Roaring Down the House

Thumping gig on Wednesday night at the Espy in St Kilda, organised by Roarhouse. The plan for my set was to slam straight, but by night’s end, I was randomly scatting over Reggae Samba with the full samba band backing of samba school O’Ziriguidum, dancing the early night hours away with tambourine in hand.My ample hip-sway, vibrating the dance floor. I jiggled big, down the bootie corridor, screaming;

"All hail mama reggae!"

You better believe I shook my groove thang in an unhinged manner my groove thang found disturbingly liberating (but almost regretted the next morning when unable to feel itself).

It was one of those strangely surreal evenings, where the crowd is small but engaged and your words just kind of seem to soak into the walls around you as soon as they exit your mouth. One of those quiet, still evenings when the music moves you and you wonder why you don't do this more often.

What I most love about the Roarhouse gigs is that the outfit is acutely aware of the environment in which a lot of the artist community resides. Particularly with spoken word in Melbourne, it’s sometimes easy to take stage opportunities for granted. Roarhouse manages to attract an eclectic mix of seasoned performers and first-timers in an always supportive environment, encouraging those from disadvantaged and marginalised communities to come together and story-tell in any way they can. And man, can they.

At Wednesday’s Espy gig, MC Sam Robb was an able first-timer, and for the first time, I heard elusive Melbourne poet Travis O’Shea in a full set – finishing with that famous unintentionally hilarious ‘found’ Emo Poem he picked up outside Flinders Street station one day which has been doing the spoken word rounds (starts something like: one cut, two cut, three, cut four, I don’t want to be alive anymore…you get the general gist).

So nice to usher out 2008 roaring down the house.

Saul Stalking

So, Saul Williams, poet and performer extraordinaire, graced us with his gob-smacking performance energy and screaming word-smithing at the Espy St Kilda last night. Decked out in his trade-mark block face-paint, a soon-sweat-drenched white cotton t-shirt with the chest ripped out of it, and tight tomato-red jeans ripped up the ankle-sides to slide down over his sneakers, the ladies wanted him, the lads wanted to be him.

Me? I had long-hatched a plan to sidle close enough to the stage to present Saul with a copy of my poetry chapbook Original Skin, after which, of course, he would track me down and ask me if he could use the chapbook as the lyrics sheet for his next album, thereby plucking me from obscurity and launching me to international fame.

Opening with a two minute screecher of a poem, in which he howled the names of literary brilliants from Baldwin to Ginsburg, ending with Obama, the poet ripped the hearts out of the several hundred screaming Espy revellers like he really relished it. One blonde-bobbed lass was so enamoured she leapt on stage after Saul and his musicians left for their first ‘fake exit’ (clearly, they expected to be ovationed back on stage several times, which they were...), to gather a blue feather which had fallen from his hair, which she sucked erotically in due course.

Although it was slightly disturbing to see a room full of white guys passionately screaming out the lyrics to Black Stacey in simulated oppression as if they actually knew the pain of what Williams was talking about, the evening (was it evening? By my watch, he finally came on at around 1am...) really showcased the performative and musical possibilities of spoken word.

Saul is that rare of lyricists who has remained, first and foremost, a dedicated poet, and indeed, the moments the audience seemed most captivated were those when he ditched his backing trio (sporting bass guitar, keyboard, decks, simulators and clothing so silvery shiny they were totally Sun-Ra-esque) and went solo with the mike, slamming.

Oh, and I did manage to get that copy of my chapbook into his hand. After much forceful elbowing, he left the stage carrying it. Of course, I await with baited breath...or did it just become his hotel ashtray? Never. Saul wouldn’t do that to me.

Launching the Lemon

Ok, so another spoken word-ster launches a book. Not just another book, but their first real one, that first not-much-of-a-spine-because-hell-poetry-is-hard-as-f&ck-to-publish-but-it-actually-has-a-spine-of-sorts-so-it’s-technically-not-a-chapbook original collection.

Ho hum. I know what you’re thinking: ain’t nothing ho hum about a book launch: room full of writers, nibblies, grog (free or so close at hand that after the first pocket-pinching schooner you forget it’s not free), and electric atmosphere.

Here’s the thing: I grit my teeth every time someone I admire as a spoken word poet launches a book. Mostly because I’m afraid that once the works are transcribed, left to fend for themselves without the pitch-perfect intonation, performative qualities and often larger-than-life personality of the deliverer, the words will be reduced to mediocre page scratchings. I’m scared I’ll be left staring at the page in dismay, desperately attempting to conjure the slamster in my quiet living room, recreate the body language and intensity of presence I know would accompany the poem were the author there to deliver it themselves.

So last Thursday’s launch of Geoff Lemon’s Sunblind*, published by Picaro Press, is listed amongst my all time retractions of this standpoint. The launch featured killer sets from Melbourne spoken word-sters Josephine Rowe (wow!), Felix Nobis (whose work I fell in love with back in October when I heard two sixty second snatches of it during the Doris Leadbetter Poetry Cup held at the jammed-to-bursting St Kilda Bowling Club) and the unforgettable Sean M. Whelan (who recently launched his own Tattooing the Surface of the Moon). And was followed by a knock-em-dead reading from the author himself: a towering and thunderous linguistic gymnast if ever there was one.

Got me thinking about something Π.0 said to me after watching me being interviewed at a writer’s festival last year, balking and shrugging at the question of exactly what is slam or spoken word poetry, and how does it differ from just poetry?

Never be tricked into accepting a division There is only poetry, he said.

Sunblind confirms this to be right. I guess some of us just deliver ours mighty f&cking well.

* Track Geoff Lemon down and buy this book – it sold out and the launch and there is already a queue for reprints. You won’t be disappointed. Favourites: Rustling, p12 and Who’s Liberty Valance? P76.