Roar Poets - Tour Diary 3 - Melbourne

So we got to Melbourne with a blue sky waiting and bicycles dinging and the trams all a-bustle and I made my way to The Dan O'Connell for my first performance of the week.
It was great, fantastic, largely spectacular you know?
Well... It was The Dan, which means a casual open mic with a feature in a pub where the Guiness flows freely. Local poet John McKelvie shouted me a number of rounds so I had fun.
It was the first of a number of events I performed at in Melbourne where people were just... cool.
Those who know me know I was trepedatious about Melbourne.
I'd been burnt the year before by some toxic interactions and gig handling, only to be saved by the few people that attended my workshops.
So this year I was afraid to be honest.
See Melbourne is so big and so packed with events that there is no knowing what you should go to or not. It's too full. Too many chefs. Everyone screaming for attention.
And what is actually touted as a good event could just be people blowing their own horn.
And what is supposed to be just a chilled evening could be something amazing.
But that is true of art in general and not just limited to Melbourne of course. It's just very pronounced in Australia's art capital, especially when you're trying to organise and promote a gig yourself.

So I just tagged along to things that were happening and got invited to perform a lot and it was overall a great experience because the people were great. I met great people. I stayed with Randall Stephens and we talked geek, watched the new Superman (review below) and generally just hung out coz it was nice.
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One night we went to an event called "The O.D.D.ie awards" - a celebration and gathering of those people and poets in the community who have "Oppositional Defiant Disorder".
I'd heard there would be poetry and wrestling.
I was even invited to read my piece "Bennalong's Ghost" and present an award.
What a trip.
Randall was painted green like the hulk.
Benjamin Solah was dressed in tight tight tight wreslemania tights and the rest of the poets and crowd were like extras from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. It was a mad house.
And there was wrestling. After all the poetry, nearly three hours of it, they wrestled. Yep. Benjamin Solah and James Jackson got their WWE on in a club in Victoria.
It was fucking excellent.
Well...
It was something anyway.

Later that night we caught the train home and decided Randall should chase us on to the train and we would scream "AHHH HE'S COMING FOR US!!"

We thought it was funny anyway
The train passengers? Not so much...
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The Roar Poets gig itself was great. We missed Angela's presence, but Jacky T more than made up for it with his beautiful words. And a kick ass zine that has since spread because I'm showing everyone how good it is... Bastard.
It was definitely the most confusing gig in organisational terms. The House Of Bricks crew were super supportive of The Roar Poets Tour, but it seemed a clash between whether it was a feature event or an open mic with guests. A natural hiccup on a first tour.
My favourite part of the night was Matt Hetherington, local poet and beautiful person grabbing me and giving me an inspirational speech courtesy of The Joker from Batman (the Jack Nicholson version)
(2:01 - And remember Bob, you... are my number one... guyyeeeee)

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I'm really stoked that my Melbourne experience was a positive one.
People like Benjamin Solah from Melbourne Spoken Word, Matt Hetherington, John McKelvie, Steve Smart, Tim Train, Jacky T, Amy Bodossian, the HOB crew, Michael Reynolds and a great many more people showed me that the people you interact with effect your ideology around a space or place. By being involved with them and their adventures I was given a positive shot of beauty and art and love. So thanks.
But especially thanks to the man Randall Stephens. A great host and person I admire in poetry. He's a beast. He's a man who's always supported me and I cannot thank him enough for that. Every Melbourne experience has at least been blessed with his presence and DVD collection.

Roar Poets - Tour Diary 2 - Nimbin

Nimbin.
Depending on your experience with this small town in the hills of northern NSW, the very name has made your decision for you based on what I'm going to say next. You will either be disbeilieving and write it off entirely, or you will nod your head and go "yep". I doubt anyone will be somewhere in between.
Nimbin is the spiritual home of performance poets.
There I said it.
Now, like I said before, many of you will go "huh?" and shake your head, smiling at the thought of a bunch of stoners having a base of strong performance poetry.

Well.
This is the place that began the Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup 11 years ago. Nimbin is the original stomping ground for David Hallet and Robin Archbold. 2 poets who still stand strong as premiere performers in Australian poetics. In fact, Archie founded the cup, David won it in its first year. So there ya go.
But you will still probably shake your head and go "no, bloody stoners trippin out to words I bet..."
And you're right. Kinda.
We arrived in Nimbin on a chilly Thursday's eve to find Gail M. Clarke, co-founder and current bad-arse boss lady of NPPWC scurrying about collecting raffle money, organising sound, and generally chatting to people lounging at The Oasis Cafe, Nimbin's home of poetry nights. What this lady does is phenomenal. And yes, the joints were rolling thick and fast and the murmuring locals and silent backpackers all drank their coffees and teas with red-eyed abundance.
But, unlike Armidale, which had no idea what it was in for, they were ALL there for poetry. It's what Nimbin loves. Cultivated over the past 11 or more years this small town thrives on words. Big, small, political, humorous, love, hate and everything in between and outside the box, Nimbin is an underrated poetry Mecca.

