Chapbook launch at Overload Poetry Festival
We chat with Emilie Collyer who will be launching ‘Your Looking Eyes’ during the 2011 Overload Poetry Festival.
When?
Wednesday 14 September from 5pm – 7pm
Where?
c3 contemporary art space
Abbotsford Convent
1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford
What’s the best train or tram to catch?
Victoria Park Station on the Epping and Hurstbridge Line
Any Victoria Street tram get off at Nicholson Street, Abbotsford
Tell us a little about you or your group
I’m a Melbourne writer of poetry, fiction and performance works. Overload Poetry Festival is a grass roots poetry festival, started in 2002, and is one of the major annual poetry festivals in Australia.
What will people experience when they come to the reading?
It’s in the beautiful c3 gallery, open especially for the occasion, so they can check out the art work. I’ll read a few poems from the book. Writer, editor and publisher Chris Flynn will be launching it. We’ll have some good wine to drink and the book will be for sale (it’s really beautiful and Eirian’s illustrations are amazing).
How long have you been working on this event? And what’s been involved?
I started a residency at c3 gallery through the Australian Poetry Café Poet Program in June 2010. I went in about once a week fir nine months and wrote and talked and listened. I decided to put together a collection of poetry and wanted it to be visual as well as literal. So I collaborated with illustrator and designer Eirian Chapman to create an illustrated book of poems.
Where did you draw your inspiration from?
The artwork at c3 (they have a different range of exhibitions in there every 3 weeks), talking to the artists, talking to and observing the public who came into the gallery, talking to Jon Butt, the director of the gallery. The poems are all about what happens when we look at visual art, the memories it sparks off, the inspiration and those funny feelings you can’t quite name.
In 10 words or less why should people get moving and check it out?
Words and images brought together in a unique way.
What was your biggest challenge along the way?
Making decisions about what to put in and what to leave out.
Where will we see you next?
Just before the festival I’m reading at La Mama Poetica (Monday 5 September). And in November, I’m co-creator and performer in ‘Maybe we’re never together’ – a new theatre work premiering at Big West Festival.
