Open Mic, February, 2023 and onwards

 Open Mic, February, 2023

 

What our first Open Mic for the year lacked in numbers, it made up for in the quality of presentation and the hour stretched into a very entertaining and thought-provoking session, which produced lively conversation and excellent feedback. We enjoyed poems, short stories, oral rantings and, for the first time, we had a singer song writer in our midst and were treated to a live musical performance.

Mark McGurgan, a travelling minstrel, is in town to catch up with his mother, Lesley, and to do a gig at the forthcoming Mordialloc Festival next weekend.

Mark delved into the back of his camper and produced a piano size keyboard and his trusty guitar. He writes and sings his own songs and travels Australia sharing the joy.  We were lucky enough to have him present at Mentone Public Library last weekend. 

He and his twin brother will be at the forthcoming Mordialloc Festival this coming weekend, an acrobat from southern Tasmania, and will unite to entertain in a musical /acrobatic extravaganza.

For all those who go north for the winter Mark will be resident musician at an outback pub in Tambo, Queensland, 1000 miles west of Brisbane and 1000 miles south of Mount Isa. Drop in, have a beer and say ‘hello’ from his old home town. 

To find out more about Mark McGurgan visit https://www.mmcgurgan.com

We are considering having an ‘Open mic for singer songwriters’ on a Sunday afternoon. If anybody is interested, please let us know at mentonepubliclibrary@gmail.com.

Our next weekend event is An Author for All Seasons Series 13 on Saturday March 11, 2023 at 11am.

Our next 'Open Mic' is on Saturday, 25 March 2023 at 11am. 

We hope you can join us for these events. Entry is only $5 per event and you can book by emailing the library at mentonepubliclibrary@gmail.com

You can also join our mailing list by emailing the library as above at mentonepubliclibrary@gmail.com

Location: Mentone VIC 3194, Australia

Popular posts from this blog

Judy's Open Mic reflection, 24 June 2023

Judy's Open Mic reflection, 24 June 2023 Last Saturday (24 June 2023) we had a great ‘Open Mic’ session. Stimulating writings by several members revealed their literary talents either through ‘in depth’ revelations of lives or humorous accounts of every day observations.  Pip, Jan and Elsie opened up about their inner thoughts giving us a deeper understanding of even our own lives. Bruce was in poetic and artistic form, and Graeme took a light-hearted look at Russian politics. Word choice and poetic pattern were exemplary in both cases. Terri, Tony and Judy attempted another radio play script, unrehearsed, which sadly needed better secretarial management (my bad!). Mind you Terri did a superb ‘boy voice’ for her character struggling up Balcombe Rd with a horse and dray in 1899 going to the races at Mentone Race Course; and Tony was equally in charge of his masculine character. Ron also had stories about a Jack Russell named Jill,   (There is a Jack and Jill Russell joke there somew
Read more

Lover, Husband, Father, Monster and the art of coercive control - Author talk with Graeme and Elsie Johnstone

Image
Lover, Husband, Father, Monster and the art of coercive control What a pleasure it was to have Elsie and Graeme present with us on the difficult topic of coercive control on Saturday, 15 July, using their trilogy of books as a springboard for conversations. Graeme and Elsie Johnstone wrote three inter-connecting novels on this topic under the banner of ‘Lover, Husband, Father, Monster’, entitled ‘Her Story’, ‘His Story’ and ‘The Aftermath’. The works are best read in the order of 1 The woman’s perspective 2 The man’s perspective and 3 The views of those who it affected.  When they were working on these books, Elsie and Graeme decided to write every time it rained and being Ireland, they wrote a ‘bloody lot’. Their task was to find out ‘What drives two men on either side of the planet to commit such awful acts, both in Australia and Ireland, and how have their marriages come to this?’   The novel is set in Dublin, and it focuses on the marriage of Jennifer, a legal graduate, and Stewart
Read more

Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder Author talk review and Writer Meets Reader promotion

Image
Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder and Kerryn Mayne coming again for Writer meets reader Kerryn Mayne.  What a breath of fresh air! Some people are born to speak in public and Kerryn is one of those lucky ones. We could have listened to her all day and not been bored. A full house at our Mentone Public Library was entertained and enthralled as we listened to Kerryn traverse many subjects – life as seen by a police officer, the busy and sometimes hectic life of a mother of four children under five, two of them nine-month-old twins, living with a young family in Aspendale Gardens, the goodness in almost everybody, even hardened criminals (there but for the grace of God, etc).  And those were just the side topics! What Kerryn was there for was to speak to us about the journey she took through pregnancy and COVID to produce a magnificently entertaining novel, ‘Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder’, a sort of crime fiction / psychological study / philosophical / human story, set in Belgrave abo
Read more