The Red Room Company - Public Projects

Public Projects

The Red Room Company regularly runs major public creative projects whose goal is to commission new works by contemporary Australian poets, then publicise this new work as widely as possible.

• The Disappearing

This year's major public project is The Disappearing, a free app for iPhone, iPad and Android devices that allows users to map the world around them using poetry.

Poets Jill Jones, Martin Harrison, Astrid Lorange, Nick Bryant-Smith (one half of hip-hop due Horrorshow) and Lorna Munro were commissioned to created new work about sites belong to The Historic Houses Trust in New South Wales.

Alongside the specially-commissioned poems, over 130 poems about Sydney were submitted for publication on the app. Users can upload their own poems to The Disappearing, preserving ideas, emotions and experiences about their own environment that vanish over time. Along with previously unpublished poetry, The Disappearing features videos of readings and interviews with poets.The Disappearing project will stretch across Australia during 2012.

Past Projects include:

• Pigeon Poetry commissioned eight poets from across the country to each write a poem that would be raced by thoroughbred pigeons on 3 August 2008. The birds homed from Stanwell Tops to Mt Ousley on NSW's South Coast, covering about 60 km between 15 and 20 minutes. A virtual booking system documented the project, poets and poems. Poets included Brook Emery, Robert Adamson, Ivy Ireland, Andy Quan, Alan Gould, Craig Sherborne, Kate Fagan and Anthony Lawrence.

• Clubs & Socs was one of The Red Room Company's major projects for 2011, pairing contemporary poets with clubs and societies from across Australia. Poets from each state and territory partnered with a broad range of clubs and societies representing Australia's diverse cultural landscape. Astronomers, hackers, stamp collectors, and crochet clubs all took poets as members of the club, who attended meetings and events to learn to speak the club's language. Poets created new poetic works based on their experiences.

• Sea Things saw four new poems commissioned from poets in Hobart, Melbourne, Brisbane and Darwin, and from secondary school students in Perth, Darwin and Thursday Island, as the project charted a seafaring odyssey up the East and West coasts of Australia - and back again via the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. The poems, carried in two duffle bags, made the journey in private, commercial and naval vessels from October to November 2009, travelling from all five ports, to Thursday Island in the Torres Strait. Along the way, members of the public, writers' groups and schools added incidental sketches, poems and literary souvenirs. A logbook was kept by the ship captains to record weather and marine sightings along the way. The bags were met on Thursday Island by the local community, and The Red Room Company was there to hold a school poetry workshop and to film the reception. Sea Things poems, the fact sheet, images and documentary can be viewed at The Red Room Company website. An official 'opening' of the duffle bag was held in Sydney in November 2009, along with a screening of documentary footage from the project. From March - June 2011, an installation of the trips 'poetic cargo' is on display in the window of the Australian Council for the Arts at 372 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, Sydney. The exhibition was arranged by Sydney visual artist Miriam Chatt.

• Sun Herald 'Extra' Poems saw emerging and established poets submit their work to The Red Room Company for publication in the 'Extra' section of the Sun Herald. In 2009 the Sun Herald asked The Red Room Company to collect poems from their archive to be featured over the summer. The focus eventually shifted to publishing writing from young and emerging Red Room collaborators.

• Stacks was The Red Room Company’s poetry-in-libraries series in 2011. A series of poetry readings and workshops for students and the general public, were held in City of Sydney Libraries, facilitated by eminent Australian poets. Each workshop made use of the collections and physical spaces unique to each library. Participants experienced "new ways to approach poetry as readers, writers and library users". On 7 April Andy Quan hosted a poetry workshop at Surry Hills Library, on 13 April Judith Bishop hosted a children's poetry workshop at Glebe Library. On 7 May Eileen Chong hosted a poetry translation workshop at Ultimo library and on 13 May Toby Fitch hosted a poetry workshop at Kings Cross Library.

• ATYP Workshops saw The Red Room Company pair with the Australian theatre for young people to teach young actors how to read poetry. The project consisted of a series of workshops between contemporary Australian poets and young actors, discussing how to read and write poetry.

• The Poet's Life Works was a series of performances and installations featuring four high-impact Australian poets. Showcasing a different poet each month, the project presented four events in various spaces around Sydney, exploring each poet's life through objects, music and visual interpretations by four contemporary artists from Chalkhorse Gallery. The series was launched by Queensland poet, MTC Cronin who also delivered the 2009 minislec at the Sydney Writers' Festival. In June, the project delved into the deep, ironic, angry, laconic and spirited poetry of Tasmanian poet, Tim Thorne. Internationally recognised poet, critic, philosopher and theologian, Kevin Hart, inspired the third event held at St James Church, Sydney, in July. Hart spoke about the place of faith in his life's work, the theme and exploration of death through poetry, and the choice of lyricism over politics. The fourth and final event in the series celebrated the life of Murri poet and activist Lionel Fogarty. Fogarty is a leading spokesman for Indigenous rights in Australia, particularly deaths in custody following the death of his brother, Daniel Yock, at the hands of police in 1993.

