In February we’re packing in more talent than you can poke a $10 note at (as blunt a device as that is). This month we have for you four very diverse performers, united under the theme of: people we should hear doing spoken word in Melbourne more often.
1/6 (One Six)
African-Australian Hip Hop Artist 1/6 makes his second-ever foray into a Capella, after his amazing 2009 debut at Wordplay. Born in Australia but raised and schooled in Namibia, 1/6 has emerging as one of Aussie hip hops freshest talents.
Now based in Melbourne, 1/6 boasts regular appearances with respected groups Illzilla, Public Opinion Afro Orchestra, The Mega Horns, Polo Club, Black Jesus and his crew Pang Productions, and was recently the recipient of the Hilltop Hoods initiative, giving him a grant towards his first solo album.
One Six Freestyle Live StrictlyOZ Kiss FM 2011
if you are not seeing a playable video window click here for a direct link
You can also listen to a podcast of his appearance at Wordplay in 2009 by clicking here
LAURA JEAN MCKAY
Another Wordplay veteran (yes, we steal ideas from the best here at Sweetalkers, including Wordplay’s blurb on her: “Her performances are an enchanting and chaotic mix of cabaret, short story reading, song, spoken word, and high-level wrongness”). We’ve wrestled her away from finishing her short story collection to come tell us a thing or two.
Laura has published in Best Australian Stories, Sleepers Almanac and The Big Issue. An Asialink literature residency to Cambodia led to an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne (see video below) . In 2011 she won the Alan Marshal Short Story award and was shortlisted for the 2011 Whitemore Press Poetry Manuscript prize.
The Cyclo Men of Phnom Penh -(written by Laura Jean McKay)
if you are not seeing a playable video window click here for a direct link
Andy is one of my very favourite Melbourne poets, back fresh from India, where he recently completed an Asialink residency, exploring medical tourism, and performing at poetry events over there. He doesn’t sing, shout or stage dive but speaks simply and beautifully, writing poetry about bodies, identities and the indefinable.
He has performed at the Australian Poetry Festival in Sydney, Queensland Poetry Festival, and the Newcastle Young Writers Festival. His collaborative performance with puppeteer Rachael Guy was awarded the City of Yarra Award for Most Innovative Work at the 2009 Overload Poetry Festival (see video below). His first full-length collection of poems – Among the Regulars - was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize in 2010.
Ambiguous Mirrors - collaboration with Rachael Wenona Guy
If you are not seeing a playable window above click here
SOPHIA DACY-COLE
Sophia Dacy-Cole. 20 something, hopeless romantic. Poet, artist and occasional activist. Studying an honours in fine arts as a backup plan while she waits for the anarchist revolution. Has edited for and been published in numerous student publications around Victoria. Sometimes at the same time. Has organised and performed in gigs around Victoria, Canberra and Nimbin. Is looking at starting up a slightly more queer centric gig soon, so look out for that.
Will probably fall in love with anyone who stands still long enough.
Looks much sexier on real life than in this video (of her 8 minute set as a Nimbin finalist)
~and likewise you will also fall in love with her words ~ probably happen as soon as you hear them.
Sophia is at the heart of the reason I started organising Sweetalkers ~she's one of the people I've been lucky enough to see in my travels that most Melbournians haven't. So help me help you fix that and be there Sunday!
We're mixing literature and street, brain food and braggadocio, veteran and beginner, men and women, black and white, good and evil, us and them, young and old, positrons and electrons, and maybe even a few neutrons too if you're good and well behaved.
8pm (starting time, doors open 7.30)
The Bendigo Hotel –Collingwood 125 Johnston Street (uh, Collingwood)
with your lovable MC Randy Old Man Randall Stephens
chomp at the bit off sentence swallowing down the urge to tell you- go fuck yourself that seems so imperative now knowing it may not seem so important tomorrow
know this from experience inside out a simmering stomach a flexing jaw clenched face knuckle dance on an every-ready keypad breathing a fire that might burn me back draft
once I calm down
so I hold back from punching you in the opinion planting my flag in your eye socket to send you home so sorry you ever dared fuck with me stop short shit eating the grin of a bigger man
I've one man paraded down enough years of my own wreckage to know I couldn't continue down that path
and you can call it wisdom or cowardice call it patience prudence maturity maybe not to mouth off give as good as I get say something I regret
but right now you deserve big face-fulls of me I think and kinda just wish we'd met
Recently I've fallen in with a mob called Little Raven, a Melbourne-based publisher of erotic short stories, novels, poems audio books and comics, who have been doing some great spoken word/storytelling gigs around town.
This week I'm their featured artist, with an audio recording of Except for 'Architecture in Helsinki' (text below) To listen to the recording click here
And check out the rest of their website, including recordings by other great authors here
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Except For "Architecture In Helsinki"
with your cats watching us
with your glasses on with one of my boots still on with your shoes staying on with the doors remaining unlocked
when the next-press of the snooze button could not be more than mere seconds away when you are trying, so hard, to continue talking (normally) with your friend on the phone when you're already half way out the car door when I really do have so much work to get done tonight when no other cars have pulled up next to us at the lights when we pass that big empty park near my parents’ place
with someone wondering where we got to the belt buckle still getting in the way my thumb sitting in your mouth and some annoying indy music on in the background anything that is except "Architecture in Helsinki" 'cause that could really kill any adequate blood supply where it may be needed
without any restraints on volume without having ever made it past the lounge floor without being sure your friend in the next room over is really asleep yet without walls any more solid or substantial than the thin excuses used in getting us back here far away from the many possibilities for well-behaved cowardice without me failing to notice how suddenly you were looking in another direction when I was looking in your direction without you getting away with that, one last time.
