One of the roads I went further down during this year’s Emerging Writers’ Festival was the tricky path of page poetry. After working on poems for the page with much more success in first semester, thanks to a helpful teacher, I feel like I actually might be getting it.
Photo by Amir Kuckovic (Creative Commons)
I’ve had a complicated relationship with poems for the page. I felt like there was a complicated art to it, even with free verse, that I hadn’t yet mastered. Which was why spoken word appealed to me. I found the language more accessible and natural, and it was probably by listening to a lot of spoken word, night after night, that I discovered what I liked and what I didn’t. It’s helped to construct my own poems within that body of Melbourne spoken word poetry.
But in the last year or so, my shorter more concise ideas have found more of a home inside the short page poem and I’ve found I’ve written a couple that I’ve actually liked. I still read them live, but now I’m finding that divide between poetry for the stage and page is increasingly blurred.
I’ve never really learnt in the formal sense how to write either. I’ve never gone to a workshop or really deconstructed the ‘bones of my poems’ like I would a short story. And yet, I feel like these things are more important than when writing prose. But now I am thinking about how I approach my process, for both or as separate forms. How I write page poetry now, after discovering some page poetry that I’ve liked, is making me wonder how I go about writing spoken word.
I used to write them much like I’d write a page poem, with short lines and lots of line breaks, and I suppose some poems will still be written like that, but it seems more suited to shorter pieces. And when putting together I set, I’ve really noticed how much shorter most of my pieces are compared to others. Do slammers and more spoken storytellers write pieces like they might write a tight piece of poetic prose? My prose has become more poetic, rich with images. Do I write spoken word like that?
Sure, there is no right or wrong process but I would be curious to hear how others approach the different forms. Do you write it like prose or like traditional poetry? How much do you edit? Do you edit as you try to memorise? Do you write in one hit?
I discovered the Melbourne poetry scene about two years ago, on a train home to Coburg one night. I ran into Santo Cazzati on his way to read poetry in a pub in Brunswick. That’s how I learned about Passionate Tongues at the Brunswick Hotel: by word of mouth. And from there, the Dan, the Spinning Room and the Overload Poetry Festival. I found a whole swathe of readings, slams and events had been going on right under this poet’s nose. An entire world was opened up through one man mentioning the scene in passing and it amazed me that I had never come across any of it before. I had gone to festivals, literary events and book launches, but never knew that underneath Melbourne, there existed a world of poetry.
Last month, at my favourite poetry venue in Melbourne, I was very lucky to join Amanda Anastasi on stage during her featured performance. Both Amanda and I discuss the issue of refugees in our poetry and so it was a special honour for us to combine our poems – Amanda’s “Christmas Island” and my poem, “They Kill Them” – and present “Christmas Island/They Kill Them” at Passionate Tongues at the Brunswick Hotel. Big thanks to Randall Stephens, another great Melbourne poet, for providing the footage so I could edit it and upload it to share it with you all.
Some people say,
about me,
when they look at me,
that I have a bee in my bonnet
bees in my bonnet about everything
And they look at me in mock pity
with a brick in my hand wrenched back
facing at the TV screen:
Gillard and Abbott want to tow refugees back out to sea
And some people say,
I have a bee in my bonnet
as if it’s something wrong with me?
They say I have a bee in my bonnet
because bees don’t belong under bonnets
living organisms amongst machines
but perhaps
just maybe
my fucking car runs on the buzzing of bees
So,
I took my bees
put them in my pocket
swarming around underneath
and people’s eyes
would gravitate to me
standing out
buzzing
when everyone was so quiet
around me
You would have to listen, closely,
to find others
small groups,
sharing and exchanging,
noisy insects in metal pockets
making tiny swarms flying around the city
But now, we realise
it is not us, collectors of bees
that are the breeders
we are not the beekeepers
or the honey takers
But it is those
who we aim the
buzzing bees
and in their
gluttonous desire
for more
golden liquid
they’re breeding more bees
filling our pockets
not with the produce of bees
but empty, raging, hives,
pushing up against our metal tops
and now it’s not just me with
a bee in my bonnet
and we’ve all got bricks wrenched back
in front of things more real than TV screens
and we’ve come together
a swarm of millions
billions of bees
buzzing and suffocating
greedy bee keepers
who’ve kept the honey
all to themselves
for far too long
Poetry, especially performance poetry or ‘spoken word’ is admittedly not the most popular medium, even amongst the limited crowd interested in the arts. And Melbourne, despite its creative reputation probably doesn’t have the biggest poetry scene in the world, though probably the biggest in Australia.
