www.traversepoetry.org

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!)?