Bak?

I don't know why I spelled the title differently. Maybe some unconscious need to question whether I really am back or whether I'm still stuck in my head. Maybe I'm trying to be really really really clever. Maybe I wish I was Baraka from Mortal Kombat and I'm pretty sure his nickname would be Bak. If I was Baraka I would want people to call me Bak like, "Hey, my friends call me Bak..."

That is if Bara- sorry... Bak has friends anyway...

I've been fucking depressed lately. The previous posts have eluded to it without me wanting to admit it to myself I think.

"Fuck this shit" was the main theme.

I guess it's important to remember that all this juggling has been for something, and I finally remembered that, at the Bellingen Poetry Slam last Saturday night in the Northern(ish) NSW hinterland.

Sometimes you need a win. In fact, being so unsure as to my purpose in all this mess of performing to (on average) 20 people and getting paid maybe a hundred bucks a month for poetry had left me a bit in-my-own-head.
So I finally realised why I do this shit.
Not for the win.
For the audience you fools.
The simple joy of performing to a great audience.

Do you know how beautiful it is to rock a crowd of 200+ people in a small town?
It's bliss.
To not have to deal with intense questions as to your purpose in this community? Why your ideals are wrong? How you could dare enter a slam, don't you have any ethics?
Gee it was nice to just perform for the joy of it.

Something I shouldn't forget.

And to be honest, something YOU shouldn't forget either.
Love your community of artists for what they bring.
The way we all play with creativity.
There is a lot to gain from everyone.

And hey, some people drive me nuts, of course they do I'm only human, but when I think about it, it's always been because of their conduct outside of the poems. Basically people being arse-holes are just... y'know, arse-holes...
Yet the poetry matters most.
I can't say I'm gonna support Ultimate Douchebag McDoodleDick.
But good on 'im for persevering.

There are a few great events coming up for Brisbane's Anywhere Theatre Festival in the Poetry section.

Like MaXimal!

Check em out. Support performers giving it their all in spaces not usually associated with performing.
Give em a great audience.

I've been lucky enough to be invited to Fringe India at the end of the year, so I will be getting my jets on and going back to the land of the sacred hindu cow to perform.

And mid-year I will be taking a small crew of Brisbane poets with me to Sydney, Canberra, Armidale, and possibly even Melbourne to showcase what Brisbane poets can do. Hopefully we'll get a great audience.

It's all just for the love of performing.
Honestly you cynical fucks.
Yeah we push shit up hill most of the time because poets are FUCKING CRAZY people with a lot of issues to sort out. Mental health central!!!! So you may not get a run some places, because in some places the poetry is less important than the egos and self-conscious personalities within.

But hey, we'll keep trying, and maybe we can remind others what it's all about:

The joy of being on stage with a great audience. That's all.

Zen Zen Zo Stomping Ground - Week 3 - Part 1

"Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other."

- Walter Elliot

"When you've gone so far that you can't manage one more step, then you've gone just half the distance that you're capable of."
- Greenland proverb

We flew through viewpoints this morning. Listening to each other and responding so quickly it was like we were one beast.
It was a great day. When everything seems to just come together and you train train train. And it's not like you can DO everything. This type of physical actor training necessitates staying at your edge so you have to go to the point where you are off-balance faster, quicker, through a more round-about way. Fumble more gloriously than before, tumble so you're uglier this time. Make a better mess because you've gotten so clean.

It would be a waste of my time here at Zen Zen Zo if I didn't re-evaluate myself and why I'm here. Hey, I like charging through space and making beautiful shapes, but there's gotta be a reason for it. Right? Otherwise you're like that guy who's real good a push-ups. Yay... um... push-ups.

So today I took stock, thought about how I want this training to improve the way I move throughout the spaces on stage, in my performances, how to breathe in the grotesque and the beautiful within it.

---------------

Up there,
was what I could never have again.
Plunging my fist into the frosty sky.
Angels at my back and death at my front.
I pulled down mist and water, rain and snow,
but never him.
He was never in my hands.

It didn't feel like a choice,
between heaven or hell,
it's not like I wanted to go down there.
But when I saw her waiting for me,
I knew that I would sink
into her back and
hold her in my hands.

--------------------

Zen Zen Zo Stomping Ground - Week 1

After a strong start to Stomping Ground through Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre Training, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the times and trials of the work. This week we've started our Suzuki training, and Le Coq training.
My hand written diary entries are hard to read and mostly notes or reminders on various techniques.

So here's a poem I wrote about this half of the first week. It's way better than any other poems written about the first half of Zen Zen Zo training in 2013. It features a balloon at the very end. It's kinda like a climax in an action film. If the action film was all about balloons or something. No, it's a serious poem though. Like, stern or intense something. It's actually quite nice. Sums up how I feel. Yeah. It's a good one.

