AVANT GAGA #69: Armantrout, Lilley, Carruthers, Ferney and Orlando

On the THIRD Tuesday of September, the monthly Poetry Night at Sappho returns after a couple of months off with AVANT GAGA #69, featuring special guests Rae Armantrout (USA), Kate Lilley, a.j. carruthers, Liam Ferney and Roslyn Orlando, plus a short open mic section. Food and drinks are available at the bar. FREE ENTRY.
Sign-up for the open mic is on the night, in person, from as early as, or slightly earlier than, 6:30pm, depending on demand. Up to 10 people will read for up to 1 minute each (1 poem each).
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RAW ARMANTROUT’s books include Finalists, Wobble, Partly: New and Selected Poems, Just Saying, Money Shot and Versed. In 2010 Versed won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and The National Book Critics Circle Award. She has received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation (2007) and her poems have appeared in Poetry, Conjunctions, Lana Turner, The Nation, The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, Bomb, Harpers, The Paris Review, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology, and The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine. A new book, Go Figure, has recently appeared from Wesleyan University Press.
KATE LILLEY is a queer poet-scholar and adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. Her three books of poetry are Versary, Ladylike and, most recently, Tilt, winner of the Victorian Premier’s Award. Recent poems have appeared in Griffith Review, Australian Poetry Journal, Rabbit and Plumwood Mountain. She has published widely on the history of poetry and poetics and is the editor of Margaret Cavendish: The Blazing World and Other Writings (Penguin Classics) and Dorothy Hewett: Selected Poems(UWAP).
A.J. CARRUTHERS is the 2024 recipient of the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. His latest book is Literary History and Avant-Garde Poetics in the Antipodes: Languages of Invention, and he’s written 3 volumes of the life-long long poem Axis, the latest being Axis Z Book 3.
LIAM FERNEY’s most recent collection Hot Take (Hunter Publishing) was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. His previous volumes include Content (Hunter Publishing) and Boom (Grande Parade Poets). He is a public affairs manager, poet and aspiring left-back living in Brisbane with his wife and daughter.
ROSLYN ORLANDO is an artist, writer and gardener based in Melbourne on Wurundjeri Country. Her writing and artistic works explore relationships between language, history and technology. She studied journalism at the University of Sydney, and Arts Politics at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Ekhō, her first book of poems, was published this year by Upswell Publishing, and will be released across North America in 2025, through Soft Skull Press.
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IMAGE is a detail from the cover of Rae Armantrout’s book Go Figure (2024).