Antoinette & Annabella Luu - Sisters In Slam

0:03 As Pablo Picasso said, good artists copy, great artists steal, but the best artists they listen to, I think Therefore I Slam the podcast bringing you the best spoken word and slam poetry artists from Australia and beyond. My name is Andrew and my guests Plural. My guests plural today come nominated by former podcast guest Daphne. Thank you, Daphne. They are twin spoken word and visual artists quickly becoming mainstays of the Sydney slam scene. They're both on the editing team for the celebrated UNSW literary journal Unsweetened, and they are both fresh off competing in the 10th Bankstown Poetry Slam Grand Slam at the Sydney Opera House. Amazing.

0:46 Please welcome Antoinette and Annabella Lou. Thank you. And the crowd goes wild. Thank you, Sydney. This is our very first multi guest episode won't be the last. We're all figuring out where do we look? When do we speak? Oh, I hope we don't like all speak on top of each other, but it's it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm very interested to find out where your stories intersect, but also where where they vary. You know, I'm sure you've grown up with all the kinds of cliches of like, oh, you 2 twin sisters, you finish each other's sentences or, or whatever. Was there ever point where you were finishing each other's sentences?

1:27 Did you have that kind of psychic connection at some point? Yeah, but it's not psychic. I think it's actually just, you know, when you grow up the same you're, you're brought up to think sure in similar ways. So we kind of finish each other's. Sandwiches. Sentences. Sandwiches. And Bella. Who would who would finish who would? Who would finish who's? A little bit of both. I don't know what Annette's talking about. I we we have a cosmic link where cerebrally linked and it started in the womb the. The cosmic umbilical, as they say, Well, because there's two of you, the structure is going to be a little bit different. So if you're listening, we're going to hear 2 pieces from each of you and kind of split them up over the episode. Annette, you're going to start us off with your first spoken word piece.

2:15 Did you have like an intro? Do you want to tell us about it, or did you want to dive straight in? I think I'll let the poem speak for itself. This poem is my bio, I guess. Dear Ibis, you are the true archaeologist. While the dove gets all the glory for essentially being a white pigeon, you urban bird with your snatching devilish ways in a pack in the Bankstown alleyway pot bellied off Whites, in this wasteful world you go thrifting in a dumpster. You Ibis, you white collared worker, we think to the Ibis how lowly it is to take what has already been bitten into. But my mom always taught me never pay full price. My dad always said no waste, no waste. He'd be disappointed in the trash for staying so intact. The baby teeth, shards of Victoria bitter. The second hand news of who in Hollywood got divorced this time.

3:10 The orange juice spread over headlines like a rumour. The loose lettuce, the bread unspeckled by mold. You flagrantly hijacked these scraps as if you struck gold. So before I curl my lips in disgust when the ladies at Yum Chao roll out the chicken feet, before I cringe at the sloppy slurp of my parents sucking the brain out of the prawn, when I am disgusted by the texture or the taste, I'll remember. At least they had the decency to say no waste. No waste. When Gong's main language was the chill and I spent all those fees on an English degree. I hope my parents didn't think. What a waste, what a waste, because I have no other way to repay than to write.

3:55 Even if it feels like each syllable is only worth a cent, that barely makes a dent in their debt. Maybe that's why I feel the need to achieve myself to death. But then I remember what Omte Oceanvung said. You can have medicine, bombs, robotics, pharmaceuticals, you can invent the greatest things, but only through language can you convince each other to live or die to protect them. This learning of language, I'll remember is not a waste. Not a waste because my dad pop bellied off Whites, was scared to go for Balmain school captain because his English was no so good. He's now captaining what comes in and out of the IGA loading dock because he's mastered the tone of this bartering language. Two parts teasing, one part serious. It scored him a cup and half off a couch from Nick Skali. It scored me this poem.

4:59 That's how I want to be so thrifty in my teasing that I've mastered this tonal language. It's the closest I can come to Vietnamese. Even in the migration he didn't waste a single skill. For a guy who never has access, he always has something to spare. Maybe that's why I always find gold coins in the glove box. 1 for every time he wished he could buy from his school canteen. I'll match the price with every syllabic cent I can spare for him. Fellow Ibis. My dad is a mechanic of turning waste into spare parts. Thanks for finishing the job, dear Ibis. I'm most grateful to you, but I still want my cheeseburger back. Yeah, wonderful, wonderful.

5:52 That's the like you said that is bringing us up to speed on your story and your bio. Big fan of the Ibis, at least the idea of of an Ibis, you know, do they call them bin chickens up there? Is is that a thing or is that more Queensland way? Yeah, no, they call them bin chickens. Yeah, I I like the way. I like the way you put it, like I like the idea of it, but in practice I don't, I don't like Ibis or I'm I'm I'm yet to understand the Ibis. Did either of you hear the story? I think there was a man, I want to say in Perth, I don't think it was, it was around our ways who was, who was trying to cook one, who was trying to like catch and cook 1. And I think because they're a protected species had to be told in court to not do that.

6:35 So yeah, it does happen. I did hear that, yes. It's misunderstood birds. You know, you've shared a little bit of the origin story there, but I'm interested in the origin story of the two of you and how you got started with creating and sharing your work in stage. So Bella, I'm wondering if you could start with sharing some of your origin story. OK. So in terms of slam poetry, I had sort of like half been exposed to it on just YouTube, so through like Button Poetry and then this collective in the US called the Strivers Row, but I'd never actually experienced it in person until Annette. So she's the cause of all of this. Took me to a Bankstown poetry slam, and I remember that they really reeled me in because they played the friends intro after someone's poem and everyone sort of like jamming to the yeah, I'll be eating apple.

7:34 Yeah, yeah. And obviously the poetry was also really amazing. And the support feature I remember was Ibrahim. He's got such a great poem called Men Do Not Cry. It's online, but I remember that he actually stuck post it notes under audience members chairs. And I was one of the lucky ones. And it was this purple post it note that said stay groovy. And that just sort of like won't be over. And I have it on my wall to this day. It's been up there for like a few years now. But yeah, so it was through a net. And I remember being really surprised that because we live in Bankstown, like we're very close to the Art Center where the poetry slime is.

8:17 And I remember thinking like, and this artistic space is so close to us in location, which was very unexpected. I, I'm not sure where it comes from, but we, we grew up with the idea that poetry and arts and literature was very far away from us and we'd have to travel outside our own localities in order to access it. So to know that Bankstown poetry has been there for, I think, more than a decade now, so close to home, was really comforting. And so, yeah, we attended BPS 4 a little bit. And then I went to a poetry slam in Parramatta called Westside Poetry. He's hosted by Daphne. You know, it's a really intimate space and there's no points there.

9:02 So I went to that for a little bit and our sort of first friend we made through poetry. His name is Cody, and you can sort of find some of his performances online. He really encouraged me to get up there, even though I was really young and I was really scared. But you know, we were, we had created a group chat between the three of us and then I have a lot of group chats and people because like there's two of us and if people want to say something, usually they want to say it's in both of us. So lots of like group chats of threes. So we had like a group chat called the feedback loop with Cody. And you know, a lot of my earliest slam poems were born there. Like everyone, all three of us are really generous in in feedback. We sort of sent through voice recordings of our poems. And he was a big factor in me writing my first poem that I performed at West Side.

