In the words of beloved WA poet and winner of the 2023 XYZ Prize for Excellence in Spoken Word Scott-Patrick Mitchell, “Story/Verse: it's like the multiverse with less lycra, and all your superheroes are poets.”
Possibly not the vibe Queensland Poetry was looking for when choosing this year's festival theme, but accurate nonetheless.
This is not the festival for idle bookselling chatter so much as a festival out to change minds, hearts, and lives: a tall order for a small literary festival and yet one it’s impossible not to see as ultimately achievable in the hands of the Queensland Poetry team.
After all, if Queensland Poetry Festival (QPF) has a superpower, it's building community. As an event, QPF is infinitely less interested in promoting the big names, and far more invested in seeking out complex conversations and easily overlooked voices – including collaboration with festival favourites Brotherhood Of The Wordless, a collective of non-verbal poets with a habit of decimating expectations around storytelling.
This year’s focus was on the power of stories, and Huda The Goddess (who you might remember from last year's Red Room Poetry event) proved her freestyle mastery when challenged to respond immediately to audience prompts. Watching her craft an emotive, ephemeral work from the prompt 'goose' was a masterclass in storytelling all on its own.
Though fleeting, one of my favourite festival moments was the triumphant return of former QPF Director Anne-Marie Te Whiu. Rather than organising the festivities, Anne performed a set that left an entire room of poetry fans in awed silence – a rare event given how loudly we tend to celebrate each other’s work. Add in Shastra Deo’s hilariously poignant fan fiction poem, an intersection of Tom Hardy’s 'Venom' and 'Mad Max: Fury Road' (the poem can be found in her latest collection 'The Exclusion Zone') and QPF became the absolute best kind of chaotic.
QPF is poetry without the poshness, a place to celebrate the varied ways people make magic with language, and this year included multiple collaborative creative projects, including a zine that will be available in the near future. Though the festival is over, there looks to be plenty of upcoming opportunities to explore the works created during the event.
Truthfully, the only nitpicking issue was an ongoing lack of availability of books to buy, with the SLQ store (the only purchase point for the majority of the festival) oddly resistant to let people actually buy books. Weird availability was also a minor issue at last year’s Brisbane Writers Festival (BWF), so if you’re desperate to get particular books signed next month, consider purchasing them before you attend BWF.
Though QPF will be back in 2024, that's a long time to wait for more poetry. Queensland Poetry runs workshops and events throughout the year, including their free, monthly reading sessions at Brisbane Square Library.
