Performance poets announced for Fremantle Poets 3 - FREMANTLE PRESS

8th July 2011 - Fremantle Press Poetry Publisher Georgia Richter announced the writers selected for Fremantle Poets 3: Performance Poets today.

Eleven Western Australian performance poets have been chosen for the collection which will be published in Fremantle Poetry Month in July 2012. They are: Allan Boyd (aka the antipoet), Jeremy Balius, Liana Joy Christensen, Gabrielle Everall, Amber Fresh, Afeif Ismail, Janet Jackson, Sam Knee (aka Byron Bard), Dosh Luckwell, Kaitlyn Plyley and John Charles Ryan.

Richter said the poets selected showed the range of voices and styles in Western Australia.

“These poets give a sense of the diverse talent, variety and vigour of our performance poetry scene,” said Richter.

Guest editor and performance poet Scott-Patrick Mitchell said he believed Fremantle Poets 3 was something West Australians would be intrigued by.

Article here:  http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/news/229

soundwave pickup

1800 billion or so
a mass daze swagger
a bassendean exit

30+ in 11PM carparks
surge @ red rooster rendezvous
the fuzzy-neon rush-blare of faith no more
& 4WD singlet traffic

the stench of rancid
waste toward tonkin
@ beldon mcdonalds
the burger is half pounder
a dozen yellow nuggets

our drive-thru boy
refuses to remember
the primary circle

the diff shifts in clunks
there is no doctor

a facebook status poem (420 characters only)

stabbing day blues

a rollicking bound at the backstairs
sandals in hand we split
these revenues

the tickets rip thick
at the fences of
the free world
uh the free world
uh huh the free world
the free free free free world

and so are we rocking motherfuckers?
are we rocking yet?

we take tubes at beaches
punch out under the curl
the glistenin sandy swells
a gargantuan sprawl
as the sun melts
we are marbled glass
fucked like ice cream

nowhere near suburban
like oceanic bourbon
ripped so hard yr body
tellin me stories
of uranium modesty

and we sing sonics
at the free world
at the free free world
at the free free free world
at the free free free free
free free free world
the free world
uh the free world
uh huh the free world
the free free free free world

we spit welsh
at passer-bys
here in the west
we're fully dressed
in presbyterian clothes
a kind of uniform
filling exorcise

waiting for bold stuff
at the muddy trenches
a word, a rhyme
a splash of colour

a dictionary of warfare
please recognise these tilted stars
bent, buckled
an absolute munt

the waterfalls crush cans
at the free world
at the free free world
at the free free free world
at the free free free free
free free free world
the free world
uh the free world
uh huh the free world
the free free free free world

huh how free....

on invasion day

a poem - 26th jan 10
--------------------

on invasion day

dialogue
in the black driveway
this time i'm talking
to myself, parked
leaning against
our x-cop car

the polar whiteness
through my fabric
a next generation
that rustic urban skin

icy stag in hand
easterly breezes of me
i'm waiting for manners
to appear like ghosts

yet we/i are watching
old mates' lawns
once lush die
under union jack
stars, suns set

uh huh
and me
wafting
into
acacia

art is our artillery

sisters and brothers - art is our artillery

i'm not backin up my utility - not sitting down collectively - your resistance is my futility - facing up to the humanity - this gut-drenched humility - we paint these walls they erected for our security

and art is our artillery - we are the stones at tanks - this rock-star pose at the barricades - we are black mask window smashers - with words - not guns - we bomb walls not gods - these bricks thrown at bricks - are linguistic tricks - our armour is personal - our products are political

like a one-dollar-a-day comical hedge-fund - a stand-alone reptile of climate capital - the fine sand particles get stuck in yr teeth - like a profit-driven fascist tool - as we shout azadi from the watchtowers - then this art is our artillery

when freedom is tantamount to oxygen - not just a word to breath out - but a depth of necessity for your mentality - to consume like blood - to pray at deaf gods for quality of life - of death - not air-conditioners - not cosmetic practitioners - not holistic nutritionists

