Reading Matters 2011

There've been lots of wrap posts about the Reading Matters conference (a biennial YA literature conference run by the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria) written over the last few days, and I felt like I should do one too.

Mine's a bit different, though. Throughout the conference, lots of people were tweeting about the conference under the hastag #RM11. So I've collected a bunch of those tweets, and chopped them about to make a poem.

Tweets used are from @msmisrule, @twitofalili, @SLVLearn, @annaryanpunch (yeah that's me), @bookboy, @Zoe_Walton, @mike_sh, @timpegler.

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#RM11

I love the smell of librarians in the morning.

rival gangs of verbose bookish miscreants roaming

Police should be alert for the inner city landscape

not so much black tie as black cardi.

How to tell if you are a writer:

Do you have a set of bizarre interests?

Are you bisexual? Can I have some of your blood?

Are you interested in planking?

Superheroes wrote their own comic books,

seeing what we take for granted

anew like childhood views of power stations

beautiful by night, straightforward and utterly baffling.

Everything relates to Buffy, this is clear.

Girls write themselves, damsels need

discussion that involves the phrase "sausage-fest"

not princess fairy kitten and the glitter horse stickers.

Every family has their own terminology

how they respond is what’s important.

I've heard the term 'cultural melting-pot' a lot

it’s natural to want to see outside that.

Readers will never come last in the race,

never quite know the extraordinary journey.

We owe everything to a roomful of books:

strong, flawed and not having to be rescued.