Track 10: Performance Poetry

This cassette tape of Poets against the Bicentenary is a selection from live readings held in 1987 in protest against the looming Bicentenary celebrations. The tape was edited by Jeltje Fanoy – a writer who works in both Dutch and English and who has been working on themes of alienation and displacement since the mid seventies. Jeltje performs in all sorts of venues – from factories and the streets to poetry festivals – sometimes in collaboration with other artists, and often with musicians. She currently convenes poetry performances at La Mama Poetica at La Mama theatre in Carlton.

The cassette symbolises a central debate of the 1970s and 80s between performance poets and traditional poets. The ephemeral nature of performance poetry was not always translated successfully onto the printed page. With the advent of new technologies these concerns have diminished: cassette tapes, videos, CD-ROMs and the internet have all helped to alter the traditional notion of poetry as the printed word.

Jeltje's most recent poetry compilation is a CD of recordings selected from the Reconciliation Poetry evenings held at La Mama Poetica over the last five years. These events presented Indigenous and non-Indigenous poets working across the poetic spectrum and included street poets, academic writers, rock and roll performers and fans of the New Age.

These gatherings at La Mama Poetica honour the theatre's place in supporting cutting-edge poetry and they capture the essence of all La Mama performances and programs – they are politically engaged, inclusive, experimental and unpredictable – and, most importantly, they bring communities of artists, writers, activists and audiences together.