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 “Spoken in one strange word” is the motto for the annual QUEENSLAND POETRY FESTIVAL. Festival MC and former director GRAHAM NUNN shares a few words on the 2008 program with SEANNA VAN HELTEN.
Poet Graham Nunn has a long history with the Queensland Poetry Festival. He was the director of the Queensland Poetry Festival for four years before the reins were handed over this year to current director, Julie Beveridge, but Nunn continues to oversee the programming and will chair a number of the festival’s sessions.
Now in its twelfth year, the 2008 QPF will feature two very different headlining acts at the opening night celebrations, American SLAM poet Tracie Morris and Australian songbird Mia Dyson, reflecting a pivotal philosophy behind the festival’s programming. The crossover between spoken-word poetry and music is an area which Nunn is particularly keen for the festival to explore, and one of the key motivations behind his appointment as Festival Director in 2004.
“Music had never really been featured at the festival,” Nunn explains. “I’m a big believer that most people’s first interactions with poetry, apart from nursery rhymes, are really through music … [Music is] the first thing you really connect with language in a poetic way.”
At his first festival as Director, Nunn programmed songwriter and poet Steve Kilbey from The Church, and commissioned an album from Katie Noonan’s band Elixir based on the work of Australian poet Thomas Shapcott, to highlight the ways in which song writing and poetry connect. Since then, music has been a persistent muse in the festival, reflected this year in the programming of Mia Dyson.
Diversity is a key aspect of the QPF. As well as music and lyrics, Nunn emphasises the careful programming of a variety of poetic sub-genres. “We’ve looked at all the different poetic communities in Brisbane, like there’s a really strong Haiku community in Brisbane, there are the SLAM guys, there’s the Spoken Word,” lists Nunn. “We just try to capture all of that, more or less, and put things that are quite starkly contrasting in one session…. If you just walked in, after one hour, you’d think, ‘Wow I didn’t really think to see all of that in one session.’”
Nunn admits this style of all-purpose programming is not always popular with poetry purists. “We’ve copped a lot of criticism over the years for doing things like that, you know, that poetry is this academic thing and must be treated with reverence,” he says.
However, Nunn argues, a festival, by definition, is a live, public event and he argues the main aim of the QPF is for audiences to “hear great work.” He says, “I think the greatest experience is hearing someone read their work for the first time, or having read somebody’s work and then hearing them read it aloud.” He pauses, then adds: “That’s enriching for audiences, and it’s great for book sales!”
Again, Nunn emphasises the diverse interests of both poets and poetry enthusiasts. “Since 2004, we’ve called the festival ‘spoken in one strange word,’ because ‘poetry’ to me is a really strange word,” Nunn explains. “You say ‘poetry’ to people and you get really wild reactions like, ‘Poetry – I don’t understand that, I don’t want to know about that, I’m a busy guy.’ Or ‘Poetry – I know, bush verse!’ So it has all these strange meanings for different people.
“That’s our theme: to show that all of these words that are going to be spoken at this festival – and there’s going to be literally thousands of them – are all under the banner of this one strange word, poetry.”
QUEENSLAND POETRY FESTIVAL runs at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Fortitude Valley, from August 22-24. Festival and performer details and full program available at www.queenslandpoetryfestival.com
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