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Lazy Sunday Reading

It’s not a lazy Sunday for me; it’s a sped-up Sunday. I’m doing everything I’d do on a lazy Sunday, but I got up earlier and am doing it all a bit faster because I have to work later.

Part of this is reading. I’m reading Martin Amis’ Yellow Dog, and am very very very close to finished, but I’ve also been catching up on my Google Reader feed.

Some highlights, to make your Sunday more enjoyable:

– Jo Case has written an insightful review of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.
– Alec Patric at Verity La talks to Nathan Curnow about transferrable skill sets, whether these skill sets exist at all, and the ways in which novel writing resembles The Wizard of Oz.
– On the anniversary of the Black Saturday fires, Claire Zorn at Overland writes about bearing witness for the 173 lives lost that day.
– An interesting post on Virgule about their 2010 submission statistics. It makes me feel amazing for getting in there.
– Some big news for page seventeen, as editor Tiggy Johnson moves on. I owe a huge amount of thanks to page seventeen for accepting my first published short story, and Tiggy has been amazing, wonderful, supportive, and welcoming. I wish her the best of luck in whatever she moves onto next, and look forward to the reveal of the next page seventeen editor!

Enjoy!

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2010: A Year In Review

I stole Lisa Dempster’s title for this post. I’m also stealing the layout of Lisa Dempster’s post. And idea.

Dear Lisa,
Stole everything,
Much love,
Sam.

I very much enjoyed reading Lisa’s post a few weeks ago, which outlined her wondrous 2010. She’s had a wildly successful year – I can’t hope to match the scale of her achievements (well done, Lisa!), but I feel like I’ve had a pretty amazing year myself; one worth outlining the great stuff in.

Earlier this month at the Express Media Awards Extravaganza, Bel Schenk talked about how we don’t often enough pat ourselves on the back and say, “You know that thing I did? That was pretty great”.

So feel free to flag this post as the love-fest (of myself) that it is; I’m taking this chance to put it out there: You know all that stuff I did this year? That was all pretty great!

January: I committed myself to a very very large undertaking: the 100+ Books Challenge… Current count stands at 53. That’s 1.019 books per week, every week this year. While it’s a pretty far cry from 100, it’s still an impressive list of books. Next year I’ll aim for more than this year. Perhaps not a hundred, just more than this year. In Janurary, my blog got linked on the Wheeler Centre’s website – might not seem like a huge deal, but I went crazy.

February: I reached 1000 hits on LGWABP since September 2009. My first big blogging milestone! I was invited by Misha Adair to join the book reviewing team on channel 31’s Yartz – Ralph Mclean provided a bounty of support, and the Yartz crew became my Saturday family. I stayed with the show until about September or October this year. I had a ball and learned heaps. I started participating in the Teaser Tuesday meme – there have since been about 30 Teaser Tuesdays on LGWABP.

March: I started my course at RMIT. The fact that I got into this course (very small intake of only 40 in my year-level) floored me. The course is SO supportive and SO helpful; I couldn’t be happier here. Reading back over that post, I was skeptical about whether the course would stay good – it has. I started contributing to L!MP – a publishing collective which has since become Ex Calamus. I spent time writing with people from Streat.

April: Not much happened in April. I realized how behind I was on my way to 100 books.

May: I discovered slam poetry – enter Dead Poet’s Fight Club. The poetry-minded of us Creative Writing students found ourselves a (location suppressed) to slam in. I took part in Express Media’s Connecting Voices workshop, where I met some fantastic people and learned how to run writing workshops.

June: I interviewed EZB and Lisa Dempster for Yartz.

July: I signed up for LitLife’s Comment July Challenge, and did pretty well for most of the month. I think I bowed out in the last week – but the first three weeks were fun. I started the Admiration/Inspiration Thursday meme, which was short-lived, and has given way to interviews posted whenever they’re relevant. I interviewed Sage Francis. In hindsight, it’s not the best interview it could’ve been, and that’s my fault. But I am impressed with myself for interviewing SAGE FRANCIS!

August: I was on the radio! “In Other Words”, on SYN, interviewed me about blogging. Ricochet Mag published my poem, “Tick-Tock Polka”. Benjamin Solah interviewed me about being a student and a writer. I had poetry scrolling across the ticker-text at Fed Square as part of “Poetry 4 U” – a project run by the Melbourne Writers’ Festival and RMIT.

September: I had more poetry up at Fed Square, this time as part of the Overload Poetry Festival. After blogging about the Overload Lentil Poetry Slam, the Overload people asked me to take a media pass and blog about the rest of the festival – I was super-excited that LGWABP got that sort of recognition! (Day 7, 9 and 10 follow the above post). My poem “Dancing on Architecture” was published in Voiceworks issue #82, Hunger.

