A lovely guest speaking session at the Mount Barker Library last Saturday. Not a large crowd (I gather most Hills people were off in Hahndorf watching Professor Tony Robertson film his TV history show) but a most responsive group to talk to about Oberammergau. It's always good to find some familiar faces from the past in an audience, and it was fun to catch up with people from my Immanuel teaching days. Next public event: the Words@the Wall guest reading at the State Library on Wednesday evening.

It's been great to have had so many opportunities to talk about my books and writing at public speaking events over recent months. I've been guest speaker at many Rotary Clubs, with more to come, and spoken and done book promotions at various writers' groups. Last week an interesting group of poets and musicians at Christies Beach, where Swirl & Reef hosted a regular event, and also a lovely large group of friendly and responsive listeners at the Ionian Club, an organisation that was new to me.

Two more are approaching rapidly. This Saturday (April 12) a 1 pm session at the Mt Barker Library, where I'll talk about the Oberammergau experience, and the fascinating tale of how the world-famous event of the Passion Play came into being and why it has lasted almost four hundred years. I'll enjoy telling this intriguing story, and also talking about my own trips there and the development of my novel, Passion Play.

Then the following Wednesday (April 16) is the regular Words at the Wall,a monthly event at the Treasures Wall of the State Library in North Terrace hosted by Friendly Street Poets, and a great opportunity for Adelaide poets to share their work. Ros Schulz and I are guest readers at the month's session at 6 pm, and looking forward to a chance to re-visit poems of the past as well as present - a sort of trip down the memory lane of our writing.

Both these are free events, and open to the public. It would be lovely to have friends come to support, as it's always good to see familiar faces in a crowd.

Well, it's taken me a while to master this new web site - really only marginally different in management from the last, but hey, I've never pretended to be technologically competent. Having fought my way through the process, I've now reached the goal - to add to this Latest News page.

In fact, it's a catch-up on news from the last two months, which have been so crowded with book marketing and public speaking. However, I note from earlier entries that I was registering my disappointment with lack of any coverage of Passion Play in the Adelaide press …  that was well and truly compensated for when, in mid January, the Advertiser's SA Weekend, the Saturday magazine, featured my book as the major review on the Books page. A thoughtful and appreciative review by Katharine England, their senior reviewer, which more than made up for the weeks of waiting. Phrases like 'comedic cunning' brought joy to my heart, and her final comment recognised that the book was a verse novel, but readers 'should not be put off: the free verse is flexible and beautifully lean, an ideal medium for the pen-portrait and the interior monologue, the Chaucerian language is poetically decoded below each quotation to make the tantalizing link between the ancient and the modern, and the plot, or series of plots – so many well-drawn characters, so many complex lives, so much intriguing venality – is as readable, engaging and cleverly shaped as any good novel.'

You can understand my pleasure in this review from a critic whose comments I have always respected!

In this long series of talks to various organisations, many Rotary Clubs stand out as being very welcoming, but so also does a group I'd known nothing about: Adelaide's Ionian Club, where a gathering of about fifty people proved a wonderful audience for stories about Oberammergau and its Passion Play, a wonderful group of alert and interested listeners.

So now it's back to work  - more talks to writers' groups and service organisations, and a shared night with Ros Schulz as guest poets at the State Library's monthly Words at the Wall. That's at 6 pm on Wednesday April 16, at the Treasures Wall on the library's first floor - a warm invitation to anyone who can come.