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

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.