9:51 And then and then I won. And then so I got called back to do a support feature, which means that I had like no poems in the arsenal at that point. So I had to write another like. That's the. Worst when you you're at the bottom of the barrel, you know? Maybe, maybe. But also, I think it was so like, it was such a blessing in disguise because I don't know, like just something because I'd never written. He's a slam poetry. It just all sort of like poured out of me. And then I was finally brave enough, maybe like a year later to take it to Bankstown, where the audience is both really, really welcoming, but also really intimidating because, you know, we all care so much. So I wanted to make sure I had the right one to go to Bankstown.

10:34 Long story short, I went, I performed a poem called Nosebleed, which was about masculinity. It was sort of diverted to the men in my life, yeah. And then I came second, performed in the Grand Slam. And as they say, the rest is history. But. Not history, because it's. Continuing now, but. We live in history, yes. We live in history. And history is is is told by the victors of the slam poetry scene. I don't know. I don't know. So you, you got this. Keep it stay groovy sticker at your first slam and you thought, oh, I want to be groovy. I want to write some stuff like this. Precisely. Precisely. And I like, I like that because some of the other quotes, they were more serious and they were like, some of them were more.

11:20 What's the word? Yeah. That was just like more serious. And I like that because sometimes I think just at this age, like we're both quite young. So I think when you're young, you have the tendency to take yourself really seriously. The fact that that quote sort of came in at the right time and was just a reminder to be playful. Don't take yourself too seriously. Have fun. I think that was very well timed. Yeah. Good. Keep it crispy as they say. Thanks, Bella. So, Annette, from what Bella was saying, it sounds like you were, you were one or two steps ahead. You were you were dragging your sister along to the first, the first one. How? How did you end up in that space? So like when I was 18, like I was just fresh out of high school and I was kind of craving like, you know, just just something in the art scene outside of school.

12:07 And so I, I literally, I just googled like, you know, poetry events and I saw there was one in Bankstown. I'm like that's 5 minutes away. It's so close. So I just checked it out and the first time I saw spoken word poetry around here, it wasn't actually a poetry slam thanks to an arts centre. They held this event called Nexus, and it was a bunch of different art forms performing. But the first person I saw performed spoken word poetry was Leila Menswa. Don't know if you've heard of her, but yeah, I saw her perform and I was like, wow, is this, is this what poetry is not, Not TS Eliot type, but, you know, understandable, digestible, but still challenging in a way. And that was sort of combined with, you know, like when you leave school, your whole world sort of bursts open.

12:50 And I'd started English tutoring other high school students at that time. And my first student came to me with a poetry book asking me to help her deconstruct it. And that book was Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vaughn. Have you heard of it? I have not tell me about this. Oh, it's so good. Where is it? It's on my bookshelf somewhere. Basically it's it's a, it's a poetry collection by a Vietnamese American poet named Ocean Vaughn. And it won the TS Eliot Prize back in 2020. Something I'll have to double check that. But it's interesting because he, you know, he's a member of the Vietnamese diaspora.

13:33 And even though he lives in America, his story I found, was quite similar to mine in a way. And I came across his poem like Someday, Someday I'll Love Ocean Vaughan. So it's like a love letter to himself. And I think just his, his language sort of made me fall back in love with language because I saw that poetry could be written for someone like myself and I didn't have to do heaps and heaps of work to understand someone else's experience, which, you know, there's value in that. But when you grow up on that kind of poetry, you are left feeling a little bit bereft in a way or like poetry isn't for you. So that combined with discovering Bankstown Poetry Slam was how I was sort of like encouraged to start writing a little bit more autobiographically or like semi autobiographically.

14:27 And it made me realize like there is a lot there in my own life that is worthy of being written about. And it's really worth riding my way through that first before I start fictionalizing. So I think it was like a combination of those two things that got me creating and sharing and then dragging along to the the poetry slams as well. And yeah, like similar experience with Bella, just watching the way that banks on poetry unfolds, watching the way below have to host as well. You know, he gave so much respect to just like, the figure of the poet. Every person who signed up for the open mic, he said he called a poet. I watched Ali Alhaj do a feature set and he performed this poem about Palestine at the time.

15:12 And I started to see how, like, crucial poetry could be in that way as well. And so, yeah, I think that's what started to get me, like, creating and sharing. And then in that same year, I applied for the National Youth Poetry Slam in there, like inaugural year. I got in. Somehow I got in, which is cool. I think like the poem that I performed, it was about my grandpa, which I actually I still really stand by. I still quite like. But it's quite a page poem, you know, very rigid crime scheme, not super easy to understand on the stage. But I think ever since then I've sort of just tried to write for the stage more and like I, I became addicted to it. It's really fun.

16:00 So that's my That's my Batman origin story. I'm a poet. Do you remember what you said to Bella when you know you first dragged her along to the first night? It was like, come to Bankstown poetry slam dot dot dot, like, what was the pitch? I don't know. I I honestly can't remember. Bella, do you remember? OK, when and, and I like share things that we want to go to. We just send a link and then we write 2 words. We go question mark. Simple as that. The humanity link, yeah. I mean, I guess the event speak spoke for itself, so yeah. And I guess like if you went and it was, it was lame, you know, you've, you've got someone you know there and you can kind of slip out the back or whatever. But everything I hear about Bankstown Poetry Slam, it's certainly not lame.

16:52 You know, the more I hear about it, the more it's, it's certainly like the envy of a lot of us down here in Melbourne in terms of having such a large, you know, regular celebrated event. I want to talk about the recent Bankstown Poetry Slam Grand Slam, which was at the Sydney Opera House and you were both involved. Now, I have had our mutual friend Bernadette Cohen on the show a little bit earlier and, and she kind of set the scene about what the Grand Slam was like. But I'd like to know what your play by play of the experience was and how your teams went in the in the scheme of things. So how was it Bella? You know, it's really, really cool because like we always like to say, you know, Western Sydney hits up like the Opera House, like the biggest stage in Sydney or like Western Sydney hits up Sydney Town Hall.

17:39 So it's it's just really cool that like our middle community is so like portable and we're sort of just loud and assured anywhere we go. Daphne, who came up with our team name? It was, we were called Collateral Good, which is like, yeah, a play on collateral damage. There were four of us. So it was me, Asha Almaz, deputy, and we met up quite a few times. We got to know each other. And I joked that being in a Grand Slam where you're competing in teams is like doing those icebreaker exercises, like at work or get to know your colleague. But like, you can't BS your way through it if you want to write good poetry. So.

18:22 And I knew Daphne before and I, I sort of knew Asha, but I'd never met Alan. So like, we had we, we took the time to get to know each other properly. And it was pretty easy because they're, you know, they're great people. Yeah. And so, you know, the first poem that we performed, so the grandson sort of split into two rounds. The first poem that we performed was called Somebody Teaches You, and it was an extension of a poem that Daphne had already performed at the Sydney Writers Festival. And that poem is really different to any sort of other poem that I've written, which is really cool because it pushed me into a new style. And it's sort of just like excoriates or it brings to light all of the things that no one seems to want to talk about openly.

19:06 And so, you know, at the beginning, we do have a trigger warning for things like anxiety, abuse, suicidal ideation, assault. And it takes all those things and it really just lays them bare. And we all sort of testify to some of those experiences that we went through, respectively. And the poem sort of puts all of these almost taboo experiences side by side to say that, you know, this is a pattern of our society that we've we've naturalized the idea of keeping things hidden even though they make us suffer collectively. It's a really intense poem, but it also felt really powerful to perform, especially amongst through powerful women on the stage as well.

