Sappho Poetry Night: Shying, Couani, St Vincent Welch, Skelton, Frolova

On the second Tuesday of October, the Poetry Night at Sappho will host guest poets Kerri Shying, Anna Couani, Sarah St Vincent Welch, Jane Skelton and Irina Frolova, plus an open mic section. Free entry, as ever, and drinks and tapas available at the bar.
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KERRI SHYING is a poet of Wiradjuri and Chinese family. She is the author of a bilingual pocketbook of poems sing out when you want me (Flying Island Press, 2017), Elevensies (Puncher and Wattmann 2018), and Knitting Mangrove Roots (Flying Island Press, 2019). Kerri held the Varuna Dr Eric Dark Flagship Fellowship for 2019 for her current collection Know Your Country (Puncher & Wattmann, 2020), and was shortlisted in 2017 for both the Helen Ann Bell Prize and the Noel Rowe Award. Kerri has been convenor of WUfor 5 years, a free arts/writing group for people living with disability. She lives with disability in Newcastle, NSW with her famous dog Max Spangly.
ANNA COUANI is a Sydney writer and visual artist who runs The Shop Gallery in Glebe. Her latest book of poetry is <local> from Flying Islands. Her novel The Western Horizon has recently been translated into Greek and she’s currently writing a mirror version of it.
SARAH ST VINCENT WELCH’s heart belongs to two cites, Canberra where she lives and Sydney where she grew up. She writes from her Canberra home on the countries of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. She is the founder of the project Kindred Trees (kindredtrees.com.au) which asks Canberra poets to respond to a local tree in poetry. She is also known for chalking her poems on the footpaths at art festivals, a practice she calls #litchalk. She is chalking poems at The National Arboretum on 15 and 16 October as part of Canberra Art Biennial. ‘chalk borders’ was published in the 2021 Flying Island Pocket Poet series, and a chapbook ‘Open’ was published by Rochford Press in 2019. In 2020 she travelled around Australia researching a hybrid memoir about suicide and place. She is one of the organisers of That Poetry Thing That Is On At Smiths Every Monday in Canberra.
JANE SKELTON writes poetry, short stories and novels. What the River Told Me, her pocket poetry collection by Flying Island Books was launched in 2022. It follows Chimera (prose and poetry) (2020) by Rochford Press. Lives of the Dead and Other Stories was published in 2013 by Spineless Wonders, and her novella Flying Foxes was short-listed in the Carmel Bird Award and came out as an eBook in 2015, also by Spineless Wonders. She lives in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Her website is http://janeskelton.com.au/
IRINA FROLOVA is a lover of words (and has a degree in philology to prove it!). She lives on the Awabakal land in Lake Macquarie, NSW. Her work speaks to the experience of immigration, neurodiversity, and a search for belonging. It draws on folklore and explores archetypes through cultural and feminist lenses. Her creative first collection of poetry is Far and Wild (released by Flying Island Books in 2021), and she won second place in the 2021 Deborah Cass Prize for writing. You can find Irina on Facebook @irinafrolovapoet.
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OPEN MIC
To read a poem in the open section, sign up is from 6:45pm on the night at the venue. Readers can read for up to 2 minutes each.
IMAGE: Erin Cormican and Bronte Cormican-Jones, I Echo You, alcohol ink and glass, from their exhibition across 22-28 September at The Shop Gallery on Glebe Pt Rd.