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Did any Melbourne listees go to the poetry sessions at the Melbourne Writers' festival? I went to the "Poetry for the People?" session - Peter Porter, Dorothy Porter, Peter Goldsworthy and Les Murray talking about the relevance of poetry to people - didn't think their talks were particularly innovative or anything, and kind of begged the question. Les made some interesting points about Internet archives, print-on-demand and speaking tours, and Dorothy raised the question of whether those that write poetry actually buy it, and if not do they have a right to bemoan the poor state of Australian poetry publishing? Ooh, there was lots of discussion going on... I'm particularly fascinated by Dorothy's argument - as a practising poet I'm not sure that buying whatever poetry is on offer by the publishers is the way to reinvigorate the health of australian poetry publising. I'm not a huge fan of any of the four, though I have respect and admiration for their careers and have enjoyed poems by all four, but there's a part of me that longs for a kind of poetry that I don't see on bookstore shelves (and I do see at spoken word nights and in small self-published volumes and websites) - how does buying poetry that doesn't jive me ensure that the poetry that jives me will get a go? I buy self-published books that are rather nifty, but that message isn't getting back to the publishers, really. I'm unsure about the answer, and not 100% that my position is the most correct, but if DP and LM's books sell really well, won't the publishers just go look for more DP and LM-style books? would be nice to get some lurkers' opinions on this one too - off-list is good if you'd rather. hm. adam ford http://www.renewal.org.au/scam