Detail “red ash 1” 2013, Maaret Sinkko, monoprint.

News

May -June

May 31st, June 1st and 2nd! It’s the inaugural Capricorn Coast Writer’s Festival.   It looks like it’s shaping up to be a great program.  Come join me for a poetry workshop, ‘The Curious World’ at the Yeppoon Library,  Saturday afternoon 2-4pm! Make sure you check out the rest of the program, lots of delights to be had.

April 2019

Lively Quay Street Event ROCKHAMPTON: Saturday 27th April, 6.30pm and 7.30pm

I’ll be performing  some poetry down by the river, with my lovely husband and soundscape man extraordinaire, Shaune. See you there!

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Tuesday 9th April – I had a chat with Sheridan Stewart of ABC Qld’s ‘Drive’ program. It’s always difficult to think on the spot for a radio interview, but I think I’ve survived.  I arrive at about the 2hr 44 min mark.

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Funding Announcement: Thanks to some funding from Livingstone Shire Council’s RADF committee, I will be commencing a project that involves writing a series of stories about places in the Livingstone Shire. Can’t wait to get started. 

March 2019

In March, I had the pleasure of presenting two workshops on ecopoetics, ‘Discovering Earth in the Poem’ for the Rockhampton Bishop’s In-service day for my Catholic Education Colleagues.

August 2018

CQUniversity Village Festival! I’ll be appearing at the wonderful Queen Street Hall venue on Friday 10th, 6.30pm as part of their Chai Lounge program. Accompanied by Shaune Sinclair on guitar for selected pieces. Come and see the festival in at Queen Street.

July 2018

Rachel Funari Short Fiction Award:

I am very lucky to announce I have received 3rd place in the Rachel Funari Prize for fiction and coordinated by Lip  Magazine. The story is the first one of mine to include Spanish language fragments and explores some experiences we had on a visit to Cuba in 2016. I hope you enjoy it.

I have also been lucky to have had a poem of mine ‘unmothering’ shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Best of luck to all the shortlisted poets who entered this year. It’s a delight just to know I’ve made the anthology!

October 2017 

Always a very passionate person when it comes to environmental matters, I’ve been very worried about the Government’s seal of approval given to the Carmichael Adani mine in the Galilee basin. I was invited to contribute a poem, to ‘speak up’ to Adani, by Plumwood Mountain journal editor Anne Elvey – who published 40 poems by 40 poets on the 30th October. In the spirit of Judith Wright, I hope the government recognises not only the importance of the land to Indigenous Australians, but the special place landscapes hold in our imaginations, as part of self. Click here to read my poem, and here to read the everyone’s contribution.

Very pleased to have been invited to perform at the Creek Sessions. Keppel Coast Arts have been striving to create an Arts space behind the tourism centre at Ross Creek for a long time. The re-purposed shipping container, the ‘art-ship’ is certainly a great little stage (shame it stares into the afternoon sun). Another great afternoon with a variety of Arts practitioners, poetry, music, and theater on offer today.

August 2017

Made a return to the poetry stage! After a few years absence – this year I performed at the 2017 Village festival. We were welcomed at the Queen Street Hall and kicked off the festival program. It was a lovely opportunity to read some older work and some new, to a very attentive audience. Can’t wait to do it again next year.

July 2017

This month I wrote a piece for a for a local Gladstone filmmaker – Clifton Schulke, who commissioned poem about his family time spent in the Bunya Mountains for his short film. It’s a visually stunning clip.https://youtu.be/cj8QoKuxknE. 

March 2017

International Women’s Day – “Be Bold’ was the theme this year. Thanks very much to the Red Dahlia Bar for hosting a fabulous women’s night – comedy, music and poetry.

It was a thrill to perform all my “women” focussed poems.

September 2015

So, I’ve been a little quiet of late – been taking some time to regather writing energies.

But, the siesta is over. Time to get writing and working again. This weekend on Sunday 20th September, I’m reading with some local other poets at a special Bimblebox 153 Birds Reading at the Rockhampton Gallery. The reading will kick off at 11.00am – so make sure you get along to it if you can. Set against the Bimblebox: Art – Science-Nature exhibit, it will be sure to make you think about the implications of mining on our environment. the poems I’ll be reading were published in Plumwood Mountain journal, poems about The Australian Bustard.

Then next week – I’ll be working with teenagers in the beautiful surrounds of Byfield Campstay to kickstart some ideas relating to PASSAGES. The teens will produce some text-based environmental art and then work with fabulous potter and ceramicist Renton Bishopric to develop some new 3D artworks. Can’t wait.

July

Launch dates for Curio

Looking forward to the 22nd of August! I’m hosting a Cafe Scientifique in Yeppoon.

From the book’s back page:

Curio invites readers into a world of artefacts, curiosities and natural history specimens, as poet Kristin Hannaford pays homage to the history of women working as taxidermists, naturalists, and exhibitors in 19th Century Australia. This poetry collection profiles the lives of two extraordinary women in Australia’s colonial history, Jane Catharine Tost and her daughter Ada Jane Rohu, who established and ran ‘Tost and Rohu’ – a taxidermy and curio shop known affectionately at the time as ‘The Queerest Shop in Sydney’.

