The new national Australian Poets Festival 2016 kicks off with a dynamic poetry reading and conversation featuring young local rapper Caution, award-winning Queensland poet Sam Wagan Watson and South Australian poet Natalie Harkin. Australian Poetry will also launch Word Up! with Sam and Caution discussing their recent mentee/mentorship. The launch and reading will take place in the lovely 19th century surrounds of The Moat. Snacks, great coffee and drinks available. Join us.
WHERE The Moat, 176 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
WHEN 12.45 – 2.15pm Saturday 20 February, 2016
COST Free
ARTISTS APPEARING
Caution is the musical hip hop moniker of rising Aboriginal rapper Jonathan Binge. The young hip hop star has been developing his prose and raps over the past two years at home and at the Artful Dodgers Studio in Collingwood.
Natalie Harkin is a Narungga woman, a member of the Chester family in South Australia. Her writing is an archival-poetic response to her family’s Aboriginal records, informed by blood-memory and haunting. Her first collection of poetry, Dirty Words, was published by Cordite Books in 2015.
Sam Wagan Watson is an award-winning raconteur from the south-side of Brisbane and he hails from an ancestry of Birri Gubba, Munanjali, Germanic and Gaelic peoples. Collected works of his poetry have achieved accolades, been translated into eight languages, various musical compositions, film productions and public/visual art projects.