Poet and food lover Margaret Ruckert will be visiting the library for an evening of Prose & Pavlova! Listen to Margaret read from her latest work; You Deserve Dessert, while sampling some of Australia’s historical desserts.

This event is to celebrate History Week 2011, the theme being the history of food of course!

Bookings are essential as space is limited. You can book online here or call Library Services.

Payment can be made at any shire library within one week of booking.

Start: 6:30PM, 6 Sep 2011
Finish: 7:30PM, 6 Sep 2011

Cost:$5 per person – includes dessert. Sorry no refunds

More Details Here..

Cheers, Margo.

“Sydney born poet, writer and educator, Margaret Ruckert will be joining us a Campsie Library to speak about her latest book, which celebrates the joys of food through poems and stories,” Mayor Robert Furolo said.

“Margaret won the 2007 national poetry competition of the Society of Women Writers NSW and her articles and poems have been widely published in newspapers, magazines and educational journals.

“In her latest book You Deserve Dessert: Fact, Fiction & Fable you’ll find 124 pages of desserts, cakes and biscuits – but no recipes!

“Instead you’ll find over 100 creative texts allowing the reader to sample desserts across time and space.

“Cakes become characters in this book and readers will meet a trio of proper tarts, the beast of mudcake, a fruit cake feigning holiness, crime caramel and a suave Sacher Torte.

“Our regular Author’s Talk Program at our libraries is always a popular event with local residents.

“The program presents a rare opportunity for booklovers to meet their favourite authors, and to hear first hand about the topics discussed in some great books.

“If you’re a reader who is not afraid of indulging in some delicious poetry, make sure you come along to hear Margaret speak and read poems from her new book.

“I’m sure you’ll be asking for second helpings when you met the chef of these very tasty characters” Mayor Robert Furolo said.

Margaret Ruckert, will be talking about her book You deserve Dessert: Fact, Fiction & Fable on Friday 26 November at 1pm at Campsie Library, 14-28 Amy Street, Campsie. All Authors’ Talks are FREE but bookings are essential. For more information, please phone 9789 9413.

or do you rather lump together the straight jacket of corporate strife/shoes that walk the talk to out-shout the opposition/a logo you can see through/a necktie of slow choking lies around a white shirt of total no-brainers/forget matching underwear.

When rising as the underdog next day would you agree that you often use a hair brush you used on the dog once/wear shoes that are a genuine safety hazard/throw on a jacket smelling of dry cleaner’s plastic/underwear that’s barely there (except for the elastic)/shirts that smell like sell/ties with a beer breathe/pants with rear sweat?

And after you kill the clock radio on Wednesday will you in all honesty concede their logo will dog you when the company bombs? that your shoe has come apart and only you can save the partnership? that shirts lose flirt power with inexplicable stains?

And when you abandon the breakfast team will you realise that the best time to think about clothes and do something positive is the night before and you’ve missed it again?

But one morning of the interview wide awake as possible you realise you’ve come a long way brainy and discover clothes can fall apart or be taken seriously/you dress up your body head-to-heels in an outfit of wisdom and cunning/power max a whole body envelope/precision wrapped just waiting for their best addresses.

A health-fiend of a friend once gave me Gabriel Gaté’s classic, Smart Food, wrapped in best wishes and silver cooking foil. For my birthday. Predictably, I felt as suspicious as a marked-down cream sponge. Was her gift wrapping a recycling of unwanted material? Had she given up baking for good, for the good raw food life? But the foil was wrapped around a cookery book. A cooked savoury noodle dish with spinach lavishly adorned the front cover. With a wink she said, “This has some great ideas for cake alternatives.”

And if you are thinking that, without even a thank you, I was so desperate for nutritious desserts that I immediately flipped to the chapter on Sweet Delights, you are obsessively mistaken.

Time, not cake, was my luxury at that time. With a young family and paid work, something had “to give” and since I stopped wearing panty hose during my first pregnancy there was only “give” in my daily routine. So, no caring of pets. Stuffed pets OK. A self-mulching garden. A self-seeding herb garden. Even useful hobbies like knitting were dropped, mid-stitch.

This time factor, or lack of time factor, affected dinners. No home-made desserts. My memory of aromatic winter months, sitting round the table with stewed apple and hot vanilla custard, being one of the few childhood experiences I neglected to pass down. I was a cold-tongue mother. Tinned peaches. Tinned fruit salad. And always jelly, in every artificially natural colour known. Dessert was generally this wasteland, a desert, but somehow in the summer holidays, forests of ice-cream sprouted in my freezer. And frozen yogurt, once it became available, was a regular visitor and stayed overnight or even up to a week. But never longer. And then there was all the hard work associated with organising a replacement.

