We are very sorry to announce that our originally scheduled performer, Merlinda Bobis, can not join us this week. We hope to bring her back to NVQ next year. Sandra has kindly brought forward her event which was originally scheduled for October - we hope you can make it!

Free event with open mic.

Sandra Renew, one of the editors of Not Very Quiet, reading from her new poetry collection and Alison Thompson a poet from South Coast longlisted for the @University of Canberra Poetry Prize 2018.

Sandra Renew will read from her recently published books Who Sleeps at Night and The Orlando Files as well as featuring some of her current project on the interrogation of gender presentation and the LGBTIQAA gender discourses.

Sandra was a featured poet for a second year at the National Folk Festival 2018, and she reads regularly at Canberra venue Smith’s Alternative. Her poetry includes a range of critique and commentary on issues such war, guns, gender, refugees, and gay and lesbian politics through exploration of the themes of border crossings and inclusion.

Sandra has three chapbooks available through Ginninderra Press and Amazon, Projected on the Wall, and Who Sleeps at Night and her new collection The Orlando Files 2018. In 2018 her poem Edit was performed by Spineless Wonders in Sydney and in 2017 her poem Twenty Boats was included in the poetry production of Under Sedation produced by Adele Chynoweth. She coordinated a group of five poets to present The Poetry Hub over two days at the SeeChange Festival Jervis Bay and Basin in June 2018. She is a co-editor of the women’s on-line poetry journal Not Very Quiet and every third Monday curates and co-hosts That Poetry Thing at Smith’s.

Alison Thompson is a poet and short story writer who lives near Berry on the South Coast of NSW and is a longstanding member of the Kitchen Table Poets. Her poems have been published here and overseas. She has two chapbooks published with PressPress - Slow Skipping (2008) and In A Day It Changes (2018). Alison won the DPP Byron Bay Writers Festival Poetry prize (2011) and the 2016 Poetry d’Amour Love Poem Contest and was recently longlisted for the 2018 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize.