www.traversepoetry.org

It’s almost poetry slam time again - Friday 26 June at The Front, as usual.

This month I’m very excited to present not one, but two special guest poets.

First up we have young Queensland poet Rhys Rodgers, who has just started on a mini self-funded tour around Australia. This is from his bio:

Rhys Rodgers is a new and exciting performance poet from Brisbane. He won the Love Poetry Hate Racism open mic in 2008, was a finalist at both Nimbin performance poetry world cup and Woodford slam, as well as winning the 2008 SpeedPoets championships in Brisbane.

Next up we have Tobias Manderson-Galvin, who runs the Melbourne theatre company Sample Theatre, and will be sticking around in Canberra for a while to work on an Open House show with Canberra Youth Theatre. From his bio: Tobias Manderson-Galvin is a talented actor and poet from Melbourne whose poetry has previously seen him detained for terrorism by the Federal police, the bomb squad and an Adelaide airport. No stranger to provocation or controversy, Tobias has performed as part of the Dadaist hip-hop act The Hobby Whores and as the titular character Hitlerhoff, the cult comedy fusing of The Hoff and der Führer, which stormed the Adelaide Fringe Festival earlier this year.

So come along, check out some sure-to-be entertaining guest poets and then have ago at performing yourself!

Poetry Slam
26 June 2009 7:30-11:30pm
The Front Café and Gallery
Wattle St, Lyneham

Before I start spruking this month’s slam-ganza (stay tuned) I thought I’d quickly point you to Tom’s review of last month’s slam which managed to create the most controversy (the event, not the review) I’ve seen at a Canberra slam since the ‘freedom of speech’ fight back in ‘o7…

This slideshow gives you a really quick idea of fLight, a zine of my poetry wonderfully illustrated by Amina McConvell (with an amazing cover by Jenn Arthur). Amina copied the pages and pasted them up at the decomissioned Belconnen bus interchange, as part of the in2CHANGE festival.

This slideshow uses the following sound file from Freesound: 00942 very noisy wet traffic from Robinhood76 which is licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License.

And a quick reminder that tomorrow night is the all women poetry extravaganza: Show Us Your Texts!

29 May 2009 7:30-11:30pm
The Front Café and Gallery
Wattle St, Lyneham

Each year I go through the winners of the Webby Awards (the internet’s answer to the Academy Awards) looking for interesting websites I’ve never heard of. This year I found two links of relevance to this blog’s readers: one directly and one indirectly.

Live Hope Love

Poet Kwame Dawes’s work on people living in Jamaica with HIV. The only criticism I have of this is that the poetry (recorded audio on the site as well as scrolling text) and the photos are individually so strong and interesting that they are sometimes just too much together. I suggest you close your eyes and listen to the poetry and then view the images afterwards.

Wordle: traversepoetry.org

And this is something just plain fun: choose a blog and see words magically arrange themselves into a cool clouds, such as my wordle for traversepoetry.org

May is shaping up to be a very exciting month for Traverse Poetry!

First up:

Getting Published: Secrets from the Writers & Editors!
Free Q&A panel featuring: Paul Magee, Jack Heath, Rachel Longhurst, Julia Winterflood, George Poulakis and Emily Stewart
16 May 2009 2:00-3:30pm
The Hub @ Civic Library
London Circuit, Civic

Then, at the end of the month:

‘Girls Own’ Poetry Slam
Ladies only performers - open audience!
Featuring music from Julia from the Deep Sea Sirens
29 May 2009 7:30-11:30pm
The Front Café and Gallery
Wattle St, Lyneham

A few weeks ago I had a request to publish the winners of the April slam, so here they are:

1. Seung Baek
2. Farida
3. Michael Klapdor

Stay tuned for some more interesting posts soon - I’ve got a bunch of cool things in my notes to let you know about.

This week I did a spot at a CIT creative writing class on performance poetry. It was a bit rough but the students seemed to enjoy the pieces. One of the ones I performed was mentioned in this earlier post which has links to a video and transcript. On the subject of video, you can now watch the grand final of the 2008 Australian Poetry Slam on the ABC website, as well as pieces by indiviudal poets.

E-news subscribers already know this but, for your benefit, the next slam:

Friday 24 April
7.30pm - 11.30pm
The Front Gallery and Café, Wattle St, Lyneham
Featuring new local band ‘ah, pandita!’

Hope your weekend is truly egg-cellent!

