I first spent time in Brisbane as Poet in Residence for QPF back in 2015. I came up with the following poetic exercises for my 2020 residency, as a way of being there again, if only in my mind. I also wrote them to do with the attendees of my QPF 2020 Everyday Conversations Zoom Workshop, and now share them with you, in hopes that you might find them generative, whether you are in Brisbane or not. The first set of exercises are intended to be walking exercises, poems that can be created while moving through Brisbane, or any city you find yourself in. The second set are for inside the house. The third are for writing through our online lives. The final exercise, about Brisbane’s weather app, we came up with together in my QPF workshop. I think often about the quality of light in Brisbane, how clean it was, and also of the big storm I experienced while I was there, which shook rooftops and transformed the sky. And most often I think of the faces of my friends.

–Kate Durbin, January 2021