News & Events
Latest News
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JMCCCP/UoTaA Internship Exchange The J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice congratulates graduate student Anushka Jasraj, from the University of Texas at Austin, for her selection as the first J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice/University of Texas at Austin Intern. This internship is part of a projected program of future exchanges between the University of Texas and the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice. The period of the internship runs from 15 June to 15 July 2013. |
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JMCCCP Small Grants Scheme 2013 The J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice congratulates the following successful recipients of the JMCCCP grants:
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November 2014 A world-experts symposium on the work of J.M. Coetzee, to honour the achievement of J.M. Coetzee and to research the impact of his work on a range of scholars and creative practitioners. This symposium will be hosted by the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide, and be leading up to further events and exhibitions to celebrate the 75th birthday of J.M. Coetzee in 2015. Papers from the symposium will be published in 2015 to mark this occasion. |
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Past Events
2013
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ROMANTIC AND REVOLUTIONARY - TURNER IN MUSIC Following their acclaimed performance in 2012 in association with the Fred Williams Retrospective, the Australian String Quartet and pianist-composer Stephen Whittington collaborate again to explore themes in the work of the great British painter J.M.W. Turner through a unique program of music. The program includes the premiere of a new work for string quartet and piano by Stephen Whittington, ‘The Fallacies of Hope,' in the form of a Barcarolle, or Venetian gondola song. The title comes from a poem of the same name written by Turner (never finished, or now mostly lost), quotes from which he attached to several of his paintings. The Australian String Quartet will play the 'Sunrise' Quartet by Haydn (a composer much loved in England) - complementing the marvelous effects of light captured by Turner. Also on the program: a nocturne by John Field, the originator of 'Romantic vagueness' in music as Turner was in painting, a Venetian Gondola Song by Mendelssohn - another composer much loved in England; a work by Liszt ('Valley of Obermann') from his 'Years of Pilgrimage', a musical diary of his own 'Grand Tour' and a powerful musical evocation of the Romantic Sublime; and exquisite miniatures (Nocturnes and a Barcarolle) by contemporary English composer Howard Skempton. Hear Stephen Whittington playing 'Fallacy of Hope' at the Art Gallery of South Australia Radford Auditorium, Art Gallery of South Australia |
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Asteroid named after J.M. Coetzee For more information on this asteroid and its orbit, click here. |
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'Ruskin's View' - Professor Brian Castro In a relaxed forum, explore this support in the context of contemporary writing and criticism. By John Neylon, arts writer and curator, and Professor Brian Castro, writer and Chair Creative Writing, University of Adelaide, and Director of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice. For 'The Turner Ekphrasis', Brian Castro's response to Turner, click here |
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China Australia Literary Forum and Literature and Criticism Seminar The second China Australia Literary Forum took place in Beijing on 2-3 April 2013, at the National Museum for Modern Chinese Literature of Beijing. It followed on from the success of the inaugural China Australia Literary Forum event held in Sydney, Australia in 2011. The program was co-hosted by the Chinese Writers Association, The JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice [Adelaide University], the Writing and Society Research Centre [University of Western Sydney], and the Australian Embassy in Beijing. This high profile literary exchange featured two Nobel Laureates - J.M. Coetzee [2003] and Mo Yan [2012], who formed part of a delegation of eight Australian and eight Chinese authors. They joined other attending academics, editors, publishers and members of the literary community. The program also included a one-day Literature and Criticism roundtable seminar at the Australian Embassy in Beijing, which brought together academics from University of Adelaide, University of Western Sydney, and international colleagues from The University of East Anglia, the British Centre for Literary Translation, and Chinese participants from the Universities in China, as well as publishing houses and journals. Visit the China Australia Literary Forum page for more information. |
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Street to Street longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award Professor Brian Castro's novel Street to Street [Giramondo 2012] has been longlisted for the prestigious 2013 Miles Franklin Literary Award. The Miles Franklin Award is Australia's premier literary prize, awarded to the novel of the year considered to be of 'the highest literary merit and which must present Australian life in any of its phases'. Previously shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award were Castro's The Bath Fugues [Giromondo 2009] and The Garden Book [Giromondo 2006]. Professor Castro is Director of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, and Chair of Creative Writing at Adelaide University. The 2013 Miles Franklin Literary Award winner will be announced in June.