19:48 And also like. Because that poem was really heavy, we always wanted we want to take care of the audience. And so the opening is humorous. I'm not sure if Bankstown will will put the performance online, but just to summarize what happened in the opening, you've got Asha saying, like, dying. And then Alma's going, like, watch why? And she says I'm bleeding where? And then we all point down there. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a really cool poem. And, you know, kudos to Daphne for allowing us into that poem, to breathe out and experiences into it, to expand it. I think that was really special. And then for the second round, this is where we wanted to write something new with all four of us as well. And we were really reflecting on our intentions behind that poem. And I think we got to the conclusion that we wanted to leave people with hope and we wanted to dive deep into our relationship with our respective cultures. I'm Vietnamese, Ashes Norway, and Daphne is Turkish, Elnaz is Lebanese.

20:53 And we wanted to in the lead up to writing that poem, we had a lot of just cross cultural dialogues. And we're talking about our relationship to, you know, the food, language and the land and sometimes the grief that can come with those relationships. And it was just a really cathartic poem to write. Yeah. And there was just so many lines that we all sort of resonated with. So I remember Daphne said, you know, even though we've lost some of our language, there's some words that your brain will short circuit to. And for her it was the word Bez for cloth. And you know, I got to learn a little bit of like their their languages too. And sometimes the syllables and the actual pronunciation would almost be similar to, you know, when I would speak the words to them.

21:39 So that was really cool as well. And then we came third, which was pretty. Neat. Yeah, there it is. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. And I just, it was so fun, even just like in the dressing room or in the green room, getting ready together, getting to be kind of girly. And like, I didn't, I didn't dress up very often. So that was also just a really fun part of it. And talking to the other poets backstage as well was just a really big highlight. Yeah. So that's my. Grand Slam experience. It was indeed grand. Yeah, so good. And I remember when when Daphne came on the show, she shared her piece Nobody Tells You, which sounds like it was the the the basis for for kind of the remix that that the four of you put together.

22:25 So that's that's really cool. Annette, what's what's your stories from the Grand Slam? Where to start? OK, so I'll introduce my team, I guess. So it was me, Ollie Moore Jihad just seen and Elliot your Cameron. And I've, I've seen these poets like around big stamp poetry and I've watched them perform and I was always such big fans of them, but I've never really sort of talked to them properly before. And so when, when they drew the names, we had a meeting where they drew the teams and I heard I was in their team because like our team got drawn last. I was like, hmm, who's left? Oh, I've got, I've got these two. Then I've got that guy. And I'm like, I just, I couldn't believe my luck that I, I got to work with some of my favorite poets. We all come from such like different backgrounds as well. And it's, it's similar to Bella.

23:17 Like we, we spent the two months leading up to the Grand Slam just sort of meeting up. We met up every week for a couple hours at a time, just connecting through honest conversations, I guess. And we just got to know each other as people, which you kind of need if you're going to write poetry together. And through those conversations, we built the poems that felt the most urgent or authentic to us, the poems that we ended up going with. So again, yeah, there's two. One of them. The one, the first one that we wrote was the second one we performed. And it was about masculinity. But we all had such different takes on it.

23:57 So obviously, like my, my team is made-up of like three other men. And I was thinking, you know, like as, as a woman, I, I know I had things to say, but I didn't want to speak over the men's experiences with masculinity. But I, I quickly realized, like, we all have such different takes, even like the three men, they have different relationships with their fathers, different sexual orientations. And so I, I told them, like, you know, I, I'm happy to take a backseat in this poem and just sort of highlight your voices on masculinity. And they said don't be silly in it. Don't be silly. And what they ended up doing was in, in Elliott's words, Elliott said you should have your own saxophone solo. I was like, stop it.

24:43 I'd be honored. And I think I, I really appreciate what we ended up with. So if you didn't catch the poem, the opening is like a dialogue between the three men, and it looks at how the men sometimes can struggle to communicate their affection like they do it in circuitous ways. Elliot's got this great line about how men sometimes love each other so much that they want nothing more than to show what they would break for each other and how violent that affection can come across. And so the opening is just them in that dialogue. And their section ends with the question of like, how do you love a man? And that's the opening to my section as well. And I didn't want to just answer that question because I don't know.

25:30 I don't know. But I, I think that it was a good segue into this idea that sometimes when men are not brought up to communicate properly, they can impose that role on women, just like generally speaking. But sometimes like women don't have all the answers or they shouldn't have to fulfill just that emotional role in a way. And so my, my first line in response to that question, you know, how do you love a man is I always find myself here. I always find myself here. I guess that section is just sort of focusing on how like when you're shoehorned into that therapist role within a friendship, it can get really taxing on yourself. Like I think it's true of both men and women, but I, I just have found in my experience that women are often shoehorned into that role.

26:27 So that's what my section is about. And it kind of ends with them looking at the ways in which men can express love. Because I end my section with some of the best men I know come in pairs, come in wink, wink, threes. And this idea that, like, they will raise some of the best men in my life sort of raised each other when they didn't have other men in their own households to raise each other. The second poem, which ended up being our first one, is this poem about, like, evil and what evil looks like. And Ali has this background in comedy. He's really funny. And he kicked us off with this really great draft.

27:08 You know, evil looks like Elon Musk jumping up and down for for the orange man pasty tummy showing he's got he's got this. He's got this great photo of him just like pasty tummy blind and white like Edwin Edwin Cullen in the sun this. Is, you know, the killer Bella? Bella, Yeah, that's. It. Watch out, Bella. Yeah. And so he he wrote that draft and it was really good, but the rest of us were struggling to come up with something funny to sustain that draft a because all his humour is just very well written.

27:49 But be more more saliently is that we sort of, we kept seeing like Israel's genocide in Palestine get worse. We saw Trump turning America into a dystopia. Increasingly. We saw like cases here in Sydney of workers, like getting laid off for their support for Palestine. And so I think that the reason that we were so successful is because we wrote these feelings into the poem instead of trying to force it into just like a comedic entertaining poem. So we wrote the idea that, you know, it's just, it's getting harder and harder to laugh into the poem. And I actually, I think it adds so much more tension because, yeah, like, we weren't just trying to make an audience laugh.

28:34 Then we were exhibiting how humor can be like a defence mechanism against evil, but it's also sort of teetering the on the line of like when this mechanism actually breaks down. And so Ollie opens up with evil looks like this and that, and it's really funny. But then Elliot comes in with his section. I'm sorry, but like, I don't know how to, I don't know how to laugh anymore. And the poem just sort of switches between those two tensions. So yeah. And I guess we ended up winning as well. There it. Is there? It is. Both on the party is. Excellent. And I know Bernadette's team came second. So that's the whole, yeah, the whole picture there. Well done.

29:16 It was really fun, like our dressing room vibes were Immaculate as well because like while the poems were pretty intense, I think that we just, we kept it really light and really fun and really relaxed. Like I, I actually have a recording of when I went to go change in the bathroom and I could just hear them. I hear, I hear someone start like singing and like, you know, clicking and I'm like, what is going on? And I just hear evil used to have an aura. And they're just sort of like singing our poem like a sea shanty or something like that. And I think that pretty much embodies like the attitude of my team. So we've we've become really close. Like we featured last night at Enough Said Poetry Slam as a group in Wollongong.

30:03 And yeah, I feel like I'm, I always joke to them. I feel like I'm part of The Beatles or The Wiggles when I'm when I'm with them, yeah. Both great groups to be a part of I'm sure. I really like what you said about humour there. Yeah, it does feel like a particularly humorless time at the moment. But I think, you know, I think art more broadly and comedy have a lot to offer us in this stage. It's the start of Melbourne International Comedy Festival at the moment. I don't know if you saw on the news, but they had to cancelled like the opening All Stars gala or whatever 'cause someone died in the audience while it was happening.

