In October, Cairns Tropical Writers Festival as part of its year-round program of events welcomes renowned poet, performer and festival director from the UK, Chrys Salt MBE, who is in Australia as the international poet at this year’s Tasmanian Poetry Festival.
Then in November, Professor Craig Batty is coming to Cairns, with a one-day professional-development workshop for screenwriters and filmmakers.
SPICY SUNDOWNER WITH CHRYS SALT MBE
Join us for a compelling poetry performance with UK poet Chrys Salt MBE in the late afternoon at sundown, 5.30-7.30pm on Friday 11 October 2019 at Rydges Esplanade. Drinks, canapés and networking on arrival will be followed by the spoken word poetry, Q&A and book signings.
Chrys’s performance will be from her 2017 publication, The Punkawallah’s Rope, to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of the Partition of India. This book was her response as a visiting writer from the ex-colonial power to the overwhelming first experience of India following her readings in India in 2016 at the Kolkata Book Fair.
The Punkawallah’s Rope is a sequenced performance from the book that will be preceded by readings from some of our local poets.
WRITING AND PERFORMING WORKSHOP
The following day Chrys will give a one-day workshop from 10.00am – 4.30pm at the Cairns Botanic Gardens Visitors Centre to support local writers to go ‘from empty page to mic and stage’.
The morning will be devoted to getting new work written, in Chrys’s words, ‘Don’t get it right, get it written’.
This promises to be an exhilarating journey into the imagination by using a series of writing exercises to weave words together as ripples on the surface of a deeper idea.
The afternoon’s focus will be on how to present or ‘perform’ your work for an audience. While this won’t teach acting in an afternoon, drawing on Chrys’s theatre background, she can pass on quite a few ‘tricks of the trade’.
DEVELOPING A TV OR WEB SERIES WITH CRAIG BATTY
This one-day workshop on Saturday 16 November will explore two of the fundamental aspects of creating a TV or web series – world and character. Aimed at authors thinking about the screen, or emerging and practising screenwriters who want to advance their skills in developing concepts and deepening their understanding of script development, this workshop will delve into the relationship between world and character, and how this informs themes and storylines.
Professor Craig Batty has mentored many new, emerging and practising writers in the UK and Australia for over 15 years. He is an award-winning author, educator and researcher in screenwriting and script development and the author and editor of 12 books on writing for the screen.
This workshop is a partnership between Queensland Writers Centre, Central Queensland University and Cairns Tropical Writers Festival.
All bookings via Eventbrite or for queries, contact 0437 366 651 or program@cairnstropicalwritersfestival.com
