Performances

This page lists all of the spoken word gigs, writers festival appearances and poetry performances I can remember having been involved in from 2000 onwards. Some were carried out under the name of Davey Dreamnation, others under my real name. Several actually involved appearances from Davey Dreamnation, Clint Bo Dean and others. Only one featured the delightful Charlotte Sometimes, but I digress. I’m hoping to fill in the blanks one day.

Next Wave Festival, Melbourne (2000)

My first major performance in Melbourne, in an event at the Builders Arms curated by Angela Costi and Phil Norton, also featuring the famous-even-then Terry Jaensch as well as Kate Middleton and others. This was during my Happy Farang period, and so I arrived onstage with backpack and camera attached. A true breakthrough, from which I have not yet recovered.

National Young Writers Festival, Newcastle (2000)

\Hung-over from a lethal dose of ginger beer and skinny-dipping, what better way to make one’s NYWF debut? The performance was held at the Newcastle Art Gallery, and also featured Carlie Lazar and Samuel Wagan Watson, from memory. I think I read out some poems about art which have thankfully disappeared from my current set-list. I also took part in a panel on new Australian journals.

Boroondara Soiree, Hawthorn (2000)

The Soiree was a real sweet deal for poets: a paid gig, in a fancy room in the Hawthorn Town Hall, complete with wine – okay it’s cask wine but you won’t hear me complaining. They also provided readers with a lectern from which to preach, and this was a great thing for poets (like me) who are more comfortable reading from the page. I read with Earl Livings that night and it was a triumph.

Readings bookshop, Hawthorn (2001)

I can’t really recall this one except for the fact that yes-he’s always-been-famous Terry Jaensch organised it and it was another paid gig. Nothing against Readings, but I think the crowd at the Soiree was bigger and more interested. I think it was after this reading that I began composing my (still-unfinished) ode “Bookshops make me want to smoke crack”.

Passionate Tongues (2001?)

Yes, I’ve done the Passionate Tongues thing – a feature spot back in 2001, I think, when the monthly reading was being held at that pub on Sydney Road. Somebody? Bueller? I remember the gig for another reader who read out some appalling poems about a cat, complete with unnecessary overuse of the word “bitch”, and on and on.

Babble (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006)

Information on these performances has been placed under a lifetime embargo.

Short Fuse launch, New School University, New York City (2002)

Possibly the biggest reading I have ever been involved in – approximately one hundred (or who cares, even more) poets hitting the stage ten at a time to read poems from Short Fuse: the Global Anthology of Fusion Poetry (edited by Todd Swift and Phil Norton). Needless to say, the event was epic. Notable for dictaphone performance by Victoria Stanton. Also featuring Sean M. Whelan, Wednesday Kennedy, Tug Dumbly, Lauren Williams and Phil Norton representing Oz. Followed by traditional NYC ‘apartment’ party. Huge.

Overload Poetry Festival, Melbourne (2003)

Not strictly a performance so much as an MC performance in aid of Roo-ku, a haiku-inspired event held as part of the Overload Poetry Festival 2003. I wrote a review of the night on Cordite. My only complaint was that the haiku seemed to go on too long.

World Haiku Association Conference (Japan 2003)

Of course, that last line was a joke. Going to a haiku reading in Japan, however, is no joke. The WHA conference was held in the slightly-nuts town of Ten-ri, near Nara. It was a great and strange event. I read out the five haiku I had written before the conference, and they were helpfully translated into Japanese by the conference organisers. I wrote a full report on my experiences there, again, for Cordite.

Overload Poetry Festival, Melbourne (2004)

My collaboration with video artist Dominic Redfern was performed on the opening night of the Overload Poetry Festival in 2004. The collaboration was an interpretation of my poem “The Rise and Fall of Davey Dreamnation”, which lasted approximately fifteen minutes and involved Dom doing live video mixing while I spoke the words and interacted with the TV screens on which the images played.

Melbourne Writers Festival (2004)

Again, not so much a performance as an MCed event. As part of the Sleepers MWF program, I hosted Perfect Pitch, a night where four aspiring writers pitched their ideas to publishers in a gameshow format. It was a sell-out night and lots of laughs ensued, even though there was no winner.

Emerging Writers Festival, Melbourne (2005)

The first event involved four poets – emilie zoey baker, Michael de Valle, Kate Middleton and me – reading from chapbooks we had published. Of course, my only chapbook at that stage was still The Happy farang, and that one was published in, like, 2000. What the hell had I been doing all those years? Beats me. The second was as chair of a panel entitled “Alternative Publishers, Alternative Voices”.

World Haiku Association Conference (Bulgaria 2005)

Wherein I reprised the essential wackiness of my original WHA appearance with a rather more surreal and serious reading at the Japanese embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria. The event was notable for the fact that no one listened to the haiku readings at all. This was an ominous sign that the conference would lead to serious divisions in the WHA. Weirdest gig ever.

Celtic Club, Melbourne (2005)

The smallest audience I have ever had – one cold autumn afternoon at the Celtic Club, performing in front of one person. The event also featured a Q&A section, where I was interviewed (I think) by the delightfully funny Maurice McNamara. Do you remember that U2 song on Rattle and Hum called “Heartland”? Well, that song sums up how I feel about this gig. You figure it out.

