and this is not a performance poem

can you feeeeeeel it
the difference tonight
this gap between page and stage
see these lights - our collective reality
this contrived gesture - this movement
this e-nun-ci-a-tion

yeah punters of the poem
get a dose of tactile delivery
vampires of the word
here stanzas are felt rhythmically
deliberately

approximately one hundred and twenty seconds
or less - of word - one after-the-other
after-the-other - after-the-other

i am syllables - units of rhythm
assonance - alliteration consummated
i am literally a metaphor snake
strike like a simile of the sonic
not like lee majors bionic
or remote fibre-vitiman-tonic
nor a sister of the sonnet
a munted rhyme for the seated gods

but, also this is not a fucking aabbc bbaac ccaab
bbaad rhyming pattern - un-uh - but just a word
on another word - piled on another word

now some anecdotal advice
about how i once trod barefoot
in my own hot morning shit - brown and yellow
its steaming rancid relevance - between my cold toes
and how i always - wear boots now
before a bush shit - and dig a hole

stacked here - these spoken words - this lullaby
an uttered semiotic sign - a list of the signifier, signified
a significance - a literary spin for you

and my soul - merely the width of this entire room
and the motherfuckers innit
there is repetition repetition repetition - and breath…

and words like foreskin and clitoris
and this is my voice inside you now -
resonating through yr ribs and limbs my pulse
as real as yrs
not binary, ink
or digitalised
or analog
but written read
and vocalised

see my veins run red - and bloody as yrs
and you can - by now
see the sheen of my sweat
in the red light of my brow

and the bass of this microphone
into and outta these speakers
and into you - into you
in - to - you

and this is not a performance poem
amongst the laundry lists
and rock-pose grandeur

these are words - just words
just words - on words…

WA HEATS: Australian Poetry Slam

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

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...
--

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

Perth Poetry Slam 2009

Perth Poetry Slam 2009

Full details coming soon...

Openmouth and The Blueroom present the inaugural "Perth Poetry Slam"

Starting Wednesday the 4th February 2009, the Perth Poetry Slam runs each Wednesday night until the 4th March - with up to 20 wordmongers will dazzle you in a battle to the death.

Five randomly chosen audience members will judge the performances to see who wins the final on the 4th March. Prizes etc to be announced soon...

And you're invited! Contact: email us here...

The Slam is part of the "25 nights of Summer" program at the Blue Room... 53 James Street, Northbridge in the Perth Cultural Centre. The Blue Room will become an artist club for members and friends to hang before heading out to a Festival show, rock up after a show, or head straight down and spend the evening witnessing any number of performances taking place throughout the venue.

Hosted by WA performance poet Allan Boyd - aka the antipoet

Find out more: perthpoetryslam.com - or phone 0402 573 580 to get involved.

Or email us here...

Bakery Rant

and here we are now in this baked convergence of brittle bodies
in this sacred place of deliberate rock and new-skool artifice
all the red-dirt business and radical glitter and bronze medals
of apathetic bravery, this metaphor to the corporate slavery

we're waving hands at a vainglorious nebulous democracy
the birthright of a billion losers - we're shocked at this
and we raise our many skinny fists at the thick dead sky
at this global moment - a fascinator, a tool, a distraction
an excuse not to wake, not to imagine another world
is possible, here - in this room - right here right now

lets ride the waves - lets catch the sun
lets sell the house - lets buy a gun
lets hit the street - lets shift the mode
lets touch our skin - do it in the road
lets rip at the fence - lets hammer the walls
lets kick at the door - lets get insured
lets fix the thing - lets shout at god
lets eat the dead - lets wake up wake up

we run, we run, we run and hide our money in turgid mattresses
of economic disparity without thought for the battle-cry
of colour and heart and guts and flyers, flyers, flyers for change

yes we slice these kids into ribbons of confusion
with no recognition for the guerilla manifestos
and yr mental condition an addiction to the death:
another house, another car, another card, another grave

we give our resource pleasure to the man in the deserted places
with no recourses for the buried bodies
the trees - the rocks - the sand - the wind - the rush of wealth
of mouthfuls of money money money…

lets ride the waves - lets catch the sun
lets sell the house - lets buy a gun
lets hit the street - lets shift the mode
lets touch our skin - do it in the road
lets rip at the fence - lets hammer the walls
lets kick at the door - lets get insured
lets fix the thing - lets shout at god
lets eat the dead - lets wake up wake up

