Posted By: Laura Stimson, 19 September 2011
In early September I travelled to
Melbourne with three local poets to take part in a programme of performance activity with
Melbourne Writers’ Festival and other Australian organisations.
It’s hard extrapolating two slightly jetlagged, entirely exciting weeks into a few hundred words. So, instead, I have cherry picked some of our experiences from my diary…
Day One
I have booked us in to see 3RRR Radio, a local station located in the Melbourne suburbs, where the Victorian architecture is unexpected and polarising. Luke Wright (read his thoughts on visiting Melbourne in Beat Magazine) and I argue about whether it’s beautiful or not. I think it is. Luke and Tim go out live, giving an impressive interview, considering they have just walked off a 24 hour flight. Listen here!
Day Two
This is where the activity starts in earnest. Luke and Tim have a morning show with
Melbourne Writers Festival at Federation Square, in a huge, wood and glass space in which hundreds of teen students sit expectantly. Afterwards, the audience – teachers and students - crowd around the poets, asking for advice and autographs.
In the afternoon I go to hear
Steven Amsterdam and
Maile Malloy talk about their experience of writing. Steven remembers me from 2009’s Worlds festival and we grab a tea in the green room. He praises
Worlds and the connections he made as a product. This is great to hear.
Later, we head out to the edge of the city again, to a beautifully decorated pub for the Melbourne Writers Festival’s artists' shindig. Luke and Tim have barely had time to sup the froth off their beer when they are driven off for another live radio interview, this time with Melbourne’s ABC Radio.
Day ThreeIt’s
Hannah’s first showing of
This is Just to Say (
read a review from the Australian webzine SpookMag here). The venue is a meeting room at
The Wheeler Centre, Melbourne’s impressive centre for books, writing and ideas. The room is high ceilinged, with a tile patterned floor, tall, arched windows and a reclaimed marble fireplace. We light tea candles, scatter playing cards and apologies and wait for the crowd to arrive. The show is sold out on every night and although Hannah is nursing a jetlag hangover, she performs wonderfully.
Day Four
Luke performs at The United Nations of Poetry with American (
Jive Poetic), Japanese (
Yoko Tawada) and Australian (
Gig Ryan) poets. Yoko is particularly mesmerising, reading most of her poems in Japanese. Our English speaking mouths read the poems as systems of rhythm; which drive the poems to a crescendo, or reduce them to a delicate quiet.
That night we go into the city. At night, Melbourne draws comparisons to London. Its main streets bristle with the beat of restaurants and bottle shops. The pedestrian crossings collect crowds and outside bars women dress in weather-wrong outfits. But the rhythm of it is relaxed, unlike London. Hannah thinks it has something to do with being by the sea.
Tim has a show with
Liner Notes a clever setup in which the great and good of Melbourne’s performance scene gather to interpret a seminal album. It is an Aussie affair this time, with INXS’s ‘Kick’ as the focus point (
Beat Magazine write about it here). Tim’s task is to translate the title track into something, anything. The performance niche is his oyster. He has spent the last two days drowning the apartment in ukulele, as he rehearses. The outcome is hilarious, clever and perfect for the Saturday night crowd.
Across the city, Hannah performs her last This is Just to Say show.
Day Five
We are obsessed with sleep. Each morning over coffee cups we unpick our patterns of sleep like they are riddles. It is Sunday morning and early. There is very little traffic, only the call of a bird whose name I don’t know. Hannah has an early morning read with MWF. She is reading with David Morley. Even though I have programmed David to work with us in Norwich, I have never met him before. I have had to travel all the way around the world for us to be in the same room. He is the nicest person.
He explains to me that the racket of birds I’ve heard in trees are parrots. He has spent the days before the festival in the outback, at a national park, watching koalas and kangaroos and wallaby’s. He’s climbed hanging rock. I feel a flush of jealousy.
In the evening, we’re back at the Toff, for a back to back double bill from Luke and Tim. The venue is cosy and boozy with a good atmosphere amongst the Sunday crowd. These shows are different but equally clever. Luke’s, a collection of satirical Ballads about Britain and Tim’s a dissection of an anxiety breakdown and how his dad helped (or didn’t). Both are hilarious, assured and wonderfully written shows. The Director of Melbourne Writers Festival and Toronto Literature Festival are in the audience.
Day Six
We spend the day catching up on emails at
The Wheeler Centre. There is no wifi at the apartment, which has sent us all into a spin. Hannah and Tim critique new poems and Luke does some admin for his publishing company
Nasty Little Press.
