gil scott heron is really dead

usher & chuck d already tweeted
word is even eminem hz said
bt me / i gotta see the body without the breath
the stiff lips / the still lungs
or the bullet hole upside the head
i need the grainy cc from the hospital bed
televising tht gil scott heron is really dead

jimmy off the coffin lid
rob the godfather’s plot
the revolution is alive
the revolution is alive
the revolution is alive
long live gil scott

Writers Festival Haiku

writers' festival
ideal procrastination
play disguised as work

Catch me today at the Melbourne Townhall as part of the Emerging Writers' Festival 2011.

Still Waters: Part II

Some time ago I introduced you to the women of Still Waters. So much has happened for this storytelling group for women of African descent since I last spoke of them properly on this blog. There was that second meeting, where the group consolidated themselves into a core collective of six, including myself as mentor.

Girl, do us black women know how to talk, and that second meeting, though we’d moved from the lounge space of the Institute for Postcolonial Studies to the conference room, the serious work of knuckling down to write a collective manifesto under founder Fadzai Jaravaza’s able guidance didn’t always come easy. Conversation veered off into black women’s business – Tariro spoke of the unbearable whiteness of Australian beauty, of working within the local housing commissions and being asked by young African women ‘Why do you shave your head? Why do you wear headwraps like that? Don’t you want to look pretty?’ Teurai chimed in with her experiences as one of the few black faces in the Australian modelling industry.

Tinashe, the youngest of the group at 22, but perhaps the most fiery, spoke of empowerment, displaying a large and elaborate cursive tattoo on her inner arm which proclaimed her mantra: Take Back Control. The energy in the room was electric, and it was clear an extraordinary collective had indeed been born.

The following months saw life take various turns for the women of Still Waters. There was much excitement after an invitation from the Emerging Writers Festival for the group to perform at its opening night. Then, as life lashes out occasionally, an illness in the family took Teurai back home to Zimbabwe; a serious illness saw myself in and out of hospital and then unavailable to guide the group for a couple months; and, as luck would have it, Abby was fortunate enough to have the chance to go wandering – chasing love across the country.

August saw me back on board and guiding Tariro, Tinashe and Fadzai in a workshop to compose a multi-voiced chorepoem for performance at the Emerging Writers' Festival. The piece, The First Word, came together so quickly on paper that it was clear our first words had been simmering below the surface since our first meeting some three months before. The poem speaks of the hopes, dreams and struggles of young black women struggling to find a voice, and of our fears as writers and the black storytelling tradition.

Tariro realised she was unable to perform at the festival as it clashed with the opening night of her first year VCA performance, so over the next few weeks the poem was edited, rewritten, and blocked for three performers.

Rehearsing has been a struggle. Between Fadzai, Tinashe and I, we have three young children (me a five-year-old and seven-month-old and Tinashe an eight-month-old). Fadzai and Tinashe live north of Melbourne, I live in the east. We have no car between the three of us and are constrained by family, finances and many other things. But we managed it. Sometimes I would take a bus, then train, then tram over to North Melbourne, with Maya tied to my chest in sling and under umbrella (she is a chubby ten-kilo thing so this, believe me, was no mean feat). Sometimes we’d meet in the middle at Federation Square to rehearse in front of a curious, fascinated or bemused public. Sometimes the others hiked out to my place. And between nappy-changing, school-drop offs, breastfeeding and keeping the babies from beating each other to death with rattles, we rehearsed. At times a friend, my visiting mother, my ex-partner or Tinashe’s partner, Abdul, would watch one or two of the children, but when that couldn’t be arranged we, quite literally, strapped them to our bodies and lulled them to sleep with the rhythm of our words.

Tonight we take the stage, performing the first words of the Emerging Writer’s Festival 2011. It’s been a struggle, but well worth every tired second.

...we came from a land we do not know
but feel
in every fibre of our being
from four continents of courage
lifetimesof black love
from the black nation...

– Still Waters

Get your tickets for tonight’s performance of The First Word.

