Melbourne Poets Map the City in Word and Rhyme

Melbourne’s Overload Poetry Festival, now in its ninth year, has adopted the theme of 'Screening the Word' to illustrate how poets are using new technologies to communicate their work.

Podcasts, video poems and the return of the Skype SLAM - which sees poets from 3 countries going head to head in a tri-nations challenge - are a key feature of this year's program. Using dance, photography, music and multimedia, integrated with the spoken and written word, the festival continues to push literary boundaries.

One of the festival highlights is the Melbourne Poetry Map titled Audio Graffiti. Melbourne has one of the most exciting and diverse spoken word and poetry scenes in the world – and now there’s a map to prove it. Audio Graffiti is a free series of self-guided audio walks through Melbourne’s CBD.

Supported by the City of Melbourne, the maps will be launched online as a part of the Overload Poetry Festival 2010. http://www.melbournepoetrymap.com

To create the walks, twenty-one of Melbourne’s finest spoken word performers have mapped the CBD’s epic architecture and grotty laneways, creating audio paste-ups of tragic loves lost, recording their hearts and leaving their stories like invisible murals against the city walls.
Once the project is launched on Thursday September 16th, anyone with access to a computer and portable music device will have the opportunity to download the audio poems in mp3 format with accompanying maps from the Melbourne Poetry Map website.

Melbourne Poetry Map producer, Eleanor Jackson said, “What I love about the walks is the incredible diversity, one minute you’re reliving the rock posings of 1967, then you’re having a drink with Robert Burns at the Windsor Hotel bar, before playing voyeur to a possibly doomed wedding on the steps of Parliament House. All this listening to the writers themselves, while standing the exact spots that inspired them.”

Now a firm fixture on the Melbourne culture calendar, the Overload Poetry Festival will again provide an element of the unexpected and put poetry front and centre bringing a fresh approach to a very traditional literary technique.

Melbourne Poetry Map: Audio Graffiti Website Launch
7:30pm, Thursday 16 September, Loop Bar, Entry is free.