hey hey hey, lets dig a hole for the two-three-eight,
the two-three-eight, the two-three-eight…

lets drape this million-year old concrete flag over the bones
of my mouth, of yr mouth
of his and hers matching flag tattoos
on the scarborough shores we fight and flex,
kick sand in the faces of each other
and render all those less patriotic than us
on this beach - under this footpath - a river once ran
the slogan shit of kiss the flag or die
fuck off we're full

of racist cowards

not sittin on the fence - I'm tearin it down
not grabbin at the wretched throat of this town
not reachin for the end - of this radical sentence

lets ride the waves - lets catch the sun
lets sell the house - lets buy a gun
lets hit the street - lets shift the mode
lets touch our skin - do it in the road
lets rip at the fence - lets hammer the walls
lets kick at the door - lets get insured
lets fix the thing - lets shout at god
lets eat the dead - lets wake up wake up

antipoet - allan boyd
november 6, 2008

performed as 'sacrificial poet' at the WA final of the National Poetry Slam

also read by subaware with blac blocs following the slam...

blac blocs at the bakery

Kalgoorlie Poem

(This one was written in about half-an-hour and then performed over the phone during a radio interview on ABC Goldfields - October 15, 2008 on the Morning Show with David Kennedy. They loved it! It's on their blog)

Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie
say it

a superpit* condition, a red yellow bowl of silky pear
a moon-sized, mass-mind hole in the ground, a nugget
going down town in the ripplin sun, my face an empty sky-mine
this easterly dust remembering all who trod this street
my economic reality, a hi-lux with the hubs in

Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie
say it

this is the place this is the town
heat the back o my head with the hay street nouns
waking up to the sound of a goldrush city
we follow the pipeline the pipeline the pipeline*
hey paddy* give us a drink o this
vanish to the vast, vastness this
wangai* country this

Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie
say it

Kal…

----
allan boyd - antipoet
October 15, 2008

---

Some references:

Wangai: is the name given by themselves to the 26 Aboriginal groups of the Goldfields of Western Australia. It comes from the word meaning "Speaker".

Paddy Hannan: was a gold prospector whose discovery on June 17 1893 near Kal set off a gold rush in the area.

Superpit: This renowned Kalgoorlie-Boulder landmark is currently 3.5 km long, 1.5 km wide and 360 m deep, and will eventually stretch 3.9 km long, 1.6 km wide and reach a depth exceeding 500 m.

Golden Pipeline: is perhaps the world's longest water main - stretching from Perth to Kal, some 580Ks.

Perth Heats - Slam Winners and Runners Up

Video of Slam winners
from the ABC 720 Local radio website

Heat 2 - Winner: Mark Lloyd - Video
Heat 2 - Runner Up: James Hanlon - Video


Heat 1 - Winner: Kate Wilson - Video
Heat 1 - Runner Up: Bianca Long - Video

Interview with Bianca Long

===

wake up and smell the poetry

Documenting Slam 07:

"It's the 21st century and I think it's time to wake up and smell the poetry."

SOURCE - ABC Albany 19/09/07

So says Alan Boyd, a West Australian performance poet who was in Albany to run workshops ahead of the local heat of the National Poetry Slam. The Albany heat of the National Poetry Slam was just one of the many events on offer at the Sprung Writers Festival. The slam encourages people to present a poem to the audience in less than two minutes.

Even though he's running workshops in poetry, Alan calls himself an anti-poet. "Poetry perhaps is an old art form and many people think it's irrelevant these days," says Alan. "If that's the case I say I'm the anti poet and that poetry is relevant, and it's in our faces every day, in our ears as we listen to the radio and you see it in the street you see it in advertising and you see people and hear people making their own poetry."

He says there has been a renaissance in performance poetry. "If you think about performance poetry it predates written history," says Alan. There's no mystery about what makes a performance poem, he says.

"Once you take the words off the page then it becomes a performance poem." "It's about performance, it's about theatre, making the use of the stage, engaging the audience and making people part of the performance," he says. "A lot of academics dont like the idea of slams or performance poetry because it's too entertaining."

Alan describes the Slam as "poetry for the people". Even the judging is democratic. "The performers are judged by randomly chosen members of the audience," he says. In terms of what it takes to be successful, Alan says "rehearse, rehearse, rehearse".

