mandatory refuge (poetic wordplay)

boat people
asylum seekers
boat people
asylum seekers
boat people
asylum seekers

refugees
boat people
refugees
boat people
refugees
boat people

refugees
refuge
refugees
refuge
asylum seekers
asylum
asylum seekers

detention
asylum
detention
asylum seekers
detention
detain
detain
asylum seekers

detention
jail
centre / facility
jail
detain
jail
centre / facility
jail
mandatory
bail
mandatory
bail

detention centre:
mandatory jail

asylum seeker
mandatory jail
refugee
mandatory jail
refuge
mandatory jail
solution: bail
solution: bail

solution: mandatory bail

problem: detention

solution
problem
solution
problem

pacific solution:
mandatory problem

asylum seeker
jail

boat people
seek mandatory
refuge
solution: bail

skin (ii)

some nights
i try to claw my way
out of this skin

but pull and scratch and bruise
seems i'm locked tight in

only ugly fat keloid
where my fingernails have been


from my chapbook Original Skin (Picaro Press, 2008)

rising from the ashes

I love this picture: me in the Atrium at Federation Square during the 2009 Emerging Writers Festival, screaming - SCREAMING poetry (confronting poetry) at people passing by.
Under normal circumstances I'd probably be arrested.


taken for granted

Have had my head stuck in a grant application, which is due this coming Friday. It's interesting to realise how much I take my own art practice for granted. I've always thought I couldn't be competitive in grant terms. I suppose this is partly because if the odd gap into which my spoken word falls. In the case of a lot of literature grants, the emphasis is on product: you get a grant to write, or work on a book, or research for a book. On the other hand, in the case of performance grant, you are competing against trained actors. And am not an actor, I am an oral storyteller. Hence the difficulty.

The grant I'm applying for is through the City of Melbourne ArtsHouse program. The grant application asks for supporting material, and it's been amazing how many reviews, both informal and formal, of my spoken word I've been able to locate on and offline. I have my head down for the rest of the week with this, and really have my fingers crossed it will come through.


aural text

I have signed on to be a poetry reviewer for RRR's show Aural Text starting November. I'll be talking the poetry scene, what's out, what I've been reading, with host Alicia Sometimes and her soon-to-be-announced new co-host on a monthly basis


gil scott heron is on parole

My first full poetry collection Gil Scott Heron is on Parole will be published by Picaro Press (who published my chapbook Original Skin in 2008), and will hit shelves sometime between December 2009 and February 2010. It will contain many of the poems first broadcast via this blog - so thank you to all you blogites for your invaluable feedback, and for keeping me producing!


black lazarus

A second section of my novel manuscript Black Lazarus (which was selected from over 200 manuscripts for the Overland Novel Search, but is no longer being published by Overland due to funding and other issues), has been accepted for publication. Along with the extract being published next month in Page Seventeen, a full chapter will be published by Harvest Literary Magazine. I won't say much about this, except that it's an honour to be having sections of my novel appear in both publications, and a real shock that such a controversial section of the manuscript has been chosen for publication by Harvest. The section in Harvest is set in a Black Panther Squat in Brixton, London around 1969. You'll have to buy the issue to find out more.


There are also some mutterings going on in respect of securing a publisher for Black Lazarus. This book may yet rise from it's ashes.

emerging swinging on page seventeen

Ok so here's the thing. You all know I've been doing some moaning about it being difficult to secure grant money as a spoken word poet. And let's face it, that is probably the only way I will be able to survive on poetry, if that's possible at all. Grant applications ask for a list of publications, and although I could list at least forty poems which have been published on radio or (paid-for) stage in 2009, until 3 months ago I had not been sending my poems off for publication. This is primarily because I'm a spoken word poet. A friend of mine slapped some sense into me three months ago by saying something like: The thing is, you don't actually need to change anything. Just print your poems out and submit them. How does this undermine your spoken word practice? Just try it. For a year. See what happens. If you start getting published, you can always publish just enough to show you're 'competitive' in grant terms, then stop.