30:45 So yeah, we're, we're all after, you know, a little bit of, of, of humour, but things like this, yeah, keep happening. I suppose it's. It's right. Now, in the lead up to the Grand Slam, both of you were involved with putting together kind of a, a little mini doco series called behind the Poem, which you were both featured on. But you, you know, you were both kind of in the engine room doing, doing the sound and, and the the cinematography and, you know, I, I was watching those in the lead up and I thought it was very, very, very clean, you know, very Professh. What was what was that experience like, you know, setting up that kind of prelude to, to the big events?

31:31 It's a lot of responsibility. Well, actually, like, I think because we're media students as well, thank you for saying it was professional because like, it was a huge, really steep sort of learning curve for us. And you know, I think there's little mistakes in the editing that only Anna and I sort of noticed and were like. Only you know, you know. Only you know. No one else knows. Yeah, good. Yeah. And I think, well, Annette actually had the idea, and she created like, a pitch deck and sent it to Bella Hefter, who's the host at Bankstown Poetry. And, you know, as soon as she sent it, he's like, yeah, like, I'm on board. What can we do to support you guys?

32:11 And so it was really well received and with a lot of support from Bankstown. The premise behind the series, in the way that Annette pitched it, was do you know genius lyrics? Oh, yeah, Yeah. Oh, OK. Yeah, it is. It is similar in that way. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. So we're like, you know, what would a genius lyrics look like but for poetry? Yeah, I'm into it. Yeah. And we created something that we wanted to see because, you know, the poet at a slam gets 3 minutes to present their piece, and then unless you go up and talk to them afterwards, that's all you'll hear. And we know that sometimes it takes months to write a poem, and so much care and craft and little choices go into the poem and so. You know as.

32:55 As poets, we want to give ourselves permission to share art, but then also as students who study film and all of those things, we wanted to create a space for other poets to share and speak about their process too. Yeah. So we ended up filming at Whitlam Library in Cabramatta. They have like such a great system where you can book their studio and they lend you the equipment and the stuff. They're really nice and supportive and they'll sort of help you through everything as well. So we, yeah, we ended up filming over 2 days, but we spent another two days before the filming process just like booking the room and trying to get to understand all the equipment and like so many buttons and so many screws, trying to familiarize ourselves with. And Jihad, who's on and it's team also came to help us out as well.

33:48 Lug the big iconic banks and poetry rug because we wanted the rug in the shot. Yeah. And I think it was just it sort of solidified part of the work that and I want to do, which is if we have the means and the privilege to be honest and the time and the skills to uplift are the poets voices, then we want to do that. It was sort of like, you know, it was, it was self indulgent for us too, because like these poets that we admire, we we were in the same room with them, like getting to record them and get an insight into, yeah, the the behind the scenes or behind the poem. Yeah. And so I think like every single poet I have like a highlight or something I learnt from them. I think the most transformative experience was just seeing Osama, Osama, NASA come in and talk about his poem. Do you remember the name of the poem? Yeah.

34:43 Wish, Wish. And the poem was about how him and his personal life, he was doing amazing. Like, he just got married. He went on a a trip or like a fitness retreat or something like that. But then October 7th happened and yeah, he's Palestinian. Like he's got family going through the genocide in Gaza. And he was saying that even though in his personal life he was doing so well, you have that sort of juxtapose with everything that's going in Gaza and it's like this weird disjunct that sort of, it feels unreal. And I think I like a lot of people, especially a summer, you know, relate to that. And so, yeah, I think that was just a really, you know, summer is so funny as well.

35:26 Like he just sort of brightens like any room he walks into. And I think that was just, yeah, it was a really transformative experience to be behind the camera for that and just document, you know, his what he had to say. It sounds like it was it was kind of your first time working with the the whole rig and whatever, but you wouldn't have guessed it. It's such a, you know, an impressive execution of the vision, like you said, to make it the genius lyrics of poetry. I thought it, it flowed really well. And I think, you know, got everyone excited for seeing more of each artist and seeing them compete on the big stage. So, so well done. Well done to you both. Thank you. Thank you. Thank. You now I think we're ready for piece #2 Bella, this is going to be your first one. What do you have for us?

36:15 I have a poem that I performed at National Youth Poetry Slam in 2024. I should have said this earlier, but I just want to acknowledge that like, I'm reading this poem from Gethigal Country also, specifically dark Land, where traditions of storytelling have persisted for, you know, 10s of thousands of years. So yeah, I just want to acknowledge the traditional and continuing custodians before I share my own story. So this poem is called Sky High. We have our noses pressed against the airport window. This little girl and I, she asked me, how does it feel to fly, to be sky high? Like all kids, she's full of simple questions that adults can't seem to answer.

37:01 At 4, she got a bruise so purple and dark that she asked if death had made its mark. At 9, those bruises spread until her body turned to night, sparkler in hand. She asked, why is my brain so foggy at my own birthday party. From the magician, she learns that magic exists only in escape. So at 17, she'll run out of questions and out of home, mazing at a rave, a bit away from her mum's beatings. But for now, she's dreaming of how she can go higher, go further, get older. This little girl and I, we recently hiked the Fitzroy Trail. On the left of the viewing platform she saw a blue sign that said we are here for you and a number that read 13/11/14 at 120 metres up.

37:56 Her eyes followed the water down down the Cliff to all those rocks, wondering just how quick it'd be to step off. Since then, she became obsessed with flying. Flying so high that rock bottom wasn't even an option. And like an adult who's meant to have some sort of answer, I hold this little girl from a future where the strong ones are the ones who've learned to love. And I say, maybe don't fly away. You see, the only difference between a cloud and a castle is who can fall through. If I may map out your flight tomorrow, you'll mistake your bed for bedrock, and resting will leave you restless. You'll settle for a failing Monday over a failing country. You'll cry yourself empty, but even a shell hollowed out can still recall the ocean.

38:56 Rock bottom will feel like a floor of full stops. But the thing about full stops is that you need many to build an ellipsis, to skip along those stepping stones to the next sentence, because there are so many on the other side of the world. Someone eyes dilated dials for help. Someone puts down the knife. Someone choosing their life. Suppose your thoughts were not a life sentence. Suppose there were a flight path to a future where people say thank you for being here, and instead of a farewell, you'll hear a greeting. So for now, we can press our noses against the airport window, you and I, and we'll catch our reflection, smiling from the other side. Wow, That's, that's outstanding.

39:51 Yeah. The Yep, the, the future of, of poetry in this country is in in safe hands with, with people such as yourselves. Now I want to ask about the fact that you have both been on the editorial team for the Unsweetened literary Journal, the annual literary journal of UNSW. So, you know, you have this hand in, I guess, shaping and curating other writers works and, you know, I guess looking after their babies. I'm curious how that role in editing has changed the way that you handle your own writing. Did you have any thoughts on it?

40:32 Yeah, I think that, you know, editing has forced me to be a little bit more malleable in a way. So to me, editing is like the mid ground between the reader and the writer because you're both a reader in that you're consuming someone else's work, but you're also contributing your like creative experience and you're suggesting edits. So it's, it's not quite like a Co written work because, you know, it's first and foremost your author's work. But I, I do think that I, I think it's nice because, you know, sometimes if I'm just focused on my own work, I forget what it's like to be on the other side, to be a reader or an audience member. And so to be an editor kind of mediates, mediates the the two for me.

