Magdalena Ball

On Wednesday the 18th of August, 7pm AU EST I’ll be reading poetry with Damen O’Brien at the Sydney Poetry Lounge, live via Zoom (and I believe, recorded thereafter).  I actually agreed to doing this gig in-person in Sydney at the usual venue The Friend In Hand Hotel Glebe some time ago when it looked like Covid-19 might be behind us, but alas, it’s with us still, so Zoom we must.  On the upside it doesn’t matter where in the world you are, locked down or not, you are welcome!  The details are here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1213559002390451/?ref=newsfeed

I’ve been invited by the wonderful Elizabeth Guyon Spennato to participate in a live, mostly French, Instagram poetry reading on Sunday 16th of May, 10pm AU EST (that’s 2pm Paris time). I’m normally barely conscious at 10, but the idea of connecting with a group of poets reading in other languages is too good to resist.  I’ll post up the recording here, but otherwise, if you head over to Instagram and follow me https://www.instagram.com/maggieball1 you should be able to watch the whole live hour if you’d like. I’m up first.

 My poem “The Black Hundreds” was accepted for the first Melbourne Jewish Book Week open mic event. The poem was read aloud and live-streamed on Zoom on the 20th April, 8pm AEST.

Getting published in Meanjin has been on my bucket list for a very long time (I’m sure it’s on everyone’s bucket list), so I was delighted when I was commissioned to write a little piece on what I’m reading. The fox image is a nod to Chris Mansell’s Foxline, which I reviewed and interviewed Chris about shortly after completing this piece.

What I’m Reading

On the 24th and 25th of April, the Newcastle Writers Festival will be holding their inaugural Emerging Writers Program “Fresh Ink”.  This mini weekend festival is packed with great sessions on getting started with writing, juggling writing with parenting, memoir, launching a first book during the pandemic, publishing, the agent relationship, and the session I’ll be hosting, “Taking Risks” – how writes navigate the personal and the political, with the amazing Shu-Ling Chua, Bri Lee, and Omar Sakr.  Tickets are free (!) but must be booked in advance. Go here to see the full program and book:

https://www.newcastlewritersfestival.org.au/freshink-emergingwriters/

Two new poems of mine, “Help on Arrival” and “La Grippe” have been published in the latest issue of Burrow, which has an ekphrastic/mental health theme. Both of these are from a new work in progress about my great-grandmother Rebecca, and her migration to the US from the Pale of Settlement in 1907.  You can read the whole issue, which is really quite wonderful, here: https://oldwaterratpublishing.com/current-issue/

My poem, “The Lost Sister”, part of a new book I’m working on about my great-grandmother, has won first prize in the Hunter Writers’ Centre November Writing Contest. The contest was an ekphrastic in which we were given a series of prompts – visual and verbal – to choose from. My prompt was Picasso’s “Reading at a Table”.  The poem can be read at the Hunter Writers’ Centre webpage here: https://hunterwriterscentre.org/november-writing-submissions/