I decided to grit my teeth and go with it. Strangely enough, I also last week discovered a grant which does not require previous print publications. Miracle. Absolute miracle. I had a preliminary interview this week. It was very promising, and I am working on the application at present. So if you don't see me around so much these next few weeks, don't be surprised. Wish me luck! Below are my upcoming publications from the last few months of submissions. I hope to have more news within the fortnight. Hope.

page seventeen

Page Seventeen, issue 7 will contain Hope, a fiction piece of mine. Hope is an extract from the novel manuscript Black Lazarus, which was selected for the 2008 Overland Novel Search. Overland will unfortunately not be publishing the book, and the manuscript has now been placed in my agent's able hands. I look forward to keeping you updated on the search for a publisher.

going down swinging

The next Going Down Swinging CD (#29) will contain selected recordings from the Overload Poetry Festival. A patois piece of mine, titled Carrying the World, will appear on this CD. I have been asked to perform the piece at the Northcote Social Club Going Down Swinging launch on November 17. And I'm f*cking excited about it!

the emerging writers festival reader

The Emerging Writers Festival Reader is being launched on October 12, and will contain my poem get real. It's the first time the Festival has put together a reader, and the book will be available through the festival website or 'good' bookstores Australia-wide.

sunday night with candy b

I am totally, madly, unbelievably in love with Candy B: a big, bold, beautiful self-declared Bla Bla Bla Bla Bla Blasian (Black-Caucasian-Asian) queen. A couple nights ago I spent an hour and a half in Candy’s company as she rocked stage, audience and screen in shiny pink dance-pants, which clung to her curves almost as cheekily as the way she kept running her mouth off.

Before I get any further with this review though, let me drop the line Candy Bowers insisted any reviewers start with when covering her one woman show Who’s That Chik? , running at the Arts Centre until tonight: Candy Bowers is a black woman. On stage. At the Arts Centre. In her own hip-hop theatre show: Who’s That Chik.

Are there any reviewers in the house?, Miss Bowers hollered, There were some reviewers in the house last night. I mean, why would you come to a preview? It’s called a preview FUCKERS! Then the fiery hip-hopper instructed us to: Make sure you get that ‘black’ bit right. It would be nice if you could mention that.

Who’s That Chik? is part film, part monologue, part freestyle vox-pop, part dance, part family photo album, part stand-up comedy, part rap and one hundred percent hip-hop Candy. In the space of an hour, accompanied by sound-designer and MC Kim Bowers (aka Busty Beats), and with the assistance of Video Artist Fatima Mawas and Director James Winter, this woman takes you captive on her life journey, complete with beats and breaks, starting in apartheid era South-Africa.

Candy performed the family history lesson section of the show with an academic hat and board over her shimmering emerald green, watermelon pink and bright purple hip-hop dance outfit. The right side of the audience chanted Candy B’s, and the left Family History, in an enthusiastic call-and answer which formed a chorus to her family-tree rap. (As soon as my grandfather took the ‘G’ off ‘Leong, nobody knew he was Asian. Which is really strange, because to me he kind of looks like an Indonesian man…)

The versatile actress played tag with us through heartbreaking dance-class taunts (Who’s that girl over there? How come she is so fat? Must be an Abo or something... came the child’s voiceover as Candy danced to Michael Jackson, complete with white gloves, and pasted-on smile). She explored her early life, born to South African migrants in suburban Dandenong (My mother straightened my hair from the time I was five to eighteen. When I was nineteen, I decided to shave my head and see what happened, she raised an eyebrow and pointed at her sizeable afro). Candy held our hands through the heartbreak of her NIDA audition (Ummm, I was just wondering if…maybe…you could put a monologue in the audition book for umm… for us girls that aren’t white. There’s nothing in there for us.), NIDA acceptance (I’m the brown girl! The one chosen brown girl!), and graduation (…and for her graduating performance from NIDA, Candy Bowers will be playing the role of…the maid).

It is difficult to write about growing up the ‘Other’ Black in the suburbs of Australia. I know it. There is a constant denial amongst white picket fenced Australia, and beyond, that racism even exists anymore. To many, to express anger or sadness at the blatant racism encountered by migrants of colour in suburban Australia is somehow seen as tantamount to a lack of gratitude for the ‘privilege’ of living in this country. And that’s just the surface of it. But Bower’s show shoots this notion dead, skewers it through the heart.

Who’s That Chik? is profound without being clichéd, angry without being irrational, and confronting without being inaccessible. The spellbinding performer heckles without being a hater (Come on, you, that guy over there, get up here and dance. God, you’d be the guy sitting at the table of white boyfriends at a South African wedding while everyone else is dancing), cries unashamedly (…people are being blocked, people are being blocked. People are being blocked…), ad-libs with honesty and breaks it down until we’re all left standing there, gazing at the smithereens in awe. An experienced performer, and one half of the comedy Hip-Hop duo Sister She, Candy Bowers, has proved with Who’s That Chik? that she is an extraordinary writer-performer who can hold her own, and our hearts besides. Oh - and she’s black. And has her own show! Go sister, fucking go.

Book for the remaining night of Who’s That Chik here. Can you think of anything better to do with your Sunday evening?