Oh Hai world! I was in The Age
talking about how poetry should be on TV, and ya'know what? It just may be...
Rhyme time Michael Short June 13, 2011 Comments 37
There is much to be gained by having poetry competitions on television. Photo: Justin McManus [WHO] Emilie Zoey Baker, poet and international slam champ [WHAT] Australia neglects poetry, depriving young people of a powerful outlet [HOW] Launch performance poetry competitions on prime time TV
Forget MasterChef, Emilie Zoey Baker says there is much to be gained by having poetry competitions on television.
POETRY can be one of the simplest, most malleable forms of writing. It is accessible art, for composer and consumer alike. It is a ready, rollicking outlet for many of the emotions and ideas and feelings that flay us or fling us into joyful trajectories.
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Emilie Zoey Baker. Photo: Justin McManus There can be rules, if you want, or none, should you prefer. The form presents no barriers to writers, readers and listeners; there is no monster at the gate to the poetic universe.
Poetry is painting with words. The palette is a possibility picnic laden with images, metaphors, screams, sighs, verbs, nouns, adjectival strings, intimation, exclamation, exasperation, delight. Words unshackled, words unleashed in pursuit of perfection.
All it takes to get started is desire - or encouragement. We lack not the means to create a little time and space in which to create; that, after all, is what our schools do so well. And it is young people who stand, perhaps, to gain the most from a few facilitated encounters with poetry.
Teenage years can deliver wonderful times, but they can also be littered with trauma, confusion, trial, turbulence, emotional volatility, dilemmas. Expressing such things is a way to help understand them, to instil resilience, to negotiate the route to maturity, to promote awareness of self and others and the resonances of life.
So it seems curious that such a potentially powerful partner in cosmic comprehension is not made more available, particularly to young people. Some teachers have a passion for poetry and an ability to inspire interest, and the pupils of such educators are lucky. But most of our students, primary and secondary, generally do not get much exposure to this timeless form of literature. They are not being led to write poetry.
Perhaps this is because poetry in its classical form can seem difficult and daunting, a little turgid and opaque, foreign and irrelevant. Certainly, traditional publishers find it devilishly difficult to profit from poetry books.
But it doesn't have to be this way. We might just be thinking about poetry too narrowly. The classroom is but one arena in which poetic exploration could be happening more. Another is mainstream media.
One of Australia's most active and successful poets is Emilie Zoey Baker. ''Poetry is a great stage for your voice. It's a vehicle for what young people need to say. Poetry is a fantastic way of saying it. You can really experiment with language. You can draw from yourself. You can draw from outside of yourself. You can express yourself using poetry.''
Poetry can be presented on the page and on the stage and Baker does both. She was a star act at the Emerging Writers Festival, which has just ended in Melbourne.
She is an international champion of slam, a form of spoken-word performance and competition. Slam started in Chicago more than a quarter of a century ago and is huge in the United States, Britain and Europe, stuffing venues with raucous, celebratory gatherings.
But it is almost unheard of here; there is a thriving underground slam movement, but in mainstream media it is all but mute.
Here's how slam works: 10 poets are invited to present a piece. There are generally just a bare stage and a microphone - no props permitted. Members of the audience are selected to be judges. Each recital is scored.
''It's just them and their voice. And the audience, the random judges, give them a score out of 10. It's immediate. It's live. It's raw. There is booing. There is cheering. There is jeering. And at the end the poet with the highest score is the winner.''
At the end of the 2010 International Slam Review, part of the Berlin International Literature Festival, Baker had the highest score. She is also a former winner of the Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup. She is a slam champion from festivals the world over, performing in the past two years in Paris, London, Singapore, Bali, Montreal, New York, Chicago and elsewhere.
Emilie Zoey Baker has a slightly subversive idea to help move poetry from the cultural shadows into the glare enjoyed by, for example, cooking or dancing or gardening.
Her idea is to get slam onto prime-time television. Australian television audiences evidently relish competitions and reality settings. Think of the culinary combat of MasterChef, the excruciating encounters of So You Think You Can Dance and The Biggest Loser, the voyeuristic inanity of Big Brother, the serendipity and cruelty of Australia's Got Talent.
''I would love it to be on prime-time television. It is such a fantastic way to get it into people's lounge rooms. Imagine having your soul unravelled like a ribbon at 7.30 on Thursday night, rather than learning the contents of Matt Preston's stomach. Imagine young people's voices, having that explode into people's lounge rooms. That would be magnificent.
''Let's have something real, not just something you can sink your teeth into, but something you can rip a bite out of. Poetry has the ability to cut through the bullshit, like soapsuds on oil. I want to be challenged, touched, moved, shaped and changed.
''How about a talent show where it is about original ideas and new, fresh voices, not just reciting the lyrics of dull pop songs for douche muffins like Kyle Sandilands? Let's make art. Let's explode our hearts at 7.30pm on a Thursday evening, take risks, wake up and shake this reality TV black hole.''
Maybe it would work. It would not be an expensive experiment - film a gig at a venue. Comedy festivals do it all the time. SBS created a wonderful hit with a similar format, the spoken and sung live-performance-based RocKwiz. The Melbourne Writers festival is doing its bit by holding a Poetry Idol event.
Baker would like to see at 7.30pm a show called something like So You Think You're a Poet, or MasterPoet.
Poet and Age poetry editor Gig Ryan fully agrees that poetry needs to have a bigger place in our world. She feels the education system is to blame. ''It is shocking it is not taught more in schools,'' she says.
Baker is trying to fix this, too. As national education officer at Australian Poetry and co-ordinator of Out Loud, Victoria's first teen team slam event, she goes into schools. She goes alone, or she takes a troupe with her, the Superpoets (see link below). At first, she often meets resistance, but not for long. Once the young people start experimenting - often by having to turn a cliche into something with considered meaning - they can become enthusiastic and more.
''They were almost angry that they didn't know this existed at all, all this potential to express themselves, but they didn't have it.''
The thing is to just get started. Explore online (see links below.) Write down some thoughts and feelings. Dictate them into a smartphone. Poetry is not a rule-bound, forbidding morass. Are not song lyrics poetry? Is not rap? What about graffiti?
Baker cites as poetry a sign photographed in a paddock that, for some marvellous reason, was strewn with tyres cut in half and planted into the soil. The sign read ''Used Rainbows''.
So, what is poetry? You might want to generate your own definition. Perhaps in free verse. This is what Baker reckons it feels like:
Poetry has the power to shift the way you see the world with a single line.
To twist what you know, mince what you believe in a couple of stanzas.
It uses words like paint, making pictures you can swallow, art you can eat.
It's music, literature, theatre, sculpture, all in a single bite.
It's the things you really want to say, and it's making words into shapes, making donkeys into dolphins, parking inspectors into princes, stones into castles.
It's what you are really saying, the pointed point, the underscore.
It's like life's hashtag.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nof3I—4u3dk
http://australianpoetry.org/superpoets
http://myspace.com/emiliezoeybaker
http://australianpoetryslam.com
http://cordite.org.au
http://australianpoetry.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry—slam
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/rhyme-time-20110612-1fz31.html#ixzz1POR614qt