Yesterday I had the rare pleasure of seeing Hot Soup Girl live in poetic performance, reading some of her classic pieces, including the one about handkerchiefs. The Babble venue in Fitzroy was pretty packed for a Sunday, which was encouraging to see (though I suspect most of the attendees were part of the Visible Ink entourage).

The second reader was Mike Farrell, who managed to invoke the ghost of Robert Palmer at one point during his mammoth recital. Boy, that guy has a lot of poems up his sleeve! He told me afterwards he’d even managed to sell one copy of his book (doubtless due to his extremely generous offer of $1 off for students). Apparently Mike has also taken up weights training. I shudder at the thought of how tough this tough guy is about to become. He’s the prop forward for all occasions.

Afterwords the three of us trooped downstairs and plotted the demise of Australian literature together with Brett Dionysius, a former QLD poetry apparatchik who has seen the light and moved to Melbourne. He mentioned the new Papertiger CD (of which I am lucky to be a part) which made me envious, as I have not yet received my copy. Brett also claims to be a rugby league player. I do not.