Pearlz Dreaming

(Image credit: Ian Hallmond)

In May I presented at the Ink of Light Festival, A Writing Festival to empower authors of Baha’i background; this was the first festival of its kind in Australia.

Bahai’s are from a rich diversity of cultural and spiritual backgrounds and this can be expressed in their writing through diverse genres, and approaches.  Festival participants were from Queenslands’  Gympie, Byron Bay, Toowoomba, Redland, Moreton Bay, Brisbane as well as the Solomon Islands, and Wollongong, and Melbourne and Country Victoria.

Speakers focused on fiction with characters who are Baha’is (both detective fiction and junior youth), discussing the processes to creating well  written and researched history books,  spiritual education of youth, print on demand publishing for the Australian Bahai Publications future, poetry, as well as the art of photography and different kinds of creativity and how this can be combined with spiritual expression.

I spoke alongside presenters Boris…

Image by Geson Ratow

Paper boats conjure dreams
of petals soaked by
scents of the
ocean.

Traveling boats
float in shadows
people
who have a simple hope
for happy lands,
but white markers sink
in sandy earth
marking graves of people
who cannot resist new germs.

‘Once watched paper boats,’
paternal grandfather says
in Vietnamese
but nobody understands
No translators here.

So shadow puppets dance
for petals
falling from kumquat boughs.

By June Perkins

Appeared on Australian Children’s Poetry for Refugee Week Prompt

Image courtesy of The Australian newspaper

Actor Ioan Gruffudd stars as the boat-dwelling Dr Daniel Harrow in the new TV forensic drama series ‘Harrow’ filmed in Brisbane, Australia.  The goal for this intellectual forensic drama, featuring an unorthodox and edgy forensic pathologist who lives aboard an untidy boat on the Brisbane River, was achieved by the combined talents of ABC Studios International and Hoodlum Entertainment.

Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, whose recent screen credits include movie ‘Fantastic Four’, TV series ‘Liar’, ‘Forever’ and earlier ‘Hornblower’, is now 44 and says he has more life experience to get under the skin of somebody like the flawed, smart and sarcastic Dr Harrow.  Ioan, who also filmed ‘San Andreas’ in Queensland, fell in love with Brisbane, swimming with dolphins, attending theatre productions and an Ashes test cricket match at the Gabba stadium which unfortunately ended with treatment in hospital for heat stroke.

Leigh McGrath, executive producer of the 10-episode season of ‘Harrow’, says “Brisbane has got…