve when required, sardonic when required, often in the same work, these poems are distilled Jones, from a man with a life and career more multifarious than most of us. Though the physical Rae is gone, in Sydney’s Inner West and in Australian poetry, his legend still grows”. – Alan Wearne
“Many of Jones’s poems finish with the natural world as aloof, seemingly unaffected by the odd juxtapositions in human life – …… But mostly nature serves as pool of comparison, as site of possible transcendence, with what Jones wishes to see, gracefully, as the insignificance of big-noting humanity: this is the descant strand hovering over his fervent engagement in this gritty world – viewed partly in ministerial solidarity, partly in a parody of disdain, and partly in raging shit-stirring protest”. – Gig Ryan
Rochford Press is proud to announce the publication of Cuando Fui Clandestino/When I was Clandestine by Juan Garrido Salgado. Cuando Fui Clandestino is a bilingual chapbook (Spanish/English) by a poet who immigrated to Australia from Chile in 1990, fleeing the regime that burned his poetry and imprisoned and tortured him for his political activism. Juan Garrido Salgado has published five books of poetry and his works has been widely translated. He has also translated works by a number of leading Australian poets including John Kinsella, Mike Ladd, Judith Beveridge, Dorothy Porter and MTC Cronin, into Spanish.
Cuando Fui Clandestino/When I was Clandestine will be launched by Ray Kelly Snr as parft of the Newcastle Writers’ Festival on Saturday 6 April at 5.30pm at The Press Book House, 462 Hunter Street, Newcastle, NSW
“Juan Garrido Salgado is creating a space for poetry and doing it with style and grace, this book is alive with imagination and passion, all delivered in language that is moving and hopeful, a book to read and savour”…. -Robert Adamson
Poetry has no borders in the tangled tongues of When I was clandestine. A webbed space-time where birds carry us between languages and lands to share secrets of the forgotten in the mouths of those who remember”. … – Tamryn Bennett
Juan Garrido-Salgado’s poetry lives on the streets and celebrates community. It has grown out of Australia’s suburban gardens and Chilean prison cells. Born of the población and street theatre, his work finds its natural home in the pamphlet and chapbook, passed hand-to-hand under the curfew of night. At once folkloric and literary, the poetry in this collection stakes its claim on an uncompromising and explosive dialogue between English and Spanish language traditions”. … – Steve Brock
Sarah St Vincent Welch reading at the Sydney of Open at The Shop Gallery
Sarah St Vincent Welch’s chapbook Open was launch by Anna Couani at The Shop Gallery in Glebe last Sunaday. The next launch will take place in Canberra at ‘That Poetry Thing That Is On At Smith’s Every Monday Night’, Smith’s Alternative, 76 Alinga Street, Canberra City/Civic on Monday at 7pm on Monday 8th April.
“Sarah St Vincent Welch dangles you under ‘a conker sun,’ wears you like ‘a soft corpse on her shoulders,’ slides you ‘into a bird cry.’ In Open each poem is a world – sensuous, intimate, nostalgic. You feel the rhythmic push and shove of these worlds as the poet folds you into them”.…….– Lizz Murphy
“Open collects between two covers some of the very best of the thoughtful, wise, mysterious, layered, haunting, lyrical work Sarah St Vincent Welch has been producing over many years. ‘Open’, the verb and ‘open’, the adjective are both hard at work in this book as she engages with memory, myth and dream, while remaining tethered to life’s dailiness, in public libraries and private gardens, on beaches, in houses and among children at play. If you are new to her work you will be enchanted. If you are already a fan you will reminded all over again of what has delighted you in her spare, gorgeous lines and unique consciousness. Here ‘a furled child hides’, and waits, ready to root and bloom in your mind when you open yourself to these poems. ………………………………………………………….– Melinda Smith
Open will be launched in Sydney, along with thinking process by Anna Couani (Owl Publications), at The Shop Gallery, 112 Glebe Point Road Glebe NSW on Sunday 10 March at 2pm.
Open will have its Canberra launch at ‘That Poetry Thing That Is On At Smith’s Every Monday Night’, Smith’s Alternative, 76 Alinga Street, Canberra City/Civic on Monday at 7pm on Monday 8th April.
If you can’t make it to the launches you can order your copy of Open below.
Within Australia $10 plus $2 postageOverseas $10 plus $5 postage.
