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Overland Overloaded

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15 September 2009 · Main Posts

poets holiday

Overland Overloaded

Here it is: the last post of our Overland Overloaded coverage. Tomorrow, the Overland blog will be back as it was…or maybe it never will be. Thankyou to Overland and Overload for your faith in the concept. May the relationship grow. Us Overloaders have loved it, and we hope to be back again next year. […]

15 September 2009 · Main Posts

going out swinging

Overland Overloaded

Going Down Swinging has been out and about recording during the 2009 Overload Poetry Festival. At the end of it all, they’re left with hours and hours of audio, which will be culled down to twelve or so tracks to be released later in the year as part of a new Overload/Going Down Swinging highlights disc. […]

15 September 200915 September 2009 · Main Posts

haiku chain

Overland Overloaded

At the beginning of Overland Overloaded, we sent out a call for haiku written about Melbourne poets. 2007 Australian National Poetry Slam winner Marc Testart responded with gusto. Here are his efforts, accompanied by the photographs from the wonderful Michael Reynolds, who went home on Sunday night cradling an Overload award for his utterly outstanding contribution to […]

15 September 2009 · Main Posts

look at what poetry does with us

Overland Overloaded

The Overland Overloaded team will be handing the Overland blog back to Overland at the end of today. Today we’ll be uploading our last few posts. We’ll let you sit in on our musings with the exhausted but triumphant Lisa Greenaway from Going Down Swinging, and taking one last look at the people and poetry that made the Overload […]

15 September 200915 September 2009 · Main Posts

the word on poetry blogging

Overland Overloaded

When I first started posting poetry on the Overland site, I was visited by Gingatao. And visited. And visited and visited and visited. I sent an email to Jeff: who IS this guy? But on further investigation Gingatao, aka Brisbane blogger-poet Paul Squires, is everywhere online that there is poetry, and poetry is everywhere on line […]

15 September 2009 · Main Posts

nobody comments when it’s love love love

Overland Overloaded

Overland Overloaded’s Alec Patric has instructed me to refrain from certain prefaces to this review of the final event of Overload, the Surprise Showcase. ‘Just pretend worker bee Maxine doesn’t know slam Maxine’, he urged. So here the review is. No comment. Glowing reviews aren’t my strong suit. It’s really difficult to find anything to […]

15 September 200915 September 2009 · Main Posts

haiku rooku

Overland Overloaded

Haiku are deluding. There’s always this sense that anybody could write them: grab a crumpled napkin, a spare three minutes and a pen and you have something you can call a poem: the right number of syllables staring back at you in all their self-contained smugness. Overload’s Rooku of Haiku on Saturday evening ripped apart […]

14 September 2009 · Main Posts

Nil By Mouth

Overland Overloaded

An aggressive life-sized badger (the mascot of the Bristol Poetry Festival Slam), and a pixie-sized deranged masked ninja (mascot of the Overload Poetry Festival Slam), the impromptu staccato sound-poetry caused by technical glitches and web-cammed rooms of mad, excitable poets evidently weren’t bizarre enough for Overland Overloaded’s Simonne Michelle-Wells. Embracing the true chaos of Slam, Simonne […]

14 September 200914 September 2009 · Main Posts

subliminal poegramming

Overland Overloaded

…white feathers suffocating… …my heart is a breath only… Throughout the 2009 Overload Poetry Festival, poems have been broadcast at Federation Square as scrolling text. The ticker wall on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets became a giant poetry board with a selection of poetry edited by Matt Hetherington and Luis Gonzalez Serrano. The big screens in […]

13 September 200913 September 2009 · Main Posts

it ain’t over till the last poet slams

Overland Overloaded

The 2009 Overload Poetry Festival might be officially over tonight, but Overland has agreed for the Overland Overloaded team to have the blog until Tuesday, and we intend to hold on to it for dear life. That is, until those pesky non-fiction and prose writers over there come knocking at the door with baseball bats. […]

13 September 2009 · Main Posts

an angst disposal unit

Overland Overloaded

Over the last few weeks, Melbourne’s poet soulster Sean M Whelan has been so crazily busy working the stages with his new poetry-music collaboration, Sean M Whelan and the Interim Lovers, that he’s barely had time to breathe, let alone ease out a pen and paper and scribble a little poetry. Whelan performed for the […]