October: Quiet month, was October. I read a lot. That’s about all.

November: I competed in the Australian Poetry Slam heat at Balwyn and came runner-up! I went on to compete at the State Library of Victoria, which was amazing. My story, “Hold On” was published in the 2010 issue of Page Seventeen. A comic I wrote in collaboration with Tohm Curtis went up on the project website, “12 Moments”.

December: My poem, “Dancing on Architecture” was nominated in the category “best metaphor published in Voiceworks in 2010” at the Express Media Awards Extravaganza. I didn’t win, but somebody liked it enough to nominate it. It means a lot that it wasn’t me.

What a year it’s been! 2011, here we come.

Yartz’ very, very dedicated and supportive producer, Ralph Mclean, passed away on the 25th of December. Ralph played an important part of what made this year so successful for me, and he was a delight to know. Thanks, Ralph, for your support and laughs; for being so immediately accepting. Thanks for helping me improve – I did, indeed, “thank you for it later”.

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The Spinning Room’s Last Night at ET’s

Last night saw The Spinning Room’s last appearance at ET’s in Prahran. I’ve only been going to The Spinning Room in recent months, but I’ve found such a hugely supportive community there and had such a good time that this “last night” announcement was met with sadness. ET’s is shutting down, and The Spinning Room is going with it. Having been run in Melbourne for the last 10 years, this was an important night.

As usual, The Spinning Room’s first half was an open mic. Usually these attract 10 readers or so… Last night’s open mic had a record 22 readers. It wasn’t just readers who showed up, either. The room was packed to capacity, with people peering around door frames and crouched under bars to get in on it. The open mic was packed with awesome talent – John Mckelvie’s quiet, understated intensity blew me away, as well as Randall Stephens and Alex Scott’s high-energy bounce-fest. Geoff Lemon, Steve Smart, Jessica Alice, and close friends of mine, Jo Day and Benjamin Solah… And I managed to get on the open mic list before they ran out of room. SUCH good company to be in!

The second half of the evening was dedicated to “The Best of ’10”; sets by Amy Bodossian and Santo Cazzati. I’d never seen Amy before, but had heard glorious (yet vague…) things from friends.

Amy Bodossian has a six-year old inside of her busting to get out. She twirls and spins and plays with her hair, she laughs and shakes with so much energy that the only place left for it to come out is through her hands. And her smile. She’s not all six year old though. While some of her poetry touches on themes of childhood, she also talks about “misadventures with men” and the nature of being an artist.

Santo… Oh wow. I’d seen Santo host the final evening of the 2010 Overload Poetry Festival, and had seen him read a short piece at a previous Spinning Room. But to appreciate what Santo does, you need to see a full set.

Santo Cazzati’s performance is a cross between a race-caller and an orchestra conductor spastic with passion. His whole body keeps time. He doesn’t pause for his entire set. I can’t tell you how long the set was – time just didn’t exist while I was listening to him. A discussion of themes almost wouldn’t work with Santo… There were times where I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. But I felt it. When my audience neighbour turned to me and beamed “GENIUS!”, I had nothing more to say. That, quite simply, is what Santo Cazzati is.

The future of The Spinning Room seems uncertain – while founder Jon Garrett promises that “this is not the end”, a more sombre email from resigning co-host Anthony O’Sullivan sounded a bit doubtful.

I truly do hope that The Spinning Room finds a venue for 2011 and the future, and it’s an amazing event which never fails to entertain, enlighten, and inspire me. A massive hats-off to those behind the scenes who make it all happen; amazing stuff, which I hope to see more of soon.

The evening was also filmed for Red Lobster, the channel 31 poetry show. Keep an eye out for that episode… While you know, deep down, that you should have been at ET’s last night, you probably wouldn’t have fit in the room anyway. So you can watch the best bits on Red Lobster.

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City Basement Books is BACK!

Back in April, City Basement Books closed down. They had an amazing $1 sale, where I picked up a heap of wonderful things, many of which are still on by TBR pile. They promised to return soon, at a new premises… And they’ve finally pulled through!

On Monday, our beloved City Basement Books will return to a new space, at 342 Flinders St – just around the corner from its original store!

Opening hours will be what they always have been, 10am to 6pm weekdays, 10am to 2pm on Saturdays, Closed on Sundays.

Get down there and celebrate their return! Spoil yourself for Christmas with some cheap well-loved books.

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Collaborative Comic Fun

About 6 months ago, I received an email from a friend telling me about a project in which writers were being asked to collaborate with a comic artist, Tohm Curtis, to help with a deliberate practice mission.