up there they're spruiking spin spin spin - like cleaner shinier coal - less oilier oil spills - prettier more vibrant sunsets - claiming nicer weather in other hemispheres - and we cannot scream politely - art is our artillery

our mechanical images of boots and guns projected on your houses - our street theatre is more than automatic - coz we deny the democratic - where losers lose - and winners win without consensus there is no reality

and at woomera as the fences tore to the sacred desert - from the palisades she saw them paint freedom in blood - on fences on the cameras, the walls - then art is our artillery - our radical capillary

your coded hacking the concrete apartheid - and the tanks in the streets become cardboard burning - in gaza, in palestine these words are our our intifada - our blistered feet and dusty faces weapons

the fences ripped near checkpoints - the ideas thrown at walls - that wall - that wall twice the height of the last one - more than four times the length of the last one - and it came down - we tore it down - and walls come down - walls come down - the walls come tumbling down - and walls come down - walls come down - the walls come tumbling down

they tear down the segments with car-jacks - and fists and hammers and bricks - thrown at bricks thrown at bricks thrown at bricks…

so under the tear gas grenades - art is our artillery - in the back of this police van - the seared flesh, no sirens in the coolgardie sun - the paint flaked - and we march toward the stolen lands in mass strides - the colonial treatyless regions - to the open sea of refugees - the children in boats - the unfree freedom fighters - the flags torn and sewn - kids in the water never overthrown - only spin spin spin from the parliamentarians - the negativity versus the bravery - the token corporate slavery

sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers - we demand dignity - and art is our artillery

our tongues rush at the barricades - and in the desert street again she picks up a stone at the military - chanting no borders no nations - no borders no banks - no borders no politics - no borders no gods - no borders no masters - no borders no government - to tell me that - art is our artillery

---

composed and delivered by allan boyd (antipoet) 10 nov 09 at scitech for: artilleryfestival.com

EXPERIMENTAL WRITING WORKSHOP - DEC 5 - PCWC JOONDALUP

NO BORDERS - NO NOTIONS: AN EXPERIMENTAL CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP with Allan Boyd (aka the antipoet) Saturday 5th December 2009 - 1-4pm Peter Cowan Writers Centre - ECU Joondalup

Experienced performance poet, experimental writer, artist, musician and Curtin University writing teacher - Allan Boyd (aka the antipoet) debunks the so-called "writers-block" myth in a three-hour workshop.

Allan will attempt to demystify the process of creative writing and encourage participants to take an explorative, experimental and radical approach to the process of creative writing.

The workshop provides exercises and examples to unearth new ideas, exposing processes that are often unconscious.

This workshop is suitable for both beginners and experienced writers, and involves challenging exercises and opportunities to develop their skills.

TO BOOK: Peter Cowan Writers Centre
Office hours Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10am-3pm
Phone/Fax: 9301 2282
E-Mail cowan05@bigpond.com
Web: www.pcwc.org.au

===

allan boyd (the antipoet)

Based in Perth, Western Australia, Allan Boyd has been delivering performance poetry at and organising dynamic poetry arts and music events since 1995.

He has performed his "difficult and acerbic words" as featured guest of the Queensland Poetry Festival; Melbourne Overload Poetry Festival; Newcastle This Is Not Art; Electrofringe and National Young Writers Festivals; the WA Poetry Festival; Artrage; Perth International Arts Festival; WA Fringe and others.

He is also singer/songwriter/guitarist for Perth original bands, MiteyKo and Blac Blocs - and creates music and soundscapes for film, theatre, tv and radio as well as live laptop sonics as Bozo.

Whilst studying creative writing at Curtin University he founded the popular Openmouth Poetry sessions at PICA Bar in Perth from 1996-2001, published a regular poetzine: Woodwork - as well as organised countless other poetry/music events since in WA, NSW and Melbourne.

