This was going to be a short post about my experience of YouAreHere 14-24 March 2013.

YouAreHere versus the Australian Public Service

YouAreHere 2013 has ended, and for me closes with leaving the Australian Public Service. This presents simultaneous emotions, tensions, and options.

Me at Woodford Folk Festival in 2008/09 by Asher Floyd

The Public Service has been at once liberator, providing steady income; and safety net, providing a reason to not push in certain directions. It has also given some unbelievable highs, interesting situations, invaluable experiences and personal interactions, but the law of diminishing returns has kicked in.

Joel Barcham and me
at Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! on 20 March 2013
by Adam Thomas for YouAreHere

And while I have left the office and will not be back it is still providing a limited lifeline allowing me to traverse tracts of the United States via train, explore parts of the United Kingdom, and hike across the north of Spain, perform poetry, and then finally resign.

Me, Joel and Bela Farkas
at Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! on 20 March 2013
by Adam Thomas for YouAreHere

Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! versus YouAreHere

Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! feels like it has ended for me, and ended on the most massive high; one that I could not have planned or imagined.

Things started strong in the Phoenix with Kabo performing The Night They Set Canberra on Fire to an audience that was intensely honest and vocal in appreciation of a poem first performed at Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! in 2011.

Raphael Kabo
at Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! on 20 March 2013
by Adam Thomas for YouAreHere

Hadley returned to take us through a beautifully comforting set of poems. 

Hadley returns to Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit!
on 20 March 2013 #1
by Adam Thomas for YouAreHere

That had all three of my favourite Hadley poems, including rickety planes and flying-goggles, cabbage wings, orbiting love, and free range. And Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! yawped in approval.

Hadley returns to Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit!
on 20 March 2013 #2
by Adam Thomas for YouAreHere

Amelia performed feature poems combining writing and performance that Catullus would have explained using salt but cannot be satisfactorily translated by me into English, particularly Parentheses.    

Amelia Filmer-Sankey
at Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! on 20 March 2013
by Adam Thomas for YouAreHere

The crowd went everywhere they wanted to go. Including with mystery act Fuzzsucker who clearly split the audience for or against (and what is the point if a poetry slam if it isn’t forcing a decision from someone). The audience demonstrated this division in the most frankly loving way, with an unplugging of Fuzzsucker leading to a feature set dance party with the band.

Fuzzsucker at Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! on 20 March 2013
by Adam Thomas for YouAreHere

And because nothing is perfect there was the absence of one of those people who made BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT! what it is, Amanda Coghlan, but to me that BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT! can continue first with Hadley absent, and with Amanda absent, well then I expect Joel and Adam will know next month what they need to do and everyone will remind them of what they forget – POETRY SLAM! – and it will continue without me.

The Australian Broadcasting Commission and Joel
at Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! on 20 March 2013
by Adam Thomas for YouAreHere

YouAreHere versus The Tragic Troubadours

The Tragic Troubadours held a workshop for everyone in the middle food court of the Canberra Centre, a place that has produced many of our poems. Some people turned up.

The Tragic Troubadours at the middle food court
of the Canberra Centre on 14 March 2013
by Adam Thomas for YouAreHere

I am particularly stoked that Adam Thomas’ photo of this event ended up as the cover photo to YouAreHere’s facebook page during the festival

The Troubadours then went into the bus interchange for a full week to perform poems, with veterans Skip and Bela beside new recruits Florny and Arrin. And I think the variety and the passion of the performers meant we met the warmest of receptions and reactions that exceeded anything I could have hoped for from people waiting for buses, especially on the rainy days.

Interchange poetry - Tragic Troubadours

from YouAreHere On Vimeo. 

Page versus Stage versus YouAreHere

I ran Page vs Stage with Paul Magee and Tim Kent, and was invaluably helped by Joel Barcham. Page vs Stage was an experiment and became, despite my best efforts, a sincere exploration of the creativity of both the Sydney-based Tim Kent who was exceptional and honest, and Paul Magee whose enthusiasm and joy for poetry and performing and listening to it totally contradicts the cliché that someone in a university may try to own poetry in some white tower somewhere.