That said, us poets are usually pretty happy reading to small crowds, even to a few drunk people at a bar on the tail end of an open mic, and it kind of makes each person who listens, reads or comments on a poem all the more gratifying in a really non-corny way. We do like the occasional big crowd, big slam, or something never before seen like the International Slam last Friday, but we’re not expecting arenas. We reach out with our poetry any way we can.
Which brings me to poetry videos. Sometimes it can be hard to convince even friends to come out on a cold Monday night to see some poetry, or when slams conflict with bigger more flashy forms of entertainment. I’m working on the pyro for my next show, but for now, we kind of need an ‘in’ to get people interested, to help them see that it’s not quite they might have expected.
Often after seeing spoken word, slam poetry, even ‘normal’ performance poetry, friends comment that they didn’t expect that, that it’s not all old style rhyming poems about gum trees, and good performance poets bring words to life and don’t just read off the page (some of us read off iPhones.)
So what if we could bring performance poetry, spoken word or whatever you want to call it to people instead of needing to convince them to come to a gig? People spend a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter and the Internet in general, and people are more likely to watch a video than read a longer piece of writing. If you can make it snappy, perhaps add some images etc. than we might convince some people that it’s worth seeing a whole gig of us.
After all, many people came to see Shane Koyczan on Friday night after seeing all of his heart-wrenching poems on YouTube. And those videos prove, so long as the poetry is good and clear, the videos don’t have to be that fancy anyway.
Cameras aren’t massively expensive nowadays, nor is editing software, especially when you get iMovie free with your Mac. And most smartphones have decent cameras. My first video of a poetry reading I did was done off my iPhone. Most videos I’ve seen are simple videos from actual gigs. Randall Stephens has been posting a heap of videos from his tour of South-East Asia.
You can even use a webcam. Steve Smart’s ‘vlogged’ some poems via a webcam. It works, mostly because Steve is an awesome poet. The poems are already special and double so because people can hear you read them. Steve’s ‘vlogged’ poems inspired me to do a simple video myself, put together in perhaps an hour, reading a brand spanking new poem out and whacking it straight on YouTube. The piece, Teşekkür, is included at the bottom of this post.
But videos can do more. Before I had come across others doing their own poetry videos, my first thought was that it would be emulating music videos. You could do some kind of story with the poem being read over the top, perhaps mixed in with shots of you reading it. I’ve got some ideas to do it like that, but by myself, this requires a lot of work, probably needing other actors, and multiple shots, perhaps in multiple locations.
The cheaper way around this perhaps is animation. You would of course need to know how to animate, but things like stop-motion Lego animation, flash animation and simple stuff like that might be within reach to the more technically minded people. Or, like the music video, storyesque video, teaming up with others, perhaps an animator, might be a good option. I’m looking at this now or simple ‘South Park’ style animation.
Mentioning Randall Stephens again, his video in conjunction with Alex Scott, I Statements is an excellent use of animation to bring a poem to life.
I have done a bit of video, They Kill Them, being the one I’m proud of the most, but for now, it’s been by myself. Those that have worked with others seem to pull out some really special stuff. Both Alia Gabres and Joel McKerrow have produced extremely professional videos that are an attractive introduction to spoken word via video.
These videos and others are worth checking out and sharing around, helping out the poets that made them, by making us perhaps a little less obscure. I’m curious to see how this evolves and am always excited when new poets try it out. If only there was a ‘Video Hits’ of the Melbourne poetry scene. I’ve begun collating them on a YouTube playlist, but it’d be cool to have a poetry night of poetry videos perhaps. I just came up with that idea mid-paragraph. What say you video poets?
Perhaps it was the night, the vibe or the crowd that made me excited, but after tonight’s taste of North American slam superstars, I have a ripple of inspiration and a desire to write. That’s perhaps a pretty self-centred outcome from seeing others tear up the stage but Luka urged it himself and for a writer, this is a top endorsement.
The crowd was the first thing I noticed. Poetry gigs especially in Melbourne can be hard to fill up, especially with non-poets, and this year one of the drawbacks of the Overload Poetry festival has been the attendance. So, it was a real surprise to see the Footscray Community Arts Centre full, with people I didn’t know and an energetic crowd. I really hope we can catch onto at least some of those people and perhaps see them at other events all year round. It’s encouraging for the future of Melbourne poetry and the kind of culture that Luka and the Centre of Poetics and Justice are breathing into the scene.
Tell It Like It Is, the slam at Footscray that Luka and Alia Gabres curate, pulled out the big guns on tonight, warming us with the finest of Melbourne’s spoken word artists including Luka and Alia themselves, Joel McKerrow and Mel Hughes. And after seeing the international guests, I could see the direction in style our local poets were coming from. There really is something different about ‘slam’ poetry and it’s not competition, it’s not because it’s like hip-hop either.
