maxine clarke & the people tree

1.
Last year, completely out of the blue, the Arts Centre in Victoria asked me to collaborate with guitarist John Norton to perform a blues-poetry collaboration as support for Tinariwen, an amazing group of subsaharan desert poets. The collaboration was the start of something for me, and the end set that resulted from it really opened me up to the possibility of combining spoken word and music.

2.
Enter Robbie Hendry, the husband of my bestie and (I was soon to find out) a punked up drumming machine. Robbie and I performed in the ‘Gods’ at the opening of the Emerging Writers Festival in Federation Square, Melbourne earlier this year, and also at Speaker’s Corner and Bar 303.

3.
Singer and percussionist Kate joined us, our roots reached down deeper and up above, the people tree broke the soil.

4.
This coming Friday, people tree will be performing together for the first time at The Evelyn in Fitzroy, Melbourne as part of a showcase of sisters (Polynesian, Maori, Jamaican, African...and then some) raising much-needed funds for 3CR’s radio shows Hip Sista Hop and Girly Is Good. People Tree: myself (poetry), Robbie (on drums) & Kate (on vocals & percussion), will be screaming, slamming, humming, hustling and hurling poetry across the room. Catch the words if you can, or bounce them right back at us: we’ll swallow them to the beat and throw the re-mix right back up.

5.
A concoction of silky voice and in-your-face lyrics were mixed with raw, earthy beats. Maxine spoke with curvaceous, playful intonation that shaped her lines with sharp peaks and smooth crests and was matched absolutely spot-on by Robbie's drumming and pounding. She spoke of her people; spoke for the Speechless and the Silent; told of Mama Reggae; the African plight; and my favourite…'Mr President [Obama], no disrespect to your wife but… I'll show you where I hide my weapons of mass destruction….' ! Smouldering, passionate and self-assured. She had everyone hooked.- Jo Robinson @ Roarhouse

harvesting lost sharks: two blog links

harvest
I performed at the harvest magazine launch on wednesday night. I had a wonderful evening in the company of Melbourne writer Alec Patric. He's blogged about the evening here so I thought I'd send you over to his place.


another lost shark
Queensland writer and founder of Small Change Press, Graham Nunn, has included a poem of mine 'White Bred Bun' in his latest 'Guided by Poets' thread. You can check the thread out here.

if: the rewrite

I've tinkered with my poem if (from two posts back) and added the tail below to it. Harvest Literary Magazinehas asked me to perform at their edition 3 launch this coming Wednesday night (though I'm not published in the magazine) and this poem will be born for the first time there on stage in amongst several other of my toddlers. It's the shortest write-perform gestation period I've had yet, so it should be interesting to see how things go. If you're in Melbourne, head in to Eurotrash Bar on Wednesday night and watch the chaos. Full details here.


if caliban & notorious big O
thello had ruled the town
they woulda taught that
sour shrew to break it down
in keppah pantalouns / from
two households / both alike
in brown / in some slum ghetto
where we lay the scene
& it's a rewrite / but
gentlemen / i dream

caliban woulda fingered
the merchant's bling
soweto style / with a
35 to the old man's chin
he woulda drove by goneril's
& hooked up cordelia / as
his bootielicious queen /&
king othello / he
woulda smiled / from the
royal sidelines / thinking
man / i'd give my throne
for all that hipness
to be mine / cz if
caliban had left the island
he woulda / sold ophelia hip-hop
mercutio woulda busted a cap
ulet in juliet’s hood / like
a plague on both your house—
music wd be the food of revolution
if caliban had anything to
say or do about it

twitter and a vox pop

march on overland

I am also a blogger for Overland Literary Magazine. I became involved primarily as a spin-off from entering the Overland Novel Search. My first novel, Black Lazarus, will hopefully be published by the magazine next year, but I’ll blog more about that later. Anyway, I usually blog poetry on the site every week or so, but I’m finding so many fantastic things on the net that I‘d like to introduce a wider literary audience to (& besides, people can read my poetry over here anyway!). Via Paul Squires at Gingatao, I stumbled on New York writer Jason Gusmann’s Twitter novel Richie. I’ve introduced Richie to the Overland readership this week.

Please, if you get the chance, visit Overland and get involved with the dialogue about the remarkable concept of the Twitter novel. Because I want to find more literary gems in this endless cyberspace and there’s no point shouting about them over there if nobody’s listening!

radio vox pop

The good folks at SYN fm youth network here in Melbourne have asked me to live vox pop about all things poetry with them tomorrow. That’s 90.7fm on your dial from 1pm-2pm (Melbourne time) if you’re close to a powerpoint and up for some poetic banter. Melbourne poet (ex-Canadian, can I call her that?) Zoe Barron will also be featuring on the program. She is brilliant. Brilliant! And who knows, I might even slam something.

if: a poem

(for gingatao)

if caliban had his homeboy othello’s back
he woulda said fuck
brother don’t be such
a coconut
& that desdemona thing
jesus / what the hell
is that freaky broad about
he woulda said man
i got one thing to say
to you brother
& that’s
be black / baby / be black
they woulda / bumped fists
& dealt hamlet crack
cocaine / till that
bipolar cat’s world
wz looking up again

if caliban had left the island
he woulda / sold ophelia hip-hop
mercutio woulda busted a cap
ulet in juliet’s hood / like
a plague on both your house—
music wd be the food of revolution
if caliban had anything to
say or do about it / miranda woulda
kicked ferdinand to the curb
& brought screaming creole babies
back to europe
that father of hers / well
he woulda just had to
deal with it

if caliban had his homeboy othello’s back
he woulda said fuck brother
don’t let this shakespeare
write yr script / i heard
that cracker cuts tongues off
for a clap

slamtrums

Okay, so I got fed up with slamming, had a big rant about it, hung up my slamming gloves (Yes. I have some. Seriously. They are hot pink woolen fingerless gloves knitted for me by an ex-boss. I don’t wear them very often but they rock) and I basically threw a full scale slamtrum, complete with flailing wrists and pants-wetting.

