The skies in Brisbane are far too blue, so I’m heading to Canberra gratefully, with a spring in my step and a twinkle in my eye on 20th May for Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! Canberra (in)famous click clap free slam, the last bastion of rebellion and punctuation. I might even sneak in a little gig on 22 May as well. But more of that to come. In the mean time, I want to invite you! Should you be based in Canberra, or know others who are.
For you too can be a part of this Blood Sugar Sex Magik*. All you need do is present yourself on Wednesday 20 May between 7.30pm and 11.30pm, find yourself at The Phoenix, 23 East Row, Civic, Canberra. You can bring your 2 mins of insanely good/bad/insane poetry and I will applaud wildly. Using all of my digits against each other. In a good old fashioned clap**.
This fellow, Good Ghost Bill will also being there. For those who don’t know his work, here tis:
“Bill Moran is a first-year MFA poetry candidate at Louisiana State University. He was a proud member of the 2011-2013 Austin Poetry Slam national teams, as well as the 2012 & 2013 Austin Poetry Slam Champion and 2013 Southern Fried Haiku Champion. He has co-directed the Texas Grand Slam Poetry Festival, performed and taught poetry internationally, and served as president of Mic Check, a non-profit poetry organization in Brazos County, Texas. His work has been published twice by Button Poetry (video), and is forthcoming in FreezeRay Press and The Dead Animal Handbook (print.) Also, he is convinced he has the Gulf Coast inside him. He appreciates your concern and well-wishes, but swears he is okay. Really.”
This folk electronica of his will give you no idea of his poetry, but having too many ideas of someone’s work often sucks all the goddamn fun out of the experience.
*Blood, sex, sugar and magik are optional.
**The good clap, I mean.
PS Once I wrote a very average poem about going to Canberra. I was upset at the time. #notanexcuse #itshardnottobesometimes
No one moves a brick wall with their hands over their hearts
Prohibition ended in the ACT in 1928
Charge your glasses – we can toast to our great, European narcotics:
alcohol and Christian God.
No one splits a lip or difference sober as a judgement.
Once we made our pilgrimages to the unholy land of Queanbeyan,
where you could still get a civilised drink.
Now we let the stagger juice roll and flow –
desperate to get drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence.
Bend an elbow, we can rub together all the mean bones
in our bodies, for the High Court wants to buy Joan Maloney
a drink at the world’s longest bubbly bar.
eleanor j jackson 