I’ve posted about deliberate practice before, and it’s something I really believe works. A great quote I picked up last week from Ron Pretty’s book “Creating Poetry”, was that “writers are made, not born”. You need to dedicate yourself to it, to set perimeters for productivity, and even when things aren’t so productive, you need to stick at it. Because we’re not just graced by genius, and anyone who says we are, is lying.

For Tohm’s project, those perimeters were that the writer had to write a script for Tohm to draw off, and that script could only contain twelve cells. Twelve moments to tell a story.

It was quite a challenge: I was writing for a medium I’d never had anything to do with, attempting at using black humour which seems to work in comics, and is something I’ve never attempted before, and translate things I would usually get verbose about into a visual space. For Tohm, this helped to get him drawing, and for me it stretched my comfort zone. I’ve had a heap of fun working on this, navigating new territory, and the other contributors’ comics that have appeared on the Twelve Moments blog have been fantastic.

The comic, “Arachnophobia“, is now up. Navigation is a little confusing, but there’s a “Page X of 4” link under each drawing.

Tohm’s done an amazing job here, I look forward to his future posts. He’s also been kind enough to talk to me about deliberate practice and what that involves for him, how the project’s panning out etc – check back for that interview on Wednesday!

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Little Girl On A Big Stage

Photo by Megan Burke

Experimedia at the State Library is cavernous. It’s almost as tall as it is long. An amplified voice floats up to the rafters and swells to fill the room. Sometimes it swells too fast, and the words get swallowed up. Other times it swells and settles softly on the crowd.

This is where I was performing last night, in the 2010 Australian Poetry Slam Victorian finals. I’ve never performed in such a big venue before – I think there were about 200 people there, every seat was filled, plus some standing. It was nerve-wracking, but I think I’ve finally found a performative medium where I belong. I’ve tried acting, singing, bands – none of those nerves were good. Those nerves all came from the place inside me that knew I was no good, and had nothing to offer in that medium. But this – this is good nerves, this is feeling like it’s where I’m meant to be.

I’m rambling. Back to the event –

14 poets performed at the event, hosted by EZB and deflowered by Geoff Lemon. Geoff Lemon’s name is one I’ve known for quite a while, but I’ve never had anything to do with him. I have to say, he’s wonderful in person. Seeing him perform just knocks you off your feet, he’s so witty and animated.

The fourteen competing poets were comprised of the winners and runners-up from the regional heats around Victoria. Some of these poets I knew quite well, others I’d never seen before. Some I’d seen in other non-slam contexts, while others gained new respect from me for outdoing their previous slam performances.

With a two-minute time limit for each piece, the night was incredibly snappy. I read fourth, following Luka/Lesson (winner of the Overload slam), Meena Shamaly and IQ. How to follow those guys? Good question. I don’t think I answered it adequately.

I scored quite low in comparison with the rest of the performers, but that’s not what I was there for. I learned a lot from this event, such as the need to have options up my sleeve for different pieces depending what I’m following. Also, I need to become more performative in my movement – I need to be bigger, MORE DYNAMIC! I need to have my words in my pocket, written down, because if I know they’re there, I don’t panic and forget them.

Stand-out poet of the evening for me, hands down, was Joel McKerrow. This man has innate rhythm such as I have never seen before. And he obviously knows about it, and how to make the most of it, because for last night’s piece, Joel turned himself into the beating heart of the world. There was chest-slapping and bouncing and oh, what a piece!

I feel so so very lucky to have gotten to the state finals, and performed next to people I admire so much. Melbourne has a really vibrant slam community, and it’s such a supportive place to be. People I’d never met before came and shook my hand and told me I’d done well. People I did know came and told me they’d “boo”ed the judges for my score. As with all good slams, there was a lot of yelling, there was a lot of laughing. General merriment and hilarity. It’s so… healthy.

Runner up Tariro Mavondo and winner Nour Abouzeid are off to Sydney – and I wish them the world of luck, they both obviously work incredibly hard at what they do and are stellar performers. There’s nobody better to show Sydney that the best slam poets are chillin’ in Vic!

Photo by Megan Burke

Megan Burke over at Lit Life beat me to this post – for a great wrap-up of the event, complete with lots of photos (…of me) head over there.

Talking of slamming, and awesome slam poets, Luka Haralampou is one of Melbourne’s best. He’s trying to fund his way to the World Slam Finals. Help him get there – we need to let the world know that Australia’s poetry slam scene is strong.

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Running-up and Not Quite Believing It.

Tonight was the Balwyn heat of the Australian Poetry Slam. I arrived almost spot-on 7pm – I missed the clearly-in list for registration, but I did get on a secondary wild-card list. Luckily, my name was drawn as one of three wild-card performers.