and with you now busily making that obligatorily-offered cup of tea or coffee I was ostensibly invited in for but that neither of us really (really)
Language; the greatest thing we have achieved in our mammalian two minutes to midnight the very first most diverse yet highly refined technology we possess a medium to transform thought into message
language also stands us up knife-point between hope and despair showing us the best and worst of our species
though they speak different languages when people want to understand one another they will, somehow
though also, somehow should two people not wish to listen to one another even when sharing the same language communication becomes impossible
we talk our ammunition out at each other accusations fire from the barrel of personal injustice banners of our outrage we speak our sides our teams our rights to our things talk the debts we are owed and the damages done to us
I once broke another man's nose with a balled up fist but that bloody injury is pale against the pain knowing I've caused on others with sounds out my mouth for the troubles they took in how they listened
we can make words hurt
and between us we've talked barrels of ink back and forth said clouds against mountains monologued on shared orgasm accused our own deities described minute to the infinite we've spoken pointed fingers into blunt instruments
I've seen the finger-jammed ears of those mouthing questions they'd rather not have answered back and the fumbled friction of two continents trying to be an island
I have learned how to make myself heard and I have learned how to say anything
occasionally though when I can be quiet I now hear the gaps between us,
hear them just enough to know that
I have not yet learned how to listen.
_______________________________
Need to say that the whole 'two languages/understood v not listening/understanding' concept from the third & fourth stanzas is a paraphrase of something James Cameron said on the Avatar blu-ray.
Though it probably beggars mentioning as 'borrowing' ideas is that man's specialty, so not going to lose sleep over that, and I've simply used it as a springboard to coalesce some stuff that's been rattling around my head these past few days, with enough originality to justify it.
We're kicking off 2012 with yet another all star cast of spoken word artists, to make you laugh, break your heart, and raise the bar on their craft. Check it out:
CANDY ROYALLE
The Sydney poet who inspired our gig's very name, on her return to Melbourne we're pleased-as-punch to have Candy Royalle back at Sweetalkers to tell us how it is, and give us all the Royalle treatment. Check out her latest well produced video clip below:
Stories by Starlight
if you are not seeing a playable window above click here
MATTHEW JAMES
Formerly known as Mel Hughes, Matthew is a veteran of poetry tours and workshops in the US, and Matt's style is steeped in the American slam tradition, whilst somehow transcending it's formula with a unique voice, character and beautiful words.
Matthew is not only a survivor of New York City, but more impressively, Adelaide too, and will very soon be launching a book at Collected works.
AMY BODOSSIAN
Another Adelaide survivor, Amy Bodossian fuses music, poetry, props and frizzy hair into... well, something that defies definition in any conventional sense of the word, or unconventional sense either.
I know that doesn't make sense. Amy wouldn't be so sure. The best way I can think to describe her is: someone whose been driven crazy by being the last sane person left on Earth, now trying to explain why back to us. It gets intense, sexy, poignant, and really funny.
She's been on spics and specs and won a tonne of awards and is proabaly going to mad at me for not using more info from the bio I demanded she send me. Meanwhile have a squiz at this clip from her 2011 show Plegm Fatale:
You're the One
if you are not seeing a playable window above click here
EMBER FLAME
Ember Flame is a burlesque dancer and writer who fuses silky words and rhythms in her unique brand of poetry. Telling her tales through different characters, from a whistle-blowing fairytale princess to an office girl who finally gives in to her jungle rhythms, these modern ballads offer hope for transformation with lots of hot, heart-powered seduction. Part commentary, part confession, Ember strips to the soul, often revealing some of society's hidden parts along the way.
I saw her perform her first purely-spoken word set in Sydney on my last trip there and just melted. Like a candle. Seriously, I used to be taller before I met her. Sweetalkers is honoured, humbled and just simply -really fucking excited- to have Ember do the feature for us.
This is one gig you don't want to miss. Because I don't either I'll be on door, so as to just sit back and watch, so finally...
...working his way up through the cutthroat Sweetalkers ranks, starting humbly as feature to co-organiser to flyer-putter-up guy to door-bitch, now finally usurping me as MC for this month, will be poet laureate of planet Earth: STEVE SMART
Yep, January in Melbourne just got a lot hotter folks, we'll see you and you'll see us tomorrow at:
The Bendigo Hotel 125 Johnston Street Collingwood 7.30pm
Thumbs through his black book for crumbs though it's not actually black nor a book or a list of options very likely
it's a few too few to name on speaking terms with a three ring circus of badly juggled balls old tricks unfunny and antiquated cruelty that he's already called on too many times before
it's a shortlisted transcript of misanthropic entropy spiraling reductionism circling around a drain of hands-in-his-pockets obstinancy and notated misogyny
it's hoping to think his way out of a room with a phone that won't ring a staring contest with a weekend that won't blink
his black-book a band aid covering the scrape of waking up a daze into weeks wondering where did everybody go?
it's end result gestalt of he doesn't-need-nobody turning bodily on it's head to where instead nobody needs him
so he thumbs for crumbs through that black book though it's not actually black nor a book really just a blank space where he got stuck
