Review by Heidi J. Loos

Photo credit: Richard at Urban Artistry

My emotions were stretched and twisted and snapped on Thursday March 21st at Slamalamadingdong, a local, monthly poetry slam here in Melbourne. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much in one sitting, at one event, ever. My heartstrings plucked, then stroked, and healed by poet after poet after poet. They sucked sadness from my soul, vacuuming in the depths of our shared despair, relatable struggles, and shared oppression, then handed me a ticket to an even darker place where sadness meets hate and violent histories bleed into the present: lives are ruined by rape, racism, colonialism, war… I was so deeply saddened in one moment by one poem, but by the next, my tears had evaporated into laughter, pure awe, overwhelming inspiration and ambition. Rage erupted from my stomach to my chest, exploding in my head, but my rage was welcomed, invited, accepted, and harmonized by other voices.

They say every book you read changes you, but I think every spoken word event, every poetry slam, changes you too. Slam poetry is such a powerful genre and I think this particular slam was a really great showcase of all of the things slam can do. Whether its autobiography, memoir in poem form, relating funny anecdotes, or just telling really good, relatable, fictional stories, short and snappy, three minutes max, pointing out the good, the not-so-good, and the down-right-horrendous; instructing, complaining, entertaining, and transforming audiences. These slamalama poets had the crowd snapping constantly, snapping our fingers in appreciation of really magical moments, for poetic lines that blew our minds and rhymed words we had not even known sounded alike until tonight, for metaphors we’d never tasted and rhythms we’d never danced to: foreplay for our ears, and sex for our brains. I cried, and I laughed, and I snapped my fingers more.

I snapped for humour, for boldness, for performance, for poetry that raised me up to the moon and poetry that pushed me down, six feet underground. The people beside me, behind me, in front of me, snapped and snapped, and clapped and whistled too. It was clearly a well-received and well-attended event. The venue was packed, all chairs were filled, and everyone else stood in the back, around the edges, so still, watching, snapping. The only stir of disappointment came from the questionable judging, but as is true slam tradition, the crowd was always ready and quick to boo any score less than eight, and then applaud the poet not the score. The judging became more and more generous as the night went on, and as the beer was bought, sipped and spilled. Coincidence? Maybe. But, for me the poetry started strong and ended strong, and everything in between was pure gold. Almost every poem would have received a 9.9 from this judge right here…But honestly, it wasn’t just the slam participants that made this event so great, it was the music, the DJ who mixed beats in between each poet’s appearance, and the colourful, artistic and political backdrops, the video message shout out from the 2012 Slamalama Champion, and the exceptional feature, Omar Musa, and the charismatic host who got the crowd ready, and kept the energy level up until the very end. Through all of this I was able to witness and experience firsthand the love and strength and power of Australia’s spoken word community. Like, Omar Musa said, Slamalama is his favourite Australian spoken word event, and I can definitely see why.

Wow.

I am still snapping for Slamalama!

Heidi J. Loos is a Canadian writer, musician, and activist from the Yukon Territories. She holds a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of British Columbia. She has experience writing and editing across genres. Currently, she is travelling around Australia on a working holiday and blogging about her experiences at http://heidijontheloose.com/

Review by Heidi J. Loos

If my doctor could mix medicine and metaphor as quickly and as rhythmically as Doctor Ben Mellor, I think I would move into the clinic!

Photo by Michael Reynolds

But Ben Mellor is not actually a real doctor he was simply dressed up as a doctor for his performance of Anthropoetry at Sweetalkers on Tuesday, March 13, 2013 held at the John Curtin Hotel in Carlton, Melbourne. Mellor revealed his fraudulent identity of Doctor at the beginning of his set, but continued to feed the audience with a generous dosage of the very best medicine, well-crafted, well-delivered poetry.