His radical poetry and experimental short stories have been published in various journals and underground publications around Australia.

His Antipoet Manifesto, written as Emerging Writer in Residence at the Fellowship of Australian Writers WA in 2004, has been distributed across the planet.

Allan is a regular presenter/producer at Perth's largest community radio station RTRFM. He is also a web-designer/developer, administrator, graphic-artist, editor, activist, photographer and psuedo-journalistic hack.

Allan is the WA Poet Host for the Australian National Poetry Slam Perth heats.

Allan also facilitates workshops on performance poetry, experimental writing, zine-making, stencil-making and web-publishing.

He also teaches Creative Writing at Curtin University.

Kevin Gillam - Allan Boyd Antipoet - Nick Cave

WA HEATS: Australian Poetry Slam

THE MOUNTAIN POEM

(planning to perform this piece at perth poetry club sat 29 aug 09)

well, I stand up next to a mountain - and I chop it down with the edge of my hand.. (voodoo chile: jimi hendrix)

listen: listen - my sisters – to the syllables, the syllables

poet: yr sitting on this wasted red country - a political dystopia: a brand new system now recommended by most post-sheep’s-back billionaires and rabid-rim-job taxation-officers – in cars

theme: ultra-violent cashed-up-nutritionists, plus twenty-two-percent of flammable psychologists - and fifty-five point five solid-cream-fat neurologists - bangin at the gates of a detention centre urologist – in cars

and now they listen at apology speeches wrapped in union jack n stars on beaches

and i stand up next to a mountain... in cars

and then our sorry generation of tears to break the droughts of murray-darling cotton farms, remembering Anzacs like broken biscuits on the sweetest shores of cannon-fodder obedience – of blind dominance of rats on a boat – in cars

a porn-skool swimming-pool gorgon nightmare, the flatback turtle happy to hurt the carnivorous expansion of another island, wheelbarrows of cunts, telling each other to fuck off because we’re somehow full of burning racist stubble, the fascist bubble, an intellectual equivalent of a one-digit gesture at a festival of poets – in cars

back on the mainland we’re peeling back our foreskins, aiming at the pigs, barking at the dogs, gnashing at the bacon, baking at the bikini tensions – the syllables, oh syllables –in cars

well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island - might even raise a little sand - I don’t take no for an answer - well, I stand up next to a mountain - and I chop it down with the edge of my hand

simile: like stunning corporate laces of a perfect corset, snapping at the straining eyelets, busting out in terrorist gangs, leaping the ethnic fences of air-conditioned harbour bridges - our naked backs lashed n split skin the rock-salt of the left divided by the right - like an anarchist knitting circle, a moshpit of broken dreams, the guitar hammers waltzing matilda, yr neck arched high at the strobes, the crucifix of my baritone manifesto – in cars

metaphor: tearin up the tree-lined streets on the way to buy more vitamins i sold my steel soul to titanium, rubber and lube – my erection of utterances, of stanza upon fucking stanza – together man we make the meaning – like shaving yr triangle with my broken angle grinder – in cars

and the sixteen muscles of my flexing tongue, the semiotic syllable the syllable, the syllable...

well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island - might even raise a little sand - I don’t take no for an answer - well, I stand up next to a mountain - and I chop it down with the edge of my hand... in cars

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

allanboyd antipoet- august 28, 2009

Australian Poetry Slam 2009

The search is on for Australia’s next poetry slam champion!

Speak, scream, howl, whisper or sing your original poem at the Australian Poetry Slam 09 – an electric live eventght where the audience is the judge! Slam heats are currently being held in city and regional venues across Australia until November 2009. Two finalists from each slam heat will compete in their state final.

http://australianpoetryslam.org

speak to me saint nick!

