Wombats of Bundanon launch Sydney Australia 3rd August 2011

3 books to be launched at books to be held at the Friend in Hand pub, 58 Cowper St, Glebe, Sydney at 7.30 pm on Wednesday 3rd August

1. Rae Desmond Jones' Decline and Fall
2. Kit Kelen's China Years
3. and a bilingual English-Chinese anthology of 20 Australian poets Wombats of Bundanon including Chinese poet translators Chris Song Zijiang, Iris Fan Xing and Debby Sou Vai Keng and work by Rae and Kit and Anna Couani, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Pam Brown, Adam Aitken, Andy Kissane, John Bennett, Martin Langford, Philip Salom, James Stewart, Myron Lysenko, Chris Mansell, John Tranter, Les Wicks, S.K.Kelen, Ron Pretty, Clive Ralfe, John Mateer, Beth Spencer and Carol Jenkins

You can eat at the pub eatery for $10 from 6pm onwards.

More on the Bundanon Trust here http://www.bundanon.com.au/

The book was also launched in Macao, China where its editor Kit Kelen is based and you can contact him on Facebook if you want to buy a copy.

Online poetry magazine Jacket is Jacket2

The online poetry magazine Jacket has a new home at the University of Pennsylvania, USA and is now reborn as Jacket2. Jacket itself was for many years one of the definitive online magazines. It was first published in 1997 by Australian poet and publisher John Tranter who continued as its editor throughout. At the time, Peter Forbes writing in the Guardian (UK) called it “the prince of online poetry magazines.” Its ethos, along with a small group of others, helped form a magazine web standard. The new issue was filled up bit by bit while past issues remained online. (Folks, this was new stuff back then). Most of the material was original to the magazine and commissioned, "but some .. excerpted [nice word] from or co-produced with hard-to-get books and magazines, partly to help them find new readers".

Still an interesting modus operandi I feel...

Jacket2 looks pretty good too and we hope it keeps something of its Australian sensibility, rigour and independence: try this on new Brazilian poets for example at http://jacket2.org/feature/new-brazilian-poets, 

Jacket2 is here: http://jacket2.org/.

More information on the archive can be found here: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/online-poetry-magazine-jacket-has-new-home-penn-revamped-jacket2.

John Tranter's website is here: http://johntranter.com/00/index.html.

And finally that Peter Forbes' article from 2002 is still hanging around here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2002/jun/06/internet.poetry.