26 June 2006

Openmouth Poetry Wants YOU - June 29 2006

OPENMOUTH POETRY SESSIONS - LAST THURSDAY MONTHLY AT VELVET LOUNGE

Yep - here we go again baby. You got poems? We wanna hear them...

Openmouth Poetry Action this Thursday 29th June. From 8pm at the Velvet Lounge, (Cnr Beaufort and Walcott Sts) Mt Lawley.

JUNE'S FEATURED PERFORMER > The formidable Mr TOMAS FORD, and his dancing laptop, will give Perth poem-consumers an inflated sense of mental incontinence this month.

As winner of April's Openmouth poetry Slam, Tomas gets to be June's featured poet. Woohoo.

But wait there's more! Tomas will also be the Openmouth band - and will perform a half hour set of his in-yr-face electro-poetic, musical charm just for you, gentle reader.

Check his website: http://tomasford.00cash.com

(Also keep an eye out for the Grim Reaper - rumoured to make an appearance on Thursday.)

But remember to bring poems/fragments to read/recite/perform at the gushing, ever-smiley Openmouth audience. You are fully invited to get on the Open Mic. And test out your poetry to the people.

Just let us know at the door on the night.

Or why not go to the next level - compete in the Slam heats.

What? Yes! Perform your poetry to the random Openmouth Slam judges. If they think you're good, you go through to the next heat. If they don't like ya - well, you get eliminated.
:)

All in good clean poetik fun.

Look. Just bring some letters, string them into word fragments. Perform them at Openmouth. Because you are very very welcome.

SEE HEAR TOUCH TASTE AND SMELL PERTH'S FRESHEST WORDMONGERS IN THE
FLESH: BE ONE!

FROM 8PM SHARP > THURSDAY 29TH JUNE 2006 > VELVET LOUNGE
$5/3 or donation at the door. Get in early.

See also this Feature article written about Openmouth in last weeks "The Program":
http://www.theprogram.net.au/featuresSub.asp?id=3722&state=1

See ya there. Lets bring poetry into the 21st Century.

Or phone 9307 9273 or mobile 0402 573 580...

(Hint: Tune into RTRFM 92.1 this Thursday at 8.30AM.)

respecta,
allan boyd - the antipoet
http://antipoet.blogspot.com

14 June 2006

Openmouth Poetry Sessions :: Talking Loud In Perth

Openmouth Poetry Sessions :: Talking Loud In Perth
By Rebecca Giggs WA | 13.06.2006

"Poems. Yeah Poems. Poems read. Poems performed. Poems desecrated. Poems recited and spat... Poems burnt and shed nervously. Real poems in your smiley face. Poems with sweet guts and legs and blood and gravy. Poems with sex and drugs and nudity. Poems with music and soundscape. Poems with lilting beats n bones. Vegan poems. Extreme poems. Poems whispered, poems sang. Normal poems. Radical poems. Rhyming poems..."

So Allan Boyd, Perth’s own ‘antipoet’, begins his electronic incantations, calling readers, writers and listeners to the Openmouth Sessions - an extended prologue of sorts for WA’s Spring Poetry Festival held in September 2006.

On the last Thursday of every month in the seditious Mount Lawley venue of the Velvet Lounge, Perth poets are warming up their literature, road-testing their material, simmering their ink and breaking-in their nibs to the curious delight of audiences.

The Openmouth sessions are not just about carving a space for poetical expression in the Perth artistic landscape, they are a palm-slap to accusations that poetry is dead, that poetry is a redundant form or that poetry is dehydrating in Perth.

“Poetry is alive and well” says Allan Boyd, the antipoet, “and it’s not just on the ground, it’s in the radio, on the TV, in advertising; but poets have for some time had vacuous intentions. The Openmouth poetry sessions are about invigorating the poetical community in Perth, about growth, cross-pollination and collaboration. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of poets in Perth and Openmouth is hoping to bring them together.”

Following in the footsteps of the Fuel Bar open mics and the Fremantle Furphy nights of previous years, Openmouth is stitching a small island of colluding poets, feeding off each others’ ideas, giving sustenance to a greater depth of work. Openmouth includes open-mic for free-ranging poets, poems set to music, poems accompanied by moving art and slam poetry (the poems-in-combat dialogue that has been widely popularised in Australia by the Word Wrestling Federation (http://www.wordwrestlingfederation.com.au)).

The only poetical impediment of the Openmouth sessions is that they are inherently about performance; if your work is in concrete poetry or futurist-esque word pictures you might have a hard time conveying ‘true impact’, but then Openmouth is always interested in Poets using multimedia and sound. The best poets, in terms of audience-reception, are the ones who use subtle drama to amplify the meaning of their works.

Not to say Openmouth is theatrical pyrotechnics over substance, but that the most memorable pieces involve some degree of polish in their presentation.The definition of what a poem might consist of is kept broad and loose at the Openmouth sessions, as was keenly demonstrated last month when one wandering bard performed a piece entitled The Least I Can Say, involving only silence and the drawing of an empty box in the air.

