WAVE Festival plays host to the Greek-Australian poet Luka Lesson this April, in a typically provocative performance that features the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.
In collaboration with composer Gordon Hamilton, Luka will be performing an “interrogation” of Major General Lachlan Macquarie, pulling apart the varied recounts of the infamous NSW Governor’s life and how his legacy is portrayed in modern day Australia.
Luka isn’t fazed by the challenge of entertaining an audience with a performance surrounding Macquarie, who died in 1824. The poet’s passion for his subject and his craft is ardent enough to engage the entire Powerhouse Theatre.
According to Luka, passion “is the oil in the engine for whatever it is we’re writing and trying to get out into the world… when you perform, [if] you’re passionate about what you’re performing, the crowd becomes passionate about what you’re performing.”
Luka has loved deconstructing Australian history and society since high school, when he was the only student in his Legal Studies class who believed the Stolen Generation was owed an apology from the government.
Writing politically-charged poetry and raps is the performer’s way of engaging listeners in dialogue about these social issues. “I’m getting to the point where I just want to make art that opens up conversations and that brings us to a sense of connection, not further separation.
"But before that connection can happen, some real healing needs to happen, some real conversation.”
Another project that Luka has been working on is a contemporary retelling of Homer’s 'The Odyssey', orchestrally accompanied, with video work contributed by Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore.
Fascinated by the Greek classic, the poet will apply his usual treatment, layering new lyrics over the old narrative, linking the familiar tale to modern society. “This idea that… this ancient character is so far removed from our reality, that he is just some mythological thing - it’s just wrong,” Luka says about the titular Odysseus.
“We are, as human beings, dealing with the exact same issues, talking about the exact same problems and literally travelling from one landmass across the exact same sea to find safety on a Greek island [on] such a similar journey that this mythological character had a lot of trouble traversing.”
The contemporary link here isn’t hard to make. “[Odysseus] is seen as one of the great heroes of literature and yet refugees are seen as losers or queue jumpers,” Luka says.
Connecting ideas across eras, texts and genres is where the Luka really flourishes. “Paralleling the ancient and the modern” as he negotiates the space between hip hop and poetry.
“I love to escape the modern-day world by going back into history and filling my life with things and finding some wisdom in between all that,” he says.
“Macquarie’s one of those things. Like, how can we not understand that violence is violence? How is some people's violence sanctioned while other people’s violence is called terrorism? These are big questions that we need to look at from up close and criticise and contextualise.”
