So, you know how a month or so ago I threw a massive sooky
hissy fit about not getting a place in
Poetry Idol, the Melbourne Writers Festival poetry competition (insert sheepish grimace). You know how I seriously disagreed with the judging choices made during in the Box Hill library heat, and wasn’t shy about umm...ranting about it (insert second sheepish grimace). You know how I was going to stop slamming* and the whole world came tumbling down (insert dramatic eye roll)...
Well in an odd twist, my dear friend, unofficial mentor and literary hero, Melbourne poet
TT.O (Pi.O) has asked me to judge the Northern Notes Writers Festival Poetry Slam this coming November in Northcote. I’m chuffed. Seriously chuffed. This slam and I have a great relationship: last year I was the title holder and the previous year I placed second. So it’s kind of a nice progression. I said yes without even really thinking about it, then woke up last night it a bit of a sweat, realising how difficult it’s going to be.
I judged a page poetry competition about five years ago. It was a university competition, and I co-judged it with another, more established poet. We never met up, but corresponded by phone, and both came to much the same conclusion. There were three stand-out poems from a not particularly impressive batch, and one was the clear ‘winner’ which only really left us to decide between second and third place. The poems were blind assessed and I still remember the first line of the winning poem:
Byron Bay, you’re impossibly good-looking...When I turned up to the award ceremony, it turned out that a good friend of mine at the time had written both the winning poem and the third place poem. I’ve always felt slightly uncomfortable about this, despite the fact that it was only revealed to me when the names of the winning poets were read out. When the second place winner came to the mic to read her work, she completely destroyed the poem: massacred it with a dull whining reading of what should have been a light, lively piece about childhood nostalgia. I seriously wanted to rush the stage and snatch away the cheque.
Perhaps assessing spoken word won’t be as easy as it might seem, though I’ll have my able co-judge, extraordinary spoken word poet
Sean M Whelan, to bounce off. This is, perhaps, the only thing that allowed me to fall back asleep last night.
But what if, despite my best judging efforts, I become the subject of warranted or unwarranted**disgruntled rants about my decisions? Lord, this surely must be some kind of odd karmic equaliser...no prizes for guessing the lesson learnt here. The slam Gods must be truly splitting their sides.
*Okay, that might have been a bit over-the-top, but let me just point out that I’ve only attended one poetry slam since, and have totally justified my reasons for doing so. Although I covered the Overload Poetry Festival slam as a reviewer, I did not participate as a slammer! Hopefully this at least restores a little of my credibility.
**NB: mine were totally, completely, one hundred percent warranted.
To find out more about TT.O, you can read my personal tribute to him here (warning, it gets a little soppy), or Melbourne writer Alec Patric’s tribute to him here.
