The Overland Overloaded team recently caught up with Melbourne poet Ezra Bix, MC for Overload Allstars tonight night and Overload’s Surprise Showcase on Sunday, and winner of the Melbourne Writer’s Festival’s Poetry Idol 2008. In his post-MCing frenzy, Ezra may well have let slip about one of the features of the final event of Overload 2009, the Surprise Showcase. You can catch the able MC tonight, and hopefully he’ll have taken off those pants and put them back on the way they’re supposed to go.

Call yourself a poet?
I call myself a fool.
Make us believe that.
Look! I’ve just put my pants on backwards.
What are you doing at Overload?
I’m introducing the world to the greatest bunch of reprobates and vagabonds you could hope to find.
What are you really doing at Overload?
I’m MCing the Overload All-Stars at Northcote Social Club and the Surprise Showcase with IQ at Dantes.
Someone said you’re an actor. Like, a real life one that gets parts and stuff, not just one of those unemployed graduate ones. So why should we believe you’re not acting now?
I could be acting now. You can never be sure. I may, in fact, be Meryl Streep playing Ezra Bix.
You won the Melbourne Writers Festival Slam last year. How much did it cost?

To bribe the judges? Can’t be done. No serious poetry person is interested in money. Or perhaps you’re asking about the tickets…
Poetry, why?
To fill the world with linguistic loveliness.
No, really, why?
To make the world start thinking and talking in romantic, peaceful, sextatic pentameter.
Are you insane?
No.
Are you sure?
No.
Anything else we should know about? Dirty little secrets?
I just learned that some AFL coaches surreptitiously ask their mates in the media to attack their own players in print in order to fire them up.
Really filthy ones?
AFL players don’t get filthy anymore because you don’t get mud in Melbourne now. Thanks to the drought and climate change. People have knowingly poisoned the planet for decades now. And we’re all gonna fry as a result. Tell me a bigger scandal than that!
Plug your event.
Check out the amazing, awesome All-Stars – this is better than a supergroup of The Traveling Wilburys, The A Team and the Harlem Globetrotters combined: Geoff Lemon, Maxine Clarke, Lewis Scott (NZ/USA) and Ali Cobby Eckerman (SA).
Plug it some more.
That Maxine Clarke is wicked, man!
Just watch the way that gurrrl busts a lyrical move!

My other gig is the Surprise Showcase and we are keeping it a surprise. All I can say is I’ve seen the line up and I’m very impressed. Of course I’m bound to secrecy.There’s a photo of Felix Nobis accompanying the Showcase entry in the program, but I can’t confirm that he’s performing or not. ( It could just be like when you have a classical concert and you use a picture of Mozart or Beethoven on the poster. ) If Felix is on the bill, then we’re in for a rare and wonderful treat. But it’s all still a secret and you wont be getting any confirmation from me, you Nazi swine.

However I can confirm that all sexes are represented and that there is a surprise combo in the bill. And in the same gig we have the Overload Awards, hosted by James Waller and Luis Serrano! Two highlights for the price of one!
Break it down:
Yo, shake your poetic booty down to Dantes for the last night of the Fest
featuring the most bodacious and the best
lyrical rappers and rhymers,
and classical old skool poetical sublime funky good timers
for some wicked beats and lyrics
can’t tell you who!
but the groove will be truly
smokin’
It’s the last big partay pow-wow overpowering bust-out night of the overload experience
So put on your Sunday best
Last night of the fest
Cos Sunday night
Will be well alright
With MC’s IQ and EZ in da house
Slammin the secret super showcase sideways!
Realise. Ai!

In 2008 Ezra was a finalist of the Doris Leadbetter Poetry Cup. He was an audience favourite and came an honourable third in the Australian Poetry Slam Final at the Sydney Opera House. Ezra won the grand final of Poetry Idol and has appeared at The Age, Melbourne Writers’ Festival for the last two years. He is one of the featured poets in the new ABC TV series “Bush Slam” hosted by H.G. Nelson. His first book of poetry, “Dancing in the Lifeboat” was launched in February 2009.