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.

Throwing rocks at railways

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