New spoken word schedule

WORDSMITHS, poets and orators are invited to step up to the open mic tomorrow as part of the next Ballarat Spoken Word event to mark the initiative’s move to a new monthly schedule.

Each event will be held from the first Saturday of the month at 2pm, a departure from previous Ballarat Spoken Word evenings which were held on the first Wednesday of the month at 7pm.

Founder and convenor Marty Monstar said there are three main factors to the change.

“One is safety which is paramount of anyone being out on the streets at 10pm at night, and for people to get home safely as well,” he said.

“Our numbers drop a lot over winter because people stay home. The focus is also to get more people coming down who can’t make evenings.

“The third reason is to align Ballarat Spoken Word on a Saturday with the other regional poetry events like Woodend, Castlemaine, Bendigo, all on alternative weeks.”

Tomorrow’s event will showcase local wordsmith Megan J Riedl as feature poet.

She said she has some exciting, intimate content to deliver.

“The pieces I’ve been writing lately I haven’t performed before to an audience so this is a nice opportunity to give people an outing,” she said.

“A lot of my new works are about my father who passed away in September last year. Some of them are pretty raw and emotional.

“I’m looking forward to sharing them because it takes them from being something personal I use for a catharsis and into something I can share.

“There’s always one person in the room who just really needed to hear that today.”

Riedl’s set will also include a listen at her current project Unspoken: The Ballarat Poetess, developed as part of Punctum and the City of Ballarat’s Seedpod program, which blends original material with the work of 19th-century poet Ellen Young.

Monstar aims to have four featured poets in this year’s Ballarat Spoken Word program.

Tomorrow’s event will run from 2pm to 5pm at TBH Studios.