Luka Lesson – ‘If This War is Won’
Produced by Billy Hoyle
From the “Please Resist Me” Album
FREE UNTIL IT HITS 100 DOWNLOADS
Behind the scenes at the – 17 – video shoot
The ‘Please Resist Me’ Poetry Slam Tour
LUKA LESSON IS TOURING NATIONALLY IN AUSTRALIA FROM FEBRUARY 19th WITH ALIA GABRES AND JOEL MCKERROW
For more information visit the Upcoming Gigs page
Juvenile Justice (Re)Act in Queensland
Spoken Word Video Commission
After hosting the YANQ Youth Affairs Summit last year, I was asked by their inspirational leader, Siyavash Doostkah, to write a piece addressing a very important issue in social and political spheres in Queensland.
It is an honour for me to be asked to write to enact real world change in Queensland. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the place and the Government policies have often been the impetus for much of the hate. I feel like my own and YANQ’s intentions align so well. It has been my absolute pleasure to work on this piece so far and I see it as an opportunity for Hip-hop to do what it was born to do; create awareness around an important topic and help those who are disadvantaged to rise up.
The issue is as follows.
My home state of Queensland is the only state in Australia which still incarcerates seventeen-year-olds within the adult prison system.
In every other prison in Australia only 18-year-olds and above are incarcerated in these prisons, with every juvenile facility containing young people from seventeen-years-old and below.
This violates the United Nations bill, ratified by the Australian Government who stated that eighteen should be the legal age of adult imprisonment.
Queensland’s own Anti-descrimination Commissioner has condemned the current state of affairs, as has the Children’s Commissioner and The Queensland Law Society.
It has been proven through both scientific testing and through qualitative research that young people of seventeen years and below generally have more of a chance of rehabilitation than 18-year-olds. It has now also been proven that the seventeen-year-olds subject to this kind of treatment have been much more likely to reoffend and become ‘career criminals’ as compared to their counterparts in juvenile detention in other states.
In 1992, the Juvenile Justice Act was written with the provision to change this fact spread throughout the document. At that time the amount of beds in Juvenile Detention facilities meant that ‘temporarily’ seventeen year olds would be sent to adult prisons. But this was always designed as a temporary issue, which would be attended to immediately.
Twenty years later and nothing has changed.
Of the young people in juvenile detention approximately 75% of them are on remand. This means they have no home to return to on the outside – so they are kept in custody without an official charge, or they are still awaiting trial. At the same time however, the main excuse coming from the government as to why seventeen-year-olds are being incarcerated in adult prisons is that there aren’t enough beds in juvenile detention. If 75% of these beds are being taken up by young people on remand, it seems that dealing with homelessness issues on the outside may go a long way towards freeing up these beds to accommodate the seventeen-year-olds in adult prisons.
In Queensland, you will be locked up in an adult prison before you are allowed to buy cigarettes.
You will be thrown into jail with men or women twice your age before you are even allowed to cast your vote in national or local level elections.
Check this link for more solid information from the Commission for Children and Young People.
Speaking of elections, there is one coming up very soon in Queensland… and the point of this exercise is to have an affect on the outcome, to put this issue back on the agenda and to embarrass the government enough to get things right. So please, when the video drops, if you dig it, pass it around and do what I say, there is one simple thing you can do to make this long awaited change a reality and I will let you all know in the video. It’s simple and will take you all of ten minutes.
I will be filming the piece entitled ’17′ this Monday 9th Jan and releasing it at the Brisbane leg of the “Please Resist Me” Poetry Slam Tour on Sunday February 26, 2012.
POETRY SLAMS
AND THE MEANS TO WIN
In the USA there is a nation-wide performance poetry community. Over the last three decades since Slam started, these individuals’ understanding of themselves and the world around them has been lifted. Their clarity has come from bearing witness to the Earth-shattering poetic work of their peers.
In these circles, the concepts poets articulate stretch from race, sexuality, history, family, growth, the economy, nationhood and anything else you could possibly think of. Each piece is so intelligent and in-depth that the consciousness of all involved expands with each sentence.
When travelling through these places, I made some observations. You could not be racist and a poet, you could not be sexist and a poet, you could not be a bigot, a hater, an arsehole.
Only once did I meet a pompous prick in the form of a famous poet. I’m pretty sure he was like that long before he became a poet. Point being, he’d be out of place in the typical poetry crowd: the intelligent, understated people chilling outside the venue having a cigarette, talking about hot dogs then going inside to rip the whole room apart, walls and all, with their embodied words.
