What did I learn as a writer from StoryFest?
Julie Bozza
5 August 2023
StoryFest Treasurer Julie Bozza is a self-published author of fiction, who is all about the words on paper. But then she attended the Poetry Slam workshop run by Miles Merrill at StoryFest - and her eyes were opened to other possibilities!
Being a StoryFest committee member on duty throughout the weekend, I didn’t have the chance to join the audience for any of our panels and conversations. But I did take the opportunity to sign up for a couple of the workshops, and they proved to be very worthwhile experiences.
The first workshop I attended was “Write to Perform”, led by Australian Poetry Slam guru Miles Merrill. This was a “hands-on” and indeed stand-up workshop “to help you find new ways to use stories and poetry to get your message across whatever the audience”. Interesting…!
I’m a fiction writer who is very focussed on the words, on the actual task of writing words. I visualise a movie of the story in my head - cast, location, cinematography and all - and then try to find the best words to convey that visual story to the eventual reader. It’s very much about me and my computer working in quiet isolation amid my library of books.
So it was a revelation to witness Miles talk about and demonstrate a myriad other ways to convey a story - using not just the words themselves but other sounds, and movement, and interaction, and all the marvellous things the voice is capable of. I suddenly felt boundaries lift away. (Despite being a total introvert, I might add.)
Our first exercise was to pour some words onto paper, without editing or getting in our own way. I’ll save you from the results, but looking back at my scribbles, I’m surprised to find that I’m quite pleased with them!
Later, Miles asked us to write and perform a poem about a significant moment in our lives. I chose the moment in which I realised I already had the character and story that could grow into my first “professional” novel. I wanted to convey something of the very ordinary day in which this wonderful moment occurred. This moment in which everything changed for me - or maybe nothing changed except my perspective. One of Miles’ suggestions was that we concentrate on nouns and verbs - “noun verb, noun verb” - and I probably took this far too literally, but here we go. My final draft from the day.
girl waits
girl ponders
words sit…
hope dawns
door opens!
words coalesce
wonder shines
girl believes
words energise
girl KNOWS
(And one of the things I learned soon thereafter is that it’s almost impossible to perform to the full extent necessary, while reading from a piece of paper held in one hand.)
I didn’t go on to attend (let alone perform at) the Australian Poetry Slam heat at Milton Theatre on Friday evening. However, lots of locals did - including a number of high school students, who had enjoyed more extensive workshops with Miles and his colleague Andrew Cox as part of the StoryFest Schools Program.
I may never be a performer, but this workshop sure made me think about the possibilities… Another storytelling door opens!
Australian Poetry Slam began in 2005 and has grown into an internationally-renowned poetry slam. APS has presented over 1,000 spoken word artists, bringing their words from all corners of the globe to an audience of over 20,000 within the Asia-Pacific region. As one of the largest initiatives of Word Travels, APS touches rural and urban communities in Australia, China, Indonesia and New Zealand, inspiring a love of poetry and catapulting spoken word artists onto an international stage.
Photos of Miles and the APS at StoryFest by Jim Vouden