Crowdfunding Pozible

I guess the Cat is well and truly out of the bag now. I am trying to get to Ireland for a poetry festival in August. But as I am only ever semi-regular employed (low unemployment rate my foot); I need your help…I need everyone’s help….

 was one of only two Australian poets short-listed for the Fermoy International Poetry Prize, which includes one poem published in their annual anthology and a free flight (accommodation included) for the festival. However, this year they are doing things slightly differently and have sent specific requests for international poets to attend (see attached letter) with accommodation and travel during the festival, including the poetry bus, being taken care of throughout the festival’s duration (1-5th August).

I have been given this opportunity because I was short-listed last year in the inaugural Fermoy poetry festival—however this year they are doing things slightly different. A number of poets have been invited from all over the world to attend, perform, recite, and create a dialogue between the international poets, the local Irish poets and the people of county Cork.

This year’s theme for the festival is Inclusion. In engaging with this idea I would like to create a body of work including: a book of my travels from Australia to Ireland and a dialogue between a secular post-modernist poet (like myself) and poets from the traditional world of poetry and story-telling. With poets from all over the world attending, the conversations, the world- views, the glimpses of other cultures I will experience would seem to warrant more than just a blog.

Rather, what I have in mind is a full collection of essays and poetry.  New media technology will be instrumental in this: mp3 and digital still/video camera recordings as well as the more traditional trusty pen and note pad. I want to absorb as much as I can in about the long and noble Irish tradition of poetry, and moreover what this tradition still has to say today.

I will be writing a book about the entire experience.  The book will be called Gathering by the Blackwater. it will consist of travel memoirs, essays and interviews on different forms of poetry and on the poets who attend the festival, and of course brand new poems about the entire trip, experience, by yours truly.

This will be a totally interactive experience for everyone involved. If you help me get there, you can come along for the ride, but you won’t get the jetlag, the long haul flights, the confusion, the worry. You can be apart of the festival, from the comfort of your chair, your lap, your mobile phone…I’ll be podcasting and uploading to Youtube at least once a day, so you can watch the Poetry performances, learn all about ancient Irish poetic traditions,  discover new worlds of the imagination,  help promote unity and friendship.

So, I guess you want to know how and why I can do all this?

I am an award winning, and fairly well published Poet, both internationally, and nationally. Got the Runner-up prize in the Page Seventeen/busybird annual poetry prize last year (see the link HOT WHITE KISS); highly commended in the Fellowship of Australian Writers/John Shaw Neilson Prize 2009 (see link for ECHO OF YOU).

I have a Bachelor of Arts La Trobe Bendigo, Literature, Art and Film and Philosophy and Religious Studies, and Honours in Greek Philosophy and Romantic Movement (Literature),

Poetry is not a dead of old wide-eyed, crazy haired men in tweed jackets sitting with the Rose and the Orchards.

POETRY IS ALIVE. And doing extremely well…HELP ME BRING IT TO THE MASSES.

What the money you pledge means to me…

It means  I can travel there, stay before and after the festival. Research and write Gathering by the Blackwater and create and maintain a collaborative, friendly and mutually Inclusive dialogue.

Please spread the word of if you can please pledge as you can see I have great prizes and rewards pledge as much as you like or as little as you like…There will be a video posted on the pozible page As Soon AS Pozible…sorry that was terrible wasn’t it….

 

http://www.pozible.com/project/19625/