DAEVID ALLEN PERFORMANCE SITE
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Storm in a Polystyrene Teacup (update) Woodford Folk Festival - Dec 2008 Woodford. Ahh Woodford. Everybody in this corner of Australia loves it without question! It is the folksy glastonbury of sub tropical cool-onialism where the well heeled Woodstock Hippies of the Sunshine Coast meet the cold ghost of cowboy conservativism. The festival stalwarts are a brollymix of weekend party people, byron babes & sunshine starlets, dumbstruck artists in paradise, the unsung heroes of Australian alternative/experimental music leavened uneasily by the uncertain applause of the profoundly culturally bewildered. Sadly for we futurist literati, the local poetry punters all look like the dumbed down demon spawn of the klu klux klan wearing jo bjelke petersen t-shirts. For these frosted redfaced queer-bashing bombastics, all art is for the farty lest it be ruled by “you beaut aussie sporting instincts”. Ever the bane of my existence, these pumpkin scones insist that all art be reduced to a bovine simplicity to appeal to the outback rellies with their red neckacheifs & pot bellies. Ahhh Queensland. Set in an idyllic inland mountain valley north of Brisbane, Woodford Festival has become its own vintage village over the years. It sits sleepily empty all year round awaiting the post xmas onslaught when thousands move in for a week to welcome the turn of the new year. And here was I as roadie for my girlfriend Stef who, as a major performer & organiser of Brisbane performance poetry, had been recommended by stalwart poetry luminary, David Hallett. Together we would attend the POET'S BREAKFAST each day at 8AM.....right!...and what kind of poets are these that breakfast in alignment with wage slaves & chooks? Stef's moments of glory would be twofold. A workshop on performance poetry and a 5PM gig in the Fuck & Duck bar. Curiously, although I was only her roadie, I had been granted a 15minute reading the following day in the same bar while she was doing her workshop elsewhere. Oh well, we were only really there for the camping.... So welcome to modern Australian Poetry my friends where the cutting edge is what you cut your finger on when you open a packet of glad wrap. Welcome and come warned that the happy hippy hype might be a typo born of stoned hopes from the upside of hypertension. Cuz that is what got me there. I have played festivals in Europe and America since the first Glastonbury festival in 1971 and somehow, festivals just don't rock my world like they once did. My last Glastonbury in 2003 felt like a refugee camp from the set of Mad Max 2. Also, I am congenitally a deeply unhappy camper and as we all know, this is un-australian! Such an unhealthy altidude may soon be punishable by law. Well despite ALL this, I actually bought a tent, packed as if for a tsunami and acted positive for the amusement of the fates in the psychological front row. We arrived at the gate in the late afternoon to face a confusing array of roped off avenues, esoteric regulations, colour codes & flustered schoolies. Australia as well as being responsible for the invention of the er... rotary clothesline is the fifth most regulated country in the world. Treat us like children and that is what we become. Or... primary schoolteachers if we are really smart. While I was navigating the negativity of one such victim of the system at the main entrance front desk, my mate... sorry boss, Stef, who was trapped in a queue for a parallel regulatory requirement was random witness to a couple of kids beside her passing the time. “See that old guy there!” says one pointing at me. “He played with Soft Machine and Gong and played with Jimmi Hendrix. And you know what? He's got a 20 year old girlfriend!” They grinned broadly and high fived. “Yeah man he's my mentor.” Stef fought back hysterical laughter AND the burning desire to say: “I'm 25 actually....” Back up at the front desk, innocent of my one minute of fame, the nubile nazi I was dealing with was refusing me a car pass to the camping area. After all I was only a poet's roadie. Ho hum. The tent I had been sold was clearly designed by a chinese milk product scientist. Or perhaps an australian dentist. Either way there were frightening gaps in the chemistry as well as the presentation. But after an energetic grapple with wind-bulging nylon, I must thank the gods of reinforced plastic for my auld pal Tone who calmly slotted two barely visible protrusions into their relevent buttholes. Glory to the people's republican I muttered. We survived the first night unwetted but were woken at the unseemly hour of 5.30 by the obsessive banging of conveniently located toilet doors & the spontaneous combustion of a gigantic turd-world generator. Be positive! I reminded meself. The POET'S BREAKFAST starts at 8am! The fuck & twaddle as I believe it was called, was the name of the location and having scoured the site map we found it just in time to be there at 8. DAY ONE. POET'S BREAKFRUITS A table of friends & familiar faces from the Byron & Nimbin poetry scene made us welcome. So there we sat with the Nimbinji spirits as the pride of the National