• Dust Poems explored the words of truckies and their experiences of the road, showcasing the language that carries truckies’ unique perspectives on Australian life (and death), landscapes, foibles, practices, fauna, flora and humanity. At the same time, the project paid tribute to the men, women, families and animals who ply the highways and byways of this vast and awesome nation and help keep the country running. The project commissioned three truck-driving poets David J. Delaney, Mick O'Brien, Olivia Richardson and three professional poets, Brendan Ryan, Lindsay Tuggle, Judith Bishop who work in non-trucking industries. These poems were exhibited in interactive ways at Sydney Olympic Park from March to June 2009.

• Red Room Radio was an in-studio series, where individual poets were commissioned to write a poem for community radio broadcast and online access, as integrated podcasts. Each session profiled new and established poets, or individuals who work with or have interesting views on poetry, such as readers, publishers, filmmakers, farmers and scholars, and was followed by an informal chat with the live audience.

• Nightwriting drew attention to poetry as an art that requires few external materials to exist; it encouraged people to use all their senses to explore poetic language. The project featured Mike Ladd, Lachlan Brown and Esther Ottoway with British poet, Jacob Polley delivering the mineslec. The poem-pod installation, designed by Camilla Lawson – was a trio of walk-in booths fitted with audio Braille and tactile alphabet versions of an original poem. The project premiered at the 2008 Sydney Writers' Festival and later toured to the 2008 Tasmanian Writers' Festival.

• Sustainable Sydney, a partnership with the City of Sydney council, and Art and About. Eight poets ran workshops in schools in inner Sydney, collecting the words and visions of students about Sydney in 2030. They then used these to write five-line poems, illustrated with the students’ images, and displayed on public buildings in Sydney.

• Occasional Poetry, an installation of poems, dressmakers dummies, and related costumes at the 2007 Sydney Writers' Festival. Writing about fashion, the slogan, and dressing for an occasion were Australian poets Claire Potter, Adam Aitken and Greg McLaren. Drawing on the disguises and wit of Gwen Harwood, the project muse, poet and editor Pam Brown also delivered the mineslec at the project launch, and online.

• The Poetry Picture Show, a series of poems on the theme of film and the moving picture. These were accompanied by filmic interpretations of the poem, directed by Johanna Featherstone, and a project blog, all of which are hosted on the Red Room website. The poems were written by John Tranter, Nathan Shepherdson, JS Harry, David Prater, Emma Jones, Ivy Alvarez, Kate Lilley, Briohny Doyle, Felicity Plunkett and SJ Holland-Batt.

• The Cabinet of Lost and Found, an installation of poems, and the personal objects that inspired them at the 2006 Sydney Writers' Festival. The featured poets, Ella Holcombe, Emily Ballou, Alicia Sometimes, Luke Icarus Simon and Ben Michell.

• The Wordshed, a series of six half-hour television programmes, about all kinds of writers, reading and creative processes. The Wordshed was broadcast on Television Sydney in collaboration with the University of Western Sydney’s Writing and Society Research Group. Featured writers included David Malouf, Delia Falconer, Sonya Hartnett, Catherine Rey, Brian Castro, Luke Davies, John Tranter, Christos Tsiolkas, Peter Goldsworthy, Anna Kerdijk Nicholson, Jane Gibian, Ivor Indyk, Ashley Hay and Samuel Wagan Watson.

• Poetry Crimes, new Australian poems on the theme of crime and justice. This project, launched at The Justice and Police Museum, featured poems and interviews with poets Jennifer Maiden, Jaya Savige, Ian C Smith, Alan Wearne, Jennifer Compton, Justin Lowe, Brenda Saunders, Chris Edwards, Kate Middleton, Ian McBryde and A Frances Johnson.

• Toilet Doors Poetry, a series of illustrated poem posters for display on the backs of public toilet doors. This public space project, featuring the work of emerging writers, aimed to put poetry back into public life and public places, and ran in 2004 and 2006. In 2004, poets included Bonny Cassidy, Gerard Elson, Elena Knox, Fiona Wright, Jonathan Jaques and Michael Brennan. In 2006, the posters featured Elizabeth Allen, Andrew Slattery, Keri Glastonbury, Lisa Gorton, Liam Ferney and Ed Wright. Through a partnership with The Letter Corporation, the 2006 poem posters were displayed in Greater Union cinemas and Qantas domestic terminals across Australia. This project also included the first mineslec, a poetic public address, delivered by Bronwyn Lea. Toilet Door Poetry has been partially funded by the Australia Council.

• Fingerprints, a collection of hand-written poems and poet portraits, exhibited at the Sydney Writers' Festival in 2004. Participants included David Malouf, Jordie Albiston, John Clarke, Mia Dyson, Lucy Holt, and Annaliese Porter, with artworks by Tonnee Messiah.