(apologies to Nick Cave - many stolen and bastardised lyrics inside this performance piece - al)

“my face is finished - my body's gone - and I can't help but think - standing up here in all this applause and gazing down at all the young and the beautiful with their questioning eyes - that I must above all things - love myself...”

like lazza himself - dig yourself nick - get ready for love – set me free

but my mouth like black black cotton up here in this foyer of justice – a cave of wet remembrance

coz a long black-haired skinny god of cool is in the house now, this ghost of the baddest seed, this bastard museum of bashed, bent n biblical lyrics - of birthday parties and boys next door – of orgiastic guitar, of painted strippers on my munted body – my mortality, this love of organised stanzas of hate and the perfect strut and stance - of naked full-blooded violence – the birth of a concrete vulture – this darkest night..

yr subway words hammer in my head - yr blood as a pen, beaten n robbed in the fading city light – yr face like a bug, an art school failure

and i’m not fit to tie yr fucking shoes – i’m hideous to the eye - a fat little insect - the stripper dancin on all fours in his birthday fucking suit – the stench of London, the st kilda scum – a punk gothic

we call upon the sainted author to explain – yeah man – we need the authors’ explanation – the underlying seeds of all this – the cognac, pethidine, the heroin of it all - the grinderman’s methadone plan – a twelve-step poem, a bleeding Wangaratta nightmare

hey my friends, lovers, diggers and beggars – so we ain’t believing - in interventionist gods here tonight man - one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan

but if we did, if i did, if you did motherfuckers - I would kneel down and ask Him not to intervene - not to touch a hair - yet to leave you baby as you are - to direct you, direct you into my arms

and hey, we don't believe in the existence of angels either - but looking at you I wonder if that's true - and ask the angels to watch over you - to each burn a candle for you - to make bright and clear your path - and to walk, like Christ, in grace and love

and i believe in love - in some kind of path – man, we can walk down it, me and you - always and evermore - Into my arms, into my arms - my broken, scarred and pricked arms, my germanic syringes, yr pornography of religion

nick man, let’s take a litlte walk to the edge of town - across the track, where the viaduct looms, like a bird of doom as it shifts and cracks - where secrets lie in the border fires, in the humming wires

he's a ghost, he's a guru – and they're whispering his name through this disappearing land but hidden in his coat is a red right hand - here he comes

you'll see him in your head, on the TV He's a ghost, he's a god, he's a man, he's a guru - designed and directed - his nest high up in the autumn branches, built from nothing but high hopes and thin air, collected up some baby blasted mothers who took their chances

and we've laid the cables and the wires, we've split the wood and stoked the fires - we've lit our town so there is no place for crime to hide - our little church is painted white and in the safety of the night we all go quiet as a mouse - since the word got out - from the North down to the South - no-one's left in doubt - there's no fear about - if we all hold hands and very quietly shout Hallelujah - god is in the house

back here in this july city night – in their bloated museums, all the magicians, the mathematicians - across the wet-paved, tree-lined light-lit thoroughfares - and baby, we're hip to the sound of six billion people going down, blocking the sun - blood running down the inside of her legs, the moon in the sky is battered and mangled and the bells from the chapel go jingle-jangle - we made every effort not to abuse her - crazy bracelets on her wrists and her ankles - and the bells from the chapel go jingle-jangle – do you love me? do you love me? do. you. love. me?

lets celebrate the murder of sadness, the rape of the melancholy muse – busting the rhymes – the batman regret – a permanent fear of the denial of youth – the killing of aggression – growing to each other’s faces – no grace in rebellion – no end to the 30 years of relentless scars – the unreliable muse is dead – the author unexplained – look yonder – look yonder - sailing ships around me... never enough exclamation marks anyway – dig dig dig...

so yeah man, I bought her a dozen snow white doves - I did her dishes in rubber gloves - I called her honey bee, I called her love - but she just still didn't want to - she just never wants to – Damn...!

and you there, perhaps still with us in this friday cello cave rant leave religion to the psychos and fanatics – we’re tired and hardly breathing – we’re sick and tired of all this self-serving grieving

Kevin, go tell the women that we're leaving...