Poetry can be structured and formal, or it can be spontaneous and amorphous; basically anyone who is prepared to put their words into the concert is applauded regardless of methodology or subject matter. You don’t have to be high-brow, faux-brow or any other sort of brow to participate in the Openmouth sessions, just speak loud enough to overrule the soft background jazz and you’ll find yourself a poet.

If you’re a wordmonger of any sort make your way down to the next Openmouth session on the 29th of June, 2006 at the Velvet Lounge - the back section of the Flying Scotsman Pub, 639 Beaufort Street Mount Lawley.

Entry to the Openmouth sessions is $5/$3 or by donation. Come prepared to have the conch-curls of your ears toasted, and find dormant words rising in your throat! Come prepared to get eaten alive by words that swarm the air!

Bring some ink, a well-placed phrase or two and settle in to the best poetry Perth has to offer!

Information about the Openmouth sessions can be found at Allan Boyd’s own blog: http://antipoet.blogspot.com.

The Spring Poetry Festival website is at www.thewordisout.net.

13 June 2006

The Mask of Anarchy! by Mr Shelley

the mask of anarchy - a hack

the poet said like a check,
When his foot is on the neck

Of his victum

thou dost make
That he treads upon a snake

stand ye calm and resolute
like a forest close and mute
with folded arms and looks which are
weapons of unvanquished war

pb.shelly

Pedia:
The_Masque_of_Anarchy

Peterloo_massacre

05 June 2006

ladies and gentlemen: game on moles

ladies and gentlemen: game on moles
(for tomas ford and big brother)

destroy two hundred and twenty years of culture tonight she said
to the screen, or to me in that 4AM light.
this bakery, this bread of neo-reason and abstract contraception
a new world order of neon-plastic great grey goo

tearin at the guts of a wolfmother moment
a post post post post post-modern movement

i'm a 6 string clarity fetish - an all-star mainframe dissident program
my sedition of affection / a stencilled face examining the traffic;
de-constructing the brilliant cartoon fumes
of a cyclic, primary real-estate boom.

eating from the plate of 2000 yrs of culture
if i were a carpenter i'd surely like to fault ya
squeeze my head like a dick-slid in the system
get in line got a problem better list em

and we all heave wet, like automatic britney tits;
the sweat and glare of a pro-netball fantasy.
you're the G.D. and i'm the G.A.
and we flit n prance in a chemical infliction;
bruised and broody; brewing a black black eye
a bastard broken tooth - an inspirational public electrocution.

16 layers of a post modern moment
tearing at the root of a wolfmother movement
eating from the plate of 2000 yrs of culture
if i were a teacher i'd surely like to fault ya
squeeze my head like a dick slid in the system
get in line got a problem better list em... you better list em
it makes me wonder sometimes
how i keep from going under uh huh huh

and as the spike-driven fluro and spandex nanoculture shouts:
"GNUs not Unix. GNUs not Unix. GNUs not Unix,"
a hundred billion times a second.
we fought valiant battles at the coal-face of narrative,
the TV wars; the bloody-headed peace; a crime scene nipple.
a piece o you a piece o me, she said so fast, another packet please.
please: and this poem is not about your mother, mother-fucker. is it?

is it...? and so we pack death to the boot of a hydrogen economy,
a nuclear insanity - the peak oil franchise a country singers paradise
this burning holy ring of fire; do you know the way to San Hose?
"NO." but i still call Australia homophobic, xenophobic
a dead school cultural wasteland kissing your muffin-topped waistband

26 layers of a post modern moment
tearing at the guts of a wolfmother movement
eating from the plate of 2000 yrs of culture
if i were a carpenter i'd surely like to fault ya
squeeze my head like a dick slid in the system
get in line got a problem better list em... you better list em
it makes me wonder sometimes how i keep from going under uh huh huh

if i weren't an anarchist i'd surely love to shootya.
a clear-felled forest in a super computer.
if i were jesus, i'd rise n grind n swoop from the rock a broken mountain;
a specimen of code, yearning, a cluster of lawyers pointing the bone
at a billion fatal greed breeders.

and i'm SMSing god till the credit runs dry,
flicking yr tender foreskin as if it were the sky,
or a terminal superlative; a radical racist nation laxative

so oh say
can you keep up
with the random channelling, the frantic hammering.

SALE SALE SALE
a convict culture five for a dollar - a culture convict a dollar for five,
cheaper than heroin, faster than ice, slower than GHB; or underwater K;
or crack-pipe rush-job sex-jam humility.

lying thru the perfect yellow haze of an ecstasy epiphany
so so so so 90s / so so so so 80s
so so so so 70s/60s/50s
and there we are now entertain us, a box to masturbate us

girt by sea to shining fucking sea.

quickly quickly quickly
a post-post post-post post- modern moment

26 layers of a post modern moment
tearing at the guts of a wolfmother moment
eating from the plate of 2000 yrs of culture
if i were a carpenter i'd surely like to fault ya
squeeze my head like a dick slid in the system
get in line got a problem better list em... you better list em
it makes me wonder sometimes
how i keep from going under uh huh huh

------------------------
allan boyd - performed May 2006 @ the Bakery Perth
antipoet.blogspot.com