WATCH Pride Poets | World Pride 2023

PRIDE POETRY

Dearborn Drummond Freyberg McKern Rosemont Grafton

creating a particular kind of experience ~ Poetry Sydney celebrates the LGBTQIA+ community with Pride Amplified as part of Sydney WorldPride 2023.

Image: Richard Wilkinson, Impossible Numbers. All rights reserved © 2023.

Presenting poets from the LGBTQIA+ community to showcase their queer literary practice and voice. Poetry that explores places and bodies from the deeply personal accounts of five Sydney based queer poets. Performed and live streamed for one-night only at Knox.live

The principles of deep interiority with no representations of being outward oriented are in belly button terms all innie and no outie. The interior is where we are. The exterior is where we go. Part of what constitutes sexuality is that which links the interior to the exterior. These complex relationships link the private to the public, the individual to society and the larger environment. It is what shapes and forms our human experience.

Tricia Dearborn is an award-winning poet, writer and editor. Her latest books of poetry are Autobiochemistry and She Reconsiders Life on the Run. Her work is widely represented in literary journals, and in anthologies including Fishing for Lightning: The spark of poetry, The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, and Contemporary Australian Poetry. She has been a guest poetry editor for literary journals including Rabbit 31: The Science Issue in 2020, and a judge for the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. She was the winner of the 2021 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize. Tricia is currently completing a new poetry collection with the support of a grant from Create NSW. She lives in Sydney with her wife, who is also a writer.

Willo Drummond is a queer poet who lives and writes on Dharug and Gundungurra land. Her poetry can be found in Cordite Poetry Review, Australian Poetry Journal, The Canberra Times, anthologies published by Australian Poetry, Hunter Writers Centre, Recent Work Press, and elsewhere. Willo has been the recipient of a Career Development Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts (2020), runner-up in the Tom Collins Poetry Prize (2021), and shortlisted for the Val Vallis Award (2022). Her work has been described by Scott-Patrick Mitchell as ‘bristl[ing] with life, yet [with] a perfected restraint that makes it yearn and reach with tender hands,’ and by Felicity Plunkett as ‘exhilarating for its balance of the visceral, the intuitive and the intellectual’. She teaches creative writing at Macquarie University and her debut collection Moon Wrasse is forthcoming with Puncher and Wattmann in March 2023.

Charles Freyberg is a Kings Cross (Sydney) poet and performer. In the 1990s he worked as an actor and director, especially with the surreal clown Victor Sheehan, his first poetic mentor. His own writing started with drag shows and performance art staged at Club Bent at the Performance Space in the late 90s and with a number of plays. He studied poetry at postgraduate level at the University of Sydney, supervised by Judith Beveridge. His poems have been published in Meanjin, Plumwood Mountain, Urban Village, Sappho and other anthologies. His two books have been published by Ginninderra Press, Dining at the Edge and the Crumbling Mansion. He performs his work widely around Sydney. He staged a one person show of the Crumbling Mansion at El Rocco Kings Cross which also toured to Newcastle. He is a founding member of the poetry and music group the Fierce Violets. He gives thanks to all the beautiful enlivening eccentrics who have inspired him.

Paris Rosemont is a poet whose poetry has been published in Verge Literary Journal, FemAsia Magazine, Red Room Poetry’s ‘Admissions’, Gems Zine and Heroines Anthology (vol.4.). Paris was longlisted for the Joyce Parkes Prize 2022 and is delighted to have won the Poetry Prize for the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing 2022. Paris combines her love for poetry and theatre into the art of performance poetry. She has been a feature poet at Rhapsody Revue and EnQueer Literary Festival 2022. She has also performed at various events, including the Australian Poetry Slam Sydney Finals and Sydney Fringe Festival 2022. Paris has been a Living Stories Competition judge, WestWords Academian and writer-in-residence, as well as a Frontier Poetry scholarship recipient. She was awarded an Arts Access Australia mentorship, WestWords/Varuna Emerging Writers’ Residency and was named runner up for the Writing NSW x Varuna Fellowship 2022.

Melodie Grafton (she/they) is a mental healthcare worker, political scientist and poet, and feeler of big feelings. Proudly from western Sydney, she is the 2020 winner of the Mount Druitt heat of the Australian Poetry Slam, representing Mount Druitt at the Sydney finals that year. They have also performed at the 2020 Mad Pride performance evening sharing their living experience of mental illness, and formerly co-ran WestSide Poetry Slam at Parramatta. Melodie’s poetry ranges various themes across her Filipino and queer identities, mental health, love and loss.

Emcee: Lou Steer

Lou Steer is a cabaret poetry diva, performing her poetry directly to people in museums, nightclubs, festivals and even graveyards. Through poetry, she explores the lives of seekers and dreamers, yearning for something precious they have lost – love, purpose and truth. She has been writing poetry and performing as a slam poet and performance poet at festivals and other venues since 2010. She convened Caravan Slam, the largest poetry slam in inner Sydney, from 2015 to 2018. Lou’s poems are widely published and anthologised.

Time:                Doors open: 7.00pm
Date:                 Wednesday, 22 February 2023
Venue:              The Knox Street Bar
Live stream: Knox.live FREE
Location: Garage, Corner Knox & Shepherd Street, Chippendale
Tickets: $25 – https://prideamplified.au/events/innie-outie/

EVENT FAQ'S

Is there going to be an open-mic?

There will be an opportunity for people attending the event to share their poetry. However, there is no registrations accepted, and if you are interested, you will need to register at the event.

How to Watch the event live?

The event can be watched online on the Knox.live website during the scheduled performance time. Link here: https://www.knox.live/

Will the recording be screening anywhere after the event?

The recording of the event will be made available at a future time on the Poetry Sydney website.

Can a venue live-screen the event?

Absolutely, and we encourage any interested venue manager to screen the event live, and share in the poetry experience. If you are interested in screening the event, please get in touch and let us know. We would love to promote your engagement and support of LGBTQIA+ poets.

Government recommended Covid health procedures are in place in the venue. The Knox Street Bar has ventilation systems installed in its main bar and performance room that exchanges the 8x hour. The minimum standard in NSW hospitals is x6 hour.

Poetry Sydney is an independent literary organisation committed to a presence for poetry in our culture.