=====================
antipoet - allanboyd - july 2009 - for the nick cave exhibition... july 10 2009

Perth Heats - 2009 National Poetry Slam

From the waslamheats.com website...

The Perth heats of the 2009 National Poetry Slam will be held at the 459 BAR of the ROSEMOUNT HOTEL, Cnr Angove and Fitzgerald Sts in North Perth.

Theres a map here, on the venue page.

PLEASE NOTE: We will not be accepting Heat registrations until early September 2009.

BUNBURY? there is also talk of a Heat in Bunbury! More details will be posted on this website when we have confirmed.

When are the Perth Heats?

• * HEAT 1: Friday 9th October
• * HEAT 2: Friday 16th October
• * HEAT 3: Friday 23rd October
• * HEAT 4: Friday 30th October
• * FINAL: Friday 6th November
  

Each night starts at 7.30PM

Its $5 Entry for Slam consumers - to be used to help cover costs of running the event and providing prizes for the winners.

If you wish to compete in the Slam heats, registration will cost you $5 - to be paid on the night of your heat.

REGISTER HERE (currently disabled) Please come back early September to stick things in boxes...

If you have any dramas please phone Allan Boyd - WA Slam Heats organiser on 0402 573 580 - Or use the Contact form here...

Thanks comrades... Werd!

From the waslamheats.com website...
--

bricks thrown in cars cars cars

here we're channeling street debris
thru the classic real estate blues

we're shifting the bitumen ships
like seeds of chronic charcoal

these red cycle-powered spokes spent
our 1890s dreams unpedaled
on broken cobalt beds

yet yr billion percent hedge-fund
a crash of global detritus
now an inner-jesus realised

i'm a super-anarchista stain
an economic convergence resistor

our shadow culture relishing
this delicious capital exchange rate


(in response to "Charlie's" Perth Squat 2009)

spinifex cuts

the way the spinifex cuts yr face
hair products aside

the corrogation sand and kelp mountains
another battered envelope of sky
all broken sun and flat cloud

yet i can breathe here
through yr retching lungs
the cancer of culture
reeking of piss

we settle like scars on ecology
a literary fantasy, unheard
told in inches, kilometres
laughing til mum cries

our tasks diminish against this frame
this flat sky not a dome
yet yr brass reluctance
a gnu way of dominant paradigm

----
allanboyd march09
(submission for cottonmouth)

The Antipoet Band - Thurs May 14 - Hyde Park Hotel

Doing it again - the Antipoet Band assembles at the Hyde Park Hotel Front Bar, Bulwer St, North Perth - this Thursday night 14th May - from 8pm. $5 entry - AP Band on at 10.30pm.

Details are dirty and sketchy but Al, Riche, Ray, Buddah, Subaware and maybe Kev will mount the mics at Hydey...

With DIE SCOUNDRELS
http://www.myspace.com/scoundrelsband

and CHAINSAW HOOKERS
http://www.myspace.com/chainsawhookersbloodrock

The Antipoet Band Manifesto:

The way this band works is we only have a short rehearsal shortly before each gig.

We have no full songs, no verses/choruses or formulated ideas - just a few improvised hooks and riffs to act as a bed of music/sound to free-form anti-poet lyrics - which may manifest as songs during the performance.

The band consists of Allan Boyd (the Antipoet) - frontman of Blac Blocs on the mic and occasional guitar, with backup by his partner "Subaware"; Steve Buddah is the drummer; Ray (the armed poet) Grenfell from Blac Blocs pumps the basslines; Richard (willterra) Eames provides guitarscapes - and Kevin Gillam plays cello...