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The Lear Effect: Equivocation and Torture in Times of Crisis.' Susan Sage Heinzelman [The University of Texas at Austin] Friday, 8 March 2013 Reading King Lear in an historical context that foregrounds the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, this talk will suggest how the concept of 'equivocation' operates as both a rhetorical and political way to manage torture and truth Susan Sage Heinzelman is Director, Center for Women's and Gender Studies, University of Texas at Austin. Her most recent book is Riding the Black Ram: Law, Literature, and Gender. The Cultural Lives of the Law. Series editor: Austin Sarat. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. Recent work includes: Teaching Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature: The Adventures of Rivella (1714) by Delarivier Manley (1672-1724) and Imagining the Law: The Novel.Law and the Humanities: An Introduction. Eds. Austin Sarat, Matthew Anderson, and Catherine O. Frank. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
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"The Grail of Origin": Translation and Originality.' Kurt Heinzelman [The University of Texas at Austin] Friday, 1 March 2013 Ever since the idea of originality in poetic composition underwent a sea-change in the middle of the 18th century, the way we evaluate translation has borne the burden of that change, with confusing results. This radical transformation of originality-this 'translation' of the term-is one of the great shifts of aesthetic value in the history of human creativity. But translations, of course, are always belated; they always come after an original. What chance does a translation have of attaining value when what is most valorised is originality? How we assess the value of poetic translations is the subject of this talk. Kurt Heinzelman is Founding Co-Editor of The Poetry Miscellany and is currently the Advisory Editor of Bat City Review. He has been publishing poetry for thirty years in such journals as Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, Marlboro Review, and Southwest Review. His scholarship, which has won various awards, is in the fields of British Romanticism and economic and cultural history. He is Editor-in-Chief of Texas Studies in Literature and Language. He teaches in the Department of English and the Michener Centre for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.
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2012
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FORME UNICHE DELLA CONTINUITÀ NELLO SPAZIO INTERNATIONAL COMPOSITION COMPETITION AND WORKSHOP ADELAIDE Executive directors: To celebrate the 2012 Week of Italian Language throughout the World, the Italian Institute of Culture, Melbourne, in collaboration with The Elder Conservatorium of Music University of Adelaide, The National Conservatory "Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina " of Cagliari, The INA-GRM of Paris, The J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, Soundstream New Music Collective, The Taukay Edizioni Musicali, and The Jeunesses Musicales Italy Modena Section, will sponsor an international competition and workshop for composers. The title of the competition, FORME UNICHE DELLA CONTINUIT NELLO SPAZIO - or Unique Forms of Continuity in Space - is derived from the famous sculpture by Italian futurist artist Umberto Boccioni. This international composition competition and workshop is an opportunity for composers to express the originality of their musical ideas and aims to contribute to the creation of a large and eclectic body of art works, with rich implications in the relationship between music and poetry. Finalists of FORME UNICHE 2012: Ewan Campbell (United Kingdom); Matteo Casula (Italy) Enquiries: formeuniche@me.com |
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'Nights at the Musicircus': John Cage & Angela Carter in Bath - A Symposium Friday, 26 October, 3pm-5pm EMU Space Musicircus is American composer John Cage's method for translating text into musical performance. At this year's Bath Festival, Angela Carter's brilliant novel Nights at the Circus was adapted for Musicircus by Steve May and James Saunders as part of the Cage centenary celebrations. John Cage (1912-1992 ) was a person of many parts-composer, writer, poet, visual artist, gourmet cook, mushroom expert-and is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Cage performed at the 1976 Adelaide Festival, polarising opinions at the time. Angela Carter (1940-92) was one of the most original fiction writers of recent decades. She was writer-in-residence at The University of Adelaide in 1984. At this special ‘Words and Music' event, a screening of part of the Bath Musicircus performance will be followed by a panel discussion with composer and performer Stephen Whittington, Rosemary Moore (who knew Carter in Adelaide and London), and Maggie Tonkin, author of Angela Carter and Decadence (2012), with James Saunders and Steve May online from Bath. Chaired by Nicholas Jose. ‘A wonderful celebration of gentle, burbling anarchy' |
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‘Not Quite Feature Length: The unacknowledged skill of writing and making short film': David O'Brien Creative Writing Seminar Just a few years ago you needed hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a movie. Today you need maybe ten thousand and, of course, plenty of determination. This seminar is about film that is not quite feature length. Technology has made short-form moviemaking accessible to almost everyone. It is a much-maligned art form swamping YouTube with dross on every subject. It is used by filmmakers for an entry into industry. It's almost impossible to make any money from short film. But the form is rising and deserves the change it's getting in attitude and approach by writers and filmmakers. In this seminar, David O'Brien will look at it's potted history and what it's future might be. He will touch on ways to achieve quality in short movies; how to write and make a short film that stands out from the relentless and soaring heap of ‘awful'. And he'll discuss: 'What's so great about ninety minutes?' David O'Brien is a screenwriter, director, journalist, script editor and playwright with thirty years experience in film and television. His screen credits include an episodes of POLICE RESCUE, the $4.2 million feature film SHOTGUN WEDDING, over twenty documentaries as well as numerous corporate, training and educational films. His short film SWAT was awarded Best Film and Screenplay at the 1999 Brekfest Awards. David was a television journalist for fifteen years before setting up his freelance screenwriting business in the early eighties. |
