www.traversepoetry.org

Yes, these updates have been few and far between. I apologise. I’m moving to a nine-day fortnight this week so hopefully there’ll be some more time to devote to this blog soon.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago we had another good slam, with a whole bunch of new faces. In fact, our second place winner had never performed before…

1. CJ (on why he’s too boring to be a poet!)
2. James Douglass
3. Anthony

A couple of days later Daniel Ferri, David Finnigan and I ran an enjoyable workshop at C Block. About half the people who signed up turned up but, in fact, we only just managed that number in the time we had, so all was well. Hopefully we’ll see some of these wonderfully talented people at forthcoming slams!

Now, a couple of links readers might find interesting:

• Poetica – Poets of Papua New Guinea: part one and two (I found the first part more interesting than the second, but both are good).
• Visible Tweets: ‘poetry’

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

Late last year a guy called Matthew Robertson contacted me to promote the Human Rights Torch Relay through the slams at The Front. Just a few months ago he sent me a link to an interesting item from The New York Times, on one teacher’s use of poetry in a Philadelphia school. It’s quite short but still heartening:

We show 32 young urban voices how to ask probing questions about a text, a formula, or a problem in their communities. We use those questions to flavor each unit plan that we prepare. The end product works much like that call-and-response piece that shouts ‘Listen!’ and quiets all sidebar conversation. The audience owns the words too. The kids are more inspired to pay attention. The artist is more inspired to bring the noise.

Hope you all have a great end of year break.

One of Bonnie’s colleagues passed on a link to this article in the Times Online about Josephine Hart’s poetry events. There’s a wonderful quote from the article selected by Bookninja that’s worth repeating:

Going to a library to listen to an actor read poems is not, she insists, an act of self-improvement. ‘It’s allowing yourself to stop depriving yourself of what is incandescently beautiful in life. To deny yourself that is voluntarily to starve your soul. And if your soul is starved it is impossible to be happy. Modern life makes it hard for people to feed their souls, and that’s what people find there. They’re on a starvation diet and they come out and they suddenly think: “My god! This is a feast!”‘

‘After all, what is it that makes us human? It is language. And poetic language is the most rare form. It’s like a gem because the wisdom and insight of the poet is compressed into it. It’s a thrilling thing that a line can set off in your mind a whole world of potential experience. Either it inspires you in terms of wanting certain experiences, or it can help you to treasure the experience within those lines. And therefore life, for the short time we’re on this Earth, is immensely enriched.

Beautiful stuff.

My word, what an action-packed final it was!

At the end of an incredibly tense slam, Omar Musa (last year’s ACT winner, and grand final runner up) and David Finnigan (whose extreme creativity constantly blows me away) drew for first place and then, after each poet performed a second piece, drew for a second time. So there will be three poets – Hadley, Omar and David – going up to Sydney for the grand final!

Omar’s style was very emotional and down to earth, and less hip hop than last year – his delivery is extremely smooth and a delight to hear. Both of Dave’s pieces were, as too be expected, utterly unexpected. The first, a conversation between David (who writes poetry) and David (who gets the credit) and the second, a passionate yet scientific description of how planets and moons are formed.

As I predicted we had a packed final night and a third of the 20 performers were people I’d never seen perform at previous slams. I tried to get around and talk to all of these poets after the competition and most people seemed interested in coming along to slams at The Front. Unfortunately the regular ones won’t start again until late January, so I hope they will stay keen over the new year’s break.

Munro, Jules (Casual Projects) and Ben were a perfect accompaniment to the slam… Heidi commented on how much they reminded her of early Whitlams – and Munro is certainly as enternaining performer as Tim. Such a pity we will be loosing them to Melbourne!

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!