about THE FOUNDERS
DR MARK TREDINNICK OAM
Mark is a celebrated poet, essayist, and teacher. Since 2003, he has published over two hundred works—poems, essays, reviews, papers, and books. For twenty-five years, he’s taught poetry and expressive writing at the University of Sydney, where he was poet in residence in 2018.
In 2020, Mark was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for services to literature and education. His other honours include two State Premiers’ Literature Prizes, The Blake and Newcastle Poetry Prizes, the ACU and Ron Pretty Poetry Prizes, two Premiers’ Literature Awards, and the Calibre Essay Prize. The Blue Plateau, his landscape memoir, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Prize.
Mark has published five volumes of poetry, the latest of which is A Beginners' Guide, published by Birdfish in 2022. His many other works of poetry and prose include Walking Under Water, A Gathered Distance, Almost Everything I Know, Egret in a Ploughed Field, Bluewren Cantos, Fire Diary, The Blue Plateau, The Little Red Writing Book and The Little Green Grammar Book.
Mark is the Managing Editor of Oystercatcher Enterprises.
STEVE MEYRICK
Steve is a Wollongong-based poet, politely referred to by Mark as 'emerging'. If this is indeed the case, he has taken a rather long time to emerge.
Born in Wales, he was brought up in WA and lived for a few years in Tasmania before making his home in the Illawarra. Poetry has been Steve’s private passion for most of his life, but he only began sharing his work in 2022, after being 'outed' by his three daughters, who compiled a book of his handwritten poems and distributed it to family and friends . His poems have been included in the 2022 and 2023 editions of 34 to 37 Degrees South, an annual anthology published by the South Coast Writers Centre, and have been shortlisted for the ACU and Calanthe prizes.
Steve, who is the Commercial Director of Oystercatcher Enterprises, describes his role as staving off the inevitable insolvency of a small poetry press for as long as humanly possible. The target for Oystercatcher Enterprises is to ensure that it survives at least as long as the founders--and neither is intending an early departure from this beautiful world.