Tag Archives: Poetry

Mark Roberts at the Sydney Poet Lounge – 21 May 2025

7 May

I’m excited to be one of the feature poets, along with JR Grogan, at the Sydney Poetry Lounge at the Glebe Hotel ( 63 Bay Street, Glebe, New South Wales) on Wednesday 21 May from 6.30pm. I will be reading from my new collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Islands Press 2025).

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Welcome back to the May 2025 chapter of the Sydney Poetry Lounge, featuring poetry from Mark Roberts, JR Grogan and our incredible open mic! Join us upstairs at The Glebe Hotel for a night filled with powerful spoken word performances and heartfelt poetry.$10 entry, $5 concession, tickets available on the door or via Humanitix. The May SPL Facebook Event 

Mark Roberts

For much of the last four decades, Mark Roberts has been involved in writing, criticism and publishing. In 1982, he established P76 magazine with Adam Aitken and has been involved in small press publishing ever since. In 2011 he set up the on-line journal Rochford Street Review with his wife, Linda Adair, which has recently published its 41st issue; the Review is one of the leading (and long-lasting) independent cultural journals around. Mark’s work has been widely published in journal and magazines both in Australia and internationally. He has also published three collections – The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Islands Press 2025) is Mark’s third book, after Stepping out of Line (Rochford Street Press 1986) and Concrete Flamingos, (Island Press 2016).
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JR Grogan
John Robert Grogan (aka: JR) is an Irish-Australian poet based in Sydney, Australia. His childhood in Ireland and wanderings since, spawned a love and curiosity for the connectivity of the natural world and the human condition. He has poems published in a number of anthologies and online at: The Madrigal, Blue Bottle Journal, Live Encounters Magazine and From Whispers to Roars literary magazine. He is one quarter of the SPL team & sometimes known as ‘the voice of reason’. Find on Instagram: @jr_grogan.

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Dublin GPO – Easter Poem from ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’

18 Apr

Easter means different things to different people. For many it a time for deep religious and spiritual contemplation, for others it represents a holiday and lots of chocolate. For the Irish Catholics on my mother’s side of my family it was a time of great solemnity, not just because of the Christian celebration of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, but because it was the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland.

In my poem ‘Returns’, which appears in my new collection The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Islands Press), I write of my return to Ireland, over 150 years after my great grandmother was forced to flee with her family. In the final part of the poem ‘Dublin GPO’ I remember my grandfather. While he never saw Ireland, he grew up with the stories of Irish resistance and the memory of hearing about the Easter Uprising and it’s aftermath stayed with him all his life. Before I read the history of Easter 1916 in books I had already heard his version of events numerous times.

 

The  Office of Literary Endeavours is available from https://www.5islandspress.com/product-page/the-office-of-literary-endeavours-by-mark-roberts

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Michael Witts double book launch at the Shop Gallery Sunday 16 March

12 Mar

This coming Sunday I will be doing the honours and formally launching not one but two books by Michael Witts at the wonderful Shop Gallery in Glebe Point Road. I first read Michael’s work in 1982, the year Adam Aitken and I started P76 magazine, when Fling Poetry published his third collection, Dumb Music. More recently I have enjoyed more recent work his has been published in various journals and magazines and we now have the pleasure seeing this new work collected together.

If you are in Sydney this Sunday try and make it to the Shop Gallery to see me launch 28 Sonnets and Some Dualities and. more importantly, hear Michael read from these collections.

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Four new poems from ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’ appear in the ‘Lothlorien Poetry Journal’ blog

1 Jan

It was a great feeling to wake up on New Year’s Day to find four poems from my upcoming collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours, published on the the Lothlorien Poetry Journal blog. Many thanks for editor Strider Marcus Jones for publishing ‘cutting the grass’, ‘the other city’, ‘consolidation’ and ‘Northern Stone’.

You can read the poems here:  https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2024/12/four-poems-by-mark-roberts.html.

Make sure you check out the rest of the site – there is some amazing work there.

 

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Three new poems from ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’ appear in ‘Live Encounters’ 15th Anniversary Edition Volune Five

1 Nov

It’s alway exciting to be contacted by about contributing to an upcoming issue of Live Encounters and particularly so this time as the November-December Issue celebrates the on-line journal’s 15th anniversary.

My contribution to this issue consists of three poems from my upcoming collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours, which will be published by Five Islands Press in the first half of next year. The three poems include two of my film poems, ‘Final Reel’ – After Breathless (1960) directed by Jean-Luc Godard, ‘Taking Tea’ – After Cléo from 5 to 7 – directed by Agnès Varda (1962), and another shorter poem titled ‘Consecration’.