"I suppose it's just a matter of being confident in the work that you're going to present," says Alan. "That means knowing your stuff, rehearsing it, recording it, pacing it, understanding things like enunciation and delivery, making the use of the space and things like that. It's just generally taking away some of the nerves because I think that's where some of us trip ourselves up. The more you practice and the more you're in tune with your work, the more confident you are and the better performance you'll give." Albany ABC RADIO

Some Australian Poetry Slam History

Slam Poetry in Australia

I assembled this last year when I built the initial aussie poetry slam website: australianpoetryslam.org

May 2007 - This section is an attempt to document a history of Slam Poetry in Australia.

Whilst Poetry Slams have been happening, albeit in random and sporadic pockets across Australia for around a decade, over the last two years the notion of performance poetry has attracted the imagination of Australian audiences and media alike.

Poetry Slams have been hosted by the State Library of NSW, the Sydney Festival, the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Woodford Folk Festival, at Openmouth in Perth as well as on ABC radio. In the US Slams have had popular appeal for over 20 years. (Stateline 2007) (Albany 07)

Below are some recent Australian events…

2007

Victorian poet, Marc Testart, won first national slam title. The Australian Poetry Slam grand final was held on 7th December… Slam heats were held in city centres and regional venues across Australia between June and November 2007. Two finalists from each slam heat traveled to compete in their state’s final, and the two top point scorers from each state final went to Sydney in December to battle it out for the national title at the State Library of NSW.

All contestants were given a mic, a live audience and just two minutes to impress the judges (selected at random at each heat) with their original spoken word, poetry, hip hop, monologues and stories…

2006

The 2006 ‘State Of Origin’ Team Poetry Slam -Thursday 25th May, 2006 - To an appreciative full house at the Bangarra Theatre on Thursday, 25th May 2006, NSW team Housecat Havoc and QLD team The OuTsideRS gave it their all - and that all-important little bit more - in the Sydney Writers’ Festival / WWF State Of Origin Team Poetry Slam. And it was NSW who hoisted the Shield on their shoulders, parading it through their hometown streets, with a 10 point margin making the decision decisive!

We thrilled to the delights and challenges of 2-up, 3-up and 4-up poetry, laughed ’til our ears all but fell off as Tug Dumbly anti-serenaded the PM pre-match, and Dr Plumb serenaded us all at half-time. We gasped at the kinetic wonders of synarcade’s live visuals and video scoreboard, and made the rafters of the Bangarra Theatre ring with applause at a wonderful night of poetry in motion. The final score:NSW 110 points QLD 100 points

The day before, Bravo and Citizen took on Ghostboy and Spiritgirl in a live to air triple j poetry slam, and again the Housecats took the line honours, as triple j’s national audience SMS’ed their votes (and some strange poetry of their own) into the studios… Word Wrestling Federation

2005

The State Library of NSW launched its inaugural competition – the Sydney Poetry Slam - in 2005 and was so successful it was expanded to include five venues from regional NSW in 2006 (NSW Poetry Slam 06). Slam heats were held in libraries and cultural spaces in Armidale, Wagga Wagga, Broken Hill, Newcastle, Wollongong, Sydney (Glebe and Newtown) and Parramatta.

Over 200 poetry enthusiasts and students attended workshops and participated in regional and metro poetry heats, and the NSW Slam Final in Sydney last year. At the Final the sell-out crowd was treated to over two hours of amazing entertainment, including a guest performance by Australia’s first poetry boy band, The Bracket Creeps. SLNSW teamed up with spoken-word artist Miles Merrill to co-organise, host and perform at both the Sydney and NSW Poetry Slams.

2004

Radio National’s daily arts and music program, the Deep End selected nine finalists to perform in Australia’s first national poetry slam. On Wednesday November 24 the slam came to radio audiences across Australia, when one writer from each state and territory performed a two-minute poem live on the Deep End. You had one week to decide the winner by lodging an online vote for your favourite performance.

The winner was Mitchell Joe from the ACT.The finalists were:Murray Jennings (WA), Mitchell Joe (ACT), Jayne Fenton Keane (Qld), Benny Walter (Tas), Pru Gell (NT), James W Dennison (SA), Jay Hambly Jones (Vic), Jess Cook (NSW), Klare Lanson (Wildcard) … Find out more and listen to the poems here

2003

etc…

READ MORE...