Performance poetry punches through to the truth with its high energy and biting satire. As part of the Weather Stations project, a global initiative that places literature and storytelling at the heart of the conversations around climate change, three poets will take on the powers that be in a night of rhythm and rhyme, focusing on what it means to be an artist living in a hostile world rife with political and social injustice.
Polish Weather Stations representative Jaś Kapela takes to the stage in an incendiary event that will tackle today’s most politically charged issues, most notably climate change. Kapela is a renowned master of the form, as well as an accomplished novelist and blogger.
Joining him will be Maxine Beneba Clarke, Abe Nouk, Emilie Zoey Baker and Geoff Lemon. Maxine is one of Australia’s best known performance poets and her much anticipated short-story collection Foreign Soil, winner of the Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award, is released in May. Abe is a Sudanese refugee and the reigning Victorian champion in the Australian Poetry Slam competition. Geoff is an author, poet and editor of seminal Australian literary journal Going Down Swinging.
Featuring
Maxine Beneba Clarke
Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of the acclaimed memoir The Hate Race, the award-winning short fiction collection Foreign Soil, the poetry collections Carrying The World and How Decent Folk Behave, and many other books ...
Abe Nouk
Abraham ‘Abe’ Nouk is the founder and director at Creative Rebellion Youth.
Spoken-word poet, hip-hop fanatic, MC and an author whose craft developed from a realisation of the freedom of speech, Sudanese-born Abe was illiterate when he and his family arrived in Australia in 2004, as UN High Commission designated refugees. Since realising his illiteracy, he began reading and writing to improve his lyrical content for hip-hop music when it became apparent to him that ‘the best thing you can do for yourself is to feed your mind.’
Abe went on to become third in the Australian National Poetry Slam and self-published HUMBLE, his first collection in 2013.
Jaś Kapela
Jaś Kapela is a Polish poet, novelist, columnist and blogger. His darkly comic work is proudly left-wing, and focuses on the conflict of an individual living in a hostile society.
In 2013 Kapela participated in Live Green, a campaign for ecological lifestyles led by the Green Cross, Poland.
Kapela is the author of Stosunek seksualny nie istnieje (Sexual intercourse does not exist) and Janusz Hrystus (Janus Hrist).
Emilie Zoey Baker
Emilie Zoey Baker is an award-winning Australian poet and spoken-word performer who has toured nationally and internationally performing and writing. She was a Fellow at the State Library of Victoria, and has previously ...
Geoff Lemon
Geoff Lemon is a political satirist, sportswriter, spoken word performer, and editor of lit anthology Going Down Swinging.