A Night by the Fire with Sam Wagan-Watson

On Tuesday, 3rd March at 6.30pm we will be visited by the deadly Samuel Wagan-Watson;  a Brisbane poet of Munanjali, Birri Gubba, German and Irish descent who has long been a contributor to the writing landscape of Queensland and Australia.

His bio is impressive and inspirational, with ventures into the published world but also stage and radio - no boundaries for this deadly brother!

But in short - 

• Samuel Wagan-Watson was the winner of the 1999 David Unaipon award for emerging Indigenous writers for his first poetry collection Of Muse, Meandering and Midnight.
• He has written four more collections: Itinerant Blues, Hotel Bone, Smoke Encrypted Whispers  and The Curse Words.
• He has also written an opera—die dunkle Erde (The Dark Earth), the story of a German vampire who gets a taste for Aboriginal Dreaming
• His poetry has been adapted for animation with the support of the Australian Film Commission.
• In 2005 he was briefly the poet-in-residence for ABC TV’s ‘Sunday Arts’
• In 2007 he was an artist-in-residence for the Indonesian ‘Utan Kayu’ Literary Biennale, where his work was translated for audiences in Jakarta and central Java.
• In 2007, he made his debut as a vocalist/performer alongside the Northern Territory artist and musician Leah Flanagan at the Newcastle National Young Writers’ Festival.
• He was commissioned by the Japanese Aeronautical Exploration Agency to develop haiku for the pleasure of astronauts living and working on the orbiting International Space Platform.

For those who have never read any of Sam's work, it will be a wonderful night of story, prose, lyrical waxing and stories by the fire. If you are super keen, you can purchase Sam's work via University of Queensland Press  and bring it along.

One interesting project he was involved in as a writer was as part of ABC Radio Nationals Poetica ' On the Road' series.  Its a really interesting way of creating stories with poetry and conversation and a fascinating insight into the minds of creative people! You can check out the transcript or download the recording here: ABC Radio Nationals Poetica

This event is part of the A night by the fire with Aboriginal storytellers event series.