Apparently this was the first Sweetalkers gig of 2013, and the first Sweetalkers event in almost a year, but it was my very first Sweetalkers event ever, and it was my second taste of the Melbourne spoken word scene. Enchantingly sweet and salty, sweaty, actually, but it left me wanting more!

Despite this event happening in the middle of a record heat wave, with a high of 37 degrees, held in a venue without air conditioning, I found myself constantly chilled by the talent and depth of the poetry. Goosebumps crept up my arms on more than one occasion, forced out of hibernation by pure passion and creative genius. The line up was diverse in style and performance and we heard everything from sassy love poems to boarder line satires. Topics skyrocketing from dinosaurs to soap powder, lustrous murder, individualism, hipsters, and optimism, to beautiful, dangerous, and romantic activism, Paris Hilton, and a call and response poem about breasts! And all of this happened before the UK Slam champion and feature of the night even took the stage. Let’s just say, the bar was set extremely high, but luckily Ben Mellor and his musical counterpart Dan Steele delivered a phenomenal performance that was bubbling over with passion and precision.

Their concoction of music, poetry, hip hop, beat boxing, science, left-wing environmental activism, comedy, acting, and improvisation was wildly complex, yet so simple to watch and listen to and get lost in. Steele’s guitar rhythms seemed to bleed into Mellor’s voice until you could not separate note from word, sentence from strum. Each poem, song, blend explored the human body literally and as metaphor, twisting words through veins, pumping music and poetry from heart to mouth, sharing their talents with an eager and responsive crowd.

My favourite piece in Anthropoetry was set in the region of the heart: a poem about our future as a dystopia where love has become a commodity and smiles and hugs must be purchased. Where our governments make choices to drill into the ground to mine ‘love’, destroy our economies for ‘love’ etc. The metaphors in this piece held such agency, and screamed for attention, for cooperation from the listeners, and the speaker’s intentions were crystal clear. However, the themes and messages from this poem and a few of Mellor’s other more political works within Anthropoetry did not flow through the entire performance equally and there were some poems and songs that I found extremely jarring and poignantly contradictory. Mellor spoke of love and equal marriage rights, of environmental justice and equality, so I was disturbed by some of the underlying sexism, gender essentialism and unrecognized misogyny. Two poems that did not sit right with me for these reasons were the poem set in the region of the chest and the poem for the genitals. Perhaps I was disappointed because I had anticipated that at least one of these areas would be used to stage a more political piece that might dismantle objectification of women, sexual assault, hegemonic rape culture etc. But instead Mellor seemed to be criticizing women who object to objectification of women, and placing ‘maleness’ and masculinity on a pedestal. I found both of these poems reiterated essentialist notions of sex and gender, and did little to nothing else, politically anyway. I was also shocked and appalled by his casual use of the term Femi-Nazi (an oxymoron in itself, but one that I would not expect from someone who for the most part presents as an ally). That said, I found the performance as a whole to be very progressive and sent a lot of really positive messages. And of course, Mellor’s poetry, in structure and in presentation was absolutely, undeniably, sensational.

Mellor spoke of the conception of Anthropoetry revealing that it was inspired by anthropometry, the study of measuring the human body. As he elaborated on multiple measurements and contexts for measurements, I couldn’t help but make my own mental measurements, comparisons in my head, of this event to others I’ve been to. Of this poetry and spoken word, to the spoken word of my home country, and how the Melbourne spoken word scene compares to the Vancouver spoken word scene, the people, the community, the venues, the hot topics and the slam trends, the differences and the similarities, but the only conclusion I could come to, was that I’ll have to go to many more spoken word events here in Melbourne before my measurements are anywhere near accurate.

Anthropoetry as a book and/or CD is also available to buy and download via Bandcamp

Heidi J. Loos is a Canadian writer, musician, and activist from the Yukon Territories. She holds a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of British Columbia. She has experience writing and editing across genres. Currently, she is travelling around Australia on a working holiday and blogging about her experiences at http://heidijontheloose.com/