Poet performs at folk club

The Troubadour folk club will hold its next meeting on Saturday, September 24, at the Woy Woy CWA Hall from 7pm, and will feature poet Graham Johnson.

Mr Johnson writes and performs both traditional and original verse following in the footsteps of Australia's rich heritage of rhyme and meter.

Calling himself The Rhymer from Ryde, Mr Johnson comes originally from country NSW and has lived in inner city Sydney since 1991.

Mr Johnson said, after meeting some bush poets in 1994, he was inspired to combine his love of language with 25 years of theatrical experience to take his poetry "back to the people".

Often described as "painting pictures with words", he uses his skills to draw his audience into his stories about the Great Southern Land and its people.

"Whether it is his recollections of travels in the countryside, his love of our colonial history, or reliving the experiences of the bohemian residents of Sydney's past, Graeme is drawn with fierce patriotism to embrace the virtues that makes us the Aussies that we are today," said Troubadour publicity officer Ms Willy Timmerman.

He has won the prestigious Banjo Paterson Writing Awards 2004 for Bush Poetry, the John Dunmore Lang Poetry Prize and been runner up in both the Henry Lawson Society of NSW Adult Literary Prize and Leonard Teal Memorial Spoken Word Award.

He is published in a number of magazines and books, has appeared in 17 anthologies of Australian poetry and appears regularly on radio.

Email, 29 Aug 2011 Willy Timmerman, Troubadour