12 September 200912 September 2009 · Main Posts

what poetry looks like in cyberspace

Overland Overloaded

Coverage of Overload wouldn’t be complete without a word from Melbourne poet Komninos Zervos. Komninos was one of the poets who was locked in the poetry workshop during Overload, while the rest of us were out sestina-ing the streets. The Overland Overloaded team caught up with Komninos: Komninos Zervos…Sorry, that was self indulgent, I love […]

12 September 200912 September 2009 · Main Posts

the land of the oongolie doongolies

Overland Overloaded

Overland Overloaded’s Karen Andrews weathered poets drenching each other in beer, blinding each other with hairspray and waxing violent and lyrical about the ‘land of the oongolie doongolies’ and left the Overload Slam Final last night oddly inspired: “I want a poem that takes you on a journey…” “I want a poem that plays Russian […]

12 September 2009 · Main Posts

the basic butchery of what a human being is

Overland Overloaded

Overland Overloaded’s Alec Patric, the critic we all love to hate, attended the final of the Overload Poetry Slam last night. It was the first slam the Melbourne writer had ever attended and the odd mixture of fascination and bemusement was clearly evident on his face throughout the evening. Overloaded’s Karen Andrews will also be […]

12 September 200913 September 2009 · Main Posts

we make no apologies. we’re poets

Overland Overloaded

Okay, so it was bound to happen. For the first five days of the Overload festival, the Overland Overloaded team has been right on the money. But now the festival’s two days away from being over, we’re all tired, we’ve spent a little too much time wining and poetry-ing rather than typing, reviewing and posting. […]

11 September 200911 September 2009 · Main Posts

listen up: afeif ismail abdelrazig

Overland Overloaded

Overload 2009 has only three more days to go, and though we’ve been managing to catch and review slices of it here on the Overland blog, there’s a heap that we’ve unfortunately missed out on. For those interstate or unable to catch the chaos live, we’ll be posting, over the next three days, the odd […]

11 September 200911 September 2009 · Main Posts

a poem that can’t be read aloud isn’t poetry

Overland Overloaded

Koraly Dimitriadis crept into the Northcote Social Club on Wednesday night to review Overload Allstars as part of the Overload Poetry Festival. the Melbourne writer found herself chuckling, enraged, serenaded and turned on. In the end though, she realised that one must ultimately wear their words, in order for them to be appreciated. When asked […]

10 September 2009 · Main Posts

a cross between elvis and johnny cash

Overland Overloaded

After performing at La Mama Poetica and Dante`s over the last week as part of the 2009 Overload Poetry Festival, Overland Overloaded’s Ben Pobjie contemplates exactly what he expects from a ‘poetry’ audience, apart from the disgusted walk-outs he’s come to love: After performing at Dante’s as part of “Takin’ It To The Streets” at […]

10 September 200911 September 2009 · Main Posts

a truckload of valium and an anger management class

Overland Overloaded

Overloaded’s Maxine Clarke recalls last night’s Overload Poetry Festival slam heat in the lead-up to the September 11 Overload Poetry Slam Final, and the September 12 Skype Slam with Bristol Poetry Festival: Last night’s Overload Poetry Slam heat at the Northcote Social Club brought home to me what this festival is all about. Slam MC […]

10 September 200910 September 2009 · Main Posts

how many clouds in the sky?

Overland Overloaded

Melbourne was enchanted last night by the mellow and soulful murmurings of African American jazz poet Lewis Scott. The poet’s set at the Northcote Social Club last night as part of the Overload Allstars event left Overloaded’s Alec Patric strangely enchanted. Overload Allstars will also be reviewed, in full, by Koraly Dimitriatis. Lewis Scott is […]

9 September 20099 September 2009 · Main Posts

he made me cry, and I still didn’t want to leave

Overland Overloaded

Wordplay convener Geoff Lemon talks up tomorrow night’s Overload line-up at the Dan O’Connell: The Tongue is being imported by us direct from Sydney purely for this show. The Tongue is one of the few artists in the country good enough to be signed by record label Elefant Traks. He’s had four substantial JJJ hits […]

