Book Launch: Out of Copley Street

29 October 2020

BOOK LAUNCH: OUT OF COPLEY STREET
GEOFF GOODFELLOW IN-CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR RICK SARRE

THURSDAY 29 OCTOBER,
6PM TO 7.15PM, ACDT

Allan Scott Auditorium, Hawke Building, UniSA City West Campus MAP
Presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre

ACCESS VIDEO HERE

Join us for the Book Launch of Out of Copley Street with Australian literary icon Geoff Goodfellow, in conversation with University of South Australia's Professor Rick Sarre. 

Out of Copley Street is a poignant snapshot of working-class Australian life in the 1950s and 60s, expertly rendered with the vivid lived detail and wry knockabout humour that he is famous for.

Geoff is renowned for his brutally evocative poetry: famously performed on building sites, at factories and jails, and in mental health organisations, as well as the traditional schools and literary festivals. Martin Flanagan says he reads ‘like an angry red nerve’. But this playful, tender, richly realised childhood memoir – his first prose collection – reveals the vulnerable side of the working-class boy from Copley Street.

Growing up in Adelaide’s inner-northern suburbs, Geoff inherits a quick mind and quicksilver tongue from his father, a tender but troubled war veteran (and talented glassblower) who struggled with alcoholism. Geoff’s dad teaches him to make things with his hands, staunch loyalty to family, to charm and cajole – and perhaps most enduringly, to tell stories.

So we follow young Geoff as he takes his first job as a milkman’s assistant, aged five, fixes up his first motorbike aged eleven, flirts with housewives (and punches out his boss for insulting his dad) in his first job as an apprentice butcher aged fifteen, and hitchhikes to Mount Gambier to work on oil rigs aged seventeen.

‘A genuine, unmistakable Australian voice.’ – Ken Kesey

Click here to purchase the book from Matilda Bookshop's website and choose Hawke Centre Free SA Postage as the delivery option. They will then deliver or post your book to you at no additional cost (South Australian residents only). Alternatively, books will be for sale by Wakefield Press on the night, and Geoff will be signing personally.

This event will be presented LIVE in the University of South Australia's Allan Scott Auditorium to a limited audience. For this reason, REGISTRATIONS ARE ESSENTIAL All registered attendees will be required to sign-in and confirm contact details, as a requirement of our COVID-safe plan. Please stay at home if you are unwell or have any COVID-19 symptoms - see SA Health website for more information. We thank you in advance for your thoughtful and responsible cooperation.

GEOFF GOODFELLOW
AUTHOR AND POET

Geoff Goodfellow has established a reputation for giving voice to a wide range of people who wouldn’t normally be the subjects of poetry or prose. He began to write in 1982, aged 33, after working for many years in semi-skilled occupations. He is an autodidact.

His first collection of poetry, No Collars No Cuffs, was launched at Adelaide Writers Week in 1986, and has been reprinted nine times. Out of Copley Street, his boyhood memoir, will be his eleventh book.

Geoff has worked as a writer in schools, jails, youth detention centres, drug and alcohol rehabilitation units, building and construction sites and factories, as well as universities in Australia and overseas. For over 37 years, he has helped people to find their own voice. In doing so, he has edited three anthologies written by incarcerated people.

In 1988, Geoff was awarded the inaugural Carclew Fellowship, to assist in the development of young South Australian writers. His collection Poems for a Dead Father was shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year award in 2002. His poems have appeared in Best Australian Poetry (2009) and in Best Australian Poems four times.

Geoff grew up in the inner-northern suburbs of Adelaide, but has spent most of his adult life close to the beach, at Semaphore. Out of Copley Street is his first book of prose.

Geoff Goodfellow: website

EMERITUS PROFESSOR RICK SARRE
JUSTICE AND SOCIETY, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Warwick T. (Rick) Sarre is Emeritus Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at the University of South Australia.

Emeritus Professor Sarre is the immediate Past President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology (2012-2016), and was awarded Fellow status (FANZSOC) at the 2018 Annual Conference. He was formerly the Dean of Law at the UniSA Law School 2019-2020.

Emeritus Professor Sarre holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Adelaide, a Doctorate of Legal Science from the University of Canberra, a Master of Arts (Criminology) from the University of Toronto (Canada), and an Honorary Law Doctorate from Umeå University, Sweden. Emeritus Professor Sarre taught in the Business Division at Graceland University (Iowa, USA, 1997), in the Department of Law, Umeå University (Sweden, 2004), and with UniSA business programs twinned with Hong Kong Baptist University (1999-2008).

Emeritus Professor Sarre won a Carrick citation from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council in 2008. His research awards include the Research Excellence Award from the Division of Business (2006), joint winner of the Anne Hawke Prize for best article published in the Division of Business and Enterprise (UniSA, 2000), and winner of the Elbert A Smith Award for best article from the Herald Publishing House (USA) (2000). He was an International Ambassador for the British Society of Criminology 2015-2017.

He was the Chair of Academic Board at the University of South Australia from January 2011 to December 2016, and a member of the University Council for the same period.

Rick Sarre: The Conversation, articles   
Twitter: @stickwithricksa

         

Presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre