NOT A POETRY SLAM
Poetry, spoken word and performative reading galore
Friday 4 November 2022
8:30 pm - 10:00 pm - Sappho Books Cafe & Wine Bar, Glebe
We're bringing a group of incredible poets, performance artists, spoken wordsmiths and writers to read their work in a slam that is touching, introspective, edgy and sexy. Be prepared for variety, fun and above all talent!
AJ Lamarque is one of Australia’s rising stars in Comedy. A proud Mixed Race, Queer comedian, AJ has garnered a formidable reputation as a skilled writer, a charismatic performer and a strong community leader.
AJ has written for Season 14 of Gruen with Wil Anderson as well as previously having written for Wintergarden Pictures and Matchbox Pictures. He was a 2022 Sydney Fringe Festival Official Ambassador and was selected to be a part of the Australian Council for the Art’s Future Leader program for 2022/2023 for his work in the Comedy industry. He was also invited to join Sydney Comedy Festival’s prestigious FRESH Program for 2022 with his show English Breakfast. In 2020, AJ made it to the NSW RAW Comedy State Finals.
You may have seen AJ on at The Comedy Store, Comedy Republic, The STEAM room with Dr Karl or heard him on numerous podcasts such as Kyran Wheatley‘s Wax Quizzical, Acquisitions Incorporated, Justin Hamilton‘s Big Squid series or his on podcast Floof with AJ Lamarque.
Paris Rosemont is a performance poet whose work features in Verge Literary Journal, Upswell Publishing’s ‘Admissions’, Heroines Anthology and was longlisted for the Joyce Parkes Writing Prize 2022. Paris is a Frontier Poetry scholarship recipient, WestWords Academian and in-house writer-in-residence. She has been awarded an Arts Access Australia Professional Development and Poetry Mentorship and WestWords-Varuna Emerging Writers’ Residency.
Paris has performed her poetry as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival and New Annual Festival 2022. She has been feature poet in Girls on Key Poetry and Rhapsody Revue and is a regional finalist in the Australian Poetry Slam 2022.
Dylan Barrett is a queer Irishman who moved to Sydney last year (he doesn’t live in Coogee). His writing emerged from the storms of early bereavement and the forlorn closet. However, it wasn’t until the first lockdown that he began sharing his writing in the form of spoken word. This presented him with the opportunity to finally talk back to the things that frustrate him – usually the men that he kisses and the ones who call him a faggot for doing so. He hasn’t shut up since. His poem “These Sticks” won the audience award at the 2020 Bunker Spoken Word Competition, a national event held annually in Queensland.
Laneikka Denne is an award-winning actor and writer from Western Sydney. She wrote her debut play DEAD SKIN at seventeen, which was awarded the State Theatre Company x Flinders University Young Playwright's Award and premiered at Kings Cross Theatre in 2021, published by Australian Plays. Laneikka is the recipient of the Diversity Entertainment Creative Mentorship 2022, her play DEAD SKIN will be performed LA and Off-broadway in New York while she works on a feature film adaption of the play at Diversity Entertainment, LLC. Her short screenplay Oi was awarded Open Screenplay’s Best Short Drama Award and is in pre-production in Sydney. Laneikka was awarded the EDGE Grant to develop her next play FEMINAZI due to be performed 2022 into 2023. Laneikka is producing a program called THE MONOLOGUE COLLECTIVE where teenagers write monologues for teenagers to perform for the HSC, supported by Create NSW, the Rodney Seaborn Foundation, Australian Plays Transform, CWA NSW, PYT Fairfield, and KXT. Young queer femmes are at the heart of all of her work, as she seeks to represent real femmes with agency and intrigue.
Sarah Jessica Carpark is a young writer and artist living and working on Gadigal Country, Eora. Their work explores employing metaphysics for queer survival, saddled on a deep rooted belief in the cathartic power of story to heal. In the past year, Sarah’s literary works have involved dispersing free meditation booklets, delivering readings publicly and virtually, and writing a satirical Sex and the City inspired biography.