9 September 20099 September 2009 · Main Posts

hats off

Overland Overloaded

Overloaded’s Simonne Michelle-Wells has just emerged from a night at La Mama Poetica. Barry Dickins has taken off with her heart and she’s been left with Pobjie aftershock and seriously wanting of a hat: Ever noticed the prevalence of hats at poetry gigs? I counted 10 at What I’m Talking About at Poetica La Mama […]

9 September 2009 · Main Posts

the life of TT.O

Overland Overloaded

Overloaded’s Alec Patric muses about meeting poet TT.O, who can be found at Glitch Bar and Cinema this evening for ‘But is it Poetry…?’ #2, reading with Sandy Caldow, Sean O’Callaghan, and Carolyn Connors: A few months ago I’d never heard of TT.O. Despite what it says on his card (Famous Poet), I had no […]

9 September 2009 · Main Posts

Look! I’ve just put my pants on backwards.

Overland Overloaded

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 […]

9 September 20099 September 2009 · Main Posts

small change

Overland Overloaded

Overload Overloaded’s Benjamin Theolonius Sanders took his haiku reviewing on the road to Dante’s for the launch of Maurice McNamara’s Half Hour Country (Small Change Press, 2009) on Saturday September 5, catching performances by poets Matt Hetherington, Anna Fern, David Stravanger and Graham Nunn. IQ chides the calling of a mobile phone during a poetry […]

8 September 20098 September 2009 · Main Posts

the subtle art of arresting applause

Overland Overloaded

Alec Patric’s experience at Passionate Tongues last night led him to contemplate the difference between poets who read, and poets who perform: Santo Cazzati told me last night he can stop people clapping between poems. Poets repeatedly asked the audience at the Brunswick Hotel to stop the incessant clapping until after all the poems were […]

8 September 2009 · Main Posts

reaching for the allstars

Overland Overloaded

The Overload Allstars gig, featuring African American jazz poet Lewis Scott, indigenous poet Ali Cobby Eckerman and Melbourne’s Maxine Clarke and Geoff Lemon, will kick off at around 8.30pm tomorrow night at the Northcote Social Club. The Overland Overloaded team looks forward to catching up with Eckerman and Scott to chat during the evening. In […]

8 September 2009 · Main Posts

coming up

Overland Overloaded

Stay with us on Overland Overloaded for reviews from Passionate Tongues, the Spinning Room, La Mama Poetica, Dante`s, Federation Square and the Northcote Social Club. We will catch up with Geoff Lemon , Ezra Bix and Komninos Zervos. We will be reviewing out-of-staters and Melbourne-towners. We will be watching poetry slams and attending workshops. We […]

8 September 20098 September 2009 · Main Posts

ekphrastic remix

Overland Overloaded

To add to Overload’s collection of poets who dance, sing, chant and rant, the Overland Overloaded team is also talking with poets who blog. Stu Hatton is one such poet. The Melbournite will remix the work of fellow poets for the last of Overload’s ekphrastic readings, Tripping the Light Ekphrastic, at Glitch Bar and Cinema […]

7 September 20097 September 2009 · Main Posts

the doorbell doesn’t work so just knock really loud

Overland Overloaded

Josephine Rowe is a Jill-of-all-writing-trades. Her poetry and fiction have been published and broadcast nationally. Tomorrow, as part of Overload 2009, she will appear at the Spinning Room’s Les Enfants Terribles with fellow poetic trouble-makers Anthony O’Sullivan, Meghan Bell and Steve Smart. The Spinning Room poets will read each other’s favourite works, in a word-swapping […]

7 September 20097 September 2009 · Main Posts

the thunder of poets

Overland Overloaded

Overland Overloaded’s Benjamin Theolonius Sanders (IQ) believes the delicious rain falling over Melbourne has been delivered by the thunder of poets. As he splashes around in wonder, he contemplates the coming of tonight’s Passionate Tongues gig, and the accompanying launch of the two spoken word discs:Tales from an Idiot and Passionate Tongues Ten Years. Being frank […]

7 September 20097 September 2009 · Main Posts

for the good of mankind I must now slaughter you without mercy

Overland Overloaded

If you’re not heading to Passionate Tongues tonight, La Mama Poetica will come alive with words from Angela Meyer, Ben Pobjie, Sean M Whelan, Briohny Doyle and Barry Dickens. Poet Lynne Dale‘s vox pop ( several posts below) has got all of us Overland Overloaders thinking about the largely invisible (in terms of visibility in the bars, […]

7 September 2009 · Main Posts

But…is it poetry?