Martin, Angela and I knew that, respected it, and gave the best performances we've possibly ever done. It was hot, frothing, loving, aching, potent poetics.
And the crowd loved it.
If you wanna get into the stoner thing, fine. But you're ignoring what Nimbin Poetry's really all about. The superficiality of Nimbin is that it's a place to get high. But anyone who's been to the NPPWC knows that Nimbin is a place to perform to a beautiful crowd. Roaring, cheering, laughing, crying. We took them there on Thursday night. But only because they were so willing to go with us.

Roar Poets Tour - Diary 1 - Armidale

Armidale is cold. I forgot all about that. After living there for a few years I'd forgotten that the beautiful rolling hills and rocks sit beneath a layer of frost so sharp when you speak the air slices your tongue.
But we got there... with our multi-layered pants and jumpers and socks...

There's no-one in Armidale you know? Unless you count the uni. But I'm not even sure if the uni counts itself as part of Armidale. I know when I was a student there we could exist pretty well without any form of town contact... that's either good or bad depending on how hungry you are/n't or how stoned you are/n't.

But I programmed the tour to included Armidale for one reason: it's the beginning of things.

It was in Armidale I really learnt to rap, to write, to produce... and to make friends.

So here I was again, after all these years, showing my art to the people who had supported me from the beginning.
Sure, it wasn't ME they were supporting. It was their sons and friends who I happened to be in a band with. But I took what I could and still ran with it. It still mattered.

SO...
We arrived in Armidale to find that only a few of the flyers had been handed out, the radio station wouldn't get back to us, and the community group we'd been in contact with for months, desperately trying to get any form of workshops or community connections, were STILL not taking us seriously, or just not... I dunno...
what do you call it when people don't get back to you and then give you backhanded support at the last minute?...
On top of that we'd been told the place would've emptied out for school holidays...
It was fucking frustrating and a bit like being punched in the guts.

So when people showed up to the gig. When a room full of people watched and listened intently. When a table actually said they were here for poetry... Well suffice to say I was pretty happy. When the people who had been there to support their family and friends said "wow, it's great to see what you've been up to all these years, fantastic", I felt like I still mattered. Which is a nice feeling. And to be perfectly down and depressingly honest probably the first time I've felt that this year.

And BrokenWord were fantastic. It was them that most people were there to see, and they did not disappoint. What was amazing was that Martin Ingle and Angela Willock kept people in the room after the BrokenWord boys had done their thing. The strength and raw honesty of their performances kept people gripped. The 90% of the room who weren't there for poetry were all of a sudden deeply invested in the poetry. The bar... the fucking bar where everyone milled and talked and yelled drunkedly fell silent on more than one occasion in all of our sets.

And being the organiser and facilitator of the event I was worried we wouldn't be able to make any money to pay the venue hire or even ourselves... but we did. Yes we lost money still. Fuel and food dents finances dramatically but hey... whatever... we got at least one free meal out of it...  and the venue hire. And we were all pretty clear from the beginning that this would not be a money making venture... it would be gypsy survival. It would be rolling with the punches and making the most of it. It would be: Happiness = people + fires + conversations.
Which we had plenty of on Saturday night after the "slab" gig...

So now on to Nimbin. The Oasis Cafe. 7pm Thursday night 20 June.
The Roar Poets Tour is alive. It's a thing now. Not just a few words online or a FB event.
And we're excited and enjoying the taste so far.
Sure Armidale was cold. But if the rest of the shows end up being half as warm-hearted as Armidale then I think we'll be pretty happy.

New Ish

(c) http://katykelley.tumblr.com/post/5670949379/comfort-zone

I've been thinking about the way we write and what we write and how we challenge ourselves recently. After a conversation this morning, I realised there's been this unwritten rule at Jam Jar Poetry Slam (this Sunday 11th Nov 3pm y'all!), where you bring new shit.

Of course, no-one's gonna string you up if you perform or read the same piece from a previous month, but at the last slam in October, there were a few folks who did the same piece again.

I'd rather you got up and performed than didn't at all, however when it's a monthly event, and a regular crowd forms, is it artistically okay to perform the same 2 minute poem as last time? I don't know, and I'm only riffing here, so please don't take my word as bond...

Personally as host, I'll always try to bring something the crowd hasn't seen before. On occasion I've done the same piece from a few months back at the Jam Jar slams, but as a general rule, I'll usually have new material. Sometimes it's great and goes down a treat, it ALWAYS shows me if a certain piece needs a bit more tinkering. Thanks to following that ethos, over the past 12 months or so I have over 20 different performance poems up my sleeve. Some suit certain audiences better, of course, but overall I've built up a pretty strong repertoire of pieces which I can pull out almost any time.

In this context I think of performance poetry as something in between stand up comedy and a band. I'd be pissed if I went to see Billy Connelly and he gave me the same jokes and stories as on his dvd's. However it would piss me off as much if I saw Radiohead and they didn't play something from OK Computer or Kid A.

