David Stavanger
David Stavanger is poet, performer, cultural producer, editor and former psychologist with lived mental health experience. His poetry has been widely published in journals, anthologies and newspapers. In 2013 he won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, resulting in the release of The Special (2014, UQP), his first full-length collection of poetry which was also awarded the 2015 Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. His prose-poem ‘The Electric Journal' about receiving ECT was a finalist of the 2016 Newcastle Poetry prize. David was Co-Director of QLD Poetry Festival 2015-2017 and David co-directed Queensland Poetry Festival (2015-2017) and is a Senior Project Manager at Red Room Poetry. He is the co-editor of Australian Poetry Journal 8.2 Spoken, Rabbit 27 Tense, The Moth Autumn 2020 (Ireland, first international guest poetry editor) and SOLID AIR: Collected Australian & New Zealand Spoken Word (UQP, 2019.) His newly released collection is Case Notes (UWAP, 2020). David sometimes performs as Green Room-nominated spoken word artist Ghostboy.
He is also well known for his work as a workshop facilitator in schools and with several community writing projects that amplify marginalised voices and lived experience writers including Brotherhood of the Wordless (writers with autism precluded from speech), School of Hard Knocks – Word on the Street (writers with mental health and/or substance abuse issues), MAD Poetry (writers with lived mental health experience), and GranSlam! (a writing and performance project for emerging senior writers aged seventy and over.)
Reflection
"Sometimes the poet is not there when you are there" – Youth Unlocked – David Stavanger