This is the world of slam poetry.
A few weeks ago, I took out first place at the Australian Poetry Slam Final for 2011. I’d like to tell you how I achieved this, but the truth is that I don’t really know how it all works.
I mean, I know the rules: two minutes, no costumes, no music, all your own words and absolutely no holding back.
What I don’t know how to explain is how a slam feels or how it seems to guide my life. I certainly don’t know how to explain why I would spend the whole week prior to the Australian Poetry Slam Final praying on my knees for the right outcome, ignoring calls, cancelling appointments, drinking clove and tumeric tea (which tastes terrible but is ‘apparently’ great for the throat), focusing, practicing, grounding myself and getting ready to get on stage like it was the most important two minutes of my life.
Why? What for? It’s just a poem right?
No.
To me, there’s no such thing as ‘just’ a poem.
Some might say that the average person isn’t all that important. They might say the average person can’t articulate world issues or believe they can change the globe with the mere sentences they mumble under their breath. Some may say that normal, everyday people like you and me aren’t that special really.
Bullshit!
You are that special. We are all really that special. Every part of human communication is important.
The mumbles under your breath teach the audience that you are afraid of being judged, self-conscious about speaking out and scared of the world hearing you. Just as the craft of your writing, your powerful glances and your articulate fashioning of meaning teach us all a lesson in humanity.
As soon as anyone stands on stage, their humanity is intensified. The audience is reading the lines on their face with more gravitas, watching their every move and opening themselves up to be moved to a new understanding of the world.
So when you step on a stage, best believe you are a teacher whether you intend to be or not.
Poetry is not alone in its amplification of human experience. The writing of theatre makers such as all-round sage Anne Bogart (check her text: And then, you act: making art in an unpredictable world), and smaller theatre and improvisational projects I’ve been involved with have shown me that performance art is special.
As soon as a person comes into frame, or onto a stage, it seems to me that everything begins to hold further meaning. Symbolic.
The unique difference poetry holds for me though, is that the audience reads us as the individuals that we already are. We are the actors of our own lives. Speaking our own truths. Raw. Real.
It’s as if a crane has plucked us up off the streets of our everyday lives and dropped us onto a stage with all of our faculties, skills and faults turned up to a hundred decibels. In this moment we are endowed with the power to move people with our actions and speech.
This moment should be honoured. This moment should be appreciated. This moment should be valued as precious.
I’m not trying to say that your time on stage should only be used to talk about big issues like refugees coming to Australia, or Palestinian, or Indigenous land rights, or West Papuan land rights or any other of our worlds social struggles (but please look them up if you just went blank).
Each of us as individuals have our own little traits or histories that are worth sharing. The more we communicate with each other, the closer we become to each other. From here, the social issues of the world become easier to confront when we are united in our experience of just being people. Every experience is worth sharing. Some of us would just like to write a poem about lollipops. Cool, do it. Who knows what that can bring? It could be freeing to write. The smile on your face as you exclaim “I LOVE LOLLIPOPS!” could bring a joy to other people that forms a connection.
So do it if that’s what’s on your mind. Just don’t over think it.
Be aware that you are influencing and affecting the world around you. You have power as a human being to be a player in this samsaric game we call existence.
So when reflecting on the Australian Poetry Slam, although it’s all about the two minutes, I realise it’s also not at all about the two minutes. It’s about everything in between, all of the baggage we carry on our shoulders and onto stage, everything we pour out in those fleeting moments and everything we collect afterwards.
I don’t know about every poet in the world but I am changed by my work because the art of performance poetry is not a painting to be sold one time only. It is a series of connections with a burgeoning flame that has been ignited inside me and must be shared to be realised.
Once shared, my relationship with that pain, issue or scar is slowly healed and changed with every performance.
If you write and perform poetry I encourage you to live it.
At a reading, at a slam or even at a party where someone says to you “hey, c’mon you’re the poet. Show us a poem!”: smile, be grateful, get everyone’s full attention on you and say it like you want to win the world, and the world wants to win you.
So when I look back at all I’ve done already in this career of mine, I realise how every piece I’ve written has pulled me further into my own skin, and how I’ve won.
THE AUSTRALIAN POETRY SLAM FINAL 2011
NEW VIDEO!
Live at the MoneyKat Album showcase and Mixtape launch September, 2011.