So there's an element of "play it again Sam" because you enjoy the delivery and the art of the piece, like a song, yet in the up-close-and-personal world of performance poetry, there is a need for the conversation between audience and poet to be fresh and new like a stand-up's jokes.

But I'd hate it if performers, especially those who are only just getting their feet wet, felt some sort of pressure to give new material all the time. I work on my art constantly. I have both the time and the energy to commit to writing new material. A lot of other people don't. The slam at Jam Jar can be a confronting enough space as it is - no mic, a round space, very close vocal crowd - without having to always write new material.

But remember that it's a small community, this poetry thing. The same folks come to most of these events.

Eleanor Jackson and Betsy Turcot are endlessly inspiring because they not only work full time, but also write whole new sets of poetry for specific gigs. When Betsy came to Jam Jar in October, she had a fresh 12 minute set prepared. I've barely seen Eleanor Jackson repeat a thing.

I'm not saying be prolific every single month. And your challenges may be different: this month you might read your piece, next month you might have it memorised. You might skip a month, so you can get a new piece ready for the next one. There's a lot of valid choices to make. But playing it safe may just be the easiest way to distance yourself from your audience.

I was incredibly impressed that Martin Ingle, who has begun to acquire a nice little collection of poems, read something new at the recent QLD Poetry Slam heats. He could have pulled anything from this year's Jam Jar performances out, yet he didn't. And he didn't make it through to the finals either.
Yet through the poetry community there were whispers of pride and encouragement for a guy pushing himself constantly. Which is why I recommended him to the State Library to be sacrificial poet at the state final, he did a great job, got paid too, and it could almost be argued that - more so than the runner-up or the winner - Martin is the go-to guy for a fresh new voice in poetry.
Because he's starting to push himself in new directions with his art. Therefore making an exciting experience to watch.

Try to enter the challenge of constantly writing.
Create feasible, realistic goals and go for them.
Try something new.
Make your art on the knife's edge.

At Graham Nunn's recent workshop he commented that, if you are a writer, you write.

So write.

Raw Poet, ROOOAAAARRRRR

It’s the end of the year (derrr), Speedpoets has finished up, we are coming up to our last Jam Jar Poetry Slam of the year too, Words or Whatever is having a November sign-off on the 16^th and basically we say bye for another poetry year and let the words sift through till January…Not that it’s all over, of course, Woodford’s WordFood is going to be a hell of a new year’s event and there’s a few nice little open mics still kickin around. 
But sometimes it’s nice to honour the year and go out with a bang. 
So please come, if you’re in Brisbane, to

Raw Poet Roar! 


Dec 1^st, 6:30-10pm. $15 entry. The Box. West End. 
It’s gonna be huge.


And it’s been a huge year for me, my first year doing art as my actual career (eek!), the 1^st anniversary of Jam Jar Poetry Slam, my first year touring Melbourne, Sydney, Lismore, Byron etc etc… So I want to celebrate and honour that, if nothing else…And really, I’ve NEVER done a big set in front of my home audience before. It’s been my personal challenge to hold the space for a big, big feature. Not like poetry “big feature” of 15minutes. 
I mean like... double that, if not more.
It brings into play my role as not only poet, but entertainer as well. Someone who can hold a crowd. Can I do it? I don’t really know. But you can come and see that’s for sure. And if I fail, then there’s entertainment in the cringe worthiness of it all…

The other thing about this event is, well, I thought about who else to get to feature. I thought of some of the big names and my friends in Brisbane spoken word at the moment… Doubting Thomas, Eleanor Jackson, Betsy Turcot, Ghostboy, Graham Nunn, Adam Hadley… the list goes on…
But then I thought, there are a fair few poets whose work I really like, whose ethos and attitude I really like, and who seem to come to almost everything, read a poem or two, basically making the Brisbane Poetry community the warm and diverse place it is.

So fuck it, let’s make a place for the raw talent to shine. An event featuring sets by some of Brisbane’s hidden (and not-so-hidden) poetry talent. From beautifully realised car rides with Trudie Murrel through to haiku heavyweight Vuong Pham, faerie love poet Rachael Dean and slam maker of lurrvve to words Martin Ingle, this is going to be raw, different, crazy, real...

So let’s roar together eh? With host Fern Thompsett at the helm, we are guaranteed a night of bad puns, fun smiles, and a down-to-earth way to celebrate success in all its forms AND future success in all its hope and glory.
Raw Poet Roar has come together beautifully.
I can’t wait to see what this crew of 10 poets has to offer.
And what the hell am I gonna do?
Blow the roof off the mother.
Roar.
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The official line-up for Raw Poet Roar is as follows:

• JD
• Rachael Dean
• Vuong Pham
• Ahliya Kite
• Michael Cohen 
• Zenobia Frost
• Trudie Murrel
• JK
• Angela Willock
• Martin Ingle

Special guests include 18 year old stand-up comedian Calum Johnston 
and kooky songstress Lucy Fox!
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6:30pm, Saturday 1st December, The Box, 29 Vulture St, West End. $15 entry.