Beat Poets – Outspoken #10

Overview

We don't quite have a poet laureate here. In the UK they get two, one for children, one for grown-ups. The USA has one, and a staccato history of employing poets at presidential inaugurations. While Canada too has a laureate, when it came to get a poet front and centre for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, it chose to bring out local slam champ Shane Koyczan. Koyczan will bring his rattleshot delivery to the Sydney stage, headlining the evening at Outspoken's evening of beat poetry at FBi Social.

Beat poetry is a form that never really died, living on in the music of Tom Waits and the Twitter bot that rebroadcasts lines from Allen Ginsberg's Howl on the hour. Accompanying Koyczan in bringing this faded form to Sydney will be the rhythmic Jive Poetic, host at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the Denver-lurking Ken Arkind. They'll be backed by local poets Alana Hicks, Alia Gabres and Randall Stephens, with visuals by collective Optic Soup. So whatever your poetic roots, the Social offers you a night to leave you lost in fast words.