"Christmas Island/They Kill Them"

Last month, at my favourite poetry venue in Melbourne, I was very lucky to join Amanda Anastasi on stage during her featured performance. Both Amanda and I discuss the issue of refugees in our poetry and so it was a special honour for us to combine our poems – Amanda’s “Christmas Island” and my poem, “They Kill Them” – and present “Christmas Island/They Kill Them” at Passionate Tongues at the Brunswick Hotel. Big thanks to Randall Stephens, another great Melbourne poet, for providing the footage so I could edit it and upload it to share it with you all.

My Open Mic Debut

Last night, with the encouragement of a comrade and a fellow collaborator in The Red Pen zine, Santo Cazzati, I got behind the mic for my debut spoken word performance at an open mic night. And it confirmed one of my fears – that I would enjoy it so much I’d want to do it again.

Every second Monday or so, The Brunswick Hotel hosts a poetry night called Passionate Tongues where budding poets use the open mic as a chance to perform alongside two feature poets.

After confirming via Twitter that performing a poem wouldn’t make it void from submitting to all those markets that only accept unpublished work, I decided to perform my poem The Homophobe because I think there’s some biting lines in there that would work better out of my mouth instead of off the page.

I was a little nervous but after a few glasses of red and seeing that the crowd was friendly and encouraging, my nerves eased and getting up on stage seemed fine. I think I did pretty well and received a good reception.

Santo described it as a “Fabulous, forceful, ferocious debut.”

I think I will definitely do this again.

Day 246, 365 Day Challenge