Korean Modern Poets Association, Seoul (2005)

Oh yes, this was a weird one. I’ve written about this gig elsewhere (see this post, including photos) and while it was one of my best paid gigs ever, it’s not one I remember that fondly, due to the obscene amount of muzac used as a backing track to my poem. Still, as my only reading in Seoul, I guess it’s kind of significant. I just wish I’d met some poets under the age of sixty during my stay.

St Kilda Writers Festival (2006)

Having just returned from Seoul, this reading was my first chance to ‘unpack’ as we say in the industry. Organised by the Asialink crew, the reading featured several returning residents. I read some poems from my imaginary cities: pc bang project. Other readers included Other readers include Sophie Cunningham, Paddy O’Reilly, Andy Fuller and the wunderkind of ac-po (actors who write poems) Terry Jaensch. Annyeung haseyo!

Going Down Swinging launch, Melbourne (2006)

Ah yes, GDS. One of the coolest mags in Melbourne, if not Australasia. This performance was a special one, as it was the first time I have ever done spoken word with a band and what a band – the Renovators! A week or so prior to the performance, I went out to the band’s recording studio in a back block of the western suburbs, and was greeted by a wave of gunja smoke as I walked in, and the highly evocative sounds of blues guitar, harmonica, kick-arse drums (compulsory) and, of course, bass. We did a version of “50”, a poem that was featured in GDS #23 (the book) and, on the night, it went really well. Kind of strange to be reading from a book and trying to sound as if I was improvising but there you go. What a cool bunch of guys.

Poetry Picture Show Project, Sydney (2006)

This project was put together by Johanna Featherstone of The Red Room and involved ten poets writing specially-commissioned pieces about the relation between poetry and the moving image. A short film was then made in response to each piece and the whole thing culminated in a reading/screening at the old Darlington School in the grounds of the University of Sydney (right down near the engineering buildings). It was a full house, which was a great thing to see – as were the performances from some great poets including Felicity Plunkett, Nathan Shepherdson, Kate Lilley, js harry, John Tranter and yours truly. I read my poem “Karin revisited”, based upon the movie Can You Feel Me Dancing starring Justine Bateman as Karin. An emotional and linguistic triumph.

Boroondara Soiree, Hawthorn (2006)

My second Soiree appearance was an hilarious affair, teaming as I did with uber-zinester Adam Ford, who shocked and awed all with his great poems, including my all-time favourite, “There Was An Explosion”. I also pulled out some funny ones, old and new, as I was pretty drunk throughout and was trying to impress my newly-arrived Dutch princess. Notable for its free booze (though of poor quality, who am I to complain) and its eccentric open section, the Soiree never fails to writhe. Special guest appearance by the Jade Prince, in devastatingly mesmerising form.

La Mama, Melbourne (April 2007)

I was honoured to be invited to perform for the first time at La Mama, Melbourne’s spoken-word and theatre equivalent of the Holy Mount if ever there was one. Notable for its intimacy, the La Mama theatre is a terrific place to perform – no mikes, no curtain to hide behind, and only a limited amount of free booze but then, again, who am I to complain. I did a short set, including the world premiere of “That’s Buddha”, a piece performed using one (and later two) ambient music loop players to create a meditative and hallucinatory effect, over which the gentle though firm invocations of Buddha can be ranted. The audience response to this piece alone was worth the stress and freak-outs beforehand.

Melbourne Writers Festival 2007

You can read a write-up of the launch of my book We Will Disappear, here. I also did an interview with John Tranter.

Queensland Poetry Festival 2007

You can read a write-up of this event here.

National Young Writers Festival 2007

As is traditional at these kinds of events, I was half-tanked on ginger beer before the reading started, which seemed to take the edge off the crazy but nevertheless endearing chaos of the reading. In a room stacked with broken sofas and cushions, about thirty five to forty people crammed in to hear five people read their poetry. One didn’t show up, another read four short poems in a painfully shy way and then left, leaving three poets to fill about fifty minutes of time. Josephine Rowe, Sean Wilson and myself did our best but couldn’t do it on our own. Cue the audience who, armed with their identical notebooks, valiantly (and sometimes hilariously) demonstrated just what is so good and so bad about the phenomenon that is the open mike session, especially as there was no, like, mike. I also chaired a panel on post-paper publishing.

Passionate Tongues 2008

For my encore PT performance, I was joined by the wonderful alicia sometimes, who took us on a blistering journey through cyber can-can, starpoetry and other goofy stuff. I dunno, I just wasn’t feeling hot on the night, probably due to the distance between the stage and the audience, or else it was the thirty beers I drank before performing. In fact, I came away from this gig slightly depressed, knowing that it was probably my last proper gig in Melbourne for quite some time. Still, it could have been worse. We each got $30 from the proceeds of the raffle, which almost covered my beer costs on the night.

Oxfam Christmas Reading, London UK (2008)

Het Huis van de Poezie Utrecht, Netherlands (2009)

Festival Voix de Amerique, Montreal Canada (2009)

Salon des Mots Utrecht, Netherlands (2009)

Perdu Amsterdam, Netherlands (2010)

Final Friday, Newtown (Sydney, Australia, 2010)

Readings @ Readings (Melbourne, Australia, 2010)

Struga Poetry Evenings (Macedonia, 2011)

Södermalms Poesifestival (Stockholm, Sweden, 2011)

More information on these and future events coming soon.