Poets and Pizza – Coriole Winery – Friday 17th January 2020

 

I’m delighted to be appearing at Coriole’s Poets and Pizza event on Friday 17th January 2020 at 6:30 pm. It’s a stunning location in McLaren Vale. Coriole make some of the best wine on the planet and the crowd are always boisterous and out for a fun night.

Tickets are $35 a head, which includes pizza. Booking in advance recommended because the event has regularly sold out in the past.

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Poets and Pizza

Coriole has been celebrating and supporting South Australian poets since 2005 with the Poets and Pizza event.
Come indulge in a raucous evening of poetry, great company, wood fired pizza and wines by Coriole.
For this event we welcome Jude Aquilina, Emelia Haskey, Sarah Jane Justice, Alison Paradoxx and Mike Hopkins.

On Friday 17 January 2020 at 6:30pm

LOCATION

Coriole Vineyards
Chaffeys Road, McLaren Vale, SA 5171

Book here

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Gig: Wednesday 2nd October 2019 at The Wheatsheaf Hotel.

The monthly No Wave readings are a sort of heir to the long-running Lee Marvin readings which stopped a few years ago. Curated by Dom Symes, Banjo James and Olivia De Zilva, they usually feature four invited poets. Each poet reads for ten minutes with a break between the second and third readers. The Wheatsheaf is a great pub, serving a wide selection of their own and other micro-brewery beers, wines and spirits. Always a nice buzz at these readings. Get along if you can. $5 entry.

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Reading at the Halifax Cafe, Adelaide with Jude Aquilina: Thursday 27th June 2019 at 6 p.m.

 

More Details on the FSP site here

Caution – Rabbits hitch-hiking

Near Ridge Park, Adelaide is a traffic sign, which used to warn of elderly people crossing. For some weeks now, the sign has been upside down (see above). It’s on Glen Osmond Road, near the bottom of the south-east freeway. It would be one of the first things people driving from Victoria see on arriving in Adelaide. (For non-Australian readers, there is a fair bit of animosity between Victorians and Adelaideans). I often wonder what they might think of the sign, especially if they’ve looked at optical illusion pictures. On the other hand, they probably just see an upside down warning of elderly people ahead.

 

Caution – One-Eyed Rabbits Hitch-Hiking

Caution – One-eyed rabbits smoking cigars

Caution – One-eyed rabbits line-dancing

Caution – Abusive two-finger gestures ahead

Caution – Abusive two-finger gestures combined with A-OK gestures ahead

Caution – Abusive one-balled rabbits ahead

Caution – Elderly people helping each other across the road whilst doing head-stands

Caution – Elderly Inverted Line Dancers Ahead

Caution – Fancy cocktails with two straws ahead

Caution – One eyed rabbits drinking fancy cocktails ahead

Caution – One eyed rabbits spitting out fur-balls ahead

Caution – Double Fuck off back to Victoria

Caution – Bad shadow puppetry ahead

Caution – Rabbits cleaning their ears with Q-Tips

Hey Victorians:  Fuck off back to Melbourne and take your bloody one-eyed, one-balled, cigar-smoking, fur-ball-spitting, cocktail-drinking, line-dancing, hitch-hiking fucking rabbits with you.

 

Glen Osmond Road, Myrtle Bank

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Copyright Mike Hopkins 2018

Book Review: “Meet My Mother” by Louise Nicholas

Meet My Mother by Louise Nicholas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Louise Nicholas is a much-loved and admired Adelaide based poet. This book, about her mother Dorothy, builds on the writing of her mother, and supplements it with Louise’s recollections of her relationship with her mother. There are poems by Louise about her mother, poetic letters which her mother wrote to her in Louise’s adult travelling years, and sections of prose providing a timeline through her mother’s life.

Louise describes her mother’s life, in a non-pejorative way, as ‘a little life’. Most of us indeed lead little lives, without achieving or experiencing anything world shattering, getting through life as best we can. This book shows that a little life can still be an incredibly rich life, where the day-to-day challenges of childhood, family and ageing are wrestled with. It is written with the gentle humour and accessibility which characterises Louise’s poetry. And in Dorothy’s poetic letters to Louise, one can detect the seeds of Louise’s poetic style – just one of the many gifts that her mother left her.

A lovely book.

View all my reviews

Free the Garron Five: Brock, Dally, Flett, Hopkins, McKenna – Saturday 25th March 2017 7 p.m., Blackwood.

 

Well, not quite free, but only $5 on the door. A reprise of the launch of the 2016 Garron chapbooks at The Artisan Cafe, 252 Main Road, Blackwood, South Australia.

Probably advisable to book a table in advance.

For bookings/info call Rebecca Edwards on 8278 2473

On Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1857556531173873/

 

 

 

Summer Slam Final, Friday 10th Feb 2017

I’m a finalist in the Spoken Word SA / Draw Your (s)Words Summer Slam, this Friday 10th February 2017, from about 7 p.m at Jive, in Hindley Street, Adelaide.

 

I’m Guest Poet at St.Peters Library on Feb 4th 2017

Thanks to Jules Leigh Koch for inviting me to be feature poet at the FSP reading at St. Peters Library on Saturday afternoon, 4th Feb 2017:

December 3rd at SPIN in McLaren Vale

Along with a number of talented performers, I am guest poet at the SPIN gig in McLaren Vale on December 3rd 2016. I’ll be reading from my recent chapbook, “Selfish Bastards”, plus other work. Thanks to Julia Wakefield-Houghton for inviting me. She’s given me a 20 minute slot, which is long by poetry reading standards. Perhaps an opportunity to respond to world events of 2016!

Typology of Stobie Poles – Take II

 

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