Party's poetry flaunted its floral prints, freckles & presbytarian principles. The presenter was probably a primary school teacher. He mumbled peoples names, rambled on like yer average neighbor and told acheingly unfunny jokes. But of course he was a nice chap, a primary school teacher and therefore a born leader of men, or er boys or.... so that made it all ok. As the reading unfolded it slowly dawned on me that the poetry I was hearing from those i did not know was...er....primary school poetry. The kind that puts our kids off poetry for thirty years. So I went for some breakfast. The people serving were....maybe I am wrong but...primary scool volunteers?? So of course I was immediately chewed out for standing in the wrong queue but in any case there was only baked beans on toast and undrinkable tea. A nice country primary school breakfast. The er poet on the microphone was a nice middle class gardening woman with shiny riding boots and a firmly fixed supercilious smile. She still looked just a little put out by the demise of John Howard the deposed great white supremacist & redolent racist but she was going to do her bush poem that she was sure would win her a poetry poodle prize. I ordered several bottles of the coca cola franchised water and reached for the rescue remedy brandy. This was becoming a long hard outback breakfast and the rowdy rebel meter in my gut was beginning to peak. I was ready to do THE AVERAGE AUSTRALIAN, the prospect of which clearly worried David Hallett. So out of deference to his clearly superior grasp of the local environment I lapsed into baked bean addled trance. Stef chose my poem for me: WHEN YOU KISS ME LIKE THAT. Just as well really. It only had three very tender fucks in it. Now I think the word FUCK is one of the most versatile, powerful, meaningful, sensitive, delicate, adaptable, multi-dimensional and musically useful words in the english language! It is one MAGICK word! Wise men from the east have written whole sermons in glory of its hilarious user friendliness. Yet there are still some hungry jerk gobblin bogan zombies who only use it as an axe. Or a roadside bomb. Fuckin kill! Killfuck!! These are the REAL terrorists.Fuckin terrorists. But do these people end up in Abu Grabe or Guantanamo Bay....or.... Christmas Island? NO! They just get jobs there as screws. There is no justice my friends there is just fuck-stice. Returning to the POETS BREAKFARTS, I can tell you that my poem with the three tenderly and softly spoken fucks was actually well received. Several ex presbytarian ministers who are now primary school teachers (retired) came up to me with beady enthusiasm wanting copies. I wondered if they wanted me to kiss them. Their nice obedient wives seemed uneasy & looked at me with weary suspicion. Ahhh. Life on this green and pleasant land. Oh sorry. Brown and unpleasant sand... Stef's reading soon followed and she wowed (confused?) them with the high speed super illiteration of her piece BITTER BETTY. “That was very clever dear but a bit too complicated for me!” said a pair of jodhpurs. Stef sneezed powerfully and courageously held her tongue. DAY TWO: THE POET'S BREAKFAST. I think I'm getting it sussed. Today I rose at 7.59am and arrived fashionably late. But then I realised that I had to have a human breakfast or I would become a zombie. So I sidetracked towards smoothie town & fruit salad with chai and arrived yet later in a fine feathered mood. Today the compere was our friend and understandably somewhat guarded podmaster, David Hallett. Now David is the only person/freek in the history of Nimbin to actually show up like clockwork to organise, set up, run and compere regular readings in the north coast of NSW year after year. So he is an expert at the art of style and gender sequencing to create maximum contrast and maintain constant public interest. So this reading flowed flawlessly and carried the assemblage with it on a poetic journey fit for any palate. This time all of our readings went with the flow & we all gracefully accepted the polite applause. Five stars for professionalism. HOORAY! But Stef had met up with the woman she was sharing the running of the workshop with. This was a woman who believed there were only two types of poetry. Bush Poetry and ....Slam Poetry. And this was because poetry wasn't good poetry unless it had audience approval. Right then.... Stef was understandably depressed. She was after all Brisbane's punk equivalent to David Hallett. Tireless Brisbane poetry gig organiser, international film maker, multi media poet, punk singer, theatre director, film critic....and she had to work with a catatonic cowgirl AND a primary school teacher (retired). DAY TWO. STEF'S GLORIOUS GIG. Hot as hell we mopped our brows under floppy trees until late afternoon when we found our venue. A dusty shallow tent with a table and a scattering of chairs and the inevitable bossy pumpkin scone lady poet making sure everybody obeyed the rules and regulations. A scattering of mildly interested passers by, some refugees from the poets breakfast and <we who care> made up the audience. David Hallett led the charge with his usual topical sophistication and compositional