Poems read at the Dead Poets Dinner on 22 July 2014

The Dead Poets Dinner, run by Geoff Page as an annual event, was held at ‘The Gods’ Cafe at the Australian National University Canberra on the 22nd of July. This event started in 1998 and as usual it was a very lively and entertaining evening.

For interest below is a list of readers and the poems read. Full marks to Laurie McDonald in his rendition of David Meyers’ poem ‘Fencing in the Dark’– an excellent choice … an entertaining, humorous and easily accessible poem … it is difficult to choose deep poems at such events … that is unless the audience is already aware of the poem. David Meyers was a local poet and for many years he was involved with the Queanbeyan Bush Poets. He died of cancer at the age of 63.

Colin Campbell / Thomas Blackburn – A Smell of Burning, and Hospital for Defectives
Marion Halligan / Yeats – Sailing to Byzantium
Joyce Freedman / Siegfriend Sassoon – Everyone Sang
Hazel Hall / Hilaire Belloc – Tarantella
Chris Dorman / William Baine – The Archery of William Tell
Kathy Kituai / Muso Susaki – Sun in Midnight
Nicola Bowery / Sarah Broom – About Me, and That Moon
Wendy McMahon Bell / Seamus Heaney – Digging
P.S. Cottier / Catherine Martin – The Mouse Tower
Geoff Page / Seamus Heaney – From the Republic of Conscience
Laurie McDonald / David Meyers – Fencing in the Dark
Carmel Summers / Janice Bostok – Amongst the Graffiti
Moya Pacey / Elizabeth Bishop – One Art, and Louis MacNeice Wolves
Rosa O’Kae / Seamus Heaney – Skunk
Sue Edgar / J.L. Borges – Mirror, and Sylvia Plath – Mirror
Adrienne Johns / Hugh McDiarmid – Vanitas, and Balmorality
John Stokes / R.F. Brissenden – The Whale in Darkness
Mary Besemeres / Wizlawa Szymborska – View With a Grain of Sand
Sarah Rice / T.S. Eliot excerpts from Little Gidding
Emily Rice / Ted Hughes – Tractor
Annie Didcott / Keats – Ode to a Nightingale
Tony Williams / Neruda – The Dead Woman
Arlene Williams / J.J. Bray – Address to Pigeons in Hurtle Square, and William Carlos Williams – This is just to say
John Van de Graaff / Seamus Heaney – Follower, and D.H. Lawrence – Piano
Adrian Caesar / R.S. Thomas – The Owl
Michael Thorley / Thomas Hardy – Channel Firing, and They
Andrew McDonald / poems by two Scottish poets (Norman McCaig?)
Lesley Lebkowicz / poems by Soseki
Alan Gould / a song by Hamish Henderson
Alinta Leaver / Kenneth Koch – Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
Richard Scutter / Auden – Musee des Beaux Arts, and Hopkins – Inversnaid
Martin Dolan / Dylan Thomas – Prologue
Marlene Hall / Thomas Wyatt – Whoso list upon the slipper top
Melinda Smith / Francis Webb – Cap and Bells, and The Bells of St Peter Mancroft
Ruth Pieloor / C.J. Dennis – The Australaise
Janette Pieloor / Gwen Harwood -The Secret Life of Frogs