Poetic Portraits: A Conversation with Cassandra Atherton, Tracy O’Shaughnessy and Jessica Wilkinson
Monday 8 September
4pm-5.00pm (AEST)
Online event (Zoom) [Link below]
‘Poetic Portraits’ was the winner of the Council for the Humanities Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) Distinctive Works Prize in 2024. This online event, for Social Sciences Week, will be a conversation between the project team and Frank Bongiorno, CHASS President. The project addressed belonging and disconnection by using poetry workshops to encourage self-expression and community connections and dialogue. The team developed partnerships with local councils (from City of Greater Bendigo, Pyrenees Shire [Beaufort], Yarra Ranges Council, Frankston City Council) to shape poetry-writing workshops that addressed specific community and demographic concerns. Supported by a Creative Australia grant, Poetic Portraits promoted poetry as a way to connect with and convey the experiences of rural and regional Victorians, and as a creative platform through which to instil a sense of sharing, belonging and catharsis. The workshops provided a space for sharing, listening, respect and positive reinforcement, giving lessons on poetry craft to enable participants to express aspects of themselves and their experiences. Limited edition publications of the edited poems were produced to have immediate impacts on a local level; they offered a reason to bring people together for a community launch celebration that could further amplify and instil confidence in local voices, and to provide a beautiful memento for participants and their families. The four community-based publications that resulted involved collaboration with the Bowen Street Press team, led by O’Shaughnessy.
Judges’ comment: ‘this is a democratic, inclusive and regionally orientated project that has provided opportunities for new stories to be told and for voices often unheard in national conversations to find eloquent expression.’
BIOS:
Cassandra Atherton is Distinguished Professor of Writing and Literature at Deakin University. She was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University and is one of the leading international scholars on prose poetry, co-authoring Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton University Press, 2020) and co-editing the Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry (Melbourne University Press, 2020). With Professor Jessica Wilkinson and Associate Professor Tracy O'Shaughnessy she edited a series of books of poetic portraits based on workshops with constituents in local Victorian communities.
Tracy O’Shaughnessy is an Associate Professor at RMIT University and Publisher of the Bowen Street Press. She has over 25 years’ experience as a book editor and publisher and has worked at leading Australian publishing houses, including Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne University Press as the Miegunyah Publisher, and Allen & Unwin. In 2016 she launched the innovative Masters of Writing and Publishing with the embedded student-led Bowen Street Press. She won the 2019 Vice Chancellor's Award for Strategic Contribution to Learning and Teaching for the program's industry engagement and in 2023 the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence.
Jessica Wilkinson is a poet, essayist, editor and Professor of Creative Writing at RMIT University, Melbourne. She is especially interested in exploring what poetry can ‘do’ - whether that be in pedagogical settings, for social change, as a research tool, or for expanding the field of nonfiction writing. She is the author of three poetic biographies and the founding editor of Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry.
Frank Bongiorno is Professor of History at the Australian National University and President of the Council for the Humanities Arts and Social Sciences.
Join us on Zoom!
https://anu.zoom.us/j/89149798895?pwd=zHXdks0yz8Y4alurFyZfdbloNmya7B.1
Meeting ID: 891 4979 8895
Password: 679891