ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Bowed out of the Poetry Slam this year as one fella said.

Bob you are to old and just to ugly. Probably right on both points.


Think that will be my last try, four finals is still pretty good going.

Bob

Oh this was my poem.

Lost

She lay there in the dirt and dust just off Collins street
needle tracks up both her arms no shoes upon her feet.

In the grime filled filthy doorway of an old abandoned shop
though people passed her lying there none took the time to stop.

A Vinnies worker found her and recoiled at the sight
a piece of flotsam on life's ocean another victim of the night.

How long she had been dead it was impossible to tell
the bruises on her battered face spoke of living hell.

Was she here because she chose to be or forced to be by fate
the product of a fractured family torn apart by hate.
or
Did she come in from the country wide eyed and full of hope
a runaway who'd lost her dreams consumed by sex and dope.

Would her body now lie in some morgue broken and defiled
Would no one mourn her passing for she was some mothers child.

A story told so often but to which there is no happy end
such loss of innocence and beauty so hard to comprehend
for
This is the land of plenty where all are equal so they say
but are some more so than others? Are there no shades of grey?

So we go about our daily lives but we all must bear the cost
nothing changes, life goes on and another broken soul is lost.

Bob Pacey (C)

so now the old and ugly can't dominate poetry either ??

Apparently Not H

Will stick to what I do best I think.

You've done a bloody good job with it mate. I haven't been game to ever go near one, as popular as they are. I just find Poetry hard to slam. In fact these days I even find it hard to remember!! Keep with what you are doing, mate. Our styles have and again will outlast the Slam faze pretty easy. I still have a fortnight to go up here before heading to the Gympie Muster. Still as busy as when I started. Hope all is busy there as well.

Neil

I wouldn't argue with the old and ugly but I would argue against those things making you out of place in a poetry slam. You have done well Bob, pity to call it a day.

The poetry slam heat in our area got canned because the regional arts mob reckoned they couldn't afford the cost, so the slam has faded in the Hunter Valley. And I was going to 'ave a go, ugly old mug and all.

See now, that's the problem, the old and the ugly give up too easily (or forget). How you ever gonna take over the world!!

If you lost with that one Bob the winner must have been a ripper!
I recently received the greatest back handed compliment I have ever got.
Visited a folk club and one of the singer songwriters came up to me and said that he owed me a great debt, that I had inspired him and that I had shown him through one of my performances that it didn't matter how old you are or what you look like you can still write poetry and songs and entertain people! I didn't know whether to thank him or abuse him.

I can understand that Vic


Not unhappy with the format and I really love sharing my poetry with the slammers but the judging set up where they just select them randomly from the crowd tends to put a lot off. Most of the audience this time were high school students who were there to watch their friends perform so perhaps I hit a raw nerve.

If I made I this year I was going to say bugger the two minutes and just do what I wanted just to show what rhyming poetry is all about. I will say the young bloke who won is a rhyming poet and I have offered to help him with his presentation ( might not be a goood thing )


Cheers Off to do a campfire.

Bob

You would have got my vote with that one Bob, but you certainly would have been up against it with the young ones!
Young blokes at work have had the rap crap blairing on the radio the last couple of days! plays merry hell with my tinnitus!!
Maybe I'm just getting ol... er mature!! but thank god that job's finished!

Ron