The day before I moved to Melbourne in 2010, I had an incredible time launching the Melbourne Poetry Map, a beautiful collection of site-specific works commissioned from some of Melbourne’s most delightful, spiteful, delicious and dastardly spoken word artists. It was a heartbreaking way to leave a city that had been a kind of home for most of my adult life. But hey, why slink out? Why not go out large with a massive tentacular farewell, like a thousand waving octopi strapped to the back of a truck? Never Let Go. Memory is what keeps us crazy.
Brisbane, my adopted second home, since then, has been kind to me for the most part. And I have a strange affection and affliction with the city, almost as if we’re constantly trying each other on, but happily finding ourselves not the right size. I find myself happily Brisbane and Un-Brisbane, confused with longing and lusty with disgust sometimes. As a part of 4ZZZ’s At the Local, I have encountered a city filled with can-do creatives, hard working community groups, and off the wall types not waiting for the word go, they just start running.
So, I’m delighted to be able to share that I’ll be performing a new work that grapples with some of that silly and that loving between me and this city – Un-Brisbane, as a part of Lunchtime Live.
Lunchtime Live is a program of free weekly lunchtime entertainment held in various locations across QPAC. The project will present 30 performances across 30 weeks in conjunction with QPAC’s 30th anniversary. More information can be accessed at qpac.com.au for those detail oriented types. It’s a great way to dip you toes in the pools of art and sludge and oh goodness, what a terrible pitch. God, just come along, it’s free, it’s live, and I’d welcome your ears.
For those detail oriented types who are also based in the Brisbane CBD, it’s a quick hop across the bridge for a sumptuous half hour of stories about place, love, and the ways that our cities inhabit us more than we ever inhabit them. DETAILS ARE LIKE THIS:
- 12:30 – 1.00pm Fri 5 Jun Melbourne Street Green, QPAC
- MORE DETAILS: Un-Brisbane is equal parts love letter and part playful romp, a poetic monologue that asks, if Paris is a woman, and London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub, is Brisbane a bikie with a boob job? Or can a relocated Southerner find the beauty in Bracken Ridge, the illumination in Inala and the magic in Moorooka?
eleanor j jackson 