What I hate about Facebook

is that it allows you to pretend you have all these friends, but they aren't real, you don't know half of them, a third are passing acquaintances and a handful (usually the ones who never update status or contact you wall to wall) are actually real live friends you see face-to-face on some occassions.

What I love are peer workshop groups and other things that make me want to write more/more often/again.

What I would like to establish is a writers' reading group - where we meet, read a piece or more - three poems by the same poet, a short story, a section of a novel and discuss how it was written - the writing nuts and bolts. Then I'd like someone to set a writing exercise inspired by the piece we've read. How hard does that sound?

Well, I've been trying for about two months to get a good date suggest this very thing to a number of peers around the traps. And do you think I can find a regular date that's going to work for more than two months in a row in the near future? Not likely. The third Sunday was looking possible for a while. Then something cropped up. The second Sunday became a likely contender. Then something else happened.

Still, it was a poetry filled week - Thursday night I went to The Wheeler Centre which was absolutely packed for the launch of the Australia Poetry Centre's four new poets series. Mish Leiber read beautifully as did Chloe Wilson. The small chapbooks look lovely, too. Afterwards we went to dinner at a Japanese beer hall upstairs in Melbourne Central - a bit of a discovery. I had beef with chilli marmalade which was delicious.

Saturday was the regular Word Tree, featuring Alice White. I loved Alice's poems - elegant & often gently humourous visions of ordinary life. The eavesdropped staff room poems were great examples of found poems - and a testament to what I constantly tell students - eavesdrop away!