…because he believes that dreams are fragile
and shouldn't be disturbed.

           ~ excerpt from "The Great Displaced" by Omar Musa

The Project

Poet, novelist and academic Berndt Sellheim held a free 90-minute poetry writing workshop that maps the appearing and disappearing worlds around participants.

Presented by The Red Room Company in partnership with Charles Sturt University and Cowra Library, these special, once-off workshops used language to guide participants' reflections of the changing local landscapes and environment.
The poems from this workshop will then form part of The Red Room Company’s The Disappearing 2.0 project – a digital project that maps poetry to place.

All poetic responses are published on The Disappearing.

Berndt's reflection:

...The aim here was to emphasise poetry’s relationship with song, to give a foundation for, and explanation of, the diversity in contemporary poetry, and expand the notion of the poetic beyond the kinds of models we find in ‘bush poetry’ such as A.B.Patterson or Henry Lawson, which can become dominant. I wanted participants to focus on the intensity of everyday utterances, the music present in their own speech, and the richness of the Australian vernacular...  read more »