The 2011 Buddha Birth Day Festival is being held in Brisbane this weekend, so if you are venturing out on this gorgeous Sunday, come on down to Brew and get your fix of SpeedPoets, then slip over to Southbank to take in the festival’s closing ceremony which starts at 5:30pm.
To celebrate, I will be reading from the work of Phillip Whalen at SpeedPoets today. Whalen was a Zen Buddhist and a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance and his work continues to have a profound influence today.
To experience Whalen read his own work, The Poetry Centre Digital Archive features his December 12, 1956 reading at San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill Neighbourhood Association. It features some of his best known poems, Sourdough Mountain Lookout, Martyrdom of Two Pagans and the brilliant, Invocations and Dark Sayings in the Tibetan Style (parts I & II). You can stream or download the reading here.
It will make the sun seem even warmer…
It’s all happening!