41:21 And yeah, I think like editing with unsweetened in particular is to edit work that is from people sometimes at that are at a similar stage in life to you and a similar stage in their creative journeys to you. And so it feels like I'm sort of contributing to like my own zeitgeist in a way. You like, you know, how in in high school you analyse how there were these like writers, collectors who were like the modernist and there were the romantics. And so me putting in the work to help other people's writing as well feels like I'm contributing to sort of our own collective, our living and breathing collective now.

42:05 For sure, yeah. And I think that the work that comes out of Unsweetened is quite different to the work that comes out of something like Bankstown poetry as well. I'm not just editing poetry, but I'm editing prose and I'm editing different themes as well. The latest piece I edited was from a person called Juno in my uni, and her piece was called something like Advice to the Living from Dead Girl, and it was structured as like an advice column from someone who's died and it was really cool. It was really experimental and you can find it on the Unsweetened website. It was from last year's issue.

42:51 But yeah, I think editing, editing humbles me as a writer, I would say. Yeah, no, that's, that's well put. And Bella, I'm just wondering is in that editing process, you know, have you ever had to work with a writer who you you kind of you kind of saw that there was something in what they were sharing, but it just needed a little bit more, you know, a little bit more work, a little bit more refinement or or Polish. You know, you didn't want to you didn't want to kind of give them the the rejection straight away. Has anything like that come up? I feel like, and what you just said there, Andrew, like is the very like crux of editing in that you're not going into fix, quote, UN quote, fix a work. You're going into sort of sharpen and enhance whatever intention was there to begin with. And so a lot of times, like people who submit to unswedened, they'll just like submit a draft or just something that's in the works.

43:48 And so sometimes like the intention comes through subconsciously. And so as editors, we make it come out more consciously. So a lot of people have the conception that editing is just like proofreading for grammar and things like that. But it's so much more. We go through stages of, you know, big structural edits where at least for me, like a really important part of the process is meeting up in person, if not over online with the author and actually dedicating time to have a chat about, you know, what is why did you, why did you write this piece? You know, where did it come from? What were you reading at the time? And why does this piece exist? You know, what do you want it to say? How does it engage in the discourse that you're participating in?

44:32 And so unpacking the author's intentions, their vision, their style in order to find ways to enhance it is, I think, a really humbling experience for me as an editor because it sort of takes you out of any sort of tunnel vision or like solipsism you might have for what makes good art, right? You know, the works that I got assigned most recently, they were both poems and I was, I was inspired by them because they were so bold and willing to be, to break form, to play with imagery, to scatter things across the page. And so, you know, the first poem I edited was by a writer named Chris. And he wasn't even in a creative writing degree. He was outside another, he was in another discipline. I think it was STEM related.

45:18 And that's a great thing about Unsweetened because it's a student publication. Like everyone comes from different disciplines, which is often their strength. It's the IT pays to the uniqueness of their gaze when they're writing. Yeah. So he wrote a love poem called The Briefest Form of Forever, and it was so beautiful and experimental in the metaphors particularly like he, the persona compared himself to a camera and a lot of different things and to a semi colon he played with. I love works that play around with grammar itself and used grammar like the actual, you know, semicolons and dashes and full stops as metaphors in and of themselves. And then the second poem that I looked at was by a great writer named Pieta.

46:05 And she wrote and you can tell how she how creative she is by the title of this poem. It was called Cassandra Curses the Sun from the depths of a bar in New Orleans. Yeah. And it was it was about this tradition of, of women that have been so angry but sort of have been pushed aside for that because there's no space to express that anger. And yeah, they were both so open to the editing process. But you know, like, you're not there to tell them what to do. Like, you put a lot of trust in the author. Like they know what's good for their work. So you just plant the questions, you plant the alternatives, you bring to the light their intentions behind each line, and then they'll, they'll do the rest. And yeah, it's such a great process. And like, and I said, like a lot of it is students submitting and a lot of them are emerging writers who have never been through the editing process before as well. And so that's always something we like to to keep in mind when we when we take them through.

47:02 Yeah. So it's a rigorous process, but it's also hopefully an enjoyable process where both the editor learns something and the author learns something as well. And I'm sure that now that you've, you've seen things from that perspective, you know, it, it helps to, I guess, sharpen your own work as well. Precisely. Yeah, yeah. Has work already kicked off for 2025's edition, or is that Yeah yeah. Already into it, Yeah. Great. Yeah, we just, we just had a meeting the other day where we met all of our editors. We did a little bit of like editor training as well, which is good. Like I think unsweetened, other than just being a wholesome community, like they do offer you professional development.

47:44 They breakdown the stages of editing for you, like the difference between structural edits and copy edits and proofreading. So we're going to start accepting submission soon and doing the selection process. It's going to be really fun. This is our, this is our third year with them and we've witnessed like 3 different coordinators and they each have different visions for the journal. And so it's, it's really exciting and it's really humbling to be the ones to help them achieve that vision as well. That's sort of like your role as the editor. Always you're helping someone else achieve their vision to the the best that they can. Great, sounds good. Now I want to talk a little bit about your relationship with with each other and art. You know, I'm imagining growing up in the same household as a, as a sibling who, who's, who's also creating stuff. You know, hopefully there weren't too many fights about like, oh, I, I heard, I read or I heard one of your lines and now I'm stealing it, you know, or, or something like that. Hopefully things were a bit civil. But the question I want to know is what is a a dimension or like an aspect that you both see in your sister's work that you believe differentiates it from your own? It's a, it's a good question.

48:58 You know, like I'll, I feel like we're so similar, not genetically, not just genetically, but now upbringing as well. And I think sometimes it can be really hard, like when we go through the same things and we write about the same things, and then, you know, I'll have an idea and then I'll discover that Bella wrote it first. I'm like, ah, you've got first dibs on that. You know, I've got to step back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And often, you know, we don't like fight per SE, but we we do have, like, moments of insecurity at the same time where it's like, oh, you're such a better writer than me. You said what I wanted to say, but you said it better.

49:41 Beside all of that, though, you know, I think in general, but it's sort of common knowledge that all, almost all stories have been written before, right? And the uniqueness of the writing is in how you construct that same story. And so that principle is amplified when you're a twin and you literally have the same experiences as someone else. And I actually think it's forced us to be more nuanced, or at least we've tried to shift our mindset where, you know, if we write some other thing, similar things, we think, OK, how can I take the same thing but write it in a unique way, in a more specific way. And I think that the way that our work trajectories have differentiated, at least lately, is I feel like, and Bella, you can tell me if you agree.

50:33 I'm sort of more comfortable with stage poetry. Whereas Bella has been doing a lot of writing for the page and a lot of like publications for the page as well. She recently published with DVAN in their journal Diacritics. They're like a a Vietnamese diaspora association in America. And they published a page poem for her, which is really cool. And I think, yeah, it's so funny. I, we always say, I aspire to Bella's this and you know, vice versa for me. I aspire to Bella's, like, brevity on the page and the concentration of her, like, figurative language as well, which is something that I feel like I'm slowly trying to get back as I shift onto the stage where the drafts are a little bit more, I guess, in a way, journalistic or just sort of more conversational because it's different, you know, writing for page and stage.

