Members Only

Members Only, 2017, Melinda Smith & Caren Florance
in association with (and available from) Recent Work Press or available from my shop
Paperback, 203 x 228, 48pp

1962: Menzies was in power, Whitlam was Deputy Leader of the Opposition, and the Cold War was in full swing. Canberra was steadily transforming from a town in a paddock to a city with a lake. This is a year in the life of the building that held all the action: Old Parliament House. One of the outcomes of a collaborative project between poet Melinda Smith and artist Caren Florance, this poetic work is an exercise in re-voicing the past and placing it in conversation with the present.

Parliament: Middle English: from Old French parlement ‘speaking’.

Other projects with Melinda: Be Spoken To (2014-15); Secret Life (2014); 1962: Be Spoken To (2014-17); and Red Language (2015-  ).

Melinda Smith won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for her fourth book of poems, Drag down to unlock or place an emergency call. Her work has appeared widely in Australia and overseas. She was Poetry Editor of the Canberra Times from 2015 to mid-2017. Her latest collection, Goodbye Cruel, was published by Pitt St Poetry in 2017.