As there is a taxidermy theme – I thought it would be wonderful to have a taxidermist to come and talk at the event, so we’ve turned it into a National Science Week event! Taxidermist Shelley Smith from the Queensland Museum will talk to guests about all things taxidermy on the night and her appearance in Yeppoon has been supported by a National Science Week speaker grant. It’s going to be a lot of fun and very interesting.

It’s a free event – but I’d love people to book so we can cater to the masses. Inspiring Australia have organised the bookings page

Event Details: Date: Friday 22nd August 2014
Where: St Ursula’s College Hall (Ballygriffin Cultural Centre), Queen St Yeppoon
When: 6.30pm for 7pm start – (end of event approx. 8.30)
Cost: Free
Contact: Kristin Hannaford (at) hotmail for further details

I’m also very pleased to have some poems about the Tost and Rohu story featured in the online journal Postcolonial Text, they’ve used an image I took of a letterhead of the taxidermy firm as the journal’s cover for this edition.

Did a poetry workshop at the Figtree creek markets this month in order to help develop some content for the Animating Spaces event in Yeppoon, see some discussion here on the ArtsLink page 

March

So pleased to finally have had the courage to submit to the Weekend Australian Review and to have had a poem accepted for publication. ‘Audition’ appeared on the weekend on March 1-2, 2014.

February

The nice people at Eureka Street, and poetry editor Philip Harvey, accepted a few poems of mine to publish. They’re accompanied by a rather grisly image of slaughtered cows. Though, if I’m going to write about an abattoir (almost wrote Abbotoir) I can’t complain. Hope you like them.

Also early in February Anne Elvey published the inaugural edition of Plumwood Mountain – a new Australian journal of ecopetry and ecopoetics. I’m very pleased to have a poem in this first edition. It feels like this is a timely publication for Australia. Make sure you explore the poetry and excellent reviews. There is a launch for the journal in Melbourne on Sunday 9 March 2014, from 3.00pm-5.00pm in the Learning Centre at CERES Community Environmental Park, Cnr Roberts and Stewart Streets, Brunswick East.

January

I’m thrilled to announce that my new collection of poetry, titled Curio, will be published by Ralph Wessman of Walleah Press. I’m very grateful for the funding I received from the Australia Council for the Arts Literature Board that enabled me to complete the new work.

4th Jan

I’ve had an article published in ‘This Life’ in the Weekend Australian Review. It’s about the experience of observing life at a country show and becoming owners of sheep. I wrote the piece last May; seems sad to see such a celebratory piece about the ‘ideal’ of farming life appear now in the middle of such heat and drought. Still, it was a lovely day – and year of ongoing farming experiences with my son.

 

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October 2013

In October I took up a virtual residency as the online poet-in-residence at Australian Poetry.

I wrote about the Trace Project I had worked on in August, featured a local hand-press printmaker, and a piece on country shows and their connectedness to an area of interest in my writing.

Posting # 1 ‘Poetry Gardens’
Discusses the installation of poetry and print at the Rockhampton Botanic Gardens in August 2013 and the possibilities of poetry as cultural tourism.

Posting #2 ‘Re-inked’
Explores the world of the Officina Athelstane – a private press in Rockhampton that utilises a traditional 1887 Alexandra hand press to create some truly stunning work.

Posting #3 ‘Exhibition’
An exploration of a day spent at a country show observing my son show cattle. I also chat about the significance of agricultural shows and identify some timely connections to my poetry.

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August 2013

August saw the realisation of the Trace project – a collobaration of poetry, art and the place, funded by Creative Capricorn  in association with the Australia Council, and Rockhampton Regional Council.  Working with poet Paul Summers, the project celebrated the legacy of some of Rockhampton’s most historically significant sites through site specific poetry/art installations at the Botanic Gardens, Kenmore and the City Printing Works. Paul Summers and I played tour guide on a two day ‘one-weekend only’ bus tour of these significant historical sites in Rockhampton.

I was lucky enough to collaborate with the Capricorn Printmakers Inc. A very talented group of printmakers who developed an incredible installation of over 400 jars filled with individual prints, that responded to the four poems I had written about the history of the Rockhampton Botanic Gardens. Audiences had a vintage afternoon of high tea underneath a curtain of glass.

At Kenmore House, I collaborated with fabric artist Julie Thornton, and sculptor Brendan Tohill. Poems about Central Queensland dreams of secession and high society 1890s style were realised as 2.3 m mannequin and a dress with a 25 metre train. I wrote an article about this site installation that appears on the State Library of Queensland site. Paul Summers’ poems featured narratives about South Sea Islanders and the history of workers at the site as indentured laborers.

Finally, at Anderson’s City Printing Works tour goers experienced poems and prints about working-class rockhampton and the history of the printery – with prints from Derek Lamb and an installation using original wooden and metal type face (some not used for over a hundred years).

Below are some composite images from the event by photographer Jo Kupershoek

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