You can read the poems here https://liveencounters.net/2024-anniversary-editions/mark-roberts-final-reel/

You can also download a pdf from here  https://liveencounters.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/LE-PW-Vol-Five-Nov-Dec-2024.pdf

My thanks to Mark Ulyseas for including my work in this milestone edition.

 

 

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Just a bit of fun – Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Special Humour Edition, June 2024.

3 Jun

MARK ROBERTS – THE DEMISE OF POETRY

Many journals have themed issues but, as guest editor Les Wicks points out in his introduction Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Special Humour Edition, humour is not a theme normally associated with contemporary poetry. Forms such as limericks and nonsense verse obviously have humour at their core, but aren’t really recognised as ‘serious’ literature. Perhaps the first ‘real’ poem which really made made me laugh out loud in public was Chris Mansell’s Definition poem: Pissed as a parrot, which I seem to recall I first heard at a reading upstairs in a strange, secret, vegetarian restaurant in Leichhardt, NSW.

But onto the issue at hand – my attempt at a humourous poem, The demise of poetry, somehow made the cut and made it into the Live Encounters Special Humour Edition. I hope that it provokes at least the hint of a giggle…….

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‘Gweagal Shield’ published in ‘War’ 24 Hour Chapbook Challenge

22 Jan

WAR: 24-Hour Chapbook Challenge VII, edited by Colin Dardis, Rancid Idols Productions, Northern Ireland

I tend to take time writing a poem. A first draft, some initial revisions and then coming back over a period of time, reviewing and editing. I think my record from first mark on paper to completed poem is 30 years. So the concept of writing a poem from a single word prompt and being published all withing 24 hours was a particular challenge for me.

The challenge, by Rancid Idols Production, was part of their sporadic poetry challenge series: a one-word prompt was sent to participating poets, we replied back with a brand new poem, It is then collated and a free digital chapbook available to be download all within 24 hours!

The one word prompt was ‘War’, unfortunately currently a very fertile ground for artists. My poem is based around the Gweagal Shield, which is currently held, under dispute, in the British Museum. Although its providence is questioned, is it supposedly the shield dropped by a Gweagal warrior following the confrontation with British Marines on the shore of Kamay (Botany Bay) in 1770.

The chapbook, which contains some remarkable poems, all of which were written withing 24 hours over the weekend, is available for download here:

https://rancididols.weebly.com/war-chapbook-challenge.html.

Many thanks to Colin Dardis who coordinated and edited the project and to all the other poets who took part in producing this remarkable little artifact in such a short period of time.

Rancid Idols Productions also runs the Poet Alone project and maintains a Bandcamp channel of music, poetry and noise. You can access these projects at

https://rancididols.weebly.com/

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‘Gaanha-bula’ translated into Hindi

13 Jan

Ganhabula

Although it was published in 2019 I only just discovered that my prose poem ‘Gaanha-bula’ was translated into Hindi as part of the Spineless Wonders Shuffle Translation Project. The work first appeared in in Shuffle, An Anthology of Microlit, published by Spineless Wonders in 2019, so it was a pleasant to find it had been translated.

Many thanks to the translators, Anindya Singh and Ishrat Parween, to Paulette Smythe who produced the video poem of the translation and to Anindya Singh who read the poem. And of course thanks to the Spineless Wonders team who pulled the project together.

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‘The weather was perfect for making movies outside’ – Film Poem published in Sublunary Review

16 Jul

I haven’t sent much work out over the past 12 months, but I did try to find a home for one of my film poems and was excited when ‘The weather was perfect for making movies outside’ – a poem based on the Godard film Made in the USA – found a home in the excellent Sublunary Review. Many thanks to poetry editor Ruslan Garrey and the Sublunary Review team. You can read it here:

https://www.sublunaryreview.com/home/weather-was-perfect-for-making-movies

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‘Cadogan Place, Orange, 1992’ – published in ‘The Blue Nib’

5 Jul

Almost 75% of the work in the Lacuna cycle has now found it’s way into magazines, journals and anthologies in Australia and around the world and I’m excited that one of the more personal memoir poems, Cadogan Place, Orange, 1992, has just appeared in the wonderful Blue Nib Literary Magazine. Many thanks to editor Denise O’Hagan for giving this poem such a wonderful home.

If you want to read Cadogan Place, Orange, 1992 you can find it here: https://thebluenib.com/poetry-by-mark-roberts/

A companion piece to ‘Cadogan Place, Orange, 1992, Place Burial, was published in Issue 3 of Pink Cover Zine back in May 2019 https://printedshadows.wordpress.com/2019/05/08/place-burial-appears-in-pink-cover-zine-issue-3/

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