Catalyst Literary Arts Journal: Volume 23 Australian launch will be held in Sydney on Saturday 11 July, 3-5pm at ellipsis Gallery, Level 1, 41 Crown Street, Woolloomooloo NSW 2011.
Poetry Sydney and the Catalyst Literary Arts Journal warmly invites you to the Australian launch of Catalyst Volume 23: Devine Embrace.
Catalyst is a literary arts journal originally published by a collective of artists known as Neoismist Press inside an old volcano in Whakaraupo/Lyttelton, Aoetearoa New Zealand, 2003.
Catalyst Volume 23, ‘Divine Embrace’, features talent from the thriving poetry community in Christchurch alongside international voices, including a special feature of poetry from Iran, and Trans-Tasman connections from Australia, and incredible artwork by Jason Bezas.
Join us to launch this new volume of Catalyst, and celebrate these themes of hope as a discipline, as we wrap our readers in a ‘Divine Embrace’. The afternoon will feature poets in the collection: Linda Adair / Doc Drumheller / Kate Lumley / David Musgrave / Mark Roberts / Angela Stretch (Host) / Les Wicks
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Linda Adair’s debut book, The Unintended Consequences of the Shattering, launched on Zoom during Covid, but was reviewed to acclaim in Text, Cordite, Compulsive Reader, and ABR. Several poems have been anthologised and many published both here and overseas. She enjoys performing and featured at La Mama Poetica, Melbourne; Reading the River, Brooklyn, NSW; Live Poets at Don Banks; Cuplet; Poetry at the Pub; The Dickerson Gallery, Woollahra; The 5 Islands Press 1st Anniversary Reading, Footscray; Kedumba Gallery readings. In Ireland she featured at Poetry Plus in County Tipperary and Culture Night in Charlie Byrne’s, Galway. She was honoured to be a guest poet at the Glasgow launch of She’s Some Woman by The Wanderlust Collective.
Doc Dumheller, a New Zealand touring poet is an award-winning poet, musician, dramatist, who has published 11 collections of poetry. His poems are translated into more than 20 languages, and he is the editor and published of the New Zealand literary journal Catalyst. He was elected to represent New Zealand on the Executive Board of the World Congress of Poets, and is the editor in chief of the World Congress of Poets literary journal Fuego. He has represented New Zealand at international poetry festivals all over the world. His latest collection, The Hotel Theresa, features seventy of the published poems from more than one hundred composed between 2011 and 2024, Cold Hub Press (2024).
Kate Lumley Kate Lumley is a Sydney-based writer. Kate’s poetry and prose has been published in journals including Studio, Not very Quiet, Rochford Street Review and anthologies including Australian Love Poems 2013; Prayers of a Secular World; To end all wars; Avant la lettre; Messages from the Embers; Australian Poetry Collection and a chapbook View from the Bridge.
David Musgrave is a poet, novelist critic and publisher who lives in Newcastle. His work has won or been shortlisted for many awards, including the Grace Leven Poetry Prize, the WA Premier’s Book Awards and the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Mark Roberts For much of the last four decades, Mark Roberts has been involved in writing, criticism and publishing. In 1982, he established P76 magazine in with Adam Aitken and has been involved in small press publishing ever since. In 2011 he set up the on-line journal Rochford Street Review with fellow poet Linda Adair. The Office of Literary Endeavours is Mark’s third book, after Stepping out of Line (Rochford Street Press 1986) and Concrete Flamingos, Island Press 2016. Mark was the winner of the 2016 Byron Bay Poetry Prize and runner up in 2013 Joanne Burns Award. He has been shortlised for the 2026 Booranga Writing Award (poetry) and was shortlised for the 2025 Liquid Amber Poetry Prize and the 2026.
Angela Stretch lives on Gadigal/Sydney, She is a poet, curator and writer from Otautahi/Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand. The artist uses language and poetry through different mediums and has been exhibited and published nationally, and internationally. She is the director of Poetry Sydney and intelligent animal, and produces Arts Friday on Eastside Radio.
Les Wicks is an Australian poet, publisher and editor. He has a long list of achievements in writing, publishing and broadcasting. In the late 1970s, set up Meuse publications (with Bill Farrow) which was a high-water mark in Australian poetry publishing with its cutting edge mix of text and graphics. Les helped set up the Poets Union in NSW and has published eleven books of poetry. He has been a guest at most of Australia’s literary festivals, toured widely and been published in over 300 different newspapers, anthologies and magazines across eighteen countries in ten languages. During September/October 2006, Les a guest of the Festival International de la Poesie in Quebec, Canada. In 2011 he was the 1st Australian guest at the International Literary Festival, Lviv, Ukraine. 2013 saw him as a guest at the International Poetry Festival of Medellin.
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