Poetry Slam Competition

A man that lives and breathes the spoken word, Ghostboy is returning to Brisbane to give this year’s Australian Poetry Slam his own ethereal touch.

If you’ve been to a ‘slam’ before, then you know that poetry isn’t something overemotional 17-year-olds write for girls in their maths class. Microphone fiends like Ghostboy have taken performance poetry to new heights, showing the rest of us how comparatively small our own vocabularies are.

The Australian Poetry Slam, now in its sixth year, may have gained near-unstoppable momentum, but Ghostboy laments that before its inception, poetry had such little support that he had to trick people into coming to his performances. “The following was pretty small. We used to run these little poetry slams under trees outdoors with DJs… basically trying to trick people into coming to an event and then sneaking poetry in while they weren’t looking.”

Ironically, Ghostboy’s devious ways would lead to a longterm love affair with music, fusing poetry and song together with his band, Ghostboy With Golden Virtues. The difference is now doesn’t feel he has to trick us into coming along. “It’s something I love doing, not so much something I felt I had to do. I’ve always loved poetry, but I’ve also always loved rock n roll, and the idea of fronting something. I’m a shocking singer, but listening to Nick Cave and a lot of those guys I realised there’s a lot of different ways to sing. I love the idea of writing narratives and having stories backed my music.”

Ghostboy With Golden Virtues will be unleashing two feature sets at this year’s Australian Poetry Slam Queensland State Finals, giving a slight reprieve for the 16 finalists who will be battling it out for $500 and a place at the Nationals in Sydney.

“It’s always a huge event, held in a tent outside the State Library. The judges are randomly chosen from the audience, they may have never seen that poet before, they might not even like poetry. That’s kind of the beauty of it, it’s quite arbitrary.”

While Ghostboy agrees the Slam presents a great opportunity for burgeoning poetic geniuses, he warns against taking the competition too seriously. “Winning a slam ultimately is kind of meaningless. The whole show’s an entertainment device. That’s the whole point. It’s about the audience being entertained, it’s not really about the poets.”

Ghostboy With Golden Virtues will play the Australian Poetry Slam State Finals at the State Library of Queensland on Friday October 7.