What Will Change in National Poetry Week

every fifty two weeks

there is a national week
of poetry / which
really only exists
in our alternate
litreality
& in no way
actuality

as if we cd stand & say
my name is such & such
& I’m a poet
without fear
that someone backed away
or rolled eyes in mockery
(as if national veggie week / wd
make all three year olds
love broccoli )

Best Before

Slam Up Overloaded

In September 2009, I assembled a team of six poetry reviewers to cover Australia's only Spoken Word Poetry Festival: Overload Poetry Festival. Overland Literary Magazine lent us their blog for ten days and we quietly observed (and not so quietly commentated) Overload in all its delightfully poetic mayhem. Some of the results can be read here, here and here. For many spoken wordsters, Overland Overloaded was the first time they had the opportunity to have their sets reviewed.

This year, Overload is coming to SlamUp.

From September 7, 2011, six reviewers will descend on Slam Up and blog-squat for ten days to bring you the best, and worst, of Overload 2011. We will be reviewing local spoken wordsters such as Steve Smart, Emilie Zoey Baker and Sean M Whelan in addition to visiting international heavyweights such as New York's Mahogany L. Browne and Jive Poetic and Canada's Shane Koyczan.

Hear it at Overload, then talk about it here.

'You may need to wear rubber pants...' : Geoff Lemon for Going Down Swinging #32

Melbourne poet Geoff Lemon (Sunblind, Picaro Press 2009), is one of the poetry editors for Going Down Swinging, quite possibly the hippest literary journal in Australia. He's been locked away at desk and in studio, madly compiling the next issue of GDS, but here he pops his snout above ground for a sunny moment to talk boxer shorts, rubber pants, Felix Nobis, Mahogany Browne,  Jive Poetic, mugging Japanese dock workers, nakedness as a crowd pleaser and the upcoming launch of GDS#32 at the Melbourne Writers Festival:

Before Sleeping with a Poet

thin air

it is three thirty pm
primary school pick-up time
& you
have looked all over the schoolyard
for your five-year-old child

the teacher looks at you
clipboard shaking
eyes open wide

& it is then you realise

this morning
your child
did not
arrive

there was another girl
reported missing / today
her picture only made third page

her mother / red eyed /gasping
pulled frantically at her hair

how can a fourteen year old girl
just /disappear into thin air

& you will your mind / you
will it just not
not to go there

thin air

where none of us / wants
our babies to be / thin air
is the guilt you start to see
on every neighbour’s face

broken adolescents
crawl from prison basements
all over the goddamn place
they are all grown up but
somehow still have
the missing child’s face

do we need to teach our children
to walk to school with blades / is that
paranoia / mother-love
or just common goddamn safety
cause the girl in the paper this morning
she only made page three
thirty pm
school pick-up time
you / have looked all over the schoolyard
for your teenage child

& thin air

is the possibility
they could be still alive
statistically your child could wait /six
hundred thousand years
before any harm would come true
but / for that little melbourne boy
thin air was a friend
of the family’s boot

did he regain consciousness
before he slipped away / was it
dark in there / was that
three year old very / very
afraid / i watch my children
while they sleep / thin air
could happen as i dream

was he very / very afraid

a little blonde girl / vanished
from a hotel room in spain

thin air

thin air / is now a household name

as i speak / the
queensland police
are scouring a lake
with divers

while the nation waits
it’s pick-up time
in every mother’s mind

it's thin air

the possibility
our child
will not
arrive

Review: 'Love & Fuck Poems' by Koraly Dimitriadis

You asked me if I’d be long and I said
‘Why, you expecting someone?’
And when you didn’t answer I said
‘Call her and tell her if she comes
into my house I’ll kill her and I’ll kill you’
‘It’s not your house anymore,’ you said.
I gave you back the keys.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said,
‘I’ll be out of your hair soon
and then you can fuck her on our bed.’

Such is the pulsing, unchecked emotion that rages though Koraly Dimitriadis’ second self-published poetry chapbook, Love and Fuck Poems. Melbournite Dimitriadis is a young, outspoken, Greek Cypriot spoken-word ‘newbie’ with a brave, no-holds-barred approach to poetry. Since storming the Melbourne spoken word stage some eighteen months ago, poetry has all but wooed her from her first love of prose, and her much-laboured-over first novel-in-progress.

