Resilience + Adaptation = International Impact
WHAT’S CHANGED ABOUT AUSTRALIAN POETRY SLAM?
HEATS
Let’s start with the whole online thing. Yes most, maybe all, of our poetry slam heats and finals are going to be through Zoom. They’ll still be hosted by a crew of solid spoken word artists, we’ll still have audience judging and silently applauding up to 20 poets in a slam. We want as close to a live event as we can get. Some states will do real life live slams! Keep checking your state’s heat page for local info. Coming soon are NT Heats at Red Dirt Poetry Festival and a NSW heat at Byron Writers Festival.
One challenge: How do we give folks from regional centres a chance to perform in their own slam heats without a mass of Sydney or Melbourne poets swooping in and scooping up all the spots? We had to say - “Perform in the heat closest to you.”
However, the biggest plus to all spoken word events is the international factor. This led to an interesting heat in Randwick, NSW.
Daiane Moret lives in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. She came runner-up in the Randwick Poetry Slam Heat while stuck on travel restrictions with her family in Brazil.
THE FINALS
We’re thinking hybrid. A live event that’s also streamed. Hell, if footy can seat 10,000, bring some of those bums to our seats. The National Final is looking like October 25th. Who knows what venues and virus will look like but we will adapt. We’re already thinking poets from a bunch of different countries will feature in finals.
We are all missing direct human-to-human, look you in the eyes and gift up a deep particle of imagination called a poem. But COVID-19 has helped us visit people in hard to reach places.
CASE STUDY: MUMBAI
Miles Merrill, Creative Director of Word Travels (the literary org behind APS), toured India in 2017. Thanks to the Australian Consulate, he delivered poetry slam programs to a couple thousand kids across six cities in 15 days.
In Mumbai, he met kindred spirit, Priya Srinivasan.
Priya directs The Pomegranate Workshop. This dynamic and inspiring company runs creative education programs with schools and youth centres throughout Mumbai.
For the past three years, Word Travels and The Pomegranate Workshop have been trying to co-create a poetry slam program for kids in Mumbai.
It took COVID-19 to make it happen.
Last month, Miles Merrill spent a week with dozens of kids in lock-down in Mumbai. He sat in the Word Travels office. The kids sat in their homes. Pomegranate and Australian Consulate - Mumbai staff facilitated the whole thing and…Boom! Video-chat magic!
20 kids aged 11-17 performed their own poetry in a slam for the first time. These truth-sayers give us insight into their lives, their feelings and into Mumbai’s version of social distancing. The program was based on Word Travels three-stage model:
Stage 1: Inspire - Students watch a spoken word show followed by a Q&A.
Stage 2: Engage - 20 students, inspired by the show, learn to write a performance.
Stage 3: Empower - Participants from the workshop perform in their own poetry slam
The prize? Five new spoken-word videos are shared with the world.
Here are our Mumbai Youth Slam Champions! Enjoy.
“Wonder in disbelief. It’s a dragon? Climbed on his back. Off! To flights of fantasy. Higher! Faster! Higher! Faster! Endless blue, Beautiful cities, Hauntingly Silent!”
