Today when we went to buy Christmas champagne the woman in this second photo @cellarbrationsyarraville and her staff member accused my 12 year old daughter of having been in their store on December 3 and stealing an entire slab of beer from the shop. My daughter has never been inside this shop before. They claim they have video footage of her stealing, but refused to produce the footage, even though the store was literally empty and they have an exact date and time saying they “don’t have time right now”. My kid is absolutely distraught and traumatised. This is racial profiling of a young child and it’s not good enough. Do better @cellarbrationsyarraville - provide the footage you claim you have and provide a public apology and a personal apology to my primary school child, who was with her 72 year old Nana when this happened (I went back to the store later and they made the exact same claims to me).
Update 27/12: This woman now says she has “referred the matter to police.”🙄🙄🙄
Just spoke to them. They have no record of her complaint. (I also spoke to them *on the day* against every fibre of my being; they said accusing someone of a crime isn’t a crime so they couldn’t help). See most recent post for a more detailed update.
My Dear Fellow Westies, I have a few sessions on at @willylitfest including year, including performance, readings, panel and workshop.
June 12-14
Link in bio for the full program, and to book.
@amayalaucirica and I are thrilled to be bringing “Fire Moves Faster: What A City Can Overcome” to the city of Bendigo this August, thanks to @wheelercentre@goldfieldslibraries and @redroompoetry , and with the support of @bookishbendigo .
“Drawing on poems from Maxine Beneba Clarke’s acclaimed collection How Decent Folk Behave and accompanied by original compositions from Amaya Laucirica, Fire Moves Faster is an arresting union of poetry and song that moves through the emotional landscapes of recent years – tracing threads of trauma and joy, confusion and clarity, despair and hope.
Join Clarke and Laucirica in Bendigo for an intimate evening of striking live performance, followed by a Q&A exploring their creative partnership and the role of poetry and music in navigating uncertain times.”
Presented in partnership with The Wheeler Centre and supported by the City of Greater Bendigo and Red Room Poetry as part of Poetry Month.
6pm, Friday August 14.
Tickets $5-$20
Booking link in bio.
A window decal at my local Footscray library, where I work occasionally if working at home is annoying me. There’s a desk right under it. I’ve been tempted to sit there as a little joke to myself, but have never been able to bring myself to do so, I always sit in another section😂 There are also window/wall decals for books by Alice Pung and Tony Birch.😍
Image description: A photo showing a shelf in the library, and a window looking out onto a courtyard and a giant outdoor chess set. On the window is a round pink wall decal featuring a yellow book. The cover reads: “Foreign Soil. Maxine Beneba Clarke”
Tomorrow evening, myself, Brian Nankervis and Sean O’Beirne will be performing some spoken word poems/stories with Sally Ford and Idiomatics @idiomatic_arts at Kingston Townhall.
UNDERSCORE blurs the line between music, storytelling, song and recitation as acclaimed writers perform excerpts of their work over a lush electro-acoustic soundscape provided by Sally Ford and the Idiomatics, bookmarked by songs and stories from the band, featuring Sally Ford’s wryly-observed lyrics of life.
UNDERSCORE launched in mid-2023 at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and Melbourne’s Brunswick Ballroom to hugely enthusiastic audiences, and have since presented iterations of the project at Melbourne’s Malthouse Outdoor Stage, Clunes Booktown Festival, The Athenaeum Library, Readings Bookstore’s 50th Anniversary, Beleura House and a return performance at the Brunswick Ballroom.
Link in bio to book.
Tune in today to ABC Radio National between 12:50-1pm to hear Maxine Beneba Clarke read her poem 'Beautiful Changelings’ as part of the Line Break segment, brought to you by Red Room Poetry in partnership with the ABC.
⭐ "Beautiful Changelings is a tribute to older women, in all their tenderness, wisdom and ferocity." ~ Maxine Beneba Clarke.
Maxine is a poet, fiction writer and memoirist. Her books include the short fiction collection Foreign Soil (Hachette, 2014), the memoir The Hate Race (Hachette, 2016) and several poetry collections, including Beautiful Changelings (Hardie Grant Publishing, 2025), her latest collection of poetry.
Find out more about Line Break at the link in our bio 💫
Please note: While we strive to preserve the original formatting of poems on social media, this image template may alter the line breaks.
@maxinebeneba@abcradionational@hardiegrantbooks@hachetteaus@hachettekidsanz #WeeklyPoem #RedRoomPoetry #LineBreak
Last call! @jacintaparsons and I will be talking about our new books Beautiful Changelings and A Wisdom of Age at Cheltenham Library this evening. FREE, but please book. Link in bio.
I don’t believe in the capitalist day (even though I gratefully accepted the gorgeous presents from my gorgeous children, who both have uni/school jobs now, to buy really decent ones🙂)- but I do believe that handing the world over to The Matriarchs would save us.
thank you,
matriarchs-in-the-making,
and matriarchs,
on your thrones
What a wonderful tour through the reading lives of Maxine Beneba Clarke @maxinebeneba , Nadine Garner @nadinegarneroffical and Omar Musa. There was laughter, spoken word/poetry performance by Omar and Maxine and some great reading suggestions from the audience for @abcradionational Top 100 Books (which is coming later this year). Thanks for providing the space and enthusiasm for this discussion @melbwritersfest and @veronicaahhh_
Tomorrow at Melbourne Writers Festival: Top 100 Books, with Radio National, hosted by @maibstrange . Join us! *Booking link in bio, under MWF Sessions.
Melbourne, Naarm - I feel so very lucky to be able to travel to this beloved city and host a book event for I Lost Someone Then Found Them In My Body. I’m amazed at what a glut of fine poets walk those streets, four of which will read a poem of mine and one of their own at @the_alderman_bar this Thursday 6:30 - @no_wave_poetry (Dominic Symes), @maxinebeneba , @gayelenecarbis2025 and @belschenk Then I will visit a gallery and eat at a cafe with a friend. Thanks be to this fine city for always being so dependably arty and fun. Hope to see some of the poetry community there.
One of my poems* that we analysed during my session at @melbwritersfest VCE Day today. Some of the questions I asked the grade 9-12’s.
What is the myth of Icarus?
What, in the myth, have I flipped in the first 2 lines of the poem?
Why have I used the word “fashioned” instead of saying something like “made her wings”?
What do I mean by “flight?” What might flight refer to in this version of the poem, and for this Icarus?
What might “flying too close to the sun” mean in this version of the myth?
Why did Icarus say “I am going to burn…before I die” not “I’m going to soar to epic proportions and prove everyone wrong?”
The answer to the last one, from a student was “Because she KNOWS her journey is going to be difficult and because having a lot of ambition in life as a girl or young woman will mean it doesn’t go smoothly, but she’s going to do it anyway!”🔥🔥🔥
Students all put their hands up to voluntarily answer these questions within minutes of seeing the poem.
The kids are alright!
Thanks @karyswrites for programming me on the new VCE Festival program, which was by all accounts a new @melbwritersfest success! And thanks to all the students and teachers who were such an enthusiastic audience - and my fellow presenters today Alice Pung and Tony Birch.
*The poem Icarus is from my 2021 poetry collection How Decent Folk Behave.