And yeah I stick by my last post. I should have won that Poetry Idol heat hands down. No fucking question about it. I know when my poetry bombs. It happens less and less often but when it does, it’s truly Hiroshimic.

So I gave up poetry slamming. Or at least ummmm...I um, vowed to. And then I went in a poetry slam. Three days after my (very public) denouncement. It’s all getting a bit “My name is Maxine Clarke, and I’m a slam poet” for me now. This whole relapse happened on Tuesday night, at the The Spinning Room in Prahran. So here’s my defence for misleading you all:

1.

I had agreed to be part of the Melbourne Believer Slam Final at the Spinning Room in Prahran, and thought well, I’ve been through the heats and won a place, committed to it, I better go. And I love the way this slam works. Heats for the slam have been held at places of spiritual (not necessarily religious) significance. Heats have been held at the Victorian Council of Churches, Iramoo Sustainability Centre and Quang Minh Buddist Temple (where I won the heat, and was voted on by Buddhist Monks). Every person in the audience votes between 7 and 9 (if you get up you deserve at least a 7, and no poet is perfect) and the figure is divided by the number of voters to get an average. Who could resist?

2.

At the last minute I was told that the slam would actually be another heat, rather than a final. Don’t know what that was all about but...

3.

I’d organised for Overland Literary Magazine to sponsor the slam, and for Acting Poetry Editor Tim Wright to be present and speak to the poets whose work he liked about submitting to the journal as part of my ongoing campaign for Australian Literary Journals to become more involved in the grassroots poetry scene.

4.

Slam organiser Melbourne poet Geoff Fox, goaded me when I arrived by telling me I was second on the slam ladder to IQ (aka Benjamin Theolonius Sanders) and saying that if I placed in the top three, I would be at the top of the ladder.

5.

The slam was over in Prahran, and I knew if I won, I would get $50 and be able to get a taxi home (& then some), instead of waiting for the train.

6.

My last post still stands true. I am still tired of slams and don’t intend to perform in any...uh, make that many ...more.

So I went, and I conquered. I slammed Armageddon for the first round, Little Michael for the second and Plantation Rumours for the third. Are you folks gonna forgive me, or do I need some serious help?

poetry idol

So, today I took part in the last heat of Poetry Idol 2009 at Box Hill Library. Poetry Idol has kind of become the poetry slam for the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Heats are held around Melbourne throughout the year, with the final being held at Federation Square during the Festival. I’ve been in the final for this slam two years in a row (2007 & 2008). The first year I was very new to slams and had no idea I was supposed to read a different poem in the final than I did in the heats (of course, now I feel totally foolish about this, but there was another girl who also made this mistake so I guess an argument could well have been made for clearer instructions). Of course, this disqualified me. The second time I was in the final, I sacrificed more ‘literary’ work for something that I knew would drive the crowd wild (Obama), knowing full well I probably wouldn’t ‘win’. I mean, what can I say, I have no regrets: you have four hundred people sitting in front of you, and sixty seconds with them. Do you want them to roar and remember you, or what?

During my interview on radio 3CR’s Spoken Word the week before last, Santo Cazzati asked me what my success to winning poetry slams was and I answered, quite honestly, that I have never ever believed I was the ‘best’ poet in a slam. True. Not once. Until today. Today was the first time I’ve ever had the audacity (I always cringe using that word these days because it has been so obamafied) to believe I was the best poet on the floor, despite knowing almost from the moment the first reader finished, that I wasn’t going to place (watch the judges, you will almost always know). The poem I performed was Delilah. The odd thing though, was my reaction to not ‘winning’ a place. Let me take you through the stages of my loss:

1. Resignation: somehow the moment I saw the judges reading the poems on paper rather than (not as well as) watching the performance, I knew they would probably choose ‘shelf-poems’;

2. Apathy: the “nyeeh” factor kicked in almost immediately. There is $2000 at stake in the final, and this still wasn’t enough for my disappointment to last longer than, oh, five seconds or so. What was up with that?;

3. Annoyance: the heat was at Box Hill Library. I mean, seriously, Box Hill Library. What was I thinking. As if I didn’t have anything better to do with my Saturday afternoon; and

4. Analysis: I tried to balance the pros and cons of having attended: seeing several great new poets I hadn’t seen before, supporting a poetry event and finally talking to Ben Pobjie about a possible collaborative fiction work versus the loss of an afternoon and general feelings of irritation akin to constant flies around your ears.

So, the general thought process was: “Yeah, figured I wouldn’t win before I even spoke...oh well, at least now I don’t have to do this all over again...should have gone to the park or something instead...still, heard some cool poems so guess I got something out of it...I need a coffee. That was bullshit the library had a no alcohol policy. I mean seriously, at a poetry reading?”

At first I thought there might be some kind of repressed-disappointment sour-grapes thing going on. Then I thought about the last slam I went in (the Melbourne Slam) at the Spinning Room about two months ago, and how the only reason I was desperate to win was so I could use the money to get a taxi home instead of waiting for a train ...

The one thing I have always loved about slams is that, being fairly time-poor (life, child and all that), they give me a chance to read a few of my poems, get some instant, feedback and also hear short works from many other poets and give them instant feedback. But now it’s finally happened... After two years on the (Melbourne) circuit and many great times I am completely over (participating in) poetry slams. Which begs the question: what’s a good new title for this blog...? Suggestions appreciated.