The boxer and the wrestler I taught a boxer English No bruiser, he was deft In year nine at high school he enjoyed respect A wrestler in the same class fell to wrangling words For his trouble he got lumped in with the nerds The boxer had a girlfriend knew how to manage him The […]
POET’S DREAM Night releases ideas Held captive by daylight Throwing down lines Stimulating nightmares Altered states Memorise: repeat, repeat, repeat Elusive phrases Recaptured at dawn – Julie Moran Julie finds inspiration within the minutiae of life: the mundane, the humorous and quirky find their way into her poetry. She enjoys open mic and poetry slams, […]
A circle, complete A man – Like all men – Of clay; and his world The slow, slow kiln From which Now He has emerged, complete, His perfected, shining, final face The one true ideogram, The whole story Of a life Lived now, now, in this great Only-ever We all share, with all its freightage […]
Words from friend Maia Irell “This beautiful man, Petrus Spronk meant so much to all of us together and apart. As Tina (Banitska) said, we’ve lost the patriarch of our town. Friend, son, father, uncle, brother, beloved artist, thinker, disciplined Do-er. Ceramic bowls, casts of pears, of rabbits, mud balls, sand sculptures, mirrors of birds […]
The Words in Winter name carries a unique resonance across the Central Highlands, representing a trio of distinct festivals. While the Central Goldfields festival in Maryborough celebrates in May, the Daylesford and Hepburn Springs festival and the Trentham festival wait for the chill of August. The shared roots of 2002 Words in Winter began in […]
As part of the Words in Winter festival in Daylesford, Australian poets with a passion for the natural world are invited to enter the 2026 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize, offering a $1000 major prize for unpublished work. The prize honours Venie Holmgren, who began writing poetry in her late 50s and went on to […]
trip a wheelie suitcase carried by its handle one wheel wiggles they come for cezanne and art’s heavy hitters still life in aix balance at the calder exhibit a one-legged woman bip bip BIP BIP BIP BIP too close to art distant squarks lasso the summer sky thirsty seagulls all quiet in montparnasse cemetery a […]
Words in Winter has appointed Aunty Alison McRae – a Dja Dja Wurrung, Gunditjmara and Yorta Yorta Elder and leader – as its inaugural Cultural Advisor. The friendship between festival producer Devon Taylor and Aunty Alison began at Paradise Bookshop in Daylesford. That connection has now deepened into a formal role that will see Aunty […]
