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Sarah Gory, Director, Queensland Poetry Festival  Credit: Darlia Argyris
Sarah Gory, Director, Queensland Poetry Festival
Credit: Darlia Argyris

We are delighted to announce our next edition, which is a special collaboration between Peril and the Queensland Poetry Festival, guest edited by the Festival’s Director, Sarah Gory.

Last year, Sarah provided a beautifully frank and thoughtful response to our festival Q&A and we’ve been keen to follow up with her and get a bit more of an insight into the way that Queensland Poetry Festival engages with a “representative snapshot of contemporary Australian poetic practice”. Although we would never name names, not every festival director that we have approached has been prepared to answer our questions, so Queensland Poetry Festival’s positive engagement early on in this project has been a key factor in encouraging others to come on board. We are thrilled to be able to follow up on this conversation about the place of poetry as a mirror and a lens through which we view contemporary Australia.

Despite having once been disparagingly referred to as the “Lake Eyre of Australia’s cultural landscape”, Queensland has nevertheless been home to writers as lauded as David Malouf and  Judith Wright, and we are excited to explore the contemporary writers and creative of this particular part of Australia under the editorial guidance of the state’s flagship poetry festival.

To do this, Peril and Queensland Poetry Festival have invited eight poets –  all of whom have a relationship, past or present, with the Sunshine State – to ask themselves what Queensland is, for them.

We hope that you will look forward over the coming weeks to sharing a little more of Queensland’s most engaging and energetic poetic voices as they reflect on their connections to place, to culture, to language, to creativity and to their contemporary context. We hope you enjoy what they have to offer.

Nikki, Lian and Eleanor

Author: Eleanor Jackson

Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet, performer, arts producer and community radio broadcaster. Eleanor Jackson is a former Editor in Chief and Poetry Editor of Peril and currently Chair of the Board.