Love and Fuck Poems is that most curious of poetry beasts, an entirely erratic collection. While the inclusion of poerotica such as Fantasy and How to get a fuck might startle poetry purists, there are also moments of stillness in this book: perfectly captured family tableaus which leave your heart aching, poetic polaroids which cut with razor-sharp precision into the writer’s psyche and life. In Best friend, for example, Dimitriadis captures her post-marriage mindset and her family’s culturally ingrained shame at her changed circumstances:

The wedding dress in a cardboard white coffin,
telling Mum I’m going to sell it on ebay,
Mum, taking the box, saying the dress is hers
she paid for it, watching her take it away to her room...’
My life is over,’ she said.
‘Me evales ston tafo.’ You’ve put me in my grave.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the poems which deal purely with graphic sexual encounters which let down this collection. That said, the more emotive poems are certainly no simpering dedications to everlasting companionship: they too, are fuck poems in their own way. They are complex, angst-ridden, volatile, eloquent and honest:

You say I’m like a volcano...
...There’s one point you overlooked
as you fought me naked in the night:

Nobody is crazy enough
To go near a volcano
And the ones that do
Never survive

Love and Fuck Poems showcases, Dimitriadis’ versatility, moving ably through humour, passion and heartache. The poem Gotcha is a side-splitting social-networking send-up of a disgruntled ex:

...Found ya bitch on facebook.
Fucked her page over.
Ha.
Saw her ugly face.
The wedding photo.
Bitch.
Her profile’s hidden.
But facebook made changes.
Yeah.
Changes....

Dimitriadis’ second chapbook is slightly hindered by the classic hurdles of many self-published collections: though the cherry-red cardboard cover is apt and eye-catching, the writer’s line drawings add little but distraction to her words. Then too, a reader might wonder at the logic behind the ordering of the poems.

But Love and Fuck Poems must be embraced for what it is: an unashamed poetic celebration of one woman’s liberation from the chains of marital convention, sexual repression and cultural obligation. All in all, it is a gutsy, defiant firecracker of a chapbook which demands to be read angrily out loud after half a bottle of red. Readers who approach it thus will doubtless be satisfied.

Love and Fuck Poems is available at http://koralydimitriadis.com/love-and-fuck-poems/ or online at www.polyester.com.au.

there was an old woman who lived in a shoe

there once was a lady / who
lived in a shoe / she had
so many children / she
didn’t know what to do

word is / she beat them
after their bread
but most likely
some hater
had that spread

& she was just
a good woman
in a difficult situation
whispered about
all over the town

but nonetheless

trying her best

Dear Readers

Writing Competitions Are Useless to 97% of Entrants

At the end of last month, Maya (my 10 month old) and I went to the Wheeler Centre to present the poetry prizes for the bi-ennual poetry competition of the Society of Women Writers. I blogged here several months ago about how difficult the competition was to judge...and it didn’t get any easier. I ended up with about eight poems which I read over and over again to ascertain the three places, and even then I ended up with a first, a second and two highly commendeds.

The competition was judged blind, so I was a little surprised to find out that I’d given first and second place to the same poet for the astonishingly raw poems Milk and Scar. The author unexpectedly turned out to be one Lorraine McGuigan, who at the prize giving ceremony gave me a copy of her book Wings of The Same Bird. The winner of IP Picks 2009 Best Poetry Award. The book is fast becoming one of my favourites. The two highly commended places went to Maree Silver for her haunting landscape poem Corner Country and Meryl Tobin for the poem Athens.

When I was initially asked to judge the poetry competition, I undertook to give feedback on every single poem. I know this sounds mad. After all, the competition guidelines specified that the judge’s decision was final and no correspondence would be entered into. And perhaps I was voluntarily opening my judging decision up for scrutiny, but I didn’t much care. My rational was that writing competitions are useless to the 97% of people who don’t get a place. You enter the writing and have no idea how, or if, you went wrong. Perhaps you were in the top four, and there were simply three poems the judge considered ‘better’ than yours, or maybe most of your poem was fantastic but the last line was so cringingly cliché that it ruined the whole experience.

Of course, once I started writing a one sentence comment on each poem, one thing led to another and I ended up writing each poet a report of several paragraphs in order to properly explain myself and provide feedback which will hopefully go on to be some kind of use.

Judging the competition taught me so much about what never believed I knew about poetry.

Some of the images from these poems still visit me in my sleep.

Now that is poetry.

Thanks to SWA for the use of the photograph, thanks to my daughter Maya Lou for behaving with suitable decorum throughout the judging speech and 'ceremony' .

Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

that wasn't climate change, it was jesus

climate change ‘science’ is frickin crap
all those hurricanes n floods:
phuket haiti & new orleans

that wasn’t climate change man
it was jesus

cz we all know deep down
jesus hates asians & blacks
so that wasn’t frickin climate change
it wz the boys upstairs cleaning up

i gotta pay ten cents for a plastic bag
now / at the local supermarket
well aldi cn kiss my ar*e
i don’t give a frickin shit
sell me the plastic / in fact
here’s a dollar / i’ll take ten
& no half retarded check-out chick
is gonna guilt me for using them

anyone with half a brain cell knows
tht climate change is crap
jst like anyone with half a brain cell knows
jesus hates asians
green voters & blacks

i am gonna buy myself
a really old four wheel drive
the gas-guzzling / black
smoke-belting kind
i am gonna backyard manufacture
three hundred thousand litres
of leaded petrol
i am gonna fill the tank
load the other tins in that beast of a boot
& i am gonna come visit
all you climate change ‘scientists’
who think the big bad carbon monster
is gonna come and eat you

bt before i leave i ‘m gonna make sure
every light switch in the house is on
& every appliance is plugged in / i
will turn all the taps on full
& leave the gas right up
burning / just for you

climate change ‘science’ is fricken crap

everyone knows jesus hates
climate change scientists
just as much as asians / gays
& blacks / & i
am gonna help the boys upstairs
clean the real pollution up

Attitude

Writing black, political, spoken word poetry in Australia.

Still thinking about what I’m going to say tomorrow during my talk at the CaribVic Youth Arts Festival. I know that sounds really slack, but it’s just the way I approach panels and talks. Things brew somewhere in the untidy back of this brain for weeks, and then I jot down a few talking points the night before.

The topic I gave was: How to ‘survive’ writing as West Indian-Australian when you have an often ‘resistant’ Australian audience.

Going over it now, I realise I didn’t explain the topic very well. It’s more how to survive writing West Indian-Australia than as a West-Indian Australian. That is, the writing theme, rather than the cultural background.

But it’s more than that.

It’s being a writer. It’s being a black, female writer. And choosing poetry. It’s choosing poetry, then writing black. It’s choosing poetry, writing black and writing politically. It’s being a black female writer, choosing poetry, writing black, writing politically, and writing way left of centre.

Then choosing spoken word as a medium.

Four words for you on my cue card, dear Youth Festival Audience:

I. must. be. mad.

And as for 'survive', what does that mean anyway? In terms of poetry in Australia, it means being published, getting reviewed, being booked for performances and maybe selling a few books every now and then if you’re lucky.

I’ve got a long night of poetic disillusionment ahead of me. Catch me tomorrow and see how I come out the other end of it.

I'll be performing some poems and a Q&A about my writing and the above topic at the CaribVic Youth Arts Festival in Melbourne which runs from 3pm to 7pm. Other featured artists include artist Tony Phillips, filmmaker Jason Phillips and musician Lloyd Watson-Jones: Really looking forward to this one! You can find out more details about this event, how to book, and about the Caribbean Association of Victoria over here at the CaribVic blog.

tim minchin wants to marry me

for David Ryding


turns out tim minchin is an old friend
of an old friend of mine

for real

it/s not one of those six degrees
of kevin bacon things

my mate n tim r really tight

& now / he hz told tim minchin
about me

& last i heard
tim wz tweeting my sh$t
all over f!ckin town**

won’t be long before he comes for me

that/s right
next time you see tim
he will sing
about a whole lotta bad brown
next time you see me / i
will be wheeling little minchins
all over melbourne town / all those
doe eyed groupies / trying
to slap me down

that/s right
what did i always say
i said: one day tim minchin
is gonna ask to marry me

wz that really so hard to believe?

to all of you who rolled eyes
guffawed / snickered / even sighed
i say: suck it / doubters

i always knew
we/d be this way eventually:
me & tim
even before i read the secret
& channelled him

y’see / tim minchin & me
is about more thn just
the law of attraction:

me & tim minchin
tim minchin & me
me & tim

it is poetry
meant to happen


**{@timminchin Wow. Maxine Beneba Clarke: http://t.co/1CPYUJy #ukriots (PLEASE don't troll her comments. It's a poem, not her nor my opinion) - 10 Aug 2011}

ban live export

the rspca hz got a ban live export campaign
bold printed across the national paper pages
in it / there is a beach
& sun
& an australian mum
says / she wants her four children to grow
in a country that is humane
she says / how cn we send livestock
to places / there are no laws from cruelty

shame

the rspca is right
ban live export from australia
starting with the refugees
we r shipping to malaysia

