Wordplay #29
September 10, 2009
Zoë Barron, The Bedroom Philosopher, Tom Joyce, The Tongue
This was another corker. Put on as part of Overload Poetry Festival, we had their help to whip us up another bumper crowd, and to bring Elefant Traks MC The Tongue down from Sydney for the gig. The crowd were amped and the talent lived up to their expectations. Zoë Barron impressed in what would have been a rather daunting Wordplay debut, then The Bedroom Philosopher had a slew of material from his award-winning Songs From the 86 Tram show. (It’s since been released as a CD, so you should chase that up.) After the break, Tom Joyce gave us one of those really special moments: a series of poems all run together into a kind of whispered monologue; all delivered from memory; the man wandering from punter to punter like he was searching for someone; sometimes abandoning the microphone and later reclaiming it; his voice so hushed that it demanded the attention of everyone in the room. The sound of 120 people in complete silence is loud indeed, and he had every person locked onto him throughout. You can hear the exhalation of breath when he’s done. And to round it off, The Tongue delivered a blistering acapella set with complete confidence, making us extra glad we’d gone to the effort of getting him to Melbourne. “Got more Os than Wooloomooloo.” Gold.
Geoff Lemon
Fifty in Five (Hilltop Hoods cover)
Zoë Barron
The Mining Boom That Ate Fremantle Town
No Sirens
In Transit
Alex’s Poem
The Bedroom Philosopher
Swan Song
We Are Tramily
Irish Girl
A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.P.H.O.M.A.N.I.A.C.
I’m So Over Girls
In My Day (Nan)
New Media
Geoff Lemon
The President of Your Imagination
Tom Joyce
With You for a While
He Is Here Now
Thirst
Good Morning Father
Chicago Saxophone
5th of June 2006
Poem for Ted Lord
The Tongue
Australian Gangsta
Sydney
The King Is Dead
The Ten Rap Commandments
Chemical Romance
Somebody’s Trying To Kill Me
Things I Didn’t Know
[...] first thing I can think of is how eerily the scene is like Zoe Barron’s poem ‘No Sirens’ (listen to it here and see what I mean). The passengers becoming viewers of the drama. But here we have the double [...]