For World Poetry Day 2020, we gathered a multidisciplinary bunch of people to unpack a poem and reinterpret it as a multi-sensory experience. Together we tackled the question of what can be done to deliver the most inclusively conceptualised experience of a poem.
This is the text the participants were asked to work on:
And here are their responses.
Mollie Jackson is currently completing an Executive Master of Arts at Melbourne University. Her area of interest is diversity and inclusion, particularly in relation to the LGBTQIA+ community and other intersections of identity. Her academic background in Classics and Gender Studies has developed her passion for exploring the ways in which ancient myths still inform our cultural narratives regarding sexuality and gender. When she’s not agonising over assignments, Mollie likes to take the time to read, paint and go bushwalking.
Walter Kadiki grew up in Romford, Essex, and began composing deaf poetry at a very young age: “Poetry was a special channel for expressing my innermost feelings without the strain of being misunderstood. My earliest poems were mostly about the frustrations of living in the hearing world, of being misunderstood, underestimated and frowned upon.” Walter is one of Australia’s leading Deaf poetry performers. He has worked with numerous community groups, and his poetry has been performed in venues across Melbourne and in the UK.
Artist and proud Yorta Yorta woman, who has always been experimental with her art and it reflects her as an Indigenous woman. The fact that she is learning about her inherited culture at this stage in her life is a result of the effect on her family of the period called “stolen generations” and the time of colonial rule over her people and her land. Her personal Indigenous inheritance shows her the way to create and understand her own story from her land and ancestors. Her working life has taken her to many countries and this time of travel gifted her opportunities to embed with other cultures, explore listen learn and create. In this process her understanding of self, and self in relation to others grew, as did her thirst for knowledge of her own Indigenous ancestors, their lives, skills and traditions.
Mito Elias, multi-disciplinary artist, born in Santiago de Cabo Verde. Working the word in different settings has been the primary task in the art of this poet of the Creole diaspora. He has traveled with the Creole word for to many corners of the world. Mito Elias usually writes in Portuguese and in Cape Verdean Creole. He is represented in the Poetic Anthology A Voz Limpia Vol. 3 – 2018, and appears with some frequency in some poetic readings around Melbourne.
Saras Windecker is an ecologist based at University of Melbourne specialising in software development for research. A wetland ecologist by training, she is now working on statistical models for a range of public health concerns. Through her academic service she is involved in developing communities around open and reproducible science. In her spare time, she enjoys reading about history, learning languages, and cycling.
Emiliano Beltzer is a multi-instrumental musician from Argentina. In Melbourne since 2013, he has performed and recorder in a wide range of musical styles, from traditional Italian to heavy metal. He is also a music teacher, educator, producer, sound engineer, arranger and composer. His is a comprehensive approach to music that involves audiovisual, stage and experience design.