Overland Overloaded

Overland Overloaded reviewer Alec Patric visited Glitch Bar and Cinema in Fitzroy last night to check out the Voiceprints “But…is it poetry?” event, featuring poets Steve Smart, Santo Cazzati, Jo Truman, Carmen Main and Eddy Burger. Patric emerges from the experience not quite convinced that the question has been answered. I talked to a poet last night […]

6 September 20096 September 2009 · Main Posts

who let the critic out?

Overland Overloaded

Overland Overloaded reviewer Alec Patric is on the prowl today, reviewing the Westwords and Voiceprints Overload Poetry Festival events this evening. Poets beware, this reviewer is unforgiving, with a sharp eye and a real knack for no-frills criticism. He’s armed with a notebook and ambivalence and is thirsting to be impressed. Stay tuned for his […]

6 September 20096 September 2009 · Main Posts

a poet is born

Overland Overloaded

One of the great things about a first-time and ‘grassroots’ project such as Overland Overloaded is that as you walk down the street shouting about it, people always come out of their houses to stare. Some of them just look bemused, but others pull on their sneakers and join in the chaos. Today, the Overland […]

6 September 2009 · Main Posts

live from the dan

Overland Overloaded

IQ (poet Benjamin Theolonius Sanders), the official Overland Overloaded poet laureate, haiku-ed live from the Dan O’Connell Overload readings late this afternoon, capturing the open mic and feature readings as they unfolded. Poets were excited and in top form. IQ catches first reader Brian rousing the dead, the convener (Melbourne poet) Cam Black relaxing back […]

5 September 20095 September 2009 · Main Posts

crawling haiku

Overland Overloaded

Setting out to review the Overload Poetry Festival Poetry crawl in haiku was a decision I made at the beginning of the evening, after several glasses of wine. Piecing together haiku fragments the following morning (they were scrawled over the cover of a big issue magazine, and on the backs of several of Ben Pobjie’s […]

5 September 2009 · Main Posts

we translate, winking

Overland Overloaded

Our third Overland Overloaded guest blogger is variously known as IQ, Benjamin Theolonius Sanders, and the Poet Laureate for the Centre of Southern Folklore. IQ is a relative newcomer to Melbourne, but regularly wipes the slam floor with more established poetic Melbournites. He is the author of five chapbooks (please get a hold of one […]

5 September 20095 September 2009 · Main Posts

the chambers of the heart

Overland Overloaded

The 2009 Overload Poetry Festival launch. Festival launch. Ho hum. People to thank. Obligatory mayoral speeches. False dignitaries. Yawn. Oh, the officialdom of it all. Last night though, the launch of 2009 Overload Poetry Festival managed to bridge Melbourne’s poetic and cultural history with the present in a fitting and boredom-free start to Overload 2009. […]

5 September 2009 · Main Posts

words out west

Overland Overloaded

Melbourne poet Lynne Dale is the convener of the monthly Westwords poetry reading, which takes place in the Dancing Dog Cafe` in Footscray and coordinator of Williamstown Writers. Her work has been anthologised, including in The Other Side, Fences and Half Open Doors. Tomorrow (Sunday September 6), Lynne will bring artists and poets of the […]

4 September 2009 · Main Posts

come on people, I’ll say it again, it’s not a dirty word!

Overland Overloaded

Fitting, perhaps, that we posted this image yesterday with the above post title, and it somehow disappeared into cyber space and set about messing up the entire Overland Overloaded blog. Still, we managed to get it back again, along with the comment made in the comments section by one Carl Sandburg. Hi Carl, you’re now […]

4 September 2009 · Main Posts

circumnavigating the globe on a razor scooter

Overland Overloaded

Anthony O’Sullivan’s poetry is jazzy and mellow, soft and soothing, cutting and caressing. The Melbournite, along with poet Jon Garrett, is the able and hilarious MC of weekly Melbourne poetry venue The Spinning Room. You can catch him tonight at Southpaw at 9.30 for session two of Takin it to The Streets, the 2009 Overload […]

4 September 2009 · Main Posts

the rumours that I am actually satan have abated

Overland Overloaded

Who better to catch up with, on the eve of the Overload Opening night and Pub Crawl, than Steve Smart? If you check out anything at all this Overload, make it one of Steve’s events. You can find him this coming Saturday evening at Poetic Riffs, Sunday night at Voiceprints, or Tuesday evening at the […]

4 September 20094 September 2009 · Main Posts

get thee to a nunnery!

