Australian Poety Slam ’08 – first heat
The Australian Poetry Slams are always a very different sort of poetry slam to our usual ones at The Front.
I think running two heats has positives and negatives. The positives are twice the chance for people to get up and give slam a shot and double the exposure for Canberra slamming in general. The main negative is spreading the possible number of performances too thinly. Last year the single heat was packed with an incredible amount of energy for such a huge room (the National Library foyer). Friday’s slam was quieter but still a rocking good night. I have a suspicion that next week we’ll get a few people over the 20 we’re permitted.
We were under this time and it was slightly disappointing that five of those who had registered didn’t show up to perform (where were you Tom?!?), but the suggestion of the nice Sound Advice guy of walking around with the wireless mic and persuading people to perform was a good one, and one which got us an enjoyable performance from a bloke named Nemo (no aquatic jokes please).
Human Cannonball Academy (AKA Adam Hadley) took the gold with a delightful comparison between dropping the bombshell of ‘I love you’ and dropping the bombshell of having sold all the paracutes as the plane plummets towards to ground.
The silver medal went to a new slam performer, Susan Carcary (winner of the 2008 NSW Bush Poetry Championships) with a hartfeld cry from a little orphan African boy to be saved from the greedy hands of from Brad and Jolie.
Seung was awesome as always, as was Professor Anarchy who has promised to perform another piece for us next Friday.
The crowd seemed to like my love poem which was heartening since I’d only written it three days before. Will put pen to paper to get another one down for next week.
The Cashews were a delight as always, making great use of the space, although not getting all the attention from the crowd that I think they deserved.
Roughly half of Friday’s performances were from people I’ve never seen before which is also what happened last year – I need to figure out a way I can get this talent to perform as part of the regular slams!