Day Seven
We fly to Sydney. There is a terrifying female custom’s officer who is interrogating the person in front of me. When I get to her, she looks at me, looks at my passport, looks back at me then says ‘cheers mate’ and sends me through. I am slightly disappointed.
We give in to our delayed jetlag and spend much of the day reading at the apartment.
That evening we take the tram out to an open mic night in Glebe, a Sydney suburb. The room above the pub is packed and the quality is varied. In the second half we give up and find a seat downstairs.
Day Eight
We head over to The Rocks, which is across the harbour mouth, overlooking the Opera House. The basement room is called the Clubhouse; a chamber of ancient brick. It has been inhabited by an artist in residence and the ceiling is hung with swathes of sheer material and bunches of jasmine, which have died and dried. There are clusters of candle jars in the corner, a bookshelf full of poetry, a fish bowl with a poem slicked to its inside wall. We have four audience members; a mother and daughter from Canberra and two guys in their twenties. There are also six people from Red Room and us four poets, so in this tiny space we form a rather lovely crowd. The performances are all fantastic and well received. Tim headlines, leaving everyone effervescent afterwards and excited to talk to us all.
Day Nine
Hannah and I walk to the Botanical Gardens. On the way we happen upon a 30,000 people strong demonstration against government public services cuts.
In the botanical gardens bats hang from trees like evil fruit. When they fly they are as large as foxes and when they manoeuvre in the high up branches, their arms are like coat hangers.
Day Ten
Back in Melbourne, we feel as though we’ve returned home.
It’s Overload Poetry festival’s opening night in Fitzroy, a cool Melbourne suburb. The building lives up to its Town Hall status; a huge, Victorian-gothic building with high ceilings, chandeliers and wood panelled rooms. The launch goes well but there are too many poets programmed (13 in all) and everyone is tired after the 5am start that morning.
Day Eleven
On Saturday we take the tram out to Canning Street. I have found that hotels in Australia are misleading, since they’re nearly always just bars. The Dan O’Connell hotel is a case in point; a pub on a corner in a funky suburb and definitely not a hotel. The gig is really informal. Locals drink at the bar in the same room and to start with the background noise is distracting, depressing. But when Hannah starts, everyone falls silent. This domination is wonderful to watch. Tim’s set has everyone transfixed, and in stitches. The loud people on the table behind us have been won over. Luke ends the evening and afterwards people come to tell the poets how much they liked it. Alongside them, two local poets piqued my interest. Amy Bodossian, an innate performer whose work has flashes of brilliance and Geoff Lemon, who does a really wonderful list poem about Sao Paulo.
Day Twelve
The Poetry Takeaway is heading for Rose Street Market in Fitzroy. Walking around Fitzroy, we wish we’d spent more time here. Even the florid Victoriana architecture is growing on Luke. It’s full of funky bars and shops selling vintage and handmade things. But, we haven’t got time to stop. We meet Luis and Ashley, who run
Overload Poetry Festival and have set up a stall for us. We have a table, pens and paper, a typewriter and a hand-chalked A-frame.
The Poetry Takeaway is Tim’s brainchild. It has been across the country and is usually housed in an actual takeaway van. But, the budget wouldn’t allow shipping that over, so this table is our home for the day.
The premise is simple: you order a poem on any subject, go off for around 20 minutes and come back to collect it – for free. It’s a bright sunny day and the market is bristling. The other stalls sell beautiful handmade oddities, the kind of things you can’t justify buying for yourself so you buy for someone as a gift and then regret not keeping it for yourself. A girl called Bronwyn is our first customer.
Read her view of the poetry takeaway here.
That evening, a triple bill at The Wheeler Centre. The crowd are small but appreciative and the poets are sparkling as ever. Afterwards, we gather some poetry friends; our Takeaway mate
Ezra Bix, Luis and Ashley from
Overload and local poet
Geoff Lemon and go to a small, effortlessly cool bar in the city. Hannah, Geoff, Ezra and I quietly read poems into each others ears. Behind the bar a guy from New Jersey plays vinyl.
Day Thirteen
It’s our last day in Melbourne. We pack our huge suitcases and bundle over to the Wheeler Centre, where we set up camp for the day. I go and meet Paul from Australian Poetry and say hi to Ashley from Overload and Jenny from Melbourne Writers Festival, who are also in the building – exhausted.
We spin through the city streets in a taxi, watching the high risers slope into the distance, and take the freeway to the airport. Twenty four hours later we will be home.