Words

angry brown men r gonna burn london to the ground

fifty five years

beat up / pat down
spat at / shot / chased /stopped
false incarcerated / harassed
accused / debased / denied
cuffed / bluffed / roughed up
dehumanised
& baited

bt miss cnn looks surprised
tht angry brown men r gonna
burn london to the ground
is bemused when
the black grandfather whoops:
go on & light the match / sons
this city is no f*ckin friend of ours

miss cnn is sayin / these riots
cd put ’58 and ’85 to shame
bt the ole man’s smile reads:
ain’t that damn right pretty white
girl / our grandbabies
gonna pull the pin
tht blows this mo fo
into the London Met hall of fame

beat up / pat down
spat at / shot / chased /stopped
false incarcerated / harassed
accused / debased / denied
cuffed / bluffed / roughed up
dehumanised
& baited

fifty five years

& miss cnn is talkin
unlawful /unemployed
& undereducated

all around
angry black men
burn london to the ground
& these people ask
if it is really
about race



- @slamup

drought

she can’t crawl yet
but my sassy little daughter
bum-shuffles her way
toward the broadsheet
smirking back at me / in defiance

the paper is open
to a young somali woman
trying to finger-feed rice
to her wasting child

maya stares at them
transfixed

then / trying to catch
the dying baby’s gaze
she lifts chubby brown fingers
to cherubic mouth
& smiles

the young mother
half-turns from the camera
lowers suffering brown eyes

there

drought ravaged
desperate
broken

& but by the grace of god

go i

Poevolution

Poevolution:
1.The spiritual, physical, intellectual or humanistic enlightenment of a human being through the consumption, or creation, of poetry;
2. An uprising of, by, or for poets;
3. The changing of a poem.

Some Dream Was Brewing

Last week on Tuesday I went to RRR studios to record my poem Some Dream Was Brewing for the next issue of Going Down Swinging magazine. Some Dream Was Brewing is a 13 minute percussive patois poem which was commissioned by Going Down Swinging to be performed at the Melbourne Writers Festival’s Thursday Night Swing Club last year. The recording went well – no glitches and we got the piece down in just the one take.

I wanted more though: the recording studio experience reminded me what spoken word is all about. Sometimes stage performing becomes about the audience, rather than the words. I’ve always felt that a really good spoken word artist puts thought into each set : picks poem based on the venue, the kind of audience they’ll have, thinks about the order of pieces - whether they fit together, whether to start by easing the audience in, or hit them hard upside the brain space.

In the studio it was just me, in front of the microphone, in a sound-proof glass cubicle. The sound engineer, Keiren, was doing his thing on the other side, but for me, nothing and no-one existed but the sounds I was making, which were amplified back to me through the headphones.

I’ve been working on a pretty major non-fiction manuscript for the last few months, but also thinking about my next step in terms of poetry publication. I’ve been putting together poems for a third poetry collection, ordering poems, re-ordering poems, editing and re-thinking editing, thinking about whether to approach a new publisher with the manuscript or maybe the one who published my last collection.

And I haven’t been having fun with it.

When I first started this blog, or at least, a long while ago on this blog, I had a project to get a heap of poems published in all sorts of journals. Of course, I publish a lot of non-fiction essays, journalism articles and short fiction, but I’d always been vocal about my poetry being, well, vocal.

But in any case, I started sending poems out, sometimes on the page, sometimes in audio and they started being accepted. And it just became, well, part of what I do, as a poet.

Is that why I started putting together another written collection? For the reviews? The publication credit? The validation? Because that’s what poets do? It's not that I think my poetry doesn't translate well to page, it's that I’m first and foremost a spoken word performer.

Performer.

Derr...derr!

Why (the f*ck) am I not in recording the studio? What about a spoken word album?

Seriously, sometimes I wonder how I even have enough brain cells to write one line of a poem.

Carib Vic Youth Arts Festival

On Sunday August 14th, I'll be performing some poems and a Q&A about my writing at the CaribVic Youth Arts Festival in Melbourne which runs from 3pm to 7pm. Other featured artists include artist Tony Phillips, filmmaker Jason Phillips and musician Lloyd Watson-Jones: Really looking forward to this one! You can find out more details about this event, how to book, and about the Caribbean Association of Victoria over here at the CaribVic blog.

Poebot