Tag: the red room company

This entry is part of a series, Unlocked» Confused Like Horses He sat down and tried to focus but couldn’t truly make out the shapes. Some nights, he sleepwalks into streetlit rooms all over the planet. You dream of your best friend’s house – it’s a collage, but you’d swear blind it was the real thing. Us here, we’re confused like horses kick in thunderstorm stables. The distant end of every tunnel is darker than the blue of night above. _____________________________________________________ Rob Wilson is a poet that currently resides in Sydney. He has had poems published in Cordite, Boxkite and Ampersand Magazine. His first collection of poems, Camera Farm, was released in 2003 by Bird in the Mouth Press. His poem is featured in the . Entries in this series: Introduction to Unlocked Unlocked: John Morony Poets Unlocked: Rob Wilson Unlocked: Lindsay Tuggle Related Posts Introduction to Unlocked Unlocked: John [...]

This entry is part of a series, Unlocked» Unlocked is an educational program developed and run by The Red Room Company in collaboration with NSW Correctional Centres. The program aims to unlock the potential of inmates through the transformative possibilities of poetry. Australian poets are taken into the centres to run intensive writing workshops, working with the students on every stage of the writing process, from the initial exercises and experimentations, through the editing and rewriting process, to recording, performing and publishing their work in a professionally designed print anthology. You can . Piloted in Sydney in 2010, the project has now entered its third year. The most recent Unlocked project was held at the Balund-a Project, a residential diversionary program for male and female offenders between 18 and 40. The program has a strong Indigenous focus, which is also a focus for Unlocked for 2012. Indigenous poet Lionel Fogarty [...]

The Astronomer Just stars, and grassland – ___to stand on the limit of the world ___and then climb upwards. Here is his tower, ______his staircase curled and vagrant as any dream: It is pictured next to the cow. How constant the constellations, this city now wheeling beneath them. Here is his quiet heartbeat. He must have heard the cries of children in his sleep, their lowing. In his tower, you breathe lungfuls of sky. _______________________________________________________ Fiona Wright is a Sydney poet, whose work has been published journals and anthologies in Australia, Asia and the USA. Her work was included in Best Australian Poems 2008, 2009, 2010 (Black Ink) and The Red Room Company’s Toilet Doors Project (2004). Fiona was runner-up in the 2008 John Marsden National Young Writers Award. In 2007, she was awarded an Island of Residencies placement at the Tasmania Writers’ Centre, developing a sequence of poems about [...]

This entry is part of a series, The Disappearing» Rouse Hill Time travelling on the motorways we watch the landscape change as cramped steel and concrete give way to open space Somehow bare and more exposed Billboards tout BRAND NEW LUXURY HOMES carbon copies of a pre-packaged urban dream past the outback steakhouse past the golden arches Flying high in this distant corner of the empire At our destination vivid white and yellow in the trees A row of cockatoos observes what’s on offer making selections from a drive through menu of their own On the old Windsor Turnpike I look across at Bunnings and realise I’m standing on the front line a battle between past and present History holding the line as the machine of progress threatens to swallow it whole The smell of death lingers on the property rabbits drowned in the heavy rain mosquitoes buzzing Life and [...]

This entry is part of a series, The Disappearing» Charlotte Street The pavement is a narrow procession of footsteps returning home in darkness. There is a raw gas-smell past Island Street, the rancidness of lamb-fat that clings to plum-coloured brickwork. A palm tree rustles perpetually through the windless night with percussion of heavy plastic. There is a crumbling border a child might walk tentatively, giddy with the danger of falling into fathoms of lantana. As you follow in sequence, muffling your pursuing steps, you notice the graded curvature of hairstyle against the nape, the way jeans shape and angle the leg, the sculpting of muscle by the tilt of heels. You pass the private hotel with all its yellow windows lit, Victorian and ornate, transient figures flitting within its walls, a church illuminated by orange spotlights, the fluorescence of a shop you have never entered - then turn from the [...]

This entry is part of a series, The Disappearing» The Disappearing is a new app for , and that (literally) explores poetry and place. Beginning with a collection of over 100 poems about Sydney, the app creates a poetic map charting traces, fragmentary histories, impressions and memories. Along with previously unpublished poetry, The Disappearing features exclusive videos of readings and interviews with poets. Users can upload their own poems to The Disappearing, preserving ideas, emotions and experiences about their own environment that vanish over time. Explore Sydney streets or upload your own memories of place – Download The Disappearing – The Red Room Company’s free poetry app for iPhone and iPad or for Android. Entries in this series: The Disappearing: Introduction The Disappearing: Astrid Lorange The Disappearing: John Hawke The Disappearing: Nick Bryant-Smith The Disappearing: Fiona Wright The Disappearing: David Prater The Disappearing: Bronwyn Emily Lang The Disappearing: Kim Cheng [...]