John Forbes: 50 Years of Tropical Skiing

Friday 2 October, 8:45am-5:30pm
William Macmahon Ball Theatre, Old Arts
University of Melbourne, Parkville

In ‘Ode to Tropical Skiing’, Forbes put it best: it’s all ‘a total fucking gas’. Half a century on, his debut book has become both a cult classic and a canonical touchstone. This slim collection packs more classics than entire anthologies of Australian poetry: ‘After the Bombs We Invent the Future’, ‘T.V.’, ‘Admonitions’, ‘Four Heads & how to do them’, ‘To the Bobbydazzlers’, etc etc. Contemporary reviews from 1976 are scarce, but Ken Bolton remembers his first Forbes encounter the way Forbes remembers Berrigan:

I had been reading some poets before,
who were supposed to be good
And I suppose they were
but it was on
first reading John Forbes …
my eyes opened

Why, fifty years later, do new readers still flock to Forbes’ poems? Does Forbes today live up to his own criteria of poetic success—‘feeling surprising and inevitable at the same time’? Is he, as he saw himself, ‘a rococo Brian Wilson’? To celebrate the 50th anniversary of John Forbes’ first book—along with a forthcoming biography and selected prose—the symposium brings together scholars, poets, enthusiasts and amateurs (i.e. lovers) to revisit Forbes’ poetry, poetics, life and influence.

Speakers include: Aidan Coleman (keynote), Alice Allan, Brendan Casey, Cath Kenneally, David Motamed, Duncan Hose, Elese Dowden, Gareth Morgan, Gig Ryan, Kate Lilley, Ken Bolton, Laurie Duggan, Michael Farrell, Simon West, Toby Fitch and Ursula Robinson-Shaw.

All welcome, no booking necessary.

Double book launch
Friday 2 October, 7:30–8:30pm
Clyde Hotel, Carlton

The symposium will be followed by a double book launch of Stuart Cooke's Apples & Oranges: Adventures in Poetics and Liam Ferney's Shark of Messina.

Homage to Forbes Reading
Saturday 3 October, from 4:00pm
Library Portal, opposite 11 Hawthorn Rd, Northcote

On Saturday afternoon we will reconvene at Library Portal for an afternoon of readings.

sile philomela pro tempore
surge cantilena de pectore

and think how little you deserve
the kisses of the Muse you serve,

play rock 'n' roll for hours
until the neighbours cower