In my braided essay, Bodies of Water, I blend together three elements of water - swimming, Charles Darwin’s water cures, and the life of classical guitar maestro, Andres Segovia, who used a body of water as a resonator to bring a particular volume and sheen to his mysterious sound.

But there are many other approaches to living with pain and disability represented here.

If you’d like to order a copy, please jump over to the Westords Books page.

If you’re in Newcastle. we’d love you to join us as we launch this project, which has taken many years to develop.

Newcastle Writers Festival

Thank you for being here. A small number of How to Read A City, Your Place of Last Resort pre-sales are now available.

In Person Events click here.

In Person Purchase

Otherwise, please head to the 5 Islands Press store to place your order and it will be posted to you. I’m so grateful to you for supporting independent publishing!

Order from 5 Islands Press

To listen to Acacia Quartet perform Richard Lawson’s song cycle for string quartet which accompanies this work, please click here.

Lisen to Richard Lawson Song Cycle

Join us on 26th March for a night of new poetry at the very first pre-launch reading of Elizabeth Walton’s debut short collection, How To Read A City, Your Place of Last Resort, which will be published by 5 Islands Press in 2026. Elizabeth Walton is a writer and musician who has been shortlisted in many literary prizes. This new work asks where to find hope while living through the challenges of climate change. It is a collaboration with Richard Lawson - a triple ARIA-nominated punk rock drummer who was the first drummer to appear on ABC’s Rage, performing with the Lime Spiders. His song cycle for string quartet, How To Read A City, Your Place of Last Resort, performed by Acacia Quartet, was included in the ABC Limelight Australian Art Music playlist in 2025. Elizabeth’s poetry reading with Acacia at the world premiere is featured on the cover of her new book.

Joining us at Mad Poet, Newcastle will be two very special guests, Susan Francis and Jodi Vial. Find out all the details: Info and Bookings

Like Casey, cover artist Anthony Quinn is an Irishman living in Sydney—a city founded on the unceded land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. In a striking pen and ink rendering, Quinn presents a mythical dead crow which, in its quietest hour, is asked to carry the national sorrow of An Gorta Mór (The Great Irish Famine) whose peak years lasted from “1845 until 1849” (p125). As the crow’s lifeless wings are wrapped around its decaying body in a bleak burial blanket, a stippled beak renders the bird incapable of continuing to sing or cry “Cá, cá, cá—” (p29). Like the children of the famine softly calling for their mothers, the bird eventually falls silent.

Launched during “Samhain” (p103) on the 180th anniversary of the Great Irish Famine, this work sings to the spirit of the famine refugees so that those who have never experienced hunger may recognise its significance. As the Irish saying in the epigraph reminds us, “A well-fed person doesn’t understand a hungering one” (p6).

Read my full review at Compulsive Reader:

Seang (Hungering) by Anne Casey

​FROM THE ARCHIVE

Summarise

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A flouro-tinged dismantling of the conquering colonial.

29 Nov 2021 13:08

Flouro isn’t bright by coincidence – it’s a chemical reality. It is caused when ultraviolet light creates a longer wavelength that enhances our experience of colour. Joan Ross uses the universal colour that screams watch out! to raise the alarm of our times.

In her first solo exhibition at N.Smith Gallery, Ross’ monochrome palette of fluoro-yellow is painted over quaint colonial watercolours. Her technique challenges the assertion that it’s ok for a bunch of blokes in European boats to rock up somewhere on the beach, plant a flag, then set about removing pretty much everything.

Ross uses the Instagram handle: @Wecallthisatree, suggesting that oxygen makers will be relics of the past in the not-too-distant future. She has created a robot bird learning how to fly by watching a bird in a ‘habitat tree’ – an industrial euphemism for ‘sustainable’ logging practices still allowed today.

We discover her as Colonial Woman, looking at the systematic destruction of all that we love, through the arrogance of the conquering colonial.

Indeed, men have recently been getting their ‘colony’ on all over again, as Elon Musk and his mates dance towards the final frontier as Star Wars wannabees. Ross’ recent response, ‘Houston, we have a problem’ (2021), invites nature to ask those men to turn their attentions to the problems here on earth.

Exhibition review: Matisse Life & Spirit

Her message calls for a hi-vis reality check. In many ways, this exhibition is the artful equivalent to Bri Lee’s Who Gets To Be Smart, which also examines entitlement, and how First Nations voices are excluded from Australian identity.

In ‘Land of the broken hearted’ (2021), a woman holds the living branch of a dead tree in front of a landscape where there are no trees. We know trees were there, because Ross’ character stands among the stumps.

Though whimsical in her interpretation, flooding her maidens with their immortalising flush, the Vinegar Hill background is of a land, a place, a people and a culture, all erased. It is enough to make the viewer weep at this body of work that asks what have we done in our desire for the instant everything?

The works are presented as postcards with new messages that change the narrative of accepted historical perspectives. The bareness of the landscape mimics the bareness of the fluoro, until all that vivid colour lies flat and lifeless.

