Pugilist poets

I started and left the Arvo JOb early yesterday, and braved the madness of peak hour commuting (blah!), to get home in time to attend the local Victorian heat of the Australian Poetry Slam 2011. I also wanted to meet up with people from the local writers' centre again. The Slam was a lot of fun, although not necessarily about the best poems winning so much as the best spoken-word performers. It was good to see poets of all shapes, sizes and ages, ranging from the painfully shy, whispering kind hunched over the microphone to the perennial, young-Byron types oozing confidence, waving their arms and loudly delivering highly polished acts. It's nice to know that some things never change, and that no matter how hi-tech, lazy-minded or complacent society becomes, there still exist genuine, sensitive, outraged, rebel poets to point out the beauty of life or slap us awake with their words.

But now I must go. I did much much chatting, drinking and chip eating, for poetry seems to call for that sort of thing, and my bed beckons.