PRECEDE: On the second Saturday afternoon of each month, spoken word echoes through the Woodend RSL as poets, musicians, and writers present their work to a keen audience in an event called Chamber Poets. Oscar Parry spoke with the convener and volunteers about the monthly event and the enduring power and importance of spoken word.
Formed in 2013 by Woodend poet Myron Lysenko, who has been an active writer since the 1980s, Chamber Poets is an event that welcomes writers and poets of all experience levels from across Melbourne to present their work to others who are enthusiastic about the power of language as an art form.
Lysenko, who has facilitated several poetry events across Victoria, said Chamber Poets was originally hosted in a cafe in the Woodend council chambers – but was put on hold during the Covid lockdowns.
It was the enthusiasm of other writers that helped bring the event back to life after this period, with a collective of volunteers now offering their time to facilitate the monthly readings.
“I was pretty tired of organising the event, and up until that stage, I basically ran it on my own,” Lysenko said.
“A few of the writers from the area invited me for a coffee and they said ‘Myron, everyone’s demanding that Chamber Poets comes back’ and I said ‘well, I’m too tired for it to come back,’ and they said ‘well, we’ll help you run it.”
Each event begins with a local band performing two songs, followed by an open poetry section, an interval for enjoying food and drinks together, and closing with a reading from a featured poet who then gives an award to a poet from the open section whose work they enjoyed most.
As the convener of the event, Lysenko said he enjoys organising “something for the poets and the audience to enjoy” and giving writers “a chance to speak.”
“People get up on the microphone and they can read whatever they want, and quite often in the [gloomy] and surreal world we’re living in now – sometimes poetry is an antidote to that,” he said.
He said the event is “multigenerational,” attracting younger and older people alike.
Woodend poet and collective volunteer Helen McDonald said the event welcomes “allcomers,” including people “who’ve been just writing for themselves and feel that they want to finally stand up and share that with someone because it’s important to them”.
“[They] are just as welcome as are very established, marvellous featured poets who come along … everybody is welcomed as equals, so you can find in any session of Chamber Poets someone who’s speaking for the first time,” McDonald said.
“Your knees knock and your voice shakes, but everybody is incredibly supportive.”
McDonald said that as a “shortish” literary art form, poetry is a powerful medium for expression.
“I think it’s a wonderful [way] of reaching the depths of one’s thoughts [and] emotions. It’s not linear – it’s not like writing a short story where you have a beginning, a middle, and an end,” she said.
“I think poetry’s just a wonderful form of expressing what’s going on within oneself.”
She said she finds the evolution of poetry to be “exciting,” with plenty of younger writers choosing to present forms like slam poetry at events.
“To my mind, a lot of young poets are taking things by storm by creating their own language and their own way of expressing – and slam poetry has become such a popular form,” she said.
McDonald said that with the breadth of styles of poetry, you can “read a beautiful poem by W.B Yeats … and be incredibly moved and swayed by that as you can by a three-line haiku.”
She said the Macedon Ranges is “so rich in imagery and great fodder for poets,” with many of the presenters at Chamber Poets from towns like Macedon and Trentham.
Apart from the locals, the event attracts attendees from as far as Frankston and Euroa.
Macedon Ranges poet and collective volunteer Talon Gostelow said he believes poetry is “still very much alive” among younger people.
“I go into Melbourne, and I see a lot of 20-year-olds, a lot of younger people – even teenagers as well – who have a great deal of involvement in poetry … I know so many of my friends who don’t go to events but who just write poetry and … journal at home,” Gostelow said.
He feels Chamber Poets is an inclusive and welcoming event where he feels comfortable to present his work.
“Chamber Poets feels like an enrapturing safety net. It feels like you can throw out a line and you’re just going to be caught in the safety net even if it misses … you can just go up and stage, and even if you’ve written the worst poetry known to man, you’re comforted and you fall into that safety net,” he said.
“It’s … a place where I feel free to express myself, I feel included, I feel welcome … it’s just really warming … everyone is so kind … it’s really heartening to be here.”
Gostelow said that poetry as a literary form is a great way to express “unconscious associations” and “subliminal … pent up feelings.”
“If you’ve been dealing with anxiety your whole life, and you just bottle that up … and it’s been sitting there under the surface just sort of bubbling away … being able to put that into a verse, being able to write to that, to express that and then people … acknowledge that that’s a shared experience – it’s very difficult to beat that feeling. It’s very difficult to beat that sense of catharsis,” he said.
He said it “alleviates so much” and is “able to pull things from that unconscious in a really accessible way” that other media might require more time or energy for.
“Perhaps songwriting … painting, or drawing … those are things that I would say would have perhaps a higher skill floor, whereas poetry has a much more accessible skill floor [but] equally as high of a skill ceiling.”
Gostelow said that as someone who has worked with youth, he believes accessibility could be a factor at a regional level that might prevent younger Macedon Ranges residents from attending an event like Chamber Poets.
Throughout April, Lysenko, who is the Victorian representative of Australian Haiku Society, will direct the Woodend Haiku Festival.
This will include a month-long haiku contest with an autumn theme, pop-up haiku poetry recitals, a free haiku picnic from 10am–1pm on April 2 at the Woodend Children’s Park, and a haiku-focused Chamber Poets event from 1–4pm on April 12.
Details: facebook.com/groups/ChamberPoets
