A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist are both heading to Brisbane for the country’s premier poetry festival, the Queensland Poetry Festival, in a new partnership with QUT’s Creative Writing & Literary Studies department.
Award-winning poet and senior QUT lecturer Sarah Holland-Batt said the festival would feature novelist and poet Jeet Thayil, who was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize for his novel Narcopolis, and poet Tracy K Smith, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Life on Mars.
“It’s an incredibly exciting festival this year, with leading international literary figures coming to both QPF and QUT. We’re delighted to be supporting the festival and entering into this vibrant new partnership with the Queensland Poetry Festival,” Ms Holland-Batt said.
As a result of the partnership, QUT will host Jeet Thayil for a free public lecture and reading prior to the Queensland Poetry Festival on August 16.
“Jeet Thayil is a leading international poet, novelist, librettist and essayist,” Ms Holland-Batt said.
“His lecture will be a rare opportunity for the public and QUT staff and students to hear him read and discuss his prize-winning works.”
Jeet Thayil will also join Tracy K Smith, Sam Wagan Watson, Tishani Doshi, Steven Oliver and Gina Williams for KalyaKoorl, a literary cabaret, sponsored by QUT on August 26 at the QPF
“It’s a fantastic coup for QUT Creative Writing to help support the attendance of such accomplished and popular poets at QPF. These writers will not only read and discuss their brilliant works, but they will also demonstrate what an international literary career looks like for our creative writing students, which is wonderful.”
As a part of the QPF festival program, QUT creative writing students will also showcase their poetry in an hour-long event at the festival’s ‘headquarters’, the Judith Wright Centre.
Ms Holland-Batt said QUT creative writing students had already notched up awards and accolades and would read new and published works with a range of styles and concerns at the QUT Student Salon on August 27.
“We’ll have Ella Jeffery, a QUT doctoral student, reading in the showcase; Ella’s poetry and short fiction have appeared in Best Australian Poems 2013, Cordite, Mascara Literary Review and elsewhere,” she said.
“Anna Jacobson, another student reader, was shortlisted for the prestigious Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for her unpublished manuscript, and her poems have been published in literary journals including Cordite, Rabbit, Australian Poetry Journal, Tincture and Foam:e.
“India Poulton, who is Island magazine’s poetry intern, has been published in The Lifted Brow, Westerly, Stilts, and Yen Magazine, and will be reading from her MFA manuscript.
“Honours student Mindy Gill’s work has appeared in the Australian Poetry Journal and Hecate – she’s interested in cultural belonging within Asian-Australian identity, and will be also be joined by Emily O’Grady, Laura Kenny and Jarad Bruinstroop.”
QUT will sponsor a range of other sessions at QPF, including a showcase of international Indigenous writing and a keynote lecture by accomplished Indigenous poet Samuel Wagan Watson.
For all details and bookings for the Queensland Poetry Festival, August 25-28, click here.
Media contact: Niki Widdowson, QUT Media, 07 3138 2999 or n.widdowson@qut.edu.au
After hours: Rose Trapnell, 0407 585 901 or media@qut.edu.au
