Zen Zen Zo Stomping Ground - Week 2 - Part 2 - Final

One more week to go!
Now it gets to the point where you know that you're gonna miss it.
And what else is my body going to do? My body that loves to stomp, the face that's slowly adjusting to the grotesquely beautiful Butoh masks, the muscles that stop and start in kinaesthetic response to anything and everything.

(examples of some of the methods we've been using at Zen Zen Zo Stomping Ground)

And where do we go, personally, from here?
Is it another drift of bodies and minds departing?
Or will we keep in contact and support each other's art for a long time yet to come?

The experience of any intensive training with a group of people can be both beautiful and horrible all in one. There's the ones that always want to take control, the ones that never want to, the ones who you immediately connect with and the ones that seem a world away even when you're breathing each other in.

More questions than answers and more pondering than ever. The end of week 2's Stomping Ground left me exhausted and hungry. Angry and elated. I just couldn't do some stuff. And I just couldn't reign in my frustration. And I finally understood some other stuff. I really enjoyed Butoh. And yeah, Butoh's been a struggle. The dots finally connected. Yet viewpoints, which are one of my favourites, widened to the point where it was messy and I felt like I was constantly trying to clean. OCD hand washing for theatre exercises...

(Open Viewpoints demonstration)

We did (literally, not figuratively or metaphorically) clean the floors to Benny Hill music (cleaning the floors is a tradition in which you 'bow down to the work' in order to stay humble, via hands and cloths). That was Thursday. We needed that. Thursday was a hard day.

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If Benny Hill could have
seen us,
he would've been disappointed at the
lack of sexual innuendo.
We pretended
to fall over enough
it produced it's own sound effect.
We had floors to clean and
Benny Hill music.
Bowing down to the work,
kissing the earth with
our fingernails.
Splinters were never
Benny Hill fodder.
You can't put splinters in breasts.
That's just weird.
And dust never
got a pie in the face.
No-one would get the joke.
We just kept cleaning.
Zooming along the floors
to the old comedy tune.
Whatever,
if Benny Hill could have seen us,
at least he would have seen us
laughing.

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

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.
----------------------------------
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!
-------------------------
6:30pm, Saturday 1st December, The Box, 29 Vulture St, West End. $15 entry.

Mad Scientists in the Universe of Spoken Wired

Pic from: http://www.yaq.org.au/index.php/event/mad-scientist-tea-party-keith-armstrong-and-drew-titmarsh/

Over this past year I've had the delightful opportunity to host a series of workshops for scientists, yes REAL scientists, surrounding spoken word.

"Huh?

A spoken word artist facilitating scientists???

But they're like... doctors and stuff?!

They could save my life!

I can't operate on a person with a poem!

I can't discover a new planet through rhyme!"

Yep, that's what I thought when the lovely crew at The Edge brought this concept together.

You see, poetry was pretty boring to "general audiences" before poetry slam right? (Just run with me here, it's a black or white statement, and I can hear your argument against it already, but let's just leave the shades of grey for now...)
So the basic concept was to have a platform for science to be as exciting for an everyday audience as poetry slam is for an everyday audience.

You with me?

The workshops feed into an event called The Mad Scientists Tea Party, and over the past year I've seen scientists take audiences step by step through wrestling dugongs, talking to computers, using your own skin as art, naming new discoveries, black holes and transparent buildings (that don't need lighting other than the sun) PLUS what the universe is made of and how we're made of the same stuff.

It's been freakishly amazing, splendidly inspiring and one of the most fascinating events in Brisbane.

Each scientist, doctor, student, science based artist or general lover of sciency stuff has had 5 minutes - no powerpoint - to tell us what they do OR what they know OR just why they love science.
The event culminates in an industry pro sharing their passion for a 1/2 hour presentation - which has taken us to the world of flying foxes, science as art, the galaxy, new planets... To name a few.

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/cosmology

Saturday the 20th of October is the final Mad Scientist Tea Party at The Edge, 5:30pm. It's $10 entry and you get some blooming tea with entry. It's really cool. Like science.

Come along and check out why this event has been selling out pretty much all year.
And I promise you, you'll learn something you never knew you never knew.
-
The Edge Facebook
Mad Scientist Tea Party Event Brite

(Psssssst!!!
Rumour has it that, seeing as we've been discussing galaxies and worlds within, there might be a bit of a tangent into sci-fi, gaming, general geekdom and how worlds are created within our imaginations from a few speakers too...)