51:29 But yeah, I think sometimes our similarity is our greatest strength as well. Well said. What about you, Bella? What what do you see happening in in the network? That's that you feel like you aspire to or you appreciate the the the difference. It's funny because it's like, it's like an ad said, like sometimes there is not clash, but overlap in the things we intended to write. And, you know, if the other person has gotten their first and it's, it's a blessing in disguise because it pushes us into new ones. But it's also a gift in another way because sometimes, like we might feel the burden of representing a certain experience or, you know, feel the need to document it, but struggle. And so the other person would do it for us. And you know, so there's been times where I'll write a poem or and it will write a poem, we'll swap, we'll read. I was sort of sit back in the chairs and like, thank you, you said it.

52:26 I don't need to write this anymore. Like you did it long time. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. But like an Ed said, like it sometimes is a place of insecurity because I, I think we've internalized just, you know, from sometimes the lack of representation growing up that once one person has said something, especially if you're representing a very specific part of like, you know, your cultural identity or something like that, then no one else can speak on it. But I think that's us internalizing sort of bigger, bigger structures because we're not used to having as, as kids anyway, such narrative planitude. It's it's different now, now that we've, you know, enter spaces like BPS.

53:08 But yes, in terms of differences that I see between our work, like Annette said, I think just maybe in the past couple months, the way it's just naturally gone is that I've been writing a lot for the page and, and it's been writing a lot for the stage. And so, and it has really, I think in the last, say, six months, mastered rhythm and sound in a really concise way. Like she understands syllables and consonants on a level that just, it makes her poems really visceral. And so I aspire to that. And it's very compelling in a slam space. And she's also, I've noticed, mastered the ability to take on, you know, hermit crab forms.

53:51 They're forms that are sort of found in the everyday that artists take and sort of recontextualize. So, you know, it's like it looks like writing a poem that's structured as a menu, for example, or in a next case or a tree. Yeah, yeah. And so in a next case, it was her writing a poem titled Dear Airbnb Host. So I really. You know what's, you know what's funny? So I actually, I, I got that from Bella. I got it from when, you know, like actually we came across hermit crab forms in our, like in our degree, Rorana Gonzalez and Bella wrote a draft titled I think, dear, it's like, you know, how at university you can apply for special consideration.

54:40 Like, if you're you're struggling with something, and I hope you, I hope you write this out before I get to it. But she was writing something like, you know, Dr. Special consideration officer. I want to say that there is actually nothing special about my case, but I'm, I'm going through like this kind of grief and that kind of grief. And so Bella started experimenting with hermit crab forms. Maybe I started after that, maybe before that, maybe at the same time, I don't know. But yeah, then I, I came up with this poem, the Airbnb host, because every year my friends and I, we try to plan like an Airbnb trip, except Airbnb, I came across like this over 25 policy in trying to book saying you have to be over 25, otherwise you're a party risk. And if you see my friends, we're not party risk at all. So I wrote a whole poem about that and it was kind of like a love letter to my friends.

55:41 I think it's a it's a really generative form to experiment. You can do so many different things with it. And it also like it it, it reinvents forms that we that we move through every day, you know, applying for things, consideration forms, menus, etcetera. And so, yeah, that's one thing I admire in and that's poetry that actually inspires me to be more playful structurally. She also write a poem that's, you know, going backwards, backwards in time. And I. Yeah. So, you know, and all this is to is to say that we're inspired by other other artists and poets that have done this before us. Yeah.

56:22 And one thing that just in the last maybe month that I'm really inspired by for from Annette's poetry is the willingness to imbue humour in our work and to be sort of witty and playful. But you use that as sort of an access point or like, sort of open your arms to your audience to say, hey, let's laugh together so that we can also mourn together, breathe together, get angry together. I think humour is it. It puts people's defenses down. Yeah. And so, you know, and I was, I was listening to a podcast episode from DVAN, and Stephen Duong was on there and, you know, he's, he's a poet. He's based in America. And he's saying, like, you know, you can't read 50 pages of I'm sad and I'm depressed. You have to take care of your reader and you have to. I really like this, he said, Your poetry has to be full of life.

57:15 Yeah. And I think. And that embodies that really well. It's moments like these, moments like these, I do feel like the younger sister. I feel very taken care of again. I. Got this idea from you? Oh, I didn't even know. That how did. That happen yeah, very good I want. To spend. Some time like. Dreaming, I guess with the the two of y'all. I want to know what what your ambitions and what your I guess hopes are for the Sydney spoken word scene. You've talked about living so close to kind of the the hot zone or the epicentre of of where it's happening in in Bankstown. But you know, I've talked a bit on the show about, you know, I want every gig in Melbourne to be like booked out people hanging from the rafters.

57:58 You know, it'd be great if if you know, a spoken word can can just get more exposure and, and understanding and resourcing and opportunity. Yeah. I'm just wondering what's what are your hopes and dreams for for Sydney's spoken word? It's interesting because. The spoken word scenes that we've been exposed to here have already pushed what I thought was possible, such as, yeah, like such as with Bankstown poetry, the idea that this community in Bankstown can relocate to like Sydney Town Hall or the Sydney Opera House and can sell out to like 2000 people. I know that they're the biggest slam in the western in the Southern Hemisphere as well.

58:47 And I just, it's like you, like I, I do want it to grow even more, if that's possible. I think that's. Something that well, for for one, I think that they should get paid because they volunteer, run and they do so much work. Sorry, can you? Can you look straight into the barrel of the camera? And say that again, you should get paid. People need to pay you. Should get paid. Absolutely, Absolutely. Pay your artist, people. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder like you. Know if if there was money in this would the slam? Still. Have the same Genuity if people were doing this for money, but I also think at the same time, they deserve to be paid to at least like have a sustainable living of this kind of this kind of work. But so that's, that's one thing I have hoped for. And then I think just for me personally, I, I want to find more fellow Vietnamese spoken word poets, you know, going to Bankstown.

59:46 I see how Sarah Mansour and Bilal have to have cultivated like such a space for the Muslim community specifically. And, you know, we're not Muslim, but we've been welcomed into that as non-Muslims with open arms. And I can see how like they greet each other, how they're just so unapologetic in their identity that I'm I'm almost jealous. Like I, I wish we sort of had that for the Vietnamese community. And I am starting to find it through people like do you know Vivian Pham, she wrote the coconut children. I'm not familiar. Tell me more. Yeah, so she she published. With Penguin Random House that like some crazy age 1617 something like that a novel set in Cabramatta and she's done so much work since then and she's offered us opportunities. She has a behind the poem episode. If you want to learn more about her, I'd recommend do you listen to her speak.

1:00:43 So I've, I've found people like her, Sheila Femme who has, she's like everything she's done so much. She's been in this scene for, I'm not sure like 2020 years now, something like that. And it's people like her that embodies something that Sarah Minsour said. Sarah Minsour's the Co founder or founder of Bankstown poetry. And she has this ethos of, you know, muscle your way into the literary Canon and bring people with you. And I feel like Sheila Femme embodies this. You know, she's made it to the top, but she, the work that she does is focused on highlighting voices such as ours, like we're emerging Vietnamese writers as well.

