Serendipity and the Curious Mind: A Poet Travelling through History and Place  

Due to the state of emergency on the mainland, Dr Rowland has had to postpone her trip to Tasmania until later in the year.

Australian-Irish with family origins in Cork, and living between Ireland and Australia, in 2009 her Turkish-Australian sister-in-law urged Robyn Rowland to visit Turkey because of their shared love of archaeology and history. After that, a silken thread drew Robyn through countries of the old Ottoman Turkey. Mosaics from the Map (Doire, 2018), her 10 th book of poems, covered these travels and her new book, Under This Saffron Sun explores the Turkey of today. Istanbul, with its riot of colour, Göreme, Edirne, Kas, Nemrut are landmarks on the way to friendship in Bozcaada. This talk with photographs, poetry and images is a unifying and exciting journey.

Dr Robyn Rowland AO has 11 books of poetry, recently Under This Saffron Sun, Mosaics from the Map and This Intimate War Gallipoli/Çanakkale 1915, Turkish trans. Mehmet Ali Çelikel. Her poetry appears in national/international journals, over forty anthologies, eight editions of Best Australian Poems. She read in India, Portugal, Ireland, UK, USA, Greece, Austria, Bosnia, Serbia, Turkey and Italy and is published in translation. An extended interview appears in Agenda Poetry, UK, December 2018. She is filmed reading for the National Irish Poetry Reading Archive, James Joyce Library, UCD, available on youtube.