Callback

I got a Spinning room call-back! Wait, most of you probably have no idea what that means. The Spinning Room is one of the best Spoken Word venues here in Melbourne. Every Tuesday from about 8pm, fifty or so people cram into the burgundy upholstered Spinning Room – the small back room at the top of ET’s Bar in Prahran. Hosts Anthony O’Sullivan and Jon Garrett do an amazing job of chatting us through the feature reading and open mic sections as some of the most amazing spoken wordsters in Australia give us their best.I featured at the Spinning Room back in October (you can read back on it in this post here), and it was an absolutely amazing night. Anyway, for the last Spinning Room of each year, Jon and Anthony pick their favourites from the last twelve months.

And this year I’m it, alongside fellow poet and Memphis Slam King Benjamin Theolonius Sanders (aka IQ). That’s right, Tuesday night will be an all Black Spinning Room. Brothers and sisters, the face of Australian poetry is changing. Come see us spin the room in separate sets (myself with all new poetry) and if we can get our shit together there may even be some collaborative lyricism going on. You might also get a pre-launch glimpse of my new book Gil Scott Heron is on Parole, which will be out in February: she’s red as artery blood with a black power salute on the cover. You will fall for her instantly.

Tuesday December 15
8pm - 11pm

The Spinning Room
21 High Street Prahran

We All Know What Happens Next: a poem extract

An extract from a longer (hopefully book-length) poem I'm working on titled We All Know What Happens Next. This section of the poem is, directly, a response to Adam Bradley's book The Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop and indirectly an examination of elitism in poetry.


exile the academy from the hood
unanalyse hip hop
before hip hop is killed
exile the academy from the hood
warn harvard from harlem
& at knifepoint if needed

adam bradley said from out the ghetto
wz comin a new poetics that the mainstream
(& don’t we know what kinda folk he meant by mainstream)
had never even noticed / let alone understood
well howdy do / it wz there all this time
i mean whaddaya know / it seems that
generations of street corner brown folk
weren’t the shoe shiners everyone assumed
& all this time just had all the adam bradleys fooled
in reality rap was more poetry than poetry itself
apparently

some of us already knew

Found Poem

originally a mushroom paper bag

The Poem Bag
Contains Vitamin B12
stand and sing them raw, rare,
medium or well done

So pick up a bag full today

These bags are available at same price per kilo
as the poems

In The Company of Angels

Last night, after reading at the launch of Peril, I realised just how much I enjoy the company of writers. Not all writers, of course, that would be like claiming to love the company of all women, and though I’d love it to be true, clearly there would be fundamental reasons why it couldn’t be (Condaleeza Rice and Sarah Palin, for example).

The Peril launch rocked. My reading went okay (though for the first time in about two years, I actually stumbled over a poem. Mental note: just because you’re performing every few weeks, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t rehearse every poem before the reading).

The amazing performances by LOCA (anti-racist spoken word/burlesque performance troupe Ladies of Colour Agency Australia), including a White Face skit, was inspiring not just because of their conviction, subject matter and strong performances, but because I’m currently working on a poetry-dance collaboration (about African American/French dance-hall legend Josephine Baker) with writer Lian Low and dancer Raina Peterson (with whom I'll be reading as Cafe` Sospreso tonight - see below). Raina’s amazing performance of a white-face skit to the song Delilah gets more amazing every time I see it, but was particularly relevant due to the whole Hey Hey It’s Saturday blackface saga here in Australia.

Hearing author Tom Cho (Look Who’s Morphing, 2009) give his presentation was also an amazing reminder of just how much potential there is for literature to de-marginalise and deconstruct the status quo. After chatting with Simonne Michelle Wells and Angela Meyer, both of whom I met originally at Overland’s Progressive Writing Masterclass earlier this year, where I also met Melbourne writer Alec Patric, who’s also become somewhat of a writer-in-arms.

At the end of the launch, Simonne and I headed down to Melbourne Central for coffee (okay, and a devilishly rich slice of chocolate cake drenched in liquid dark chocolate, but that’s not relevant is it?) and to talk life and shop. Writing –the actual practice of it—is such a solitary affair—and I love that through the medium of performance, and through conduits like this blog, and simple after-launch chats such as yesterday evenings, I have the opportunity to engage with my peers. It keeps me sane. It encourages me back on stage. It sharpens my mind. It reminds me that there are other people mad enough to be in this caper because they fell madly in love with words, and truly believe they matter.