First published by Overland Literary Journal

The End of the Affair

poetry and i / we broke up last week
we just kinda grew apart
it wasn’t her / it wz me

well / ok just quietly / between me and you
it wz wild while it lasted
bt poetry / she got all single white female
for the last part there on me
it’s true

she wanted to be my everything
i wasn’t sure i still loved her like that
& needed some time to think
bt poetry / she said
i am not gonna buy that let’s have a break shit
poetry knew i wanted out
& started following me / everywhere
i couldn’t work / or leak / or eat or sleep
walk without her calling on me

you know poetry
at times / she can be so fucking needy

after we split/ i’d be out somewhere
& poetry wd just happen to turn up
she’d pull that fancy meeting you here crap
as if she hadn’t been hiding outside the house
to see where i went / all that time

i never thought it wd end like this /
i cd see poetry and i / old
in rocking chairs together
hands wrapped around steaming mugs
reminiscing about the good times

when we first met i wz always thinking
now poetry / she is beautiful
you know what i mean
i mean it wz like poetry
cd have anyone she wanted
& poetry chose me
(not/you understand/ tht I have low self esteem)

people were always saying
man / you & poetry
were just meant to be together
you are so lucky to have found each other
& poetry wd smile my way / as if to say
i will never leave you / maxine
we will be together always
you & me

& now
i am starting to get
just what that might mean

I'm Back!

I can’t believe it’s been almost nine months since I performed poetry. I could have had a baby in that time! Oh, wait...actually, I did. Then raised her up into a beautiful, chubby eight month old girl, started my son at school and embarked on all sorts of other unromantic un-bohemian un-poet-like domesticities.

There were many revelations during my time off the Melbourne poetry circuit. I thought I’d desperately miss performing. I didn’t. I thought I’d write much more poetry. I didn’t (maybe ten poems or so in the last six months). After two thirds of a year barely writing and not reading much either, I thought poetry would all but forget I existed. Seemed it had.

But then last week poetry came knocking, red-eyed and apologetic, at the inside of my skull like it was there all along - just couch-potatoing around lying low with a dreadful hangover. And after I finished beating poetry about the ears with the pumpkin masher I’d been using to make baby food, we sat down, sheepish, together and made sweet, sweet poems all night long.

And since then, poetry and I haven’t been able to keep our metaphors off each other. We’ve even been secretly making plans for our next book. Well, not so secretly now I guess, since I just online-outed us. So things, it seems, are looking a little less dirty nappyish and increasingly more poetic.

But tomorrow afternoon? Tomorrow afternoon will be the real writer’s block breaker or maker. I’m performing a feature set at the Dan O’Connell Hotel in Carlton. There are two fifteen minute sets to fill, so in addition to performing my fifteen minute work (for only the second time in public) Some Dream Was Brewing (which Going Down Swinging commissioned for the Melbourne Writers Festival last year), I’ll be reading new poems and also performing the choreopoem The First Word with African Writers Tinashe and Fadzai, who I’ve been mentoring for the Still Waters African Women Writers Network. The madness kicks off around 2pm and won't be done till 5pm. There's open mic, if you're game (and lots of liquid bravado to be had)

Then next Thursday evening, the choreopoem will be performed by the three of us in the BMW Edge theatre at Federation Square at the opening night of the Emerging Writers Festival (tickets available here). And on the following Sunday, you can catch me at the Melbourne Town Hall program for the Emerging Writers Festival as part of a panel discussion for the topic:

A Different Voice:You’re a 50 year old woman, your character is a 12 year old boy… How to handle voice? Character? Is it research or does it come naturally? Do people assume you are your characters? How to get realistic dialogue? With Alan Bissett, Maxine Clarke, Simmone Howell and Tony Moore. Hosted by Ruby J Murray (book here to attend)

Ladies and gentlepoets of the blogosphere, I’m back!

The Melbourne Poetry Map

Last year I was privileged to be part of a project that was the brainchild of Melbourne poet Eleanor Jackson. The Melbourne Poetry Map saw poets all over Melbourne writing about historical places in Melbourne city. The poems were then uploaded onto the web and could be downloaded and listened to on a headset as separate walks around the city. The launch of the Melbourne Poetry Map saw me on stage reading my work in mid September – almost exactly two weeks before giving birth to my daughter, which is probably why, looking back through this blog, there’s no mention of the project! In any case, the poem I contributed, Immigration Museum, can be listened to here in full flight.

...the river swelled & heaved
& into the valley
red water bled
the children’s drinking vases
were stained with blood
the elders / sombre
they called for the messenger
who looked to the wind
& said
brothers & sisters
brothers & sisters
i smell death...

Also check out Lia Incognita's poem Typography. Amazing.

The project: concept, execution and all, was an amazing one and the reviews coming in have been glowing. The Age newspaper recently reviewed one of the walks and I was lucky to rate a mention:

The song-like Immigration Museum, by Maxine Clarke, has musical notes punctuating the spoken word and is a sharp riposte to the "official" account of Australia's immigration history. The poet refers to hidden stories of Aboriginal dispossession and of asylum seekers fleeing repression, only to become political playthings locked up in detention centres

This is spoken word as it should be: in the ears of the people, stalking the streets, in the press, on the fucking map.