There is a FACEBOOK EVENT if you wish to confirm or find out more...

cheers
al

water corp

sandalwood sun
cracked boots freestylin threads off acacia saligna
whisty sheoak songlines
sweatin april dust in scattered patterns across baked mounds
a cooked mind in cream paddock bliss,
hot water swiggers off the steel tray
the shape of battered cats
the 7am bushfire haze
a thousand nuts rattle-bounce like battle-cries for pig-melon
double G spots melts like cancer
at seventy bucks a hec
no weekends

this is the construct

relax brothers, sisters
so I'm standing here in the black black light of this respirated room
this court of stonewalled rainbow pride - a razor cult
not a stolen cushion amongst you
this is a spoken saturday tragedy

question: but should i drop the blue pill

the tainted red of a sunset billionaire
a capital traffic-jam - a gridlock mindfuck
am i such a pissback-coded n fully stunted fringe
all in for the stunt-kilted mullet
a blitzkrieg of carnal spasticity
do I need a specific singular linguistic geography

right - so do i imply - allude - suggest - recommend
demand this, your collective adverbial fascism
an online zeitgeist continent

that we're licking the corporeal shine off the rigid midnight shaft
a pulsing throb of sleek exit signs and signifiers

the twitter-hit of a sub-literary militias mormonism
the twilight agenda - a drug-infused recovery
a spray-on skin grant applicator

do these shopping centre remedies poke or bend
a quantum mouthfuck, an empty bed of hedge-fund toxicity
as if I were a snare skin junkie in the crumpled sheets
i’d still sell at the best price - seek the best leather

she said this in sleek dental glass tone
the steel between her bloodied fingers, the latex sheen
this is the core, man, an old skool vs gnu skool stoker

where we smash it up yeah – push light like lipstick in bits
the broadcast of our unique pirate signal
and hack, swallow each other’s lolly

i’m sure all here get the drum, cobbers - you, yeah you

that your appearance now is what we call residual self image
it is the mental projection of your digital self

so, should you drop the blue pill

hey am i this pixilated concrete canvas?
talking about what you can feel, yet what you can smell
that which you can taste and see
then this real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain
this is the world that you know
it exists now only as part of a neural-interactive
some post-anarchist simulation
a simulacra of ecosystems, producers and consumers
of decaying text, a virus of agents upon the biosphere
chapter by chapter - a genesis to revelation

so, should you drop the blue pill

welcome comrades to the desert of the real
we have only bits and pieces of wiki-information
but what we know for certain is
early 21st century mankind united in celebration

marvelling at our own magnificent insignificance
our bastardised singular consciousness
spawning an entire race of machines to shout at

never knowing who struck first like a face slap trade
it was us that scorched the sky in a free based orgy
an alcoholic's last ideological beer, a recycled sharp
dependent upon our machines to survive in the rusty oceans
the sticky fate not without a sense of pig-irony
perversions of a basic reality
medicine and the army - favoured terrains of simulation

yet we liquefy the dead fed intravenously to the living
while we boil the bilious roads and roads and roads
all leading to here to this moment
this stand-up simulation - an economic packet

should you drop the blue pill

and my inner-neo says:
i thought I should call and let you know how things stand
I know you're real proud of this world you've built
the way it works, all the nice little rules and such,
but I've got some bad news. i've decided to make a few changes

and they sprout like arum lillies at the front-lines
human definition a reality of suffering and misery at the barricades
the perfect magazine world, this dream that
your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up
from a clusterfuck viral civilisation

a morpheus evolution, a classical trinity, a spoon-bent oracle
an agent for change - a placard - a slogan - a clown suit
at the G20 - the suits pressed against my bleeding face

should you drop the blue pill

me, trained to accept only what is rational and logical
yet unable to separate the possible from the impossible
the younger mind easier to free, he says from the script

all around us, here even in this room
you can see it out your window - or on your television
you feel it when you go to work - or go to church - or pay your taxes

the brochure world pulled over your eyes to blind you from the
born-into-bondage truth - kept inside a prison that you
cannot smell, taste, or touch - this prison for your mind.

