During the great purges in early 20th century Russia, another woman waiting outside Leningrad prison in the hope of seeing a husband, a father, a son, asked the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova if anyone could ever describe what they were experiencing. The poem, Requiem, was Akhmatova’s answer: it was her “tortured mouth, through which a hundred million people shout”. Part of what we face as we contemplate the black summer fires is the limit of our own capacity to be present to the magnitude of the losses, the thoughts and the feelings they provoke in us. It is to this impossibility of containing the worlds beyond of and beyond our experience, and to our own complex, fragmented and often strange thoughts and feelings that poetry speaks. Australian poets Michelle Cahill, Brenda Saunders, David Brooks, Felicity Plunkett, Coco Huang and Viv Pham will offer their poetic witness of the black summer fires, to the beings who lived and died through them, and to our struggle to be present and receptive to the three billion whose shouts we did not hear. Luke Fischer is chairing the event.

Renowned cellist Christina Christensen will be performing compositions addressed to trees between poetry readings. Christensen is an internationally recognised musician who composes for both film and solo cello performances that are inspired by nature.

Poets

David Brooks, poet, novelist, short-fiction writer and essayist

Michelle Cahill, 2020 Red Room Poetry Fellow

Luke Fischer (Chair), poet and philosopher

Coco Huang, writer, musician and scientist

Vivian Pham, fiction writer, poet, screenwriter

Felicity Plunkett, poet and critic

Brenda Saunders, writer and artist

Lyndsay Urquhart, poet and Manager of Red Room Poetry's First Nations Program

View the full Sydney Festival Requiem programme here. Limited registrations are available for panels and performances in accordance with NSW COVID restrictions.

In accordance with NSW COVID Public Health Orders, we ask everyone to please bring a face mask with them and wear it at all times within the space. QR check-ins with the Service NSW COVID Safe Check-In app is mandatory upon entrance. Social distancing measures will be in place along with hand sanitiser stations.