genius followed by Stef who was simmering gently behind her glorious dress sense and canadian brogue. Her last poem, a passionate demolition of the concept of competitive poetry went entirely over the head of her fellow workshop facillitator and she eventually made a three point landing on the desert of her despair. Together we trudged back up to our two star tent to contemplate the morrow. Thank the Goddess for Marijuananana! DAY THREE. THE POETS BREAKFAST. This day I was very late. The MC was the dreaded jodhpurs woman and she had slotted in the most rambling, meaningless bunch of xmas card rhymsters and george bush poets and herded we altered natives into the last limited timeslots. Gina Lakosta was ommitted as were several other luminaries of our clan while we listened to endless dim witted stories about why the poem i am going to read in a minute was actually written if you know what i mean ha ha ha. It was a relief to get out of there. The day was yet longer and hotter because i had stayed up late hangin with my muso pals and even caught some fun aussie hip hop in the late night. Late morning I visited the SLAM POETRY venue where tis rumoured that the ghostboy appears suddenly above the ouja rastafari board and here I saw what passes for SLAM. Well, it could have been on channel seven TV billed as poetry idol. The loud spruiker revving up the cattle to a solid moo. And onstage, the dreaded jodhpurs were present deigning coyly to attempt a bit of “rap”. Naughty naughty. The audience obediently clapped along with her but she had no notion of pulse and fell embarrassingly off the beat. “Oh well. I can be forgiven because I'm sixty two.” she demurred. “Alas!” I replied. “This is cultural suicide my dear.” Anywise it all ended happily and everyone had a nice big emotional release. In the fullness of time, the ripe competitive zeal that drives our famed Nimbin slamdunk superhero Archie won the day for the seriously professional err modernisers and justice was restored by the supernatural intervention of the very loud voice. Much later, somewhat the verse for where, I abandoned Stef to her Workshop which was somewhere over there, and repaired to to the hot and barren superwaste which was the Fuck & Tackle Bar aka the venue for my big poetry gig. On this day our audience began with Elliet Mackrell from Kangaroo Moon, two lovely pommie gongfreaks who come bearing photos of me playing <back in the day>, an eighteen year old budding guitarist with two (possibly misguidedly) starstruck teenage girlfriends, enthusiastic for my autograph, the parents of a friend, three slightly bewildered onlookers and a dog. I seemed to be communicating with the jodhpurs for the first time. After all... we were in this together. It was “Desert Island Disks! She said: “You go on first. How about a 15 minute set?” Right sez my head so I began with “Poets of the Mountains”. In reality we were facing the sonic headwind of two different bands coming at us from different directions across a pond. I tuned my tonsils to psychic megaphone mode and began. This first poem was a five minute piece without a single fuck but the jodhpurs kept materializing on the rather shapely legs of the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz. She would swoop at me menacingly, hissing “No rude words- there are children present!” I scan for children. The youthful guitarist is a child? Take an asprin deary! From nowhere, a tiny magnificently crazy elder poet named Shirley Friend threw herself at me like a fox terrier on perrier shouting: “Thats all for now! Thank you very much Daevid!” She grabbed at the mike but I was riding on the wind and flying. “You want to read...?” I asked her just in case she did. She had another grab at the mystical penis power of the microphone. “You've been reading too long. You have to stop now!” “Alas,” I replied, “this is cultural censorship I fear.” So I span from her clutches, hawked my honker and continued with: WHEN YOU KISS ME LIKE THAT. At the end of this one they were both at my throat. “You have to stop. You're using rude words!” “Rude words? You call that using rude words? THIS is rude words!” My next poem will be: About half way through the fuck poem they cut off my microphone. I dropped the microphone affectionately to the floor and upped my vocal power to the max while advancing on my small but perfectly formed audience to retain audibility. They were obviously enjoying themselves in acute contrast to the outraged country ladies behind me who were now unwittingly discussing live over the PA whether to call the security or the police. Instinctively I ploughed my wickid furrow, right to the end of the fuck poem which was joyfully received to enthusiastic applause....especially from the dog. My 15 minutes of glory was now up....but.... Well it seemed like a good idea at the time so I followed the fuck poem with...... "The SORRY
poem" So with those soulful moments of truth, lies and muffled orgasmic cries in the literary darkness of Woodford Fuck Festival, I moved gently in the direction of the nearest alternative bar, wondering what surreal fate had befallen Stef in her poetry workshop over there somewhere.
