Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 23 October
6:15 PM - 7:30 PM
If poetry is enjoying a resurgence of interest right now, it's partly because spoken word has given the whole art form a powerful shot in the arm, on both the stage and the page.
What's driving this renewed energy, and how are artists blending (and bending) genres and art forms? What are the links between music, spoken word and resistance? And how is the latest upswell of interest linked to First Nations storytelling and the groundbreaking spoken word movements of the past?
Hosted by Anne-Marie Te Whiu and David Stavanger, editors of the new anthology Solid Air: Australian & New Zealand Spoken Word, our third Group Texts event will feature electrifying local performers and practitioners of spoken word. Join us for an evening of conversation and performance.
Hares & Hyenas will be our bookseller for this event.
Featuring
Anne-Marie Te Whiu
Anne-Marie Te Whiu is an Australian-born Māori (Te Rarawa), living on unceded Wangal lands. She is a weaver, poet, editor and cultural producer. Most recently she edited Woven and previously More Than These Bones ...
David Stavanger
David Stavanger is an Australian poet, performer, cultural producer, editor and lapsed psychologist. His first full-length poetry collection The Special (UQP) was awarded the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. David is the co-editor of SOLID AIR: Collected Australian & New Zealand Spoken Word (UQP) and his latest collection Case Notes (UWAP) won the 2021 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry.
These days he lives between the stage and the page.
PiO
π.O. Born: Greece 1951 Came to Australia 1954 Raised: Fitzroy (inner suburb of Melbourne). Occupation: draughtsman, now retired gentleman. BIG NUMBERS is his selected poems. His other books include 24 Hours ...
Laniyuk
Laniyuk is a Larrakia, Kungarakan, Gurindji and French political creative whose art practise is grounded in cultural, language and land reclamation. In January 2024 she launched a campaign for the Return of Lee Point ...
Emilie Zoey Baker
Emilie Zoey Baker is an award-winning Australian poet and performer who has toured nationally and internationally performing, writing and producing. She was a Fellow at the State Library of Victoria, and has previously ...
Joelistics
Joelistics’ great gift is the crafting of common language into evocative turns of phrase. As a rapper, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, actor and advocate for diversity, he is recognised as a unique voice in the Australian ...
Fury
Bjork once said 'you shouldn’t let poets lie to you', but Fury writes poetry, which is a sort of lie, albeit the fun-for-everyone kind. Fury has written a book called I Don’t Understand How Emotions Work. It is a very good book; soft and tricky, like leaning your face against your favourite swan.
Eco!Slam 2019 Winners
Upani Perera, Zhoujing Chu, Neha De Alwis and Ruth Jarra are Year 11 students from Nossal High School who had the opportunity to compete in the 2019 Eco!Slam Poetry Competition. Coming in with only a tentative interest and vague idea of the workings of slam poetry, the four girls performed their poem without knowing what to expect. The girls each come from different cultural backgrounds but were raised in Australia, which led to choosing to speak on a topic that is valuable to them: how they fit into a country that is hugely different from their families’ homelands.