More of this Feature • From NYC to the Land Down Under • Meeting the Aussie poets • The Book Report

Related Articles:  International Poetry Travels • Little Planet Poetry Guide (US tour by UK poet) by Tim Gibbard • Lyrik am Lech Festival Diary by Jerry Quickley • The Women of Eritrea: Fighters & Poets by Bob Holman • All Together Now: Touring Switzerland with Le Cirque Electrique by Margery Snyder • The First International Poetry Olympics by Gary Glazner • Frankfort Buchmesse by Bob Holman

Elsewhere on the Web • OZPoet events calendar, “the definitive gateway to contemporary Australian poetry” • Article on Australian poetry from the Australian government's Culture and Recreation Portal • Jacket, our favorite poetry Web zine, published from Sydney • Australia poetry events listings & Australian poetry magazines at The Poetry Kit (UK) • About Australia/New Zealand for Visitors

I have a rule when I travel: open trading policy. I will gladly trade book for book with any poet willing to trade. My theory is that it is more important to have an open exchange of words and ideas than for me to get the $5 I normally charge. And the Australian response to that policy was swift & bountiful. I came home with a bag of books (which I will review in Part II of this article next week) and free copies of Going Down Swinging, a wonderful 20-year-old poetry magazine which is currently reinventing itself with red-headed poet/editor Adam Ford (author of “Not Quite the Man for the Job”) and which includes a complimentary spoken-word CD.

But the written stuff is only half the story. During my week-long stay, I tried to visit as many poetry performance hot spots as possible. The Australian spoken word scene is one of the most vibrant and self-promoting that I have seen. Numerous poetry readings happen at venues across Melbourne every week, there's a daily spoken word radio show called “Oral Text” hosted by poet-cum-professor Alicia Sometimes, and I found many great indie book stores filled to the hilt with self-published works. The whole community is suffused with an amazing energy, very similar to what I found in Austin, Texas: smart, well-read people wanting to make their community better.

The reading series that I most enjoyed while I was there was without a doubt Babble, which takes place on Wednesday nights at the Fitzroy pub, Bar Open. Loud, young and daring, the series featured poets of all types, shapes and ages, from bush poets (my favorite of whom, Eddie, performed a poem about burning a pie, and to prove that he could make one, passed out pie and fresh cream to everyone in the audience) to university students, to Australian spoken word superstars. At Babble, everyone has an equal opportunity to read (or not to read) -- all readers’ names are placed in the head of a baby doll, and when the emcee plucks a scrap out of the head and announces the name, the entire audience shouts “You have been chosen!” If your name isn’t called during the course of the evening, better luck next week!

Another clever twist the Babble people add is that the readers are given three minutes to read. Once the poet goes over the three-minute limit, the audience can then choose to “babble” them off the stage. What does that mean? Essentially, a person in the audience shouts (usually tentatively) “Babble!” and if others agree that the open miker's poem needs a fork in it, they join in, and finally the reader is forced to submit to the chorus of “babbles.” And Americans think slamming is rough!

Another pleasant surprise in the Australian poetry scene was the women writers. I have never meet a more aggressive lot of ladies in my life! Unashamed and performance heavy, they made me feel I'd arrived in a town filled with Sandra Berhards and Karen Finleys. Women are poetry djs, show emcees, editors, publishers and unabashed poets. One female poet even beat me in the poetry-about-one-boy contest, by publishing an entire book of poems about her off-again, on-again paramour.

There was a burgeoning excitement about starting a poetry slam in Melbourne. There is already one in Sydney, but none in Melbourne yet. They are looking for funding (a process which is an inverted version of the American process; since in Australia artists go for federal government funding first, then state funding and lastly look to the private sector) to send a team to the National Poetry Slam in 2002 -- so America better watch out!

If you are traveling Down Under anytime soon, I'd urge you to explore the poetry scene there. If you're planning a visit, be sure to check out the OZPoet Web site. And if you can’t make the trip, come back here next week for my report on the treasures I’m sure to find in this enormous bag of Australian poetry I brought home with me.

Til then, g’day and no worries, mate!

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Back to first page > From NYC to the Land Down Under > page 1, 2, 3

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Cristin is slammaster and host of the Urbana Poetry Series in New York City. She is also our New York correspondent for the About Poetry Museletter & the author of several previous feature articles here: The Wild Party On the Stage, Extreme Poetry in the North Woods & 60 Minutes: The Poets Slam Back!.

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