Join us for an evening of contemporary Australian poetry with writers Michael Aiken, Anne Casey and Gareth Jenkins as they read from and discuss their latest publications!

Michael Aiken’s The Little Book of Sunlight and Maggots is both open- eyed and uncannily hopeful in its engagements with the tragic overlay of concrete on Country.

out of emptied cups by Anne Casey explores what it means to be human—a consciousness contained within a shell that dictates so much of what our experience of life will be.

Gareth Jenkins’ Recipes for the Disaster is a project intent on an honest, heartfelt grandeur of connection, all the while haunted by the fear that such human connection is already doomed to a shallow etching of what it might be.

6pm arrivals for 6.30pm start.

RSVP in store, by phone: 02 9262 7996, email, or via Eventbrite.

Michael Aiken is a writer living and working in Sydney, Australia. His first notable publication was as Vibewire young poet-in-residence in 2004. In 2015 his first book, A Vicious Example, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Dame Mary Gilmore Prize. He has worked as a security guard, shop assistant, television extra, telephone sales manager, musician, chicken catcher, arts reviewer, census collector, security risk assessor, freelance journalist, trades assistant, life model, community worker and labourer in concreting, bricklaying, roofing and diamond drilling. He holds degrees in English literature and international security, and minor qualifications in information technology, ornamental iron forging and thermal cutting and welding.

Originally from the west of Ireland, and living in Sydney, Anne Casey is an award-winning poet and writer. Over a 25-year career, she has worked as a journalist, magazine editor, media communications director and legal author. Anne is Senior Poetry Editor of Other Terrain and Backstory literary journals (Swinburne University, Melbourne). Her writing and poetry rank in The Irish Times newspaper’s Most-Read. She has won or been shortlisted for poetry prizes in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia. She is author of where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017, 2^nd ed 2018) and out of emptied cups (Salmon Poetry 2019).

Gareth Jenkins lives in Sydney with his wife and daughter. He has taught poetry and poetics in schools, youth centres, universities, libraries and prisons. His masters in psychology was spent measuring the brain’s frontal positive slow wave. His doctorate explored the schizophrenic writing and artmaking of Anthony Mannix. He is the editor of The Toy of the Spirit (forthcoming in 2019 with Puncher and Wattmann), the first book-length publication of Anthony’s collected writings. Gareth’s poetry and theoretical work has been widely published.  His poetry-film collaborations regularly screen at festivals around the world. He makes and exhibits text-based art at Square One Studios. More of his work can be found on his site: apothecaryarchive.com