Rae Desmond Jones leading a protest over the M4 East Tunnel at Haberfield in 2004 (Photo SMH)
An article in the Fairfax, sorry Nine Media, owned Domain Real Estate website site on 1 March sang the praises of the inner west Sydney suburb of Summer Hill. In an article entitled “‘It’s a come-to destination’: Summer Hill, the inner west suburb that found its groove”, Domain went on to say that one of the suburb’s great attractions was its diversity “both in housing styles and the mix of people it attracts. Buyers can find everything from handsome Victorian mansions to Californian bungalows, art deco blocks, 1960s apartments and chic new units”. It went on to say that “the main shopping area is concentrated around Lackey Street, near the train station, where there’s a supermarket, fruit shop, butcher, doctor, restaurants, cafes and wine bars, including hot favourites The Temperance Society and one-time milk bar The Rio.” The article then quotes from a local resident who says“I know the people in the small shops …… I like the fact that I can have a chat in the fruit and veg shop or the butcher’s. And from where we are, it’s an easy walk to the station, bus or light rail. You really can’t do better than that.”
Being a real estate site Domain doesn’t examine the reasons why Summer Hill has maintained its “village feel,” but poets and local residents alike know that a lot of the credit must be given to poet, community activist and ex-Mayor Rae Desmond Jones. Concerned at proposed over-development at Summer Hill in the 1990s, Jones set up the Summer Hill Action Group (SHAG for short) and the effectiveness of the movement which he helped build is reflected both in the fact that he was elected to council and actually became Mayor of Ashfield from 2004 to 2006.
Rae Desmond Jones – poet, activist, politician – died in 2016 and Rochford Press recently launched his final collection of poetry, The End of the Line, at the Exodus Foundation in Ashfield. As poet Les Wicks said at the launch Rae’s poetry “talks about the environment, inequality, ignorance and genocide all in language accessible to a wider readership”.
Rochford Press is proud to announce the publication of Open by Sarah St Vincent Welch.
Sarah St Vincent Welch is a Canberra based writer, editor, writing teacher, and image maker, known for her short fiction about the lives of women and girls, and for chalking her poetry on the footpaths at arts festivals. In 2016 she wrote a poem a day for Project 366, an international poem-centric online project by poets, visual artists and translators. She has worked with writers living with disability and mental illness and facilitates community creative writing projects. She has lectured and tutored at the University of Canberra. Her heart belongs to two cities, and she has worked on novels based in both Sydney and Canberra. Open is her first book.
Praise for Open
“Open collects between two covers some of the very best of the thoughtful, wise, mysterious, layered, haunting, lyrical work Sarah St Vincent Welch has been producing over many years. ‘Open’, the verb and ‘open’, the adjective are both hard at work in this book as she engages with memory, myth and dream, while remaining tethered to life’s dailiness, in public libraries and private gardens, on beaches, in houses and among children at play. If you are new to her work you will be enchanted. If you are already a fan you will reminded all over again of what has delighted you in her spare, gorgeous lines and unique consciousness. Here ‘a furled child hides’, and waits, ready to root and bloom in your mind when you open yourself to these poems. …………………………………………………………………………………….– Melinda Smith
“Sarah St Vincent Welch dangles you under ‘a conker sun,’ wears you like ‘a soft corpse on her shoulders,’ slides you ‘into a bird cry.’ In Open each poem is a world – sensuous, intimate, nostalgic. You feel the rhythmic push and shove of these worlds as the poet folds you into them”. …………………………………………………………………………………….– Lizz Murphy
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Open will be launched, along with thinking process by Anna Couani (Owl Publications), at The Shop Gallery, 112 Glebe Point Road Glebe NSW on Sunday 10 March at 2pm.
If you can’t make it to the launch copies of Open can be ordered from the Rochford Press On-line Bookshop or by clicking on the button below!
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Within Australia $10 plus $2 postageOverseas $10 plus $5 postage.
Click on the image above to open the document.
Come join us for the exciting Adelaide book launch of When I Was Clandestine / Cuando Fui Clandestino by Juan Garrido Salgado. The book will be launched by the Honourable Steve Georganas MP in the delightful devoted space of the Chateau Apollo. Musical performances by Chris Finnen, Lenin Marròn & Lazaro Numa. Food & Drinks provided by Roxie’s (Highly recommended. Yummm) Open Mic for bilingual reading throughout the night.
Rochford Press 