The Red Room Company’s Club President, Johanna Featherstone, cordially invites you to attend the first club meeting of our major project for 2011, Clubs & Societies. Poets from across the country will be joining a range of clubs and societies to find out what goes on behind the locked doors of Australia’s clubrooms. The poets learn the cryptic lingos of fanatics and aficionados, and become the poet laureates of these secret societies and cultural clubs. At the Sydney Writers’ Festival, five of these poets will initiate you into their new worlds. After this event, you’ll never look at the rest of society the same way again.


Poets in Attendance:

Kit Brookman trained as an actor, so he’s used to being around stars, so we’ve paired him with the Astronomical Society of NSW. Kit will be packing up his telescope and heading up to their Dark Sky Site, trading commas for comets and ellipses for eclipses.

Nick Keys will be converted into ones and zeroes for his collaboration with Dorkbot Sydney, a group of digital artists, hackers and nerds who do strange things with electricity. He’ll be travelling through cables for his appearance on the day.

Candy Royalle on the other hand, will be there in full body and spirit. Candy writes and performs a no-holds-barred, full body-contact kind of poetry, so she’s the perfect choice for the rough-and-tumble women of Roller Derby.

Jonathan Hill, a South Coast writer and passionate advocate of social justice and aboriginal rights, is working with men from Club 2540 in the Oolong House drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in Nowra.

While back in the heart of Sydney, Pip Smith will be sharing stories and verse with the visitors of the Wayside Chapel.

Club President Johanna Featherstone will be calling the meeting to order.