Melissa Sussens will be the feature poet at The Red Wheelbarrow on Thursday, 20 October, at 19:30 SAST / 13:30 ET. She will share poems from Slaughterhouse, her debut collection coming soon from Karavan Press.
There will also be an opportunity to ask her questions and to share a poem or two of your own in the open mic that follows the reading.
Register here: The Red Wheelbarrow
Dawn Garisch will be the featured poet at The Red Wheelbarrow next week.
Dawn Garisch is an award-winning author and poet, a medical doctor and founding member of the Life Righting Collective. As an LRC facilitator, she teaches writing and poetry as a route to self-discovery, self-recovery and community building. Her second collection, Disturbance, (Karavan Press) came out in 2020.
Broken
A toy horse falls from the shelf, breaks a leg.
The small boy, tearful, shows an uncle
who gives him a tube of glue:
The boy tries hard like he always does,
not knowing how to fix
his parent’s domestic mess.
The horse leg sets, stuck back skew,
now it’s lame, he’s made things worse.
His father’s long gone, but he’s to blame,
the glue of family rendered useless.
The boy wanders out of the house,
climbs the tree, sits by himself, sick
with crying. Wanting his father
joined to his mother, wanting
the father to come home to help him.
What he wants is impossible, so he prays
for the leg to be restored like magic,
so he can ride away.
— Dawn Garisch
As always, the reading by the featured poet will be followed by an open mic session for poets from the audience. Poets are welcome to read from their own work as well as from the work of a favourite poet.
Join Zoom Meeting: Dawn Garisch at The Red Wheelbarrow
Date: 18th August 2022
Time: 19:30 SAST
Meeting ID: 952 904 1131
Passcode: 12345
Listen to Melissa Sussens speak to Andy N about poetry; her work as a vet; influences; poetry festivals, workshops and prizes; lockdown; her work promoting local poetry & her forthcoming debut collection, Slaughterhouse (Karavan Press, 2022): SPOKEN LABEL PODCAST INTERVIEW
Listen to Melissa read a few poems from her forthcoming collection: SPOKEN LABEL PODCAST READING
Follow Melissa on Instagram and enjoy the writing: @melissasussens
It gives me great pleasure to announce that Melissa Sussens will be publishing her superbly crafted debut poetry collection, Slaughterhouse, with Karavan Press later this year. I have been reading Melissa’s poetry across literary magazines and the web for about two years now and it has always moved and inspired me. It will be a joy to share it with readers in book form. Poetry lovers are in for a true literary treat!
Melissa Sussens is a queer veterinarian and poet. Her work has appeared in Stanzas Poetry Magazine, SFWP Quarterly and Isele Magazine, among many others. She has performed at the Poetry In McGregor festival, Off The Wall and The Red Wheelbarrow where she also hosts poetry readings. Melissa placed 2nd in the New Contrast National Poetry Prize and was amongst the winners of the ClemenGold Writing Competition in 2020. She was selected for the Poetry for Human Rights anthology, Between the Silence, in 2021 and has been nominated for Best of the Net. By day she works as a small animal veterinarian and whenever she’s not doctoring animals, she can be found immersed in writing, editing, or reading poems. Melissa lives in Cape Town with her fiancée and their two dogs. Find her on Instagram and Twitter @melissasussens.
Stephen Symons will be The Red Wheelbarrow’s featured poet this week.
Stephen Symons has published poetry and short-fiction in journals, magazines and anthologies, locally and internationally. His debut collection, Questions for the Sea (uHlanga, 2016) received an honourable mention for the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and was also shortlisted for the 2017 Ingrid Jonker Prize. His unpublished collection Spioenkop was a semi-finalist for the Hudson Prize for Poetry (USA) in 2015. Landscapes of Light and Loss (Dryad Press) was published in 2018, and For Everything That Is Pointless and Perfect (Karavan Press) in 2020. Small Souls, a collection of selected and new poems will be published in 2022 by Karavan Press.
Symons holds a PhD in History (University of Pretoria) and an MA in Creative Writing (University of Cape Town). He lives with his family in Oranjezicht, Cape Town.
**As always, the reading by the featured poet will be followed by an open mic session for poets from the audience. Poets are welcome to read from their own work as well as from the work of a favourite poet**
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9529041131?pwd=M2VUL3RNWGMvMFZCU1Zuemt6QnU3Zz09
Date: 20th January 2022
Time: 19:30 SAST
Meeting ID: 952 904 1131
Passcode: 12345
Poems by poets featured previously at TRW can be found here:
https://redwheelbarrowpoet.wixsite.com/website
The Poetry in McGregor Festival is officially open. It was amazing to gather in the Garden of the Beloved at Temenos and to celebrate poetry, poets and life itself, but also to honour the words of those who no longer walk among us.
Let the poetry feast begin!
Stephen Symons is among the finalists for the GBAS Book Cover Design Awards in the Poetry Category for his design of Justin Fox’s Beat Routes.
Congratulations, Stephen and Justin!
For the entire list of finalists, please see: GBAS Book Cover Design Awards Finalists
Join us for this wonderful celebration of poetry!
Caritas at Temenos Cnr Voortrekker and Bree St., McGregor, Western Cape
karavanpress.com 