Epilogue I stumbled out of my workshop, sick with heatstroke. 2 vomits on the way to Daevid’s gig later, I managed to find the “Duck n Whatever Inn” where it was all going on. A retired primary school teacher approached me as I was looking for Daevid. “There’s been an incident.” He told me nervously. “Oh right, who’d he fight this time?” I asked, looking around for bruised hecklers . “No-one! He didn’t fight. They kicked him off stage. He’s not here anymore. He left.” “Really? Is that all? How come?” “Talk to Shirley Friend over there.” Ah yes. Shirley Friend. The elderly organizer who green-lighted our passage into Woodford but was only ever very impressed with those who rhyme incessantly about livestock. All throughout the festival, anyone who introduced her pre-ambled with a bit of a Woodford in-joke. “She’s your friend, she’s my friend, she’s everyone’s friend—Shirley Friend!” By the 3rd time we had heard it and seen her squinting at our table full of freaks, it had become amongst our people, “She’s your friend, but she’s certainly not our friend, Shirley Friend”. I waited through more homage to cattle and eventually the reading finished. I approach The Friendster. She is rather unfriendly and upset. She started telling me about how Daevid had gone over his time and he was just using foul language and he was a very bad man and how nobody in the audience liked him. Then I saw his sheaf of HIS poems in HER bag. “Uh, did he give those to you? Are those yours?” “No! I took them off him and I’m thinking about handing them over to the police!” I first restrained the urge to laugh, and then decided to take the poems back. “How about you just give them to me if they’re not yours. I’ll get them back to him.” And they were gone from the big green Coles bag and in my hands. Then, very respectfully I mentioned that she, as a promoter, had failed to ensure that all the performers were aware of any content or language restrictions BEFORE them going on stage and that was part of HER job (her response, "People should just KNOW, think of the children"). Then we talked about how frustrating it was when we do acts like this that are experimental and we have no support from those who booked us, knowing full well from our portfolio and bio that we are experimental performers... she said that "no one would enjoy that kind of poetry and that the audience wasn't into it at all and he just kept using foul language..." I said to her that if he felt he was being censored, of course he would have kept going. Doing that is like waving a little red flag to a bull! She said: "We weren't censoring him; we just said that he couldn't say that!" She was completely exasperated and I was completely bewildered and trying not to lose my temper and attempting to be sympathetic to her genuine upset. Unfortunately that one statement sums up our main problem with performing in conservative places. They don’t read within their own genre let alone outside of it. It’s not poetry if you don’t have a degree. It’s not poetry if it’s not funny. It’s not poetry unless it wins something. It’s not poetry if one audience doesn’t get it. Small minds for small worlds. That particular poem is part of a duel act that we often do together and a cover of an idea by an American musician named Martin Atkins. We have done it overseas with a great response. The Friendster said, “Surely nobody likes this kind of behavior”. I told her that this kind of behavior and Daevid had sold out the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London 3 months prior to her festival. Then she said that even though my work didn't offend her like Daevid's did that it was too strong for the festival and we would never again be allowed to play there. I told her that we were leaving immediately and that we respectfully disagreed with her and that was where the argument ended. By the time I made it back to camp and found Daevid, he had already packed up the tent. We didn’t even need to discuss it. We were outta there. Fuck Woodford.
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