When on holiday, there was time for browsing my historical collection, both ancient and modern, of meal recipes and very occasionally attempting one. My many folders of mismatched colours and sizes, faded labels or non-existent, stacked as if ready for a jumble sale. So a smart Gabriel Gaté was welcomed onto my bookshelf. I followed one of his recipes, garlic mushrooms, so many times it lead me to cook the dish as an acceptable low-budget alternative to garlic prawns. His desserts are the result of healthy decisions: yogurt instead of ice-cream based on cream, traditional recipes modified to reduce sugar and/or fat proportions and wholemeal flour instead of floor sweepings.

He led me back to salads, but sadly, not the fruit-flavoured variety. Had I taken his advice and combined mango and strawberry with juice of 2 oranges, 1 tablespoon of sultanas and 1 banana, sugar optional, my family would have experienced a more organic heaven on earth than the one regularly accessed through 4 litres of Neapolitan Ice-cream, no matter how organically certified the ice-cream.

here is liquid country, expect no trees
but the occasional mast to pierce the sky

silk ripples, satin laps against the boat
but you’ve taken away the substance of today

salt, sand and an artefact I’m not supposed
to mention, you’re not allowed to take them

national parks hate people like you
stuffing a blip, ten blips, behind their smile

holiday of a lifetime and you spoil it
for me, a pillow cloud plays with dreams

the sky pitches a sun at us
we’re full speed ahead into light

wind encourages a swell
the Coolong turns in for another night

if only you could see the future
for the seas

seize nothing but peace
in this cooperative of life

Punch the Judy magazine or
latest political tell-it-all screed.
People who think they can mess with my thought

find it appropriate to hug me, their daughter
as though a stab at the right brain, cheers.
√ Yes, I would like to subscribe to your

“Better Dog Society. Read more
facts in articles, less ads, more appeal.”
People who think they can mess with my thought

arrive unannounced, no flowers, no port
of call except my private beach. (Get real).
√ Yes, I would like to subscribe to your

next major thesis: The Theatre of War.
There’s room on the bookshelf for one last scream.
People who think they can mess with my thought.
√ Yes, I would like to subscribe to your

1. personality
you wear the architecture of elegance
confident, smart, a slim sort of loud
a winning bluff to your bottom line
you will make fashion history, spied
by a fabric designer who’s wrapt in blood
your provocative colour sample, F,
becomes the new red, people
will queue to be photographed on you
and when you blush about this
only I will know

2. reflection
you’re a curvaceous mirror
to our body language
winking us to come
sit down near your legs
feel the worth of your merchandise
freeing us, weightless
but if you were a woman
wearing that look, I’d uncover
your unconscious and say
watch it, the predators are circling

3. enquiry
as chair women
our meeting is perfect match
you zing where I zang
you win many stars for comfort
I could clap your inclusiveness
whatever my temper, you accept me
you keep my feet on the ground
while my head’s gone fiction
but in summer, will you read
my temperature and sit up in blue

4. recognition
my seat of learning
oh little red writing chair
what bright smiles you give
all the better to hearten you, my dear 
oh little red writing chair
what sleek lines you have
all the better to help you write, my dear
oh little red writing chair
what strong support you give
all the better to keep you here, my dear

There are spaces
above high water, above the drown,
chill with clues of an older maritime
and harbouring history with sandstone gold:
rocks in surges, urgent weathers,
white crests and watermarks still embedded,
honey-comb erosion, no sweet memory.

Fig trees splay over angled rock,
like sailors, aching for a chance on flat land,
deep-seeking an anchor.

the neckline gripped neck bones
so clamped round the neck
it was hard to believe
breathing was an obligatory fact

puffy-blue sleeves were set into a bodice
set-in with a seam, no give, so modest
those arms weren’t going out anywhere
certainly not in higher social circles

pale-blue lace on half moon collars
pale-blue swathes to cut through the gossip
no darts appeared though the need was apparent
a zipper down the back, Nana had gone modern
fabric flowers at the waist, a miniature spray
nothing ever wasted from her milliner’s table

the whole dress was lined
in something resembling plastic
but how do I know this?
why would I care?

Nana’s hand-sewn dress
was a Sunday success outfit
everywhere it went, people wanted
to finger the finesse of it

I did love the look
and would have loved
to just look at it more often

but I was the model
twelve-year-old granddaughter
sweating
pubescing
inside it