Old Beginnings
IN THE FIRST YEAR of the pandemic, 2020, my brother the musician and teacher Russell Tredinnick turned to my collection A Gathered Distance, published that same year, and made a dozen songs from the poems he found there. The following year, in June, he performed those songs at an event we called “What the Light Tells”, an evening of music and poetry from me and the great Alison Whitelock and the equally great Peter Ramm.
That event ran as part of Sonja Millis’s Blue Square art prize, at what is now called the Bowral Art Gallery in Short Street, Bowral, my home town in Gundungurra Country. At that event, the one and only event anyone got to go to for a good while after—given the shutdowns that hit straight after—I also launched Walking Underwater. And here’s the thing: we’re back!
This year, Russell and his son James are singing songs he’s made from my BRAND NEW BOOK, A Beginner’s Guide, perfectly titled and timed, as it turns out, for this new start the nation is making. The event this year is titled for my new book, and you can book here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/a-beginners-guide-an-evening-of-poetry-song-art-tickets-331041783887
So come on down (or up) to Bowral, if you can, this coming Saturday, 28 May. Food and alcohol come with the ticket. We kick off at 7, thought he poems won’t flow till 7:30. This year I’ve asked Dimitra Harvey to read with me. Her poems draw, like all good poems, on everything, but in particular the natural world. Dimitra, of Greek and Australian lineage, is widely published and awarded.
The evening, like all the Blue Square events, raises money for CanAssist. And we’ll be performing with Mum in mind. She died in April. She was there with us last year, and I’m sure she’ll be there with us again, in our family of voices and in our riffs, this year and every year.
Numbers are building fast, so do book your ticket. It will be again a night of love for most of what counts. A celebration of all that now can start again, and all we owe the past and carry forward into brighter days.