There were twenty performers – a mixed bag. A really mixed bag. There were the people I’ve seen before and was incredibly glad to see again – Steve Smart’s performance of something much more serious than I’ve seen him do before really stood out. There were people who’d clearly been reading poetry in public for a while, they were confident without their notes and looked everyone in the eye. There were those who were first time readers, and I really must tip my hat to these guys – bless their shaking, stumbling, unsure hearts; they were brave for sharing their words, and I hope to see a lot of them in future when they gain the confidence their words deserve.

…Then there was me and my mis-placed confidence in my memory. Having performed this piece last night at The Spinning Room and getting a good response and not looking at my notes, I decided that tonight was the night – no more security blanket. I left my notebook on my chair and got up to perform.

I was planning on titling this post “The Fatal Pause,” and blogging about what a cock-up my first slam-without-notes and getting real scores was and how much I learned from failure… This is what was running through my mind after I felt like I’d made a fool of myself and I was trying to figure out how I could get something out of the situation. But that’s not what happened.

I did cock up. I did pause, and I’m sure I did that bug-eyed panic-face, where everyone in the room knows that all the words have flown straight out of your head and into some unending abyss… But I recovered reasonably well.

Apparently the judges thought so anyway, as I came runner-up for the evening. I’ll be going on to the state finals at the State Library of Victoria on Friday the 19th (7pm-9.30pm) – please oh please please come and whoop and holler for me, and the slew of other amazing poets that will be performing that night. Through from Balwyn also is Nour, who performed a really touching piece about Lego. It’ll make sense later, if you get to hear it, I promise.

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Coming home and The End Point

That’s it. Semester over! This semester was big. Really big. Fourteen novels for just two of my subjects and that’s only the stuff with covers. At least two reams of paper, lots of ink, hours and hours of reading off my screen because I couldn’t afford to print any more. Twelve weeks of sacrificing the reading I actually wanted to do, to make room for things that were mostly worth reading, but not always what I wanted to do.

But that’s over now! It’s holidays! It’s lovely weather! The real reading can begin. I can cross billions of things off my “to-do” list, and work through the huge stacks of books that I’ve been buying but not had space or time to read. I can make sense of my writing desk, make some narratives happen, rather than torturous essays comparing texts which should never, ever be compared (Camus’ The Outsider and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea being the most recent hideousness).

So here I am, back at home in the blogosphere. I can blog whenever I like, I can dedicate that section of my brain to planning posts as I live. I can work my way through my poor, neglected Google Reader feed! Oh poor Google Reader…

Today I read a piece that really got my attention, which was re-tweeted by Angela Meyer. The article, “Where Did The Web Go?“, talks about a lot of things that got my attention.

First point of interest: A quote from Stephen Mitchelmore: “Finding a way to talk about the reading experience is, I’ve realised, the greatest pleasure of writing; where it ends is of no importance.” I love this quote. Stephen’s talking about how it doesn’t matter if your online literary efforts never really take off, because that’s not the point. The point is to find a way to talk about your “reading experience”. Reading is a strange thing in a similar way to writing – it’s a necessarily lonely activity, but there’s a definite pleasure in finding ways to share that loneliness. For me, LGWABP is a major way that I do that. I’m not sure that I always (…ever) provide insightful contributions, but I enjoy doing what I do. Stephen’s right – it is “the greatest pleasure”.

Second point of interest: “Choose what you want your site to be, and then do it” – I like this. Sometimes I feel like my blog misses the mark because I’m not sure what I’m doing with it. Successful blogs have something that is specifically theirs, whether that’s a layout, a tone, a bunch of memes, whatever. They own it.

Other than these two superficial things that caught my eye, the article itself is actually a great contribution to the discussion of the role of online media, in particular online literary criticism. Check it out.

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Voiceworks Launch!

It’s come around so quickly! Tomorrow night (23rd September), Voiceworks is launching issue #82, “Hunger”.

It’s at Bertha Brown, from 6pm. Head on down!

Featuring work from Sophie Clark, Dom Amarena, Krystin Low, Peter Dawncy, Trish Griffiths, Katherine Pollock, Eli Glasman, L. Phillip Lucas, Samuel Williams, Sam van Zweden, Amber Beilharz, Jack Madin, Anna Westbrook, Erin Lockington, Emily Dacy-Cole, Adam Carr, Jessica Seymour, Aaron Benson, Jenna Sten, Marco Antonio Ruiz, Suzannah Marshall Macbeth, Kavita Bedford, Vince Chadwick, Jessica McCausland and Tammy Law.

That’s right, that’s my name right in the middle there. So come on down, grab a copy, have a chat and a drink, and celebrate my first piece in PRINT! Real pages. With my words on them. Real pages that you can turn with your actual hands. NUTS!

Hope to see you there.

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