you take the blue pill and the story ends - you wake in your bed
and you believe whatever you want to believe - you take the red pill
and you stay in wonderland and I show you how
deep the rabbit-hole goes

you take the red pill
you take the blue pill

this is the construct

---

Performed at the Perth Poetry Club, 4th April 2009

Matrix Script: www.imsdb.com/scripts/Matrix,-The.html

Perth Poetry Club Begins - Every Saturday 2-4pm at the Court Hotel

Excited organisers of a fresh weekly poetry reading, Janet Jackson and Helen Child say:

The Perth Poetry Club will be kicking off on Saturday, March 28, from 2-4pm, and every Saturday thereafter, at The Court hotel and restaurant, 50 Beaufort Street, Perth.

This is opposite the museum, just along from the train station, about as central as it gets.

For those with recalcitrant feet: no stairs! - we will meet in the front corner room, on the right as you come in the front door.

Entry is free but donations will be encouraged. We want to be able to pay our guest poets, and there may be some expenses.

Expect a Guest poet each week, plus lots of 3-5 minute open mike slots and some time to chat. Under-18s are allowed in the venue until 8pm but they must be with their parent or guardian.

If you'd like to be included in the reading line-up for the first Poetry Club performance afternoon, email Helen child at: helchild@tpg.com.au

MCs, Helen Child and Janet Jackson say: "It will be a fun and relaxing way to spend a Saturday arvo. It's also a great place to try out that latest poem, or hone your performance skills!

Come and share some poems, and while you're there, enjoy the full bar and restaurant service of The Court to the extent allowed by your wallet and your mood..."

Its just a slam ramble

From a thread on Perth Indymedia

Whilst its kinda interesting to read the analysis of a slam here on perth indy, the point of a slam is NOT the competition. At all.

The competition is an illusion, a delusion.

Slam events are purposely designed to produce random judges from the folks in the crowd, ie not literary judges, not high-brow poets, not beret-wearing snobs! Although if those are in the audience then they may get to be a judge.

Its random. Its open and transparent.

Slams began in the 80s in Chicago as an attempt to get more people along to poetry readings. And it works!

For me: having organised hundreds of poetry events since the mid-90s - including dozens of slams - the idea of a slam is to bring people to poetry events. Not for poets to compete with each other. The competition is certainly tongue-in-cheek and just a way of presenting new work to new audiences.

A slam event takes poetry to a higher place.

For poets: its an opportunity to perform your work in bite-sized chunks to a decent audience of people who may not necessarily be poets. Its a chance to perform quality work in a quality space. To be the best poet YOU can be - not the Winner of the comp!

For those that want to win a slam: Please don't enter it to win! Enter to hone your work, to take the opportunity to perform new stuff to new people. Refine and polish, rehearse and edit, craft and shape etc... Be the best poet you can be.

For the audience: its an opportunity to be entertained by contemporary and exciting poetry. The competition factor is a ruse. A joke. A ploy to get people in the venue. And it works. Every heat of this series was booked-out. We even needed a TV in the bar for those who couldn't fit in the theatre.

And the best bit about slams: I get to declare the next poet like they were a World Wrestling Federation superstar...

Nobody wins a slam. Everybody wins a slam.

:)
cheers,
al boyd
http://perthpoetryslam.com

From a thread on Perth Indimedia

Perth Poetry Slam 2009 FINAL - see hear touch taste and smell it

SLAM FINAL - Wednesday 4 March
These are the 12 finalists for the final of the inaugural Perth Poetry slam:

Belowsky
Karla Hart
Raageh Ismail
Gabby Everall
Mark Lloyd
Tiffany Ha
Paul Harrison
Elizabeth Tan
Stephanie Megatronn Low
Vivienne Glance
Jeremy Balius
Khin Myint

All welcome. Audience tickets are $5. The venue has limited capacity - so please book at the Blue Room website or phone the Blueroom on: 9227 7005