The three guests, Ken Arkind, Jive Poetic and Shane Koyczan are really nothing like I’ve seen before, especially in the level of talent. Impassioned, delicate, forceful, detailed and full of a bottomless bag of metaphors, they really put the performance element of performance poetry on display, that weave stories and paint pictures that do something in my chest cavity that they managed to describe in a million ways.
The best bet is to Google those names and check them out for yourselves, but seeing it live, feeling the electricity in the room is something else. They pulled a response from the crowd, a kind of interaction that begs you to try and pull that off yourself somewhere else. We were not just listening passively. We were responding.
I called them superstars at the start, but they’re not god-like people held up on a pedestal, bigger than us. They’re humble and just glad to be able to share their words with us.
And out of that, I hope I’m not the only poet that listened to that, felt something new and amazing send shivers up my spine and make me want to write, break some new rules, use their energy and write something that breaks new boundaries and at least tries to bring something what we saw tonight into the tradition of Melbourne poetry.
Last night, in a tightly packed upstairs room at Palookaville on Brunswick Street, this newbie spoken word artist was treated to a bit of Melbourne poetry scene history. The Class of 99 was a selection of the Melbourne scene more than ten years ago that gave birth to the Overload Poetry Festival.
I wish more of the newer poets were there to get a bit of inspiration and perhaps feed on the nostalgia. I could feel it myself even though I’d never been there when it first happened. Old friends came back into the fold for one night, remembering the readings and the people not with them anymore to remember.
I learnt that more than ten years ago there was at least one poetry reading a night in Melbourne, sometimes more, and there were a heap of paid gigs, ones paid for by the bar. Melbourne poetry, though still strong, seems nothing like what it used to be. And perhaps qualitative too. I guess there needs to be the talent and the enthusiasm to fill so many readings. I could see from just a taste of 99 that there was talent.
There were poets like Angela Costi, Melissa Petrakis, and Clint Greagen. I’d never seen them before. Others, I’d seen here and there. It made me wonder why those that obviously still had talent had left. They still seemed to love it so much. From the introductions and from discussion with Maxine Clarke, it seems that life, marriage, kids and all that took priority and poetry kind of fell away, which is both understandable and sad. We should see more of these poets again, even on occasion. But I feel like Melbourne poetry is missing this depth of quality that would enrich open mics around the city on most nights of the week.
We do have talent now though, and those committed to Melbourne poetry. But it took people like Steve Smart and the late, Sandon Mcleod to step up and get things running. Someone starting something else now, I think, would not be unwelcome.
‘I wish I was a pro wrestler’ from my spoken word show ‘Farewell to the Cubicle’ on the 4th of July at The Brunswick Hotel as part of the regular poetry night, Passionate Tongues.
I’m pretty excited to be performing at not one, but two, poetry events in Melbourne as the ‘feature’ poet in the next little while. One, this Saturday at the Dan O’Connell Hotel and then on July 4, at The Brunswick Hotel.
Spoken word is something I’ve been putting a lot of effort into over the last year or so. It’s been really fulfilling and I’ve found something that I can do that I can’t do on the page, that is express myself in another dimension. So I am very excited (and nervous) to be doing these feature gigs. I’m hoping for some friendly faces in the audience.
This Saturday, I’ll be doing my feature at the Dan O’Connell, which is one of Melbourne’s longest running poetry gigs. It starts at 2pm, and finishes at around 5pm. I’ll be doing two 15 minute sets around the usual open mic over the afternoon, reading a range of my work that touches on refugees, class, my (now ex)-job, and a few other things. You can check out the Facebook event as well to invite friends and help get the word out.
And then on Monday, the 4th of July, I’ll be performing my spoken word show ‘Farewell to the Cubicle’ from 8.30pm at The Brunswick Hotel as part of the fortnightly poetry night, Passionate Tongues run by the ‘Mother Theresa’ of the poetry scene, Michael Reynolds. It will feature all my poems about work, offices, bosses and being fired as a farewell to my shitty job. Again, two 15 minute sets as well as an open mic. I’m hoping people will use it as a chance to read their own poems about shitty jobs, offices, and bosses. Again, there’s a Facebook event for all your sharing, inviting and RSVPing needs (my needs, mostly).
Hope to see some friendly faces there! And below is a little taste from the open mic last night.
My contribution to this week’s #SpokenSunday is a recording from the Littlefoot Poetry Slam that I performed in today. Apologies for the quality of the video.