1:01:29 And so she's she's made it. She's made it in life, but she's bringing us along with her. But yeah, just like in terms of where I want the spoken word scene to go, I guess just more of that, just more of that. Yeah. Yep. Just more of it. Fill up the. Plate. Let's go, let's go. What about you, Bella? Yeah, I agree. Like more of what's going? On like, you know, continued diversity of styles actually, rather than because I find there's no one slam style, which is really cool. And I think, you know, Bilal said what makes Bankstown Poetry Slam so great is that there's never one voice that represents it, which I think it's really cool. And you know what you were saying Andrew before about, you know, I wish in Melbourne like we sell out all these seats and you know, everyone, everyone just like wants to come. And I think that's such a great thing. But I think like the, what makes, you know, spaces like Bankstown Poetry Slam so powerful is that it doesn't matter if it's ten people in the room or 2000 people in the room, they're focused on connecting with whoever's in front of them. And So what I find is that, yeah, Bankstown compels people. Like it draws people in rather than trying to reach outside in order to call out to non audience members. So they, because they're so assertive and proud and yeah, they, they draw the attention of

1:03:01 onlookers and then they they welcome anyone who who does come in like they welcome to be in it so quickly, you know? Yeah. So I think that's the power of that. And I think. You know we're talking about money. Before and paying artists and I think like you know in an ideal world poetry slams survive and thrive off crowdfunding yeah and you know so that. Way there can. Continue to be that sense of community and sharing and exchange in the foreground rather than say something like competition. Bilal always says when he hosts the poetry slam, the point is the point.

1:03:41 No, the point is not the points, the points is the poetry, right? The points are just an excuse for us to come together and share poems. And I think that's a really important principle to to guide us forward in in just poetry slams in Australia. And also what I want to see is just continuing the little traditions. I know all these slams have their own little phrases, things like that. Wait, can I swear or No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it. So, yeah. So like, you know, and I at least some poetry signs across Sydney, what I've noticed is that if someone gets up on stage and they say like, oh, I just rode this on the train on the way here, everyone in the audience will be like, no shit. And then so there's little traditions like that, yeah, that I just want to see continued.

1:04:29 I think that's so cool. But also that like going forward in terms of ambitions and hopes for the spoken word scene. I think as a community, a like we continue, yes, to take care of each other and BI think what comes with that is that we continue to be critical, critical within our own communities and open with each other. I just watched a movie called House Moving Castle. I know I'm late to the scene. Like, I've been sleeping on this movie. But I think, like, because in that movie, you have a community of magicians and witches, so, IE people who use magic to create and change reality.

1:05:11 And is that not reflective of what artists are responsible for as well? Right. Yeah. And so how as an artist is exercising his magic in order to confront war, and it takes its toll on him because he starts to lose parts of himself and because in servicing this greater 'cause he doesn't let himself be grounded in the relationships around him. And there's just a great quote in there where Hal says my own kind attacked me today. Wizards that are masquerading AS1 stands for the king. And so I think that's a good reminder that as a community of art is to have the responsibility not only to reflect culture, but challenge culture. We need to be critical of each other and hold each other accountable.

1:05:56 If we're circumventing some ideas, if we're not cutting through a lot of the sort of BS that's around us, I think there's challenges to that as well in terms of, you know. Everyone's grappling with kind of cancel culture and, and whether that's a good thing or not. So some way to to kind of hear each other out without, without exiling one another for for this or that I think is is really important. Like we've been talking about, you know, Bankstown's been going for for 10 years. So it takes time to to build community. You know, you have very, very charismatic, savvy leaders as well. You're mentioning that there are other kind of cultural ties within the group which kind of reinforce it. So so these things take time, you know, and, and you see, you know, especially in Melbourne, we've seen some older events kind of start to wind down and some some new ones come up now. And, and one in particular is kind of exploding. We also do that that new shit thing down here in Melbourne. So I'm not sure if that made its way down the East Coast or, or where that originated, but yeah, it's always, it's always good fun.

1:07:02 Is there a slam in Melbourne that you would recommend us and visit? The next time we're in Melbourne, Yeah, great question. So. There are now way more open mics than slams necessarily. Cool. All right, yeah, probably the two that are that are blowing up and that that are the place to be. I mean, one of them I'm going to this weekend, it's called slam to Dote. Shout out slam to dote. Again, more of an open mic thing, but just a, a really vibrant community who have very, very quickly like built a built momentum and kind of a vision. And they're always, you know, fundraising for, for one thing or another. So I think it's, it's really exciting to see something like that take off in the northern suburbs. The other one is, you know, the, the recent return, I suppose, of, of word craft run by our, our friend Ren Rapture. And that has also evolved in, in the time that it's kind of been off air, so to speak, into more of a, a bit more of a variety night.

1:08:06 I mean, we have people doing doing music and comedy and kind of other forms. It's, it's expanded it's scope in that way. And I think that's really cool to to see. So again, seeing like growth and and transformation there. So those are probably the big two. I mean, there are, you know, there's at least a dozen more kind of smaller ones happening in bars, you know, weekly or monthly all over Melbourne. But yeah, I I'd just love to see, I just love to see the people that run these things kind of, you know, provided for and and taken care of so that these things can can, can build, I suppose. And yeah, maybe there there.

1:08:46 I think there definitely is space for more of a slammy kind of structure to come in. And I guess we'll we'll see whether that that happens. So, so, yeah. Are you down in Melbourne soon? Ish. We were just there. We were just there. In February, yeah, we went to. AI think an underground like. Music Lounge, which was really cool. I wish we actually had that. We probably have that in Sydney, but because we just came from, Do you remember when they were doing the Candlelight concerts? I think in like the Square or something? And we just came from, I forgot his name, but the guy who sings Eagle Rock, do you know that guy? Oh, Ross Wilson. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we.

1:09:27 Just came from him. And like we, it was just by chance that we happened to be there the same the one night that he was performing. And I'm like, wow, this is crazy. Let's keep going with this. Like this music night. Bella, do you remember what the bar was called? I don't, I don't. I wish I did. It was pretty. Cool there. Yeah, it's cool, yeah. And look those those cool underground. Underground bars, yeah, they are a bit of a dime a dozen in Melbourne, but they're pretty cool. There's, oh, there's one that has like a secret bookcase that if you like, lean against it, opens to like a secret bath. That's a pretty cool one. I'm not telling you where it is, though. No, Ned. I think we're ready. For your second and final piece to bring us into the next stage. OK, so this this poem is.

1:10:14 Called Burial Rites, and it's one I've performed at the September 24, 2024 Bankstown Slam and then the National Youth Slam in 2024 as well. We're gathered here today because every few months my parents attend the funerals of people they've never met. Their friend's mother, brother, great grandfather. In Vietnamese culture, we. Attend the funerals of. People we never knew to let their loss be known. I'm gathered here today to spare a whole stage for my grieving friends. Because a genocide spares no one and no time for mourning.

1:10:59 But if I could catch that. Millisecond. Between two machine gun bullets, that breast that's held before a bomb drops, I would stretch and inflate it like a single balloon, hand it to you and say here it is a moment for you to grieve. A moment. For Abu Amar, whose job it is to. Clean bodies for Mass burial at the AL Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Day in, day out, he wrings out that bloody cloth as if he were an accordion, so swollen from inhaling decay and love and loss, yet he still exhales the music of prayer, a moment between ads. At the Super Bowl for the.

1:11:42 Man outside a burning tent in Rafa, holding the body of little Ahmad like a football, like he's paying someone else's karmic debt. A moment to realize that only a colonizer would dare us to try to see eye to eye with a headless child. A moment for you, my friend, You, who is always. Being chased by the lights. Of breaking news, the headline is that your. Government is afraid. You'll terrorize Sydney with your tears. He's the kind of guy who might stumble into a funeral and mistaken it for a conspiracy. Cole, your grief. Insensitive, irrational, inflammatory. But the moment is yours, my friend, to either pick up the megaphone or rest it on the floor while we gather here today for Armani Alfour.

