OOTA Newsletter July 29, 2014
WRITING AT THE CENTRE NEWS Shane McCauley and Helen Hagemann wish to advise members that due to regular interim increases of rent at the Fremantle Arts Centre, we have no alternative but to increase class fees to $25 OOTA and $30 NonOOTA. This new fee commences on Friday, 8th August. We also add that we are reluctant to do this, and do begrudge the fact that we often sit in a cold room in winter and stuffy hot premises in summer. However, the FAC is our home, our base, and both Shane and Helen hope you understand that the increase is unavoidable. CONGRATULATIONS to:
Cecily Scutt who is making waves with her writing that reach other shores. She has been awarded a creative writing fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Centre in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It goes over a Cape Cod winter, this October to April. Seven months writing, one of ten Writing Fellows in residence, for emerging writers. Previous fellowship holders include Jhumpa Lahiri, Ann Patchett, and Australians Fiona McFarlane and Nam Le. Fiction Fellow CECILY SCUTT lives in Perth, on Australia’s west coast, and her work has appeared in the Australian literary journals Southerly, Westerly, Hecate, indigo, Eidolon; on national radio; and in anthologies including Dreaming Down Under, which won a World Fantasy Award. A winner of the 2014 Eleanor Dark Flagship Fellowship for Fiction, she has been the recipient of residencies at KSP Writer’s Centre, the Fellowship of Australian Writers, an d at the national writing centre Varuna in the Blue Mountains. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Murdoch University, works with graduate students and faculty research writers, and is currently immersed in a novel. Check out other lucky recipients http://web.fawc.org/current-fellows
WRITING AT THE CENTRE
Friday, 1st August, is Poetry with Shane McCauley. 10.00am til noon @ the Hubbles Yard Café - Cnr. Hubble and George Streets, East Fremantle. Poetry Biter for the 1st August is Jackson. She will be reading after Shane’s Class in the private room of the Hubbles Yard Café @ noon. Come along for her reading and the cosy atmosphere. Classes will resume at the Fremantle Arts Centre on Friday 8th August and on 15th August at the Swanbourne Bookcaffe there will be a critiquing class with Helen Hagemann @ 10.00am. The class is for prose writers who wish to brush up on their stories prior to the Spilt Ink Competition. There is no cost, however purchase of coffee, etc. is required as per usual. * Dear OOTA members Those of us who attend our fortnightly Friday lunches at Fremantle Arts Centre look forward to a seven-minute reading from one of our number – it’s a delicious bite of prose with lunch, so we call it Prose Bites. I am seeking new readers to add the spice of variety to our listening. If you are interested in reading one of your prose works to us, please contact me at trenkem@iinet.net.au to find out more. Regards, Helen Trengrove.
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Five Islands Press Ron Pretty Poetry Prize First Prize: $5000, Judge: Ron Pretty Closing Date: 30 November 2014 For further information, visit www.fiveislandspress.com More information and entry forms on the Queensland Poetry Festival website. FAW Tasmania Poetry Prize No more than 60 lines. Entry fees: $5 per poem. Prizes: 1st $150; 2nd $50. Post entries to: FAW Tasmania Inc. PO Box 234, North Hobart, Tasmania 7002. Guidelines from website: http://fawtas.org.au/competitions/ Closing date: 31 August
Anzac Centenary Arts and Culture Fund Public Grants Program. Applications are now open for the Australian Government's $2 million Anzac Centenary Arts and Culture Fund Public Grants Program. The Minister for the Arts, Senator the Hon George Brandis QC and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC, Senator the Hon Michael Ronaldson said that the creative projects funded through this program will commemorate the Centenary of the First World War and the service and sacrifice of Australians in all war efforts. Applicants are encouraged to read the guidelines at www.arts.gov.au/anzacbefore applying. Applications close at 5.00pm AEST on Wednesday 10 September 2014.
CALENDAR JULY 30 - Kimberley Haiku Online Competition Details 31 – The Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize. Info here 31 - 2014 Henry Handel Richardson Writing Comp AUGUST 1 - Trudy Graham/Julie Lewis Literary Award: Prose: Details 1 – Best Australian Poems, Essays & Stories by Black Inc. 1 - New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing 2 - Perth Poetry Club: Guests: Fran Graham & Rodney Hatch 2 – Launch of Andrew Burke’s One Hour Seeds Another 2-3 - Magazine and Newspaper Writing Stage 1: Click here. 14-17 – Perth Poetry Festival 22 – Poetry d'Amour 2015. Details at WA Poets Inc 24 - Sci-ku competition - http://riaus.org.au/sci-ku/ 31 - Carmel Bird Award 2014 - Long Story Comp: details 31 - Aesthetica Creative Writing Competition 2014 Details. 31 – Wesrerly Magazine: Special Edition West Aust/Asia Issue SEPTEMBER 01 – Anthology of Loss: Details 30 – Gold Coast Writers Festival Adult Writing Competition OCTOBER 10 - The City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards: Details ≈ OOTA’s Westerly Magazine News http://ootawriters.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/one-copy-ofwesterly-for-oota-members.html
The Finch Memoir Prize This Memoir Prize is for an unpublished nonfiction manuscript between 40,000 and 80,000 words in the form of a memoir. The winning author receives $10,000 and publication on the Finch list. Entries should include the complete manuscript plus a onepage synopsis. Entry fee $30. Submissions open 120 August. For guidelines & entry forms, click here. POEM OF THE WEEK Appaloosa by Judith Beveridge I have always loved the word guitar - David St. John I have never been bumped in a saddle as a horse springs from one diagonal to another, a two-beat gait, light and balanced, as the four-beats per stride become the hair-blowing, wind-in-the-face, grass-rippling, muscle-loosening, forward-leaning exhilaration of the gallop. And I have never counted the slow four-beat pace of distinct, successive hoofbeats in such an order as to be called The Walk. Or learned capriole, piaffe, croupade in a riding school, nor heard the lingo of outback cattle-cutters spat out with their whip-ends and phlegm. I have never stepped my hands over the flanks of a spotted mare; nor hidden a Cleveland Bay carriage horse, or a Yorkshire coach horse; a French Percheron with musical snicker; or a little Connemara its face buried in broomcorn, or in a bin of Wexford apples. I have never called a horse Dancer, Seabiscuit, Ned, Nellie, Trigger or Chester, or made clicking noises with my tongue, fifty kilometres to town with a baulking gelding and a green quartertop buggy. Nor stood in a field while an old nag worked very acre, only stopping to release difficult knobs of manure, and swat flies with her tail. And though I have waited for jockeys at the backs of stables in the mist and rain, for the soft feel of their riding silks and saddles, for the cool smoke of their growth stunting cigarettes, for the names of the yearlings and mares they whisper along with the names of horse-owning millionaires—ah, more, more even than them—I have always loved the word appaloosa. Judith Beveridge is featured this year at the Perth Spring Poetry Festival.
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