Jaya Savige

November 3rd, 2008 at Globe Cafe as part of the Alchemy Prague Readings and Performance Series.

Jaya Savige is a poet, critic and editor from Australia, and a 2008/9 Gates Scholar at Cambridge University (Christ's). He was born in Sydney, and raised on an island in south-east Queensland. latecomers (UQP 2005), a poetry collection, was the recipient of several prizes in Australia including the Kenneth Slessor Prize (NSW Premier's Award for Poetry).

He is the poetry consultant to the Australian Literary Review, supplement of The Australian newspaper, and writes for several Australian publications, including the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Book Review. His visit is made possible by the aid of traveling scholarships from the Brisbane City Council and Marten Bequest.

"The poems in latecomers go beyond what we take for granted these days in a first collection: refinement of language and cadence, allusiveness, wit. Moving easily through abstract wonders and the streets of the inner city, they return for nourishment to family and "the Island" as a test always of what is native and endures."

- David Malouf