May 23rd – 25th 2008

Pier ¾, Walsh Bay

Sydney Writers’ Festival 2008

Nightwriting launched at the Sydney Writers’ Festival 2008, featuring poets [[Mike Ladd]] (SA), [[Lachlan Brown]] (NSW), [[Esther Ottoway]] (TAS).  Visiting British poet [[Jacob Polley]] delivered the 2008 Minislec on the project theme. 

This project drew attention to poetry as an art that requires few external materials to exist; it encouraged people to use all their senses to explore poetic language. Our live event was held in the dark with text versions of the poems revealed to sight through torch-powered projections. The poems were all performed from memory and each one raised our interest in the code-like and physical nature of poetic language. Our poem-pod installation designed by [[Camilla Lawson]] was a trio of walk-in booths fitted with audio, Braille and tactile alphabet versions of the commissioned poems. Pick up a copy of the Nightwriting booklet with both text versions!

You can view the Nightwriting promo film, filmed by Andrew Garrick and Kat Stone and edited by Andrew Garrick, on YouTube.

A modified version of the installation toured to the Tasmanian Writers’ Festival in September 2008.  Proudly supported by The Keir Foundation, The Sydney Writers Festival and Vision Australia.