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Etching by Adam Rish .
When The Café L'absurd, in Balmain, Sydney, opened its doors at midnight every Friday for poetic readings in the l980s , it attracted a colourful crowd at the witching hour . An illustrated article on the Café L'absurd experiment appeared in ASPECT, Art and Literature, June 1981. In the preface written by the journal's editor, Rudi Krausmann , he said the midnight readings over the months had been successful , possibly because many aspects and manifestations of contemporary society , if not all of it , had become as absurd as the verbal expressions of its protagonists . |
Continuing, he maintained the conventional media-television, theatres, broadcasts- had been conventional , cautious , if not corrupt , lacking innovation and originality . "I do not suggest that the readings every Friday midnight in the Café L'absurd can make up for the deplorable state, but they are at least a drop in the ocean , the ocean of commercial crudity and banality we are daily confronted with . As such they are and hopefully will remain a refreshing experiment . "
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Café proprietor Michael Ahearn , photograph by Judo Gemes.
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Poets who performed there included Rae Desmond Jones, Chris Mansell, Nigel Roberts , Richard Tipping , Anna Couani , Andrew McDonald and Cornelis Vleeskens . Interstate and international readers also contributed from time to time . Café L'absurd moved to Newtown and became New Partz, the Sydney centre of performed poetry.--( Ponsonby Willis special .)
