Come for inspiration at Salon Lygon

A Writing Salon is a place of non-judgment, for mutual encouragement and dialogue, where ideas spark and inspiration abounds.

The City of Melbourne Libraries is keeping alive the concept of the Writer’s Salon.

Salon Lygon, a new initiative at the Biblioteca Library Pop-up, is hosting two poetry evenings in August.

The city’s libraries created the concept to encourage poets, creatives and thinkers to unite to reinvigorate the Carlton creative community.

The first night, Wednesday, August 17, is to honour the iconic poetry of Ania Walwicz.

Born in Poland, she and her family emigrated to Australia when she was 12.

A Victorian College of the Arts graduate, Ania started her career as a visual artist. Her first book of poems, Writing, published in 1982, established her fragmented and unconventional style.

Prithvi Varatharajan and Alex Skovron will read on the night.

Poet and essayist Prithvi Varatharajan’s poetry is published widely in Australian Journals. His essays have featured in the Sydney Review of Books, Meanjin, Adaptation, Cultural Studies Review and Peril.

Alex Skovron was born in Poland, lived briefly in Israel, and arrived in Australia aged nine. He is the author of seven poetry collections, a prose novella, The Poet (2005), and a book of short stories, The Man who Took to his Bed (2017).

On Wednesday, August 31, Claire Gaskin and Dominique Hecq will read.

Claire Gaskin has been writing and publishing her poetry extensively for more than three decades. She is a long-term creative writing teacher, a facilitator of creative writing workshops, and a poetry lecturer and supervisor at various universities.

Dominique Hecq grew up in the French-speaking part of Belgium. She now lives on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, Melbourne, and writes across genres and disciplines, and sometimes across tongues. The second edition of After Cage: A Composition in Word and Movement on Time and Silence is fresh off the press.

As Salon Lygon, at 185 Lygon St, Carlton, is an open-mic event, the audience is encouraged to perform their works.

Light refreshments will be available at the venue, with the readings running for two hours, beginning at 7pm. •

Caption: Ania Walwicz

Photographer Nicholas Walton-Healey, State Library Victoria.