1:12:36 Armani, you said that you didn't. Even hear the missile. Drop. Before they made a grave of your walls, they could only salvage your mother's arms. Maybe. That is to say, they salvage the parts of her that never stopped reaching for you. A moment for the other 30. 9 in that. House that list of names rolling, rolling like end credits to an empty cinema. But the cinema isn't empty because in Vietnamese culture we attend the funerals of people we never knew to let their lust be known. And this room alone is full of people who could make these millisecond moments so moving that they become movements. Yeah, very.

1:13:20 Nice. Very, very nice. All right, now let's have a quick chat about the creative process and the mystery that it is. I'm just wondering how would, but how would both of you describe your creative process, your actual way of, of putting a piece together from the page to the stage, as it were? And within that, you know, most artists, they, they kind of face moments of, of creative blocks or self doubts, you know, perfectionism, imposter syndromes being big for me. Take your pick. You know, within your creative process, how do you overcome those kind of challenges and, and, and keep motivated through them?

1:14:02 Any thoughts about and I've said it before, right your way through right? We don't write to flex that we know everything. We write to confront head on the things that we don't understand, but we want to understand a bit more and hopefully by being able to capture it in words, the whatever we're experiencing is just a little bit lighter. So in terms of you mentioned imposter syndrome as well, like I think as a twin I have credibility in saying that like I also experienced imposter syndrome. When it comes to your overcoming impostor syndrome, I think confront why it is that you feel doubts about your own, the validity of your own voice. And again, write out why.

1:14:44 Yeah, why you think that is. I had another point, but I lost it. But in terms of overcome, maybe you'll get it in it. Maybe you'll pick it up. Cosmic link. Cosmic Link. But in terms of? Overcoming artist blocks. I think the motivation for me to create lightly has turned more into an imperative. Like at a time when you know, our government and institutions are silencing or shaming artists and academics and even journalists, we need to make ourselves visible. Like that's an imperative. And there's no time to make ourselves small. Like we need to permit ourselves artistry if we if we want to hold on to our humanity and and our agency.

1:15:30 Luca Lesson, a spoken word poet, He he said something years ago that stuck with me since he said that, you know, artists, the world is becoming an ugly and robotic and violent place. Let your art be one of the reasons people still want to get up in the morning lately. You know, I've been through blocks before, but within the last year it's not as common to me because, yeah, it's that the moral imperative to write. So, you know, before that I would have said something like if you are, if your relationship to writing has turned sort of sour and felt more like labour, and sometimes writing is labour. But you know, in that case, like, let yourself be playful in your writing, so. Because.

1:16:11 Oftentimes the block feels like we're just creating the same thing over and over again. So let yourself be playful. Do something you wouldn't usually do. Write something silly. Here's the writing prompts for you. Listen to Olivia Rodrigo's song Ballad of a Home School Girl and write everything that makes you want to just die socially in a social setting. So that's that's the writing prompts for anyone listening. But when I get stuck, I read poetry, I read other people's works so that I can nourish my own mind. And oftentimes, like inevitably I'll want, I'll be inspired to, to write something if I'm reading something or watching something or listening to, to music, for example. And also I feel like there's this false conception that if you're, if you have a writer's block, you need to push your way through it all the time. Sometimes, you know, you do need to take a step back from writing, especially if you're you're young, you're a young writer like us.

1:17:05 Like take a break until you feel. Compelled to write. Again, and don't put the pressure on yourself, Yeah, to keep writing. Focus on living your life is the advice that Sheila Pham gave me. Live your life. Prioritize loving your friends and family. And to quote Annette, we live poetry before we write it. So take that break. Let yourself take that break if that's what you need. One more tip I have revisit your why? Why are you writing? You know who, who are you writing to? Who are you writing to? Because then that sort of gets us out of the our tendency to fall back on certain topics and traumas, like we tend to fall back on certain things when we're in creative blocks.

1:17:47 So just revisit. Yeah, you know who? What kind of what kind of work do you want to do? Like, what do you want to say to people that you haven't said before? So there's that's my little arsenal of tips that I that. I have so. Much good stuff there. Everything from, you know. You mentioned Luca, you know, he knows, he knows how to put it. He knows how to to make it like pithy. But also, yeah, I, Olivia Rodrigo. Rodrigo who's probably, you know, inspired a whole new generation of, of, of artists and poets through her work. So, so good on it. What about you, Annette? What is it like dancing with the writer's block? Sometimes, Yeah. I think that, Bella said a little bit. I think that, you know, my, my high school teacher told me if you're overthinking writes, if you're under thinking, read when I'm under thinking or I'm experiencing writers block. Yeah, I consume, right.

1:18:48 So I've got Bella and I have like a quote of the day Discord server where we put it's got everything it's got. We've divided it into different threads. So song lyrics, literature, gym quotes, be uncomfortable, No, be comfortable in the uncomfortable quotes from film and TV. And it's just sort of like a rich depository for when you're experiencing writer's blog. And I think the best thing is just to consume other people's work. And another sort of little like depository I've got is a Spotify playlist inspired by Bella's Spotify playlist called Lexical Legends. I've created my own called Vernacular Visionaries. It's kind of a RIP off, but it's just like songs that I find are really well written because I feel like music has this magical ability to immediately throw you into some sort of emotional state because it's not just the writing, right? It's like the music as well.

1:19:45 Just put on your headphones and throw yourself into like the the woes of a boy genius song. And I think like it can, it can get you in touch with the feeling, the feelings behind writing instead of just the words as well. And yeah, just like a stack of poetry books that I keep returning to. So, you know, I always consume if I have writer's block. But it's like what Bella said. You know, sometimes you don't have to. Fight so hard to get over that as a young poet this is OK this is the reason why I didn't study philosophy as a degree and huge respects to people who do. But for me, I found that I, I sort of dipped my toes in some philosophy in high school in year 12, and I kind of went down the rabbit hole of it.

1:20:33 And at that age, like, you know, I had experiences, but I also haven't experienced a lot of other things. And I spent more time thinking about life than actually living life. And as a poet, wow. You have to, you have to live life to, to write. If you're experiencing writer's block, maybe it's a sign that you have to go live your life, you know, do things because sometimes just just writing, sitting in a room by yourself and writing will make you a shell of a person. You know, it doesn't have to be a whole identity. So I, I just sort of go live my life. I do things that are completely unrelated to writing. That's how I got my Airbnb poem. Being a party risk exactly being a part. Being a quote UN quote stereotyped. Party risk, right?

1:21:23 And you know, like as as a poet, again, Ocean Voom has this great quote about how our culture tends to fetishize the expert, fetishize someone who knows everything and who someone you can find as a spokesperson or a cross section to whatever experiences they're having, right. And I think it, it's sort of if, if you're that spokesperson, it pushes you to know everything. And it's like Bella said, if you interrogate the why of the why, like why you're writing. For me, it's shifted my mindset to think, OK, am I, am I searching or am I just stating, Oh, and Bella's words?

1:22:06 Am I just flexing, flexing what I know? Like I've discovered that's not the point. And so if I have writer's block, I'll use poetry as a way to just try to discover or like search for what what it is I'm trying to understand. Because often writer's block for me comes as a result of feeling the pressure to state or to be an experts. And so if I shift my intention, maybe that overcomes the writer's block as well. So that's I guess that's my tip for writer's book. And then in terms of actually formulating the work and putting together the work, I often like document stuff that I experience in real life, like in real timer. Every poet has like their notes up poetry, right?

1:22:48 So yeah, exactly. It's a staple nowadays. I I put it