--------

She says,
“You have that lovely zen zen zo glow”.
She’s seen it before.
Not one to
stomp
with the rest of us,
but one to enjoy the cracks
we leave in the earth.
I say,
“I’m tired”.
I’ve never been here before.
We churn through our beings,
kicking them
off balance
to remind ourselves
gravity exists.
When the balloon hits
the ceiling,
we can do nothing but
make the ceiling our floor,
just to play again.

----------

Maximumalism

Huzza! It seems the term Maximalism in poetry has caught on. What a strangely awesome thing.

History:
In the winter of 2011, Fern Thompsett and myself, were joking about how self-indulgent poetry can be. Like "did you get my profound metaphor?" "I can use words with LOTS OF SYLLABLES!" and basically taking the piss.
From that we thought how funny it would be if we wrote some poems, MAXIMALIST POEMS, that were basically us standing there going "hey I'm a very intelligent person please validate me for being so intelligent! Yeee!"

I performed my first "Maximalist" poem at the 2011 QLD State Poetry Slam..

From there it really got some weight behind it.
Cameron Logan jumped on board and has written a number of Maximalist poems, the most famous being his "Ipswich!" piece. Stef Petrik accused all the men in the room of being murderers. K-Dawg down in Melbourne wrote about being a maximalist coz she lives life to the max. Archie has written a carnivorous feast upon the literary elite. Michael Cohen did one at the Brisbane Slam heats this year and it was a highlight of the night: "This is my sad poem, I am sad, this is my happy poem, I am happy..."

Fern wrote me one for my birthday, it had ninjas in it and is therefore the best poem ever.

The wikipedia explanation of maximalist art is a wank. sooooo wanky.

Maximalist Poetry is the most direct path to your point. It doesn't cover it with anything other than an explanation... or something... It takes the piss out of anything that could be intelligent.
And while I have struggled to keep from "owning" the term or the art form at all (it is something anyone can and should do), I'd like to let you know what I think a maximalist poem is:

1- It is usually read. Mess it up, make mistakes, read it. It's not a polished performance.
2- It is usually done in a monotone voice. Very little inflection or pausing. You're not reading a 'poem'. You're being a maximalist. What the hell is a comma?
3- It is usually done with a shouty-ish volume. You are a maximalist, not a haiku poet or a rising slam star. Just be loud all the time so it annoys soft-voiced poets and thumbs its nose at the poetry slam "mountain" (the rise and rise and rise and then sharp fall in volume of every slam poem ever).
4- be unafraid and unapologetic in your writing. Self-involved, politically motivated and "important" poets, whether performance based, blog based, page based, avant-garde based blah blah are there to be ridiculed. But most of all, ridicule yourself. Don't be prejudiced you arse, but don't be soft and PC like everyone else. Fuck with em.
5- have fun. It's meant to be fun. And a good maximalist poem is really really fun. Funny. Funnimungus.

That's my first one ever. I like it.

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.

printed/recorded/sinking/floating

I'm in Going Down Swinging!!!!!

http://berlindomestic.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/going-down-swinging/

What a trip.
As a Performance Poet it's a weird feeling having work published or used in a way that has nothing to do with a stage.

So issue #33 of GDS is amazing for me not only because it features an audio recording of my piece If Jesus Was Born Again He Would Convert To Buddhism, but because there's something about GDS that just smells, looks, tastes (the pages are very crunchy) of quality. It's a big moment, and a nice milestone of 2012.

It's also been the first year I've been published, with my poem Thorn sitting in amongst the literary masterpieces from the QPF 2012 Anthology. Humbling indeed.

I have recently finished my self published chapbook too - Sinking/Floating. It's $7 if you want a copy! It has some old performance favourites as well as some pieces that seemed to find their way onto the pages without me ever performing them... very cool.

If you're a performer, and a bit of a wordsmith, does it look odd when you see your work in print? I know a script always seems a bit strange to me until it's been thought through and acted out.

What about poetry that sits on the page? There's been many an occasion when I've been bored out of my mind by a poet reading their work and wishing, dying, hoping, that they would just let me read their work in silence before they ruin the whole thing.

If you're curious about this kind of conversation, head to FreeVerse!, next Wednesday the 17th at the State Library of QLD. It features word queen, prose wizard and villanelle temptress Zenobia Frost versus ritual-shirt-tearing-pants-dropping-hold-on-tight performance poet Robin Archbold. It's hosted by the dynamic David Stavanger and should keep you thinking: Is there a difference? And do we really care?