‘The Lake of sadness’ (2021) responds to the drowning of Lake Pedder, which, like flooded landscapes everywhere, leaves only lifeless limbs to stand as witness. Ross casually fills her waterways with fluoro ink, like a radioactive sludge, that claims everything in its wake.

Though colonials started the problem, the artist says everything we do is continuing it – a sentiment worth contemplating when one is in an IKEA queue, reaching for a fluoro bag to fill.

This exhibition presents a timely response to the intersection of love and greed, insensitivity to nature and Indigenous presence. It comes at a moment in history when Ben Boyd’s name is being removed from national parks, and statues of men once celebrated for their pioneering prowess are coming down. Ultimately, it is a stark reminder that dead birds cannot sing.

Joan Ross: I like to name everything after myself
N.Smith Gallery
6 Napier Street, Paddington, NSW
Free entry

Joan Ross is on display until 11 December 2021.

Elizabeth Walton is a freelance writer and musician. Her words and music have appeared in The Weekend Australian, Oz Arts and ABC Radio and internationally.

Insta:@elizabethwalton.au

https://www.nsmithgallery.com/press/72-exhibition-review-i-like-to-name-everything-after/

https://www.artshub.com.au/news/reviews/exhibition-review-joan-ross-n-smith-gallery-2515437/

Band life. The long road. Thirsting for sound

for a stage, for dust and kimchi,

a conga line for a curry, for rice, a papadam,

a singer, a sound, a dance or two.

The long salt stretch down the Princes Hwy No 1

sea dawns dip dry coffee beer hear

me calling you, yes I’m calling

you, the road, she calls and I’m

all over you.

The Beatmeisters are a hot funk-fusion band from the south coast of New South Wales. Led by Damian Stirling, the band played Murrah Hall in February 2026, along with a few other bands.

As a multimodal artist, I have many projects on the go.

What you’ll find here

• Essays
  Long-form writing addressing literature, culture, sound, and related fields.

• Notes
  Shorter reflections, drafts, and working material.

• Longer projects
  Ongoing work developed across multiple pieces, including book-length writing.

I think I may have just sold my work to the weirdest little publication @netherworldarcade. Merch includes cash, a badge, a coin and a gift voucher, but be warned the terms are as irretractable as a last drinks offer from a Californian Hotel:

BY TAKING THIS COIN AND USING THIS CURSED CURRENCY TO THE VALUE OF $50.00 - IN THE DEPTHS OF THE NETHERWORLD, I HEREBY SELL MY SOUL TO ITS DENIZENS FOR ALL ETERNITY

DATE: 45/49/25
NO: NWDIGEST 413434353453456

Join us for the world premiere live performance.

Venue: Four Winds

Location: Burraga Bay, near Bermagui

When: 3pm on 30th August 2025

How to Read A City, Your Place of Last Resort, is an immersive literary and listening experience.

Acacia String Quartet will present the world premiere live performance of Richard Lawson’s classical song cycle, which featured in ABC Limelight Magazine’s Australian Art Music Playlist in 2025 and received airplay on ABC ClassicFM. The work is paired with Elizabeth Walton’s poetry, which was listed in the Tom Collins Poetry prize and the June Shenfield poetry prize, in a performance which brings together words and music in a rare convergence of the senses.

This collaborative work explores the beauty and sadness of the times we live in, building a sense of hope for the future which inviting audiences to experience the ephemeral magic of poetry and classical music.

The performance will present a mosaic of listening and responding in conversation with one of the South Coast’s favourite interviewers, ABC South East’s Eddie Williams, sharing insights into the creative process behind this deeply moving new work.

Book Now

Elizabeth Walton is launching her bespoke/rare object limited edition poetry pamphlet featuring works from her illustrated poetry cycle, "How To Read A City, Your Place of Last Resort" at Buck Mulligans Whisky Bar and Bookstore.

How To Read a City is a collaboration with ex-Lime Spiders punk rock drummer, Richard Lawson, who has written a suite for string quartet in respocollaboration with Elizabeth's work. The works explore heartbreak, and the gentle art of eating flowers in a world gripped by catastrophic decline.

This intimate event will feature a soundscape and poetry reading and a pre-release listening room experience featuring Lawson's string quartet recorded by the renowned Acacia Quartet.

Book Now Free Entry

4pm Thursday 21 Nov 2024

Buck Mulligan's 217 High St, Northcote VIC Enquiries 0447 036 783

Listen to On Love Lost Days by Richard Lawson

Order your copy of Anti AI Aesthetic poetry pamphlet - Bespoke printed pamphlet or eBook

This project was made possible by the Australian Government Regional Arts Fund, which supports the arts in regional and remote Australia.

"7 Breaths, a pavane for a dying planet" is an evocative poetry cycle by Elizabeth Walton, who performs the poetry accompanied by original incidental music. Based on iNaturalist poems, the cycle

concentrates on modified expressions of C# and the ways this note is expressed in language through sound waves.

Tickets https://redroompoetry.org/events/elizabeth-walton-7-breaths-poetry-piano-performance-guests/