Overland Overloaded

Another poet to watch during the Overload Pub Crawl on Friday September 4th is Queenslander Graham Nunn: chair of Queensland Poetry Festival, founder of Small Change Press and organiser of Speed Poets, Brisbane’s longest running poetry event. Nunn has four poetry collections hanging off his poetry heavyweight belt, including the most recent Ruined Man (2007), […]

2 September 2009 · Main Posts

why can’t I have two lovers?

Overland Overloaded

One of the highlights of Taking It To The Streets, the Overload Festival poetry pub crawl on Friday night will be South Australian poet Jenny Toune, possibly the only tap-dancing poet in the world. Yes, we said tap dancing! Jenny will be performing at Southpaw on Friday night as part of the pub crawl, and […]

2 September 20092 September 2009 · Main Posts

drunk on street poetry, with saint unmentionable

Overland Overloaded

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, […]

2 September 20093 September 2009 · Main Posts

TT.O, famous poet

Overland Overloaded

As part of the Overload Festival, you are invited, on September 9th, to the Glitch Bar and Cinema at 7.30pm to be amazed by a variety of poetic forms: visual poetry, sound poetry, body poetry, street poetry, ceramic poetry, number poetry, symbolist poetry, political poetry, modernist oral poetry and powerpoint. Overload will be warmed up and in […]

1 September 20091 September 2009 · Main Posts

wax poetic: kurtschenko’s ninja

Overland Overloaded

Throughout Overland’s Overload coverage, we will be calling for poetic contributions in different ways, mostly via the comments section of this website, and through specific ‘wax poetic’ blog posts. The below little emerald of a haiku came via Sydney poet Brad Frederikson on Facebook where, as unbohemian as it seems, there is a loud and hundreds-strong national poetry […]

1 September 2009 · Main Posts

haiku for jesus

Overland Overloaded

Ben Pobjie is New Matilda’s resident satirist, a jack-of-all-writing-trades and quite possibly the most side-splittingly offensive poet in Melbourne (for proof, come see his Overload events at La Mama Poetica or catch him on Friday during the Overload Poets Pub Crawl – you won’t correct me). Pobjie is a novelist, stand-up comic, journalist and poet, and for […]

1 September 20092 September 2009 · Main Posts

$5 jesus poetry, with crazy elf and his ninja

Overland Overloaded

Crazy Elf wants you to pay $5 to slam poetry about Jesus for so his ninja can throttle you…Wait, let me start that again. The Overload Poetry Festival Poetry Slam is set to be an amazing affair, with heats held across Melbourne leading to a final at Dante’s on Thursday September 10, and culminating in […]

30 August 200931 August 2009 · Main Posts

faithful poets & poetic faith

Overland Overloaded

On Tuesday August 4, Overland supported a heat of the Melbourne Believer Slam at the Spinning Room (Et’s Bar Prahran). Overland contributed free issues of the publication to heat winners and a subscription to the magazine, which went to Ezra Bix, an outstanding performer on the night and winner of last year’s Poetry Idol at the […]

30 August 200931 August 2009 · Main Posts

the kind of poet who…

Overland Overloaded

Melbourne writer Alec Patric is the first of Overland’s Overload reviewers to be introduced on this blog. Alec has published in many publications, including Going Down Swinging, Etchings and the Blue Dog Poetry Anthology, and was recently part of Overland’s Progressive Writers Masterclass. Here, Alec muses about the kind of poets you’re likely to meet at overland.org.au during Overload. Anonymous Poets The kind of […]

29 August 200931 August 2009 · Main Posts

bodacious poetry section, man!

Overland Overloaded

In the next few days, leading up to coverage of the 2009 Overload Poetry Festival, the Overland Overloaded team will be ‘chatting’ with poets, organisers and other contributors to the festival. We thought we’d start with speaking to Overland editor Jeff Sparrow about how it feels to have the Overland blog hijacked for two weeks. […]

28 August 2009 · Main Posts

no offence to all the non-poets but everybody knows…

Overland Overloaded