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Infinite Horizons of Sound In conjunction with the exhibition 'Infinite Horizons'- a major retrospective of the work of one of Australia's greatest painters, Fred Williams - the Australian String Quartet will present a fascinating concert of Australian music that reflects the landscape that inspired Williams' iconic paintings. This is a unique opportunity to hear the Australian String Quartet, one of Australia's finest ensembles, in a program that includes Richard Meale's elegaic 'Cantilena Pacifica', Peter Sculthorpe's evocative Quartet No.11 'Jabiru Dreaming', Stephen Whittington's minimalist classic 'Windmill', and the world premiere of 'Distant Front' for quartet and computer by Luke Harrald. Relax after the concert with a free glass of wine and meet the quartet and composers Stephen Whittington and Luke Harrald. Admission: $45; $35 Art Gallery & ASQ Members and concession. With concert admission you can also see the Fred Williams exhibition at a discount price of $10. Jointly presented by The Art Gallery of South Australia, the Australian String Quartet, and the J.M.Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide. |
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J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice and Wild Dingo Press present: I CONFESS: Revelations in Exile Dr Kooshyar Karimi in conversation with Prof. Brian Castro & Prof. Riaz Esmailzadeh Friday, 21 September 2012, 6pm-7.30pm Refreshments thereafter Ira Raymond Room Barr Smith Library In 1998, Kooshyar Karimi - a father, doctor, writer and translator - was kidnapped from the streets of his native Iran, blindfolded and tortured. His sin was his Jewishness and the fact that he helped desperate girls and women who had been raped by terminating their resulting pregnancies. When he is eventually released, it is only as a spy for the Islamic Secret Service. Certain torture and death stalked him on a daily basis, and Karimi realised that if he did not escape, he would soon be executed. In 2000, Karimi managed to flee with his wife and children to Istanbul, where they spent 13 long months of dread and secrecy hiding in a tiny basement deep below an apartment block, until he and his family were granted political refugee visas to Australia by the UNHCR. Doctor Karimi is now an Australian citizen and a Sydney-based physician. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, a member of the Australian Society of Cosmetic Medicine, and member of the Skin Cancer Society of Australia and New Zealand. He practises medicine full-time, and writes in his spare time. Professor Brian Castro is an Australian novelist, essayist, and teacher. He is the author of nine novels, as well as a body of essays on literary topics, and has won several state and national awards, including The National Book Council Prize for Fiction, and several state Premier's Awards. He is currently Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, and co-director of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice. Professor Riaz Esmailzadeh began his studies at Shiraz University in Iran in 1979, just after the Islamic Revolution, but was expelled because of his Baha'i faith. He fled in 1983 to Pakistan and then to Australia, and arrived in Adelaide as a refugee. He is Associate Teaching Professor of Management and Technology at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College. |
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JOHN CAGE DAY September 5, 2012 Elder Hall University of Adelaide 12 noon - 10pm Wednesday, September 5, 2012 is the centenary of the birth of John Cage (1912-1992), one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Composer, performer, writer, visual artist, philosopher - the scope of Cage's activities was immense, and his impact on the arts immeasurable. To celebrate this important anniversary, Wednesday, September 5, 2012 will be John Cage Day at Elder Hall, University of Adelaide. From 12 noon until 8pm, composer and performer Stephen Whittington will perform ASLSP (As Slow aS Possible) on the Elder Hall organ. Audiences are free to come and go as they please during this performance. At 8pm a 'concert' ('Musicircus') will begin, featuring performances of seminal works of John Cage including Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Aria,Theatre Pieces, Cheap Imitation and more. Included are works that John Cage himself performed at the 1976 Adelaide Festival, in a performance that polar opinions at the time. An associated exhibition of scores and other works by John Cage will be on display in the Special Collections of the Barr Smith Library during the month of September. Admission is free to all events. John Cage Day 2012 is a project of the Elder Conservatorium of Music and the J.M.Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice. |
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Antjie Krog - Public Reading and Seminar Public Reading Skinned From a poetry volume to be published in the U.S. next year. Thursday, 26 July 2012 - 6pm-6.45pm Refreshments thereafter Ira Raymond Room Barr Smith Library University of Adelaide All Welcome (Free admission) Seminar Creative non-fiction: a conversation All writing is in a way fiction. Why would a writer then choose to write non-fiction? What are the moral questions when writing suggests that it is 'closer to the truth'? Friday, 27 July 2012 - 3pm-5pm Room 618 Napier Building University of Adelaide All Welcome (Free admission) Internationally acclaimed South African writer, journalist and poet Antjie Krog (Extraordinary Professor, University of the Western Cape, South Africa) has written sixteen volumes of poetry (including three for children). With her team from the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Antjie Krog received the South African Pringle Award for excellence