Page vs Stage: The You Are Here Combat Edition

from You Are Here On Vimeo.

YouAreHere versus the writer-in-residence

Thanks to David Finnigan I got to be the YouAreHere writer-in-residence and write about the creativity of people, including a script-writer, a punk rock cook in two parts – I and II, an experimental musician, two zine makers who are zine fair organisers, a CSIRO scientist, and a few musicians over breakfast — but with so many options missed I still feel chances went wasted.

Doubting Thomas
at Australia 2050 on 17 March 2013
by Adam Thomas for YouAreHere

And really, Festival Breakfast, you should have tried to make at least one of those. They were the best opportunities the festival offers for anyone to daily access all levels of YouAreHere, from the art it creates, to the artists making it, to the festival curators and producers putting it all together.

YouAreHere versus The End

Throughout all that I have made connections, missed others, was quite often confused, fell in and out of love, broke hearts, had mine broken, changed sex to rent submarines (green ones) and managed to yell and be a dinosaur gangster on the streets of the Canberra. I am pretty sure all that happened.

Toward finally; one thing I learned from listening to Tim Kent and Paul Magee was that the multiplicity of voice in art, the making of sense from voices in other peoples’ art, the presenting of art to others, in whatever form, and being ecstatic when someone else finds something there, whatever voice it is they find, is the driver for some other people and one I share.

And finally, whoever you are reading this; if you have got this far I would probably fall for you if we hung out. Or I already have.

Me, Arrin Chapman, Bela Farkas
and a person waiting for a bus
with The Tragic Troubadours
at Civic Bus Interchange on 21 March 2013
by Sarah Walker for YouAreHere

Andrew Galan — YouAreHere 2013 writer-in-residence

All photos by the YouAreHere 2013 Festival Photographers Sarah Walker or Adam Thomas; check out all the photos at YouAreHere Canberra’s Photostream. All videos by YouAreHere 2013 Festival Film-maker’s Erica Hull and Shane Parsons; check out all the videos at the YouAreHere Canberra Vimeo page.

Franked excogitate

Paul Summerfield and I have been working for months and months on our new joint zine.

The extended period of production has been the result of a combination of him becoming a father and running his own business, and my day-job plus other writing and performing projects, including BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT!, YouAreHere, and The Tragic Troubadours.

This is the cover of the zine. All art is by Paul Summerfield, all words are by me.

Cover art for Franked excogitate

We are taking it to the Canberra Zine Emporium on Saturday 23 March in Rabaul Lane, Canberra.

Our last zine was called Franked; we will have copies of that too.

Mall Stories 2013

Julian Fleetwood has put together Mall Stories as part of YouAreHere for two years.

Mall Stories is a walking tour composed of words by writers from around the world and centres on the Mall experience. The first tour, Mall Stories 2012, took place within the Canberra Centre.

This year the collection has extended into a tour around Canberra’s civic centre, mostly outdoors, while continuing the exploration of the growing mall named the Canberra Centre.

I am stoked to be alongside writers and artists such as Monica Caroll, Pascalle Burton, Daniel Ferri, Art Rush and Marcus Westbury, as well as a bunch of others from Canberra and the wider world.

You can download Mall Stories 2013 and Mall Stories 2012.

Day Two - YouAreHere writer-in-residence

It is only the end of day two, but already I have heard Matty Ellis and Waterford sing from a Mixtape, and witnessed lots of quite good questions get finished by a man in a bathtub who was wearing undies. Who wears undies in the bath? “I do.” would likely have been the answer, maybe with some pointing and an eyebrow. It was good, I wish my friend Bela Farkas had seen it.

