I had the good fortune to attend the kick off for 2009 of Wordplay, the monthly gig hosted by Geoff Lemon which has now moved to the more spacious surrounds of the Dan O’Connell in Carlton. Given recent sad events it was also turned into a fundraiser for a poet who had suffered and lost in the recent bushfires.
We were entertained by the spiritual and thoughtful Simon Cox, Joelistics (musician and rap artist with TZU) got us moving, we were blown away by the picturesque story telling of Eleanor Jackson and beguiled at the end by the work of Kevin Brophy.
Go check out their website, listen to the mp3s of previous gigs, download a copy of the Wordplay mag that they’ve just launched. It’s all worth your time.
Well, that was a lot of fun. Thank you to everyone who came along to the gig.
Ozlem, as expected, was amazing, particularly poised for someone who was performing at her debut headline gig.
I was happy with how my new work came out. I had decided to do one of the new ones in response to something I had heard in the open stage, and it felt a lot better than I thought. Needs a bit of work, perhaps, but certainly held it’s own.
This is mostly for my own recording, but my set list was:
1st Set
Thirteen Hours Into Summer; Sad Bleak Sky; That’s Chiroptera To You Mr. Lawrence; Supermarket Queue; In Memory Of Boris Pasternak (by Denise Levertov); Observing Denise Levertov Remember Boris Pasternak; Inauguration; In The Absence
2nd Set
Dr. Frankenstein; Dust Revisited; Ballard Days; Eulogy For The Polaroid; Extracts From The Kama Sutra Of Sleep; Go; 21 – The World
Reading: “District & Circle” – Seamus Heaney Listening: “Save What You Can” – The Triffids
Well, I had an excellent evening being part of a great performance at the Candy Bar on last Thursday night. Anthony O’Sullivan (of Spinning Room fame) was an excellent host as per usual, presiding over an enthusiastic turnout.
I was grateful to find that I was opening as it meant I would be less stressed and could enjoy the show in its entirety. This was handy as, apart from Josephine, I had seen little to no of my co-stars previously, knowing them only by reputation, and was able to enjoy their work with fresh ears.
If the night made anything clear to me, it was that I really need to learn how to perform without my notes! Apart from seeing some marvellous performances being done by people who were free of having to look at paper every couple of seconds, it felt a lot better being able to concentrate purely on what I was saying without having to read at the same time.
Overload this year produced something of a record for me. Five gigs in one week I think is something of a record in the decade-and-a-bit that I’ve been attending and reading in open stage gigs. By the time Sunday’s closing event rolled around, I was too tired to attend. Hats off the Overload organising committee for bringing in festival number seven!
A pleasant Friday night was spent at the Melbourne Poet’s Union. As well as appearances from Jennifer Compton and Paul Mitchell, the evening saw the launch of Carla de Goede’s “Those Hairy Letters”. This is the ninth chapbook to be released through the MPU’s Chapbook Series.
Kris Hemmensley’s speech about the importance of the chapbook in the world of poetry was stirring enough that I wound up writing another poem, I’ll post that here once it’s been polished a bit.
Technorati tags: events, poetry, melbourne poets union
Reading: “Those Hairy Letters” – Carla de Goede
Listening: “American Without Tears” – Elvis Costello (off the King Of America album)
