Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Friday 25 June
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Peter Porter, one of Australia’s finest writers, died earlier this year at the age of 81. To commemorate his life and remember his work, the Wheeler Centre and the Australian Poetry Centre pays tribute to the Brisbane-born poet and critic. With readings from his poems, a panel discussion of his work and a very special musical performance, this will be an unmissable tribute to an unforgettable artist.
Panel Discussion with Chris Wallace-Crabbe (chair), Morag Fraser, Gig Ryan and Peter Rose
Readings by Evan Jones, Genevieve Picot and Craig Sherborne
Music from Meredith Schilling, Ian Cousins and Alister Barker
Featuring
Morag Fraser
Morag Fraser is a writer, newspaper columnist, and one of Australia’s most experienced literary commentators. From 1991–2003 she was the editor of Eureka Street magazine, and from 2003-2009 adjunct professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University.
Fraser’s books and essays range across a wide range of subjects, from higher education to gardening, politics and theology.
She was a judge of the Miles Franklin Literary Award from 2005 to 2011, and is currently chair of Australian Book Review, of the John Button Prize judging panel, and of Victoria’s oldest artists' colony, Montsalvat. From 2009–2011, she was judge of the Mildura Festival’s Philip Hodgins Memorial Prize.
In 2004, she was made a Member of the Order of Australia, for services to journalism.
Peter Rose
Peter Rose is the author of the award-winning family memoir Rose Boys (2001), which is now available as a Text Classic.
He has also published five poetry collections, most recently Crimson Crop (UWA Publishing, 2012), which won a 2012 Queensland Literary Award. His most recent novel is Roddy Parr (Fourth Estate, 2010). He is the editor of Australian Book Review.
Craig Sherborne
Craig Sherborne is an acclaimed memoirist, novelist, poet and playwright, best known for Hoi Polloi, Muck and The Amateur Science of Love.
Craig is the Sydney-born son of Kiwi publicans. They pursued horseracing for a lifestyle and raised him as a racecourse brat. He was transfixed by the seedy glamorousness of that milieu and people’s general avoidance of earning an honest day’s living, an attitude that, as an adult, he adapted to his own patchy career as a journalist.
He began writing in his early teens for the companionship of the page, and out of a dreamy affection for artful language, but it wasn’t until the ABC produced two of his radio plays in the early 1990s, and awarded him a drama prize, that he began to write seriously.
His poems and essays have since appeared in most of Australia’s leading literary journals and anthologies, including Black Inc.’s Best Australian Essays and Best Australian Poems.
His memoir, Hoi Polloi, was published by Black Inc to critical acclaim in 2005. It was shortlisted for the Victorian and Queensland Premiers' Literary Awards and selected for the Australia Council’s Books Alive program. Muck, the sequel to Hoi Polloi, was published in 2007 and won the Queensland Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Both books were published internationally.
His novel, The Amateur Science of Love was published by Text in 2011, shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Fiction, and won the triennial Melbourne Prize for Writing in 2012. He has a new novel coming out with Text next year.