Wow! What a weekend. We managed to fit over 100 into the main room of The Front and were treated to fantastic new work by poets both new to the night as well as old favourites. And Santo Cazzati did a very fine job of taking us through a kaleidoscope of aural worlds.

The next day, the always delightful Vanessa Berry led an excellent workshop on zine making, each of the participants creating a their own one page zine.

On the subject of zines (and there’ll be plenty of news about it to come) I wanted to let you know that Andrew Darragh (who designed the awesome zine fair poster), Gemma Nourse and myself are starting up a zine distro called Long Arm, which will be running out of Smiths Alternative Bookshop. More details available on the Facebook page.

Oh, and, by the way, my A Zine about Canberra is back in print with a lovely colour cover! I’m selling them for $3 (cheap!) and should be getting some stock to Sticky soon, if you’re down south. Also considering making a PDF available if people don’t want to pay for postage.

In other exciting news, Adam Hadley tells me a new poetry slam is starting up on the third Tuesday of the month at The Phoenix. It’s called BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT! (I kid you not) and apprently there’ll be cheap beer for poets. Yay! First slam on 21 April. More details to come.

I also hear Hadley is in need of young poets (25 and under) to perform at the National Folk Festival as part of hiJinx, in exchange for a day ticket. If you fit the bill then yank on Mr Hadley’s ear quick smart.

That’s it for now, except I was just listening to an interview with a Melbourne poet called Pi O in which he mentions a workers magazine called 9 to 5. I’d be interested if anyone knows anything about this publication - please let me know!

I’d like to say a quick thanks to Mary McCartney (who did such a great job on the Benedict House art:house festival) - she’s helping me out with promotion for Traverse Poetry events and she put together this wonderful media release for the next slam.

For the benefit of those who want the facts without wading through a media release, the next poetry slam is on:

Friday 27 March
7.30pm - 11.30pm
The Front Gallery and Café, Wattle St, Lyneham

In attendance will be the marvellous Melbourne poet Santo Cazzati (mentioned in this report) who will perform a 20-minute feature set - going to be great!

Meanwhile, I’d be curious to hear what you think of this blog post about the state of poetry. It’s from late last year, but still interesting. What do you think? Is there poetry that is both good on paper and spoken? Are there any good poets that could (should) reach as many children as Harry Potter? Are there any non-crap poetry blogs (aside from this one, of course!)?

Ok, first up, I was asked to help spread the word about a zine fair happening in the nearby town of Braidwood as part of the Two Fires Festival (27-29 March 2009). The festival organisers are calling for zinesters to register to sell and trade their work. There’s no fee and tables will be provided.

Register by emailing zinefair@twofirefestival.org or calling 040 1904 680.

Check out the nifty flyer here or on the Two Fires website.

Secondly there’s some very cool stuff happening in Belconnen later on in the year with the decommissioning of the bus interchange. On the final night (26 April) before it is knocked down all manner of artists and performers will be running wild. I’m hoping to get a possy of premium poets to perform poignant pieces on the night. Email me if you’re interested in being involved.

Best place to find out what’s happening is the in2CHANGE facebook group.

The final thing is I was recently catching up on IndieFeed Performance Poetry podcasts (thanks for the mention in show 505 Mongo!) and I have to mention Jack McCarthy’s poem Drunks which I encourage you all to listen to for all the reasons Mongo cites in his outro: this piece really does express what’s wonderful and important about performance poetry.

Time for a bit of off-topic self-promotion. Back in 2007 I was hired by Vignette Press to edit The Sex Mook: what is our sex? , a unique blend of book and magazine focusing on sex and sexuality from the perspective of young people.

Two years later and Vignette Press is back with a brand new mook: The Death Mook: how do we die? This time it was edited by a lovely chap, Dion Kagan (who also contributed to The Sex Mook), and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

Check out the free sample of the mook.

Here’s the official blurb:

In a culture both death-denying and death-obsessed, The Death Mook creates a space for writers and artists to talk about death in creative and unorthodox ways. Thus, this collection of essays, stories, vignettes and illustrations contains some provocative, engaging, beautiful and downright crackpot perspectives.

If you happen to be in or anywhere near Melbourne, The Death Mook is being launched this week, Thursday 26 February at Dantes, 150 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. Otherwise, you can order copies through Vignette Press or your local bookshop. Look out for my contribution - it’s an essay explaining why I love horror movies.