So, this post is dedicated to all you blog readers who are also writers (I think, perhaps that’s all of you!) and to all the other writers who I engage, collaborate and argue with. You hoist the sail, I’ll hold the ship steady and together, let’s row this baby onwards.*

*Don't get me wrong, there is a handful of writers who shit me to tears, but this is a warm fuzzy post okay: leave it be and just don't go there.

On Becoming a Writer

Cordite: Plantation Rumours

My poem, Plantation Rumours (from my forthcoming book 'Gil Scott Heron is on Parole') is published in audio in the just-pressed-go issue of the online poetry publication Cordite Poetry Review.

an ole man cuts cane
an ole man cuts cane under hot jamaican sun
back bent double
body doubled down to the ground
& all among the sugar cane
the workers whisper
see im dere
mi hear im used te be
an edukayted man
back bent double
body doubled down to the ground

five hundred lift them scythe in unison
& the sugar cane rumour mill
logs into overdrive
with it’s back bent
back bent double
body doubled down to the ground

a large woman
middle aged
with a horse fly drinking at the brow
say mi hear im read fe law
inna ingland
professorship in oxford 1989
and then she shave the sugar stalk
with a quick flick
of an aching wrist
she chop it up
& she stack it on the pile
before she back bend
back bend double
body doubled down to the ground

a young man
face smooth and clean
like him only just weaned from his mama’s teat
say mi granfadda knew de man
inna kingston school
before im grew too big
fe im docta marten boots
im laas seen
headin fe union jack atta run
but yere im is
ole man body doubled down
in de dung

but the ole man cuts cane
the ole man cuts cane under hot jamaican sun
he’s been all over
ain’t no country else he gwan run
five hundred lift them scythe in unison
& the sugar cane rumour mill
logs into overdrive
with it’s back bent
back bent double
body doubled down to the ground

Why Are People So Unkind?

go home india
as if that even makes sense / but
there it is / red-loud illiterate
on decaying station wall
like you ain/t in kansas any more
sister / welcome to the burbs...

My poem Ruby Slippers is now up as part of Peril's latest edition: Why Are People So Unkind?. The launch will be this coming Thursday night. I'll be reading Ruby Slippers along with a more recent poem titled Solomon Sung. Details are on the above invitation but just so you don't have to get out your magnifier: The launch includes performances by the Ladies of Colour Agency (LOCA), author Tom Cho, poets Angela Costi and Maxine Clarke and Actress Diana Nguyen reading from Alice Pung's original introduction to Growing Up Asian in Australia. (content warning: LOCA burlesque performance contains nudity).

7-9pm on Thursday December 3 2009
Sidney Myer Asia Centre
Melbourne University, Parkville

Book Sales

Last week I was perusing the online catalogue at Readings bookstore at Carlton and couldn’t find a copy of my chapbook Original Skin listed as being in stock. It was odd, I put about ten copies in there at the end of last year. Original Skin is a slim poetry collection: 35 or so pages. Set you back about $6, depending on the mark-up. Surely no-one would actually bother with such a slip of a thing without hearing me perform to entice them. I cruised into the shop to scour the shelves. Nothing. I checked with the consignment guy. Sold out. Sold out last January. Auuuugh! Why didn’t you call me?!?... I guess the profit margin is so tiny that it wasn’t really worth the call: the payment so minute I never even noticed it hitting my account back in January.

I’m not sure how many copies of the chapbook I’ve sold in the eighteen months since it’s come out. Maybe several hundred, from holding them up after performances, hassling friends and colleagues, prowling open mic venues. I’ve learned not to be shy about spruiking my words: it is probably the only way I will ever sell enough poetry in Australia to make the vocation financially viable. It’s an odd feeling though, not knowing who bought those few copies: not physically handing the object over, thanking them for supporting me and watching people flick through it...but I hope I’m privileged enough to get used to this feeling.

Readings said they’d like to take a few more copies of Original Skin. They also said they’d be happy for me to launch my new, full poetry collection Gil Scott Heron is on Parole at the store in two months. The book will be launched by Jeff Sparrow and Pi.O, and believe me, I’ll be stocked to the fu*king rafters. Meanwhile, you can order Original Skin from the publisher here, if you're so inclined.