The Melbourne Literature Seminars

My next book, and the first of my own poetry, will be published some time this year by Little Fox Press. Its title will be Engelboc (you’ll have to wait to see why), and here’s a mock-up of the sort of cover design I’m hoping for.

All will be revealed . . .

Brilliant cover design by my son Jon DiNapoli. Not quite finalised, but near enough as makes no never-mind.

Happy new year, everyone. I hope the holiday season passed both pleasantly and peacefully for you all.

Just some quick tidings about what’s coming up in the MLS. Not a lot, I’m afraid, at least not at first. I am stuck into a number of writing and getting-published projects that will demand a lot of my attention still. This may be a big year for me that way, but there’s heaps to do.

That said, I want, as I was saying last year, to keep the Refectory sessions going. The ongoing session will meet, as it has been, at 1pm on Wednesdays, beginning Wednesday 23 January. The first two sessions (23 and 30 January) will meet in fourth-floor Rm 4.2. After that we’ll be meeting in first floor 1.2 (from 6 February). The Refectory Sessions, for those of you who don’t know, are one-hour sessions in which we discuss poetry (modern Australian, at this point) which I provide each week in a handout. Each session costs $10.

A little later in the year, I’m thinking of using my backlog of Refectory handouts to start up a second session that will work through the texts the first session has already looked at. I’m open to suggestion but thinking of making that a Friday 1-2pm session. If you think you’d like to come and would be able (no commitment necessary, just an expression of interest), could you let me know in reply to this email? I know there were a number of individuals who wanted to attend but couldn’t make the Wednesday sessions. If I have a rough idea of how many might come on Fridays, I can (soon!) think about an appropriate Ross-House room to book.

All the best for the year to come!

Bob

Add a little sulphur, and you get something like the following pastiche of The Devil’s Dictionary.  Enjoy as you will . . . from Arena Magazine for September.

‘Do you know how to use PowerPoint, Mr Mephistopheles?’

Devil’s Dictionary Supplement

Many thanks to Maria Dahvana Headley, the Melbourne Writers Festival and the fabulous audience (and my friends and family among them!)  for helping to make our discussion of her novel, The Mere Wife, such a joy.

photos by Bec DiNapoli