As you might expect with an eclectic compilation like this one, there is a large element of serendipity. While it is easy to find your way around, with so much work available to peruse, it isn't difficult to get lost, following a thread towards someplace entirely unforeseen. The work is broken into sections which focus on words, art, noise and multimedia. The words section presents a series of poem titles scattered helter skelter and multicoloured across the screen. Pick one and the full text of the poem appears.
If you desire music or a variety of sound effects with your poetry, you can click on a list of musical/sound options - some of which have their own lyrics which can be jarring in combination with the words you want to read, although you can also choose how loud you want the music. The poems in this section tend to focus on topical issues such as September 11th, the Gulf War, John Howard himself, and Australian immigration policies. While much of this work is heady, as is sometimes the case with political poetry, the politics and, at its worst, religious propaganda, does sometimes interfere with the integrity of the poetry itself:
now, indeed, Yahweh, who on Mount Sinai
gave Moses, for the Hebrews, the Ten Commandments
including "Thou shalt not kill--or steal
or covet that which is thy neighbours".("Which God Does Israel Now Serve")
An exception is Lidija Cvetkovic's "Rose of Jericho", which doesn't lose sight of either its political message or the pain of war, but uses powerful imagery, metaphor and juxtaposition to create a moving piece on humanity and love in a time of terror:
What if nothing were transitory
what if there were no single moment
what if a curse recurred
at that pitch of fragility and violence?
As with the word section, the art section can be viewed in silence, or with a variety of musical accompaniaments. Some of these pieces are little more than a single statement of graffiti such as Anthony Bennett's "25 Words or Less", which consists of a black and white spray painted "say nothing", while others are much more complex, such as the clever montage of Shawna A Smart's "Time Crises". Many of these pieces are stills from the multimedia section, such as Scart's "Branded Child", which also forms part of his film on consumerism, "Slideshow."
The noise section is the strongest part of the CD, and features a range of straight text poems read aloud by their creators, set to music, spoken, whispered, and even muttered, along with still graphics. Without exception, the readings are dramatically rendered, with oratory skill that directs the reader's attention, lending immediacy to the poetry. Some of those which stand out are Max Ryan's "Four Years Old". This piece, which unfortunately doesn't provide text, combines the voice of a four year old, read with perfect enthusiasm, with Cleis Pearce's exquisite and intense violin track. The overall effect is one which draws the listener in immediately. Bee Perusco's "The Compassion of Soldiers", is a reading which uses music and imagery to change the nature of the text. The combination of music, court jester art, and Perusco's half smiling voice turn this dark poem which focuses on the last moments of a captured soldier to an ironic comment on the phoney compassion of the media:
FOUR PAIRS OF EYES
DROPPED THEIR SAD SMILES
THE GIFT OF WATER,
AN ILLUSION, MEDIA SPORT
ALL THE MAN HAD REALLY
BEEN AWARE OF WAS
THE GUN, PRESSED HARD
INTO THE BACK OF HIS HEAD
Alicia Sometimes's "Here it Goes Again," is almost more of a pop song (think Romeo Void), where the poetry is so well alliterated it becomes a song, sung in a sensuous duet between Sometimes and Nat Bates, who sounds rather like Nick Cave. In most instances, in this section, the voices combine with evocative, moody music to form a strong auditory experience. There's definitely a rock clip feel to most of these pieces, and I suspect that the appeal will be wide enough to encompass the very young with short attention spans. To a certain extent, that is a shame, since much of the poetry is good enough to encourage re-reading, and a slower unfolding, such as Liz Hall-Downs's "The Schizophrenic at the Fundraiser:"
they are outside respectability, struggling to be heard
in the middle of a city that they fringe, on the wings of a society
that claims to love but cannot hear them. i encourage them to go inside,
to stellazine shuffle to the man with the wine, to take at face value
the helpers' vernacular. the sons and daughters of madness ...
Not only is this a powerful comment on the relationship between those that raise funds and those that need them, but also a beautiful piece which goes inside the pain of a person on the outside of the party, in both a literal sense, and metaphorically, as life. The format though, encourages moving on, clicking to the next experience in search of something prettier, more instant and more visual.
The multimedia section isn't all that different in many instance from the noise one, at least those like Airom Bleicher's "Rise Up Singing", which make heavy use of visuals, however, in these pieces, there does seem to be a greater degree of reliance on visual motion than in other areas. Balls bounce around, and there are video clips which show live performances - in some cases, warts and all. As is often the case with multimedia, there are times when visual effects or experimentation take precedence over the quality of the poetry.
Stephanie Petrik's "Do Whatever You Want", is cute enough to watch, and professionally rendered, but the series of contradictory statements don't really add up to anything other than perhaps an oblique comment on the way governments pretend to give you freedom but take it back through laws (that's a big stretch though). Sev's "dadada" is also pretty meaningless, as the title would suggest, without even pretty music to get us through it. Others, like Gerald Keany's "City Observation", are more comedy routine than poetry, where he reads a poem with a banana in his mouth and ends by slipping on the peel. Keany's "Poem to Myself", is also a series of "blah, blah, blah's" with Walt Whitman thrown in for reference, read into a tube from his mouth to his ear.
Dave Cornell's "McDonalds" is little more than the Macca's sign with a place to type text into. Yes, we get it, and no, perhaps poetry doesn't need to take itself too seriously, but there is a limit to the number of jokes and self-referential pieces the reader/viewer can take. Miss Kate's pieces successfully manage to sound "off the cuff", but are so 'in your face,' that you can almost smell the alcohol on her breath and want to take a few steps back from the computer. Still, there are pieces which manage to make full use of the medium, often in the simplest ways, such as Sara Moss's seductive "Wire Dreaming", which combines simple fade in graphics with high quality poetry, repetitive but not unpleasant music and sibilant and evocative vocals.
Liz Hall-Down's "Shaking the Beauty Myth," relies mainly on Hall-Down's moving reading, the power of the words themselves, and the delicate music: "They run deep like the lines on a hungry third world child". Rowan Donovan's "Yukio's Ghost," is a tight live reading of a complex poem expertly filmed and close enough to bring the reader directly into the action. These are works which take good poetry and make it even better through the use of visual and sound elements.
At the very end of the CD is a graffiti wall which encourages you to delete some of the graffiti, and write your own words. You can also pick a random wall which mixes everything up. Finally, there is an R-area which contains material a little more challenging and provocative.
There is a lot of material on this CD-Rom, and while general navigation isn't a problem, it can be tricky to specifically find something. Although there is an author bio list, which indicate the works included by each artist, the list of included works isn't clickable, and this would have been useful. Although it is quite easy to meander around the CD, it is actually tricky to find something specific or cross-reference. It would also have been interesting to be able to view multiple works by a single author or collaborative team, and again, this is really not possible, unless you've written down the titles and location and hunt for them.
Nevertheless, this is a thought-provoking and unusual collection of work which will force viewers to think about poetry, music and art in new ways. It cuts through the distinctions between these different types of arts, and opens doors that will encourage more people to push their work further through collaborative efforts. It also bridges the divide between performance and recording. This can only be a good thing. The whole package is professionally produced, fun, lighthearted, and fast. All profits from the sale of the CD are donated to Refugee Action Collective.
(Reviewed by Magdalena Ball, June 2006)
