The Australian National University (ANU) Poets' Lunch has been
through three different incarnations in the last thirty years.
The first generation of lunches began in the 1970s and featured a
select group of ANU-based Poets, some of them world-famous. They
were held at the ANU Staff Centre, and the theme was wine. The
poems were published in the wine lists for the lunches. A
selection of the poems from these lunches, was edited by Philip
Grundy. It includes poetry from some of the poets who made history
for the art form in the post-colonial age.
The second generation was organised by Giles Pickford and Colin Plowman, and began in 1993 in a similar way, but soon attracted a large range of poets from all over Canberra, with a competitive selection process for the best submitted poems. Most lunches had a theme, and some had a featured poet. The venue was a marquee on the Staff Centre lawns (rain permitting). When the Staff Centre closed, the lunch moved to University House, sometimes inside, sometimes outside. The poems for each lunch were published in a booklet.
Third generation. After the second generation lunches ran out of
steam (the last was in 2001), a small group decided to continue on
a more informal basis. After initial meetings in the sculpture
garden on the lawns near Old Canberra House (the old Staff Centre
building), they are how held in the Molony Room at the ANU
Emeritus Faculty. Each of these third generation lunches has a
theme, and the poems from each have been again published as a
booklet. These booklets were published by Boris Books and are
available from this site.
The poems from these lunches appear on the Poets' Lunch website at www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/poets. The poets who have performed at the Poets' Lunches are:
Aslanides, Timoshenko