VWL’s biennial Lesbia Harford Oration honours its name sake with a presentation by an eminent speaker on issues of importance to women.
Wednesday 9 September 2015 at 12:00pm for registration and 12.30-2.30pm for lunch.
Venue: Melbourne Town Hall, Supper Room, 90-120 Swanston Street, Melbourne
This year Clementine Ford will orate on how the mission for gender equality fits within the broader diversity agenda, and what the focus on diversity means for women.
In 2012, Clementine was voted one of Australia’s most influential female voices by Daily Life readers. In 2013 and 2014, those same readers selected her as one of Daily Life’s 20 Women of the Year.
Lesbia Harford – poet, novelist, law student, articled clerk and famously bisexual – is recognised as a pioneer of women in the legal profession.
Born in Brighton, Melbourne in 1891 Lesbia was a champion of workers’ rights, and at the same time a woman of her time. A time of world war, suffrage, the challenging of religious ideals and social upheaval – all of which contributed to the lyric voice discovered in the three notebooks of poems left behind after her early death in 1927.
Although forgotten for decades, Lesbia Harford is now seen as one of the first truly modern, urban figures in Australian poetry.
The 2015 oration coincides with the publication of a new collection of the poet’s work – Collected Poems: Lesbia Harford, edited by Oliver Dennis (UWA Publishing).
Ticket price includes two course meal and drinks, plus a copy of Collected Poems: Lesbia Harford
For more information download flyer here