www.traversepoetry.org

This Sunday is the fantastic free hip-hop workshop with D’Opus and Roshambo. We still have a few spots available so quit thinking about it and book with ACT Writers Centre: admin@actwriters.org.au or phone (02) 6262 9191

The workshop is happening with the generous support of Music For Everyone, on Sunday 20 September at Ainslie Arts Centre (not Gorman House) on Elouera Street in Braddon, 2-5pm. No experience or materials required!

If that wasn’t enough, you can also look forward to an internationally themed poetry slam next week, on Friday 25 September at The Front. This one is going to feature special guest poet Randall Stephens who I met earlier this year in Melbourne. He’s an highly entertaining poet with a marvellous beard to boot.

Here are the details:

Poetry Slam: poetry from the far ends of the earth
25 September 7:30-11:30pm
The Front Gallery and Café
Wattle St, Lyneham

This month’s poetry slam is a special celebration of all things green and spring-y!

The evening will feature special guest plant poet, Berkley Walker, from the US, and music from the ever delightful Rex and Helen!

Green Slam
28 August 2009 7:30-11:30pm
The Front Café and Gallery
Wattle St, Lyneham

Plus, check out today’s issue of The Canberra Times for a very nice article on the slams!

Sorry again about the long delay between updates. We had a massive slam last month, featuring great sets from guest poets Rhys Rodgers and Tobias Manderson-Galvin – in fact I think it might have been the largest turnout since we started running slams at The Front. On that note, this month’s slam will celebrate our third birthday!

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

Look out for some more info about this special slam shortly.

Meanwhile, I’ve been very busy organising a free workshop for people under 30, that will explore the techniques and skills that professional performance poets use and how you can use them to improve your own practice. The tutor is Daniel Ferri (yes the very same Daniel Ferri that appears in the film SlamNation!). I worked with Daniel on a similar workshop last year which was extremely well received by all participants.

Performance poetry workshop with Daniel Ferri and David Finnigan
Free for people under 30 – only limited places: book now!
Contact ACT Writers Centre to book: (02) 6262 9191
2 August 2009 10.00am-3.00pm
C Block Theatre @ Gorman House Arts Centre
Ainslie Avenue, Braddon

This workshop will be suitable for all levels of experience so hurry up and book – it’s already half full and it’s less than three weeks away!

Oh, one other thing, Tom posted a review of what looks like an excellent exhibition of paintings by Joabie Lovett over at the Belconnen Community Centre: Symbols of the Dreaming from the Chaos Void. It finishes this Friday so get there quick!

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

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

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!

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!)?

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.

Friday night’s Halloween slam was great fun (although a little on the quiet side – to be expected with Stonefest, Reclaim the Night and a bunch of other events on at the same time)…  Nevertheless ’twas lovely to see all of the kids (and big kids) dressed up, getting into the spookiness of the day.

We boosted the scary factor inside The Front by (silently) projecting Nosferatu and Plan 9 from Outer Space behind the performers. I thought it might be too distracting for the audience but everyone seemed to enjoy it. My haunted house poem went down well, as did the other Halloween-themed entries. The winners were:

1. Liz Beaton
2. Seung Baek
3. Hadley

Andrew Walker did us a treat by playing well into the night – astounding variety of music for one man and his guitar.