FACTIVISM Spoken Word

We Work This Shop

We Work This Shop is a place for poets and spoken word artists of all styles and levels to bring their work for feedback and workshopping in a supportive environment.

Whether you’re an experienced poet who wants to try out your latest piece on a small audience for performance feedback, or if you’ve got a piece you want to test run before trying the open mic for the first time, or something you want to edit closely, to see if it makes sense, the place is open, especially for those new to spoken word.

We start with a short writing exercise to get your writing brain moving, and then everyone gets a turn to share their piece for feedback. Bring extra copies if you can, so people can make notes and suggestions.

Entry is free but donations are encouraged to help pay for the room.

Review: Hey Moon! by Lady Longdrop

Love, loss, and loneliness all pop up in Kendra Keller’s (aka Lady Longdrop) lively and tender first collection of poems Hey Moon! Lady Longdrop demands a conversation that leads us away from an elusive state. With an active, empowered voice, she uses the moon the way many of us use it – to connect to the hidden self from, the self that is terrified of being seen. Poetry to her is a form of meditation.

In the section ‘Moon Poems’, she takes the reader out to see the moon, and in the poem, ‘Full-of-it’ lies a powerfully vulnerable question that requires sight:

Great fat moon

Why do you look at me and ask

Whether I am as fully human as you are fully stone

What would it take for many of us to articulate the pain our mothers and fathers caused us? To articulate back, to them, their state, and ours, through a question? Lady Longdrop insists that we rest before this journey – to connect with our larger selves.

What would it feel like if we took our problems to the moon, then feasted on her light as the narrator of the book does? Would we perceive love in ways suggested in ‘Love Is’?

A silence

A forgotten dream

Would we then dig deeper into our memories, and say:

Love is some clothes I threw out cos they didn’t fit anymore

Love is some papers

Dusty with nostalgia

That I had to burn

Where would we go? The ocean?

If we are to find ourselves, to find where we belong, we must find the things that truly know themselves. In her poem ‘As Though it is OK’, Lady Longdrop poetically displays the human demise when we compare ourselves to others without the knowledge of our capacity to transcend our conditions.

Clouds

You hang there

As though it is ok

As though there are humans who can cope with your perfect

mirroring of yourself

Lady Longdrop consistently draws attention to the possibility of opening up

Ziimusic / Black Don't Crack

Ziimusic performs ‘Black Don’t Crack’ at the Slamalamadingdong Grand Slam in May. Ziimusic is on the 2018 Slamalamadingdong National Poetry Slam team travelling to Chicago in August.

ZIIMUSIC, is a Naarm based creative blending his artistry into a soulful experience. Originally from Zimbabwe, ZIIMUSIC began his creative career as a rapper and musician. He has had the privilege of performing in and around Naarm where his band have performed at festivals and sold out venues. 2017 saw ZIIMUSIC step into the Spoken Word scene as he was part of the Band Of Brothaz compromising of Naarms most decorated spoken word artists.