in journalism for their reporting on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and she herself won the Foreign Correspondent's Award for outstanding journalism for her Mail & Guardian articles on the TRC. From her experiences as a TRC radio broadcaster and as a South African deeply affected by the Commission's hearings, Krog published Country Of My Skull in 1998, which was adapted for film in 2004, under the title In My Country. She has since published two other books of creative non-fiction, A Change of Tongue (2003) and Begging To Be Black (2009). She has also translated the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom into Afrikaans (2007). Krog's works have been translated into English, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish, Swedish and Serbian. Her book Country Of My Skull is being widely prescribed at universities in America and Europe as part of the curricula dealing with writing about the past. Krog has been awarded most of the prestigious South African awards for non-fiction, translation and poetry available in Afrikaans and English, and also received an award from the Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture for the year 2000, and the Open Society Prize from the Central European University (Budapest). |
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The Paradox of Melancholia: Paralysis and Agency The Paradox of Melancholia |
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Passages - an exhibition by Brian Castro, Khai Liew & John Young The three artists in Passages inhabit a similar cultural space shaped by the Asian Diaspora, which emerges in varying degrees through their individual disciplines of literature, design and visual art. Their common Asian reference informs each artist's engagement with modernism to develop an aesthetic particular to Australia. This wonderful confluence of ideas and experiences enables fresh dialogues and dynamic correspondences to emerge and be exchanged between their different art forms. |
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The path to a new Australian opera - an open lecture by Brett Dean Monday, 7 May 2012 - 7pm Hartley Concert Room [enter from Kintore Avenue] University of Adelaide Internationally acclaimed composer Brett Dean's first full-length opera Bliss, based on the novel by Peter Carey, was premiered recently in a highly-acclaimed production by Opera Australia which was described by The Australian newspaper as 'a success in every way'. In this open lecture, Brett will discuss the process of transforming Peter Cary's novel Bliss into a libretto, and finally into an opera. Extracts from the original Peter Carey novel will be read as part of the talk and Brett will respond to questions from the audience. Presented by Soundstream Collective, University of Adelaide JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice and the Elder Conservatorium of Music |
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Making History: Stephen Whittington and Mark Carroll are giving a public presentation as part of the City of Norwood, Payneham and St Peters Arts and Heritage programme. Percy Grainger, his music and life |
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Between Quill and Quaver - An exploration of the remarkable relationship between words and music An Elder Conservatorium Research Tuesday event Tuesday, March 13, 2012. 5:30pm-7:00pm The relationship between words and music has captivated and intrigued for centuries. In the right hands their combination creates art of great power, beauty, and subtlety. Yet interpreting the dynamics of their interplay has proved elusive. Some maintain that instrumental music is the highest expressive art form, whilst others argue that music is powerless without words. So to what extent do music and words influence each other in the collaborative process? In this stimulating presentation, Professors Graeme Koehne, Peter Goldsworthy, Michael Morley and Mark Carroll cast new light on the relationship between words and music. |
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Top row: 1] Brian Castro, J. M. Coetzee, Mark Carroll; |
J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice Launch March 8, 2012 [by invitation only] The Centre was launched by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee, and the evening featured the world premier of Graeme Koehne's and Peter Goldsworthy's complete Ringtone Cycle, performed by the Seraphim Trio and Lisa Harper-Brown [soprano], and a recital of Holderlin songs, performed by Robert MacFarlane [tenor] and Stephen Whittington [piano]. Stephen also gave a world premiere of his Nocturne for Piano, one of a set of three works inspired by Holderlin's Night Songs. The following day, a repeat performance was opened to the public at Elder Hall, as part of the Elder Lunchtime Series Brian Castro's and J. M. Coetzee's speech
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2011
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'Great Music in Great Spaces' Friday November 4, 2011 Soundstream Collective collaborated with the Australian Institute of Architects, SA Chapter, in a series highlighting the parallel creative processes of architecture and music. |
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Before Time Could Change Us: Working with Dorothy Porter Friday November 4, 2011 Paul Grabowsky, one of Australia's most distinguished artists, is a composer and a leading jazz musician. He talked of his collaboration with author Dorothy Porter to create Before Time Could Change Us - a 16-part song cycle that charts a lover's journey through joy, doubt, cynicism and loss of innocence.
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'4 X 4 Creative Writing Master Class' 4 - 8 July 2011 Over a 4-day series of Master Classes, participants had the rare opportunity to work with four outstanding and award winning writers from the United States, the former USSR and Australia. Master Practitioners were Maria Espinosa [USA], Maria Tumarkin [former USSR], Peter Goldsworthy [AUS] and Sean Williams [AUS & US].
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![Master Practitioners Maria Espinosa [USA], Maria Tumarkin [former USSR], Peter Goldsworthy [AUS] and Sean Williams [AUS & US]](/jmcoetzeecentre/images/masterclass.jpg) |
