Friendly Street Poets: Censoring Australian Poetry

Friendly Street is Adelaide’s premier poetry group. In existence for some 30 years now it boasts in the introduction to its latest anthology, Rewired, that it is also the longest running “uncensored” poetry group in Australia. Funded by grants from ArtsSA, Friendly Street represents the literary establishment in South Australia and the state of the art of South Australian poetry. Their constitution proudly announces their intention as “to foster, promote and encourage the reading, writing, reciting and publication of poetry.” Yet, as will be demonstrated in this case study, its systematic persecution and overt censorship of one poet in 2007-8 reveals conclusively that despite its lofty constitutional ideals, Friendly Street is in practice a wowserist organization prepared to do anything possible to ruin the literary reputation of a poet whose radical work defies and offends them apparently to their very core.