Stephanie Green

Author: Stephanie Green

  • Sahara Rain: Canberra launch

    I’m extremely honoured that the very cool and amazing Cassandra Atherton is launching my poetry collection Sahara Rain in Canberra.

    This is a shared event with Kimberly K Williams whose new collection Following the Wagons is being launched by Jen Webb. Both books are published by Liquid Amber Press.

    Our book launch is on at 4pm, 24 October at The ArtBox, 7 Young St, Barton. All are welcome, drinks will be served and the event is free, but bookings are essential for catering, so please 1) go to this page, 2) scroll down to the booking form (“Launches – new books by Stephanie Green & Kimberly Williams”), 3) enter the number of free tickets and 4) hit next…. Hope to see you there!

  • Why a prose poem?

    At the launch of  Sahara Rain, on 25 September, my host Dr Jane Frank asked me some thoughtful questions about my work and one of the questions was one that I often get, about poetic form and my use of the prose poem. Jane asked:

    In Sahara Rain you have two kinds of poems – lineated verse and prose poems, such as ‘A line of smoke’, ‘Wet again’ and ‘Residue’. Your earlier book, Breathing in Stormy Seasons, was a volume of prose poems. What does the prose poem let you do that the line break cannot, and how do you know which form a poem wants?

    My response to Jane was that, for me, choosing the form of a poem is partly about the rhythm and the kind of voice a poem needs, in order to become whole. I would say that a linear poem takes me on a journey, as a writer. Prose poetry allows me to hold a thought. 

    An Australian writer called Kevin Brophy argues that the prose poem is a often way of capturing a moment, or an ‘intense impression’, encapsulating a momentary tension between our material encounter with the outside world and inner thoughts and emotions. Often my prose poems are somewhat interrogative – addressed in the second person. Linear poems tend to be driven by a different kind of energy and flow. I think it’s a grey area though and some of these poems sit on the fence between poetic lineation and the frame of brief prose.

    S.

  • Sahara Rain: Brisbane launch

    We had a thoroughly joyous celebration of my poetry collection, Sahara Rain, on 25 September 2026 at Avid Reader bookshop in West End.

    My deepest thanks to Dr Jane Frank for being ‘in conversation’ with me and officially launching the book in Brisbane.

    Jane asked me some thoughtful questions about my work and I was challenged to think hard about my answers.

    It was just wonderful to see all those who attended the Brisbane launch – poets and friends, students and colleagues, readers, writers and all.

    Sincere thanks to the events staff at Avid Reader for making the event run so smoothly.

    And, of course, tremendous gratitude to Liquid Amber Press for making the book possible, generous attention and care with the manuscript and wonderful support for its release.

    One Australian launch down – one more to come in Canberra, on Saturday 24 October!

    xxSG

  • “Sahara Rain” in Katmandu

    I was delighted that the international ‘pre-launch’ of my new collection Sahara Rain was held at the Himalayan Literature Festival where I had the opportunity to participate in readings and discussion panel with well-known writers from around the world, including Tony Barnstone, Kavita Jindal, Ravi Shankar, Anne Casey, Peter Salisbury, Manjula Narayan, Krestina Prater, Inderjeet Mani, Edith Hakimian, Rajni Shankar Brown, Paul Muldoon, and Tina Chang, among many others.

    An unexpected but thoroughly rewarding experience was being asked to present a workshop to students at a school called The White House, with Kathleen Willard and Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal.

    I had never been to Nepal before and Kathmandu was an amazing experience. It was deeply saddening to see news of the terrible landslides that happened in the mountains of Nepal only a few months later – another reminder that global warming must be addressed – a theme which I set out to explore in Sahara Rain.

    Deep in the Himalayas

  • And so it begins

    As with all blogs – and I guess my Jottings will be thought of as a blog – one has to start somewhere, sometime. Nothing came before, yet everything came before. If you start somewhere, it means that somewhere already existed. But my blank slate is no longer blank, so now we will see if I can produce an irregular stream of read-worthy jottings.