Friday, 4 May
6.00—8.00 pm
The Wheeler Centre
176 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Free entry with drinks and books by all poets available to purchase on the night.
Presented as part of the Melbourne Visiting Poets Program and its program’s partners, RMIT non/fictionLab, Rabbit Poetry, Australian Poetry and Melbourne Spoken Word.
David Stavanger – Electric Journal
Join David Stavanger for this free two-part event exploring the intersection of mental health and writing, as well as the divide between poets who write for the page and those that take to the stage.
The Electric Journal
A reading & performance by David Stavanger including his recent prose-poem based on his experiences with ECT, pieces from his award-winning collection, The Special, and other new work.
Page meets Stage
Based on New York’s Bowery Poetry Club’s long-running series “where the Pulitzer Prize meets the poetry slam.” Hosted and curated by David Stavanger, this event pairs acclaimed page poet Andy Jackson with renowned spoken word artist Eleanor Jackson, going poem for poem to find uncommon ground. The performance will be opened by emerging spoken word artist Tim Evans and multi-disciplinary poet Misbah.
David Stavanger is a poet, writer, performer, cultural producer and former psychologist. In 2013 he won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, resulting in the release of The Special (UQP), his first full-length collection of poetry which was awarded the 2015 Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. His prose-poem ‘The Electric Journal’ was a finalist of the 2016 Newcastle Poetry Prize. David is also sometimes known as pioneering Green Room-nominated ‘spoken weird’ artist Ghostboy, winning the 2005 Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup and establishing poetry slam and spoken word in QLD via his active work with the Australian Poetry Slam and Woodford Folk Festival. David was the Co-Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival from 2015-2017, a period known for its inclusive programming and stronger focus on CALD and first nation voices.
Andy Jackson has featured at literary events and arts festivals in Australia, India, USA and Ireland, including the 2017 Castlemaine State Festival and the Queensland Poetry Festival with Each Map of Scars – a performance, puppetry and film collaboration with Rachael Guy and Leonie Van Eyk. He was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Prize for Poetry for Among the regulars (Papertiger 2010), and won the 2013 Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize for The thin bridge. His new book, Music our bodies can’t hold (Hunter Publishers 2017), consists of portrait poems of other people with Marfan Syndrome.
Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet, performer, arts producer and community radio broadcaster. Her poems have appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review and Going Down Swinging, and broadcast on national and international radio. She is the creator of the Melbourne Poetry Map and a former Editor in Chief of Peril Magazine. Her chapbook, A Leaving is published by Vagabond Press.