Santo Cazzati‘s poems are like music. They lull and peak, they can be relaxed or frantic, they crescendo madly and laze easily. Santo is, without a doubt, one of the most musical poets on the Melbourne spoken word scene. What will he be like, though, as the MC of Overload’s Takin It To The Streets, the official opening night pub crawl of the 2009 Overload Poetry Festival?

Come and join Cazzati this coming Friday September 4, as the night grows poetic and unsteady and three well known bars and pubs in Melbourne city come alive with poetry. Jenny Toune, Graham Nunn, Vivienne Glance, Anthony O’Sullivan and many other astounding wordsmiths will grace (and quite possible lurch on) the stage at Southpaw, Dante`s and Blue Velvet as the Overload Poetry Festival truly takes over the town (click here for full details).

The Overland Overloaded blogging team recently caught up with the poet who calls himself Saint ‘Unmentionable’:

Who are you?
“I am Santo”. Santo CAZZATI. That means “saint [untranslatable]”. I am a descendant of the obscure Italian Baroque composer Maurizio Cazzati. You’ll find him in the more thorough histories of music as a violin virtuoso who opened a string school for orphaned girls in northern Italy.
No, who are you, really?
Legally, I am a tired old former concert pianist who gave up playing piano due to lack of colour and innovation and found that all I had left was my voice and my funky attire of yesteryear. So, would you believe, I became a spoken word artist. I teach in an elite Melbourne private school which must remain anonymous in order to protect those concerned, including my identity.
What are you doing at the Overload Poetry Festival?
Leading the poetry crawl on the opening night through the highways and byways of Fitzroy, trying to keep punters who are drunk on poetry on the straight and narrow path from one venue to the next.
No, what are you really doing at the Overload Poetry Festival?
Drunk on poetry.
Poetry. Why?
Because drink on its own is not purposeful; because poetry on its own is not intoxicating; because the dialectical combination of the two raises the temperature of both.
Are you crazy?
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Plug your event.
Names are being taken. If you are not seen at Overload Poetry Crawl, you can expect to be persona non grata on the world poetry scene until the next Overload.
Plug it some more.
You-avin-a-laff??? I would have thought the above threat was pretty damn final.
Break it down…(with a poetry teaser for your event):
“fifteen floors up
funk is gurgling
champagne flows for you”
…yeah, I think that’s one of them Japanesy thingos that Myron likes…

The Overland Overloaded blogging team will catch up with Santo later in the Festival as he prepares to MC the event ‘But is it Poetry?’ on Sunday September 6.