August 2026

Ireland, 2025

This isn’t really a blog anymore. Blogs are a bit done, I suspect. The heading should be be: ‘News’.

However, writing involves a lot of waiting so I can’t pass on ‘News’ until the others involved are ready for it to be ‘News’ for their organisations as well. So news on playwriting will have to wait.

But I’m very happy – after one version of a collection of my poems was short-listed for the Noel Rowe Award 2025 and another version was long-listed for the Flying Islands Poetry Manuscript 2026 – yet another version is one of the winners of the Friendly Street New Poets 27. It’s a lovely thing for one’s work to be recognised in one’s home state (go South Australia!) and I’m looking forward to actually birthing the actual critter (along with poems by Rob McKinnon and Tracy McNally) in November this year.

And I can say that one of those poems is going to be the basis for a lyric to be sung by the ineffable Lea Desandre on her 2027 Australian tour with lutenist Thomas Dunford (Is he a genius? After hearing his concert with Nicholas Altstaedt at Adelaide’s Town Hall last week I think I can say ‘Probably’…) for Musica Viva next year with music composed by the wonderful Australian composer Alice Chance.

And there IS some playwriting news waiting in the wings…I’ll be back with confirmation in due course.

And yes, that image just looks like any old moody shoreline but it’s the famous Flaggy Shore of Seamas Heaney’s wonderful poem, which was the stimulus for one of mine in the collection. Amidst the locations receding into the far distance that I’m now never going to see – I’ve been there and seen that. Phew!