Photo from YouAreHere, I felt I could steal this 'cause I'm the writer-in-residence and I hope they don't mind. Imagine that guy is Bela Farkas watching a man in his undies in a bathtub.

I heard more from Chiara Grassia and Nat Clark about their upcoming Canberra Zine Emporium (CZE) when I went to the YouAreHere Festival Breakfast. You can read something about CZE by following this link. You should go to the Emporium, you will not only find zines you may hear music like this.

Giz Medium will be teaming up with Bridget to become VÉLOCIRAPTOR (the accent is important) at the Canberra Zine Emporium.*

As a result of the YouAreHere Festival Breakfast I have been investigating Zine Bands. The breakfasts are almost every day of the festival, you may go to one then decide to investigate something.

I also heard from Lindsay Lohan in her space prison ship, I have never seen a Lindsay Lohan movie, not even the Herbie Remake, and I love Herbie movies, and I liked the poster. But not this YouTube clip, which may explain why I did not see the movie.

I don’t know why Lindsay Lohan is in prison. But I am glad I saw this with Doubting Thomas.

Finnigan had the words “Destroy A Child” painted on his chest, I’m not going to explain any of it, wait for the video. I am glad I saw this with Doubting Thomas, I wish Bela had seen it.

There was more, and there are things coming up. Tomorrow morning you can crush opponents in poker while eating their pancakes, or just pile their pancakes up around you as you win hand after hand after hand after hand of poker. You can also roll about in the piles of pancakes you win. The event is called Pancakes and Poker. You play for pancakes in the Pancake Parlour.

And Mall Stories 2013 will be released, download that when you can.

And Sunday is Australia 2050; you should go to the event and tell the CSIRO what you think about the now and the future, read a bit about that here.

* This may be to do with Secret Gig II. I may have out investigative journalised the people running that gig.

The Poetry Slam

BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT! JOINS FORCES WITH YOU ARE HERE FOR THE MYSTERIOUS POETRY SLAM!

(Seemingly there is no reason for these extraordinary intergalactical upsets)

And by mysterious we mean that we know there will be poetry! Your poetry!

Because we give you a stage, two minutes, war rocket Ajax, one MC, a large egg football, a stage, Dr. Hans Zarkov, another egg football, no wait! Two MCS, Dale Arden (My God, we're moving!) an audience, Prince Vultan, The Score Adder, The Sound Guy, a third egg football, General Klytus (What plaything can you offer me today?) The Master of Conflict, Prince Thun— it’s too late for him —judges…five judges, a Lieutenant of Ming's Air Force, a fourth egg football, and prizes, plus General Kala (Charge the lightning field) prizes, and more prizes, and Prince Barin and Princess Aura (Drop this into his glass tonight) and the soldiers that make piggie noises when they get stabbed to death by hair pins and a red singlet with a gold lightning bolt, and

All so you can save the Universe, A-AH, you’ll save every one of us

(This morning's unprecedented solar eclipse is no cause for alarm)

And when BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT! says mystery and YouAreHere it means MYSTERY AND YOUAREHERE

Because this month YouAreHere are providing two feature acts and we don’t know what they are…oh the mystery…

(General Kala, Hadley Memorial Slots approaching.)

But that isn’t all

(What do you mean Hadley Memorial Slots approaching? Open fire! All weapons! Dispatch war rocket Ajax to bring back Hadley Memorial Slots body)

Because amongst all that mystery BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT! continues its tradition of being the first last father mother stepdad stepmother distant close and third uncle aunt of Canberra poetry by filling the Hadley Memorial Slots.

This month with Amelia Filmer-Sankey!...Oh..Oh........Oh..Oh ................

(Hadley Memorial Slots, Hadley Memorial Slots, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!)

And remember, no props, no music, your original words, your original words we want them and maybe movements, two minutes, the Phoenix Pub, for prizes, 730pm sign-up.

Did I forget anything?

(The inhabitants refer to it as the planet…earth)