When
Friday, February 26 @ 7:00pm
Where
The Wheeler Centre
176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne
Price
$10/9/8
Has an Open Mic?
Yes
Founded in 1977, the Melbourne Poets Union hosts poetry readings on the last Wednesday of the month – except for February and December which are on Fridays. They are usually at the Wheeler Centre in the city, though sometimes other venues are used. Each month there is a focus on a theme for both feature performers and open mike readers, with a rotating MC.
Steve Smart
Over the past 16-17 years Steve Smart has performed all over the world, run workshops, gigs, festivals (RIP Overload Poetry Festival) and been sporadically published. He has released six poetry CDs, various self-published chapbooks and has a massive web presence. His hair is no longer categorised as brown, it is now officially ‘salt and pepper’. As a poet Steve has been described as ‘Melbourne’s rockstar of performance poetry’ – (Perth Poetry Club), “wildly funny to deeply moving’ (Simon Leo Brown – abc.net.au) and ‘a raw, seething, hardcore poet who makes the rest of us look spineless’ (Amanda Anastasi – melbournespokenword.com). He lives in Footscray and is the current President of Melbourne Poets Union.
Maxine Beneba Clarke
Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent. Her latest poetry collection is Nothing Here Needs Fixing (Picaro Press, 2013). Her short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the 2015 ABIA for Literary Fiction Book of The Year, the Indie Award for best debut fiction, and was shortlisted for The Stella Prize. Poetry his her first, and true love.