A beautiful if timid reading from Susan Fealy yesterday at the Dan O’Connell Hotel in Carlton. Delicate poetry attempting to find a balance between events and effect and affect. And the risk was to attempt this in a pub with some of the audience and open readers unreconstructed, alcoholic male dinosaurs stuck in the midst of illusion that drinking yourself stupid and then making chauvinistic, unenlightened commentary might contribute to a fantasy that they are good poets. It does not.


However Susan’s reading saved itself by teaching for those who were prepared to learn, the lesson that thoughtful self-reflection offered up in reverbent imagery can lift us all to a different level and make us glad we went there.