own nothing

Owe no one.

But if you want to find yourself and your way to the Riverbend, you will find the Queensland Poetry Festival launching tomorrow evening. Get your tickets now if you haven’t already.

What can you expect? Officially the word is:

The final event of the Riverbend Poetry Series 2012 will definitely be one to warm up a winter’s night. The evening will feature two launches: QPF will be launching the program for spoken in one strange word 2012, and Brisbane poet Julie Beveridge will be launching her latest collection, home{sic}. If you missed Julie at QPF last year (or even if you didn’t), this is the perfect opportunity to hear her beautiful new works. The night will also feature a taster of what is to come at QPF in August, including slam champ Darkwing Dubs (a.k.a Scott Sneddon), Brisbane poetess Misbah Khokhar, and duo Eleanor Jackson & Doubting Thomas. Come along and be the first to get your hands on the QPF 2012 program!

Unofficially the word is:

Although Sylvia Plath died in 1963 and Ted Hughes in 2010 – for different reasons and to different audiences – their respective work continues to exert considerable influence on contemporary poetry. Notwithstanding the strength of their work, their turbulent relationship and Sylvia’s eventual suicide have secured their place in the literary mythology such that sometimes, rational discussion of Ted and Sylvia
seems almost impossible. In one sense, without seeking to devalue their considerable contribution to literature, Ted and Sylvia were the celebrity poetry “it couple” of their time. Like Beyoncé and Jay-Z, there is a rapturous and yet slanderous momentum to the public’s consumption of their work, which makes for a fascinating study of fame culture while simultaneously distorting objective interpretation of their work. MC Lady Lazarus vs DJ Thought Fox seeks to add their ambiguous answers to the
enduing question “just what was it about Ted and Sylvia?”

Ambiguously the word is:

If living is history, then everything is talk. As you read stories so you make stories. As every brutalising act of love bruises the lips, and makes the heart sore, so does it salve and give succour. A movie once asked if we were all but Victor Hugo’s miserables, but what if instead we were all just hunting for the heated skunk of thought on fox, and dying and birthing again as our own Lady Lazarus. I don’t have the heavy burden of struggling with the scale measuring the weight of two equals, the burden of being a great poet or a great mother, but somewhere out there is a love versus living, a cure versus curse, a man versus woman, a silly, scissoring binary the confirms again that the story is great sense-making vehicle for us all.

This is not my story.
This is not his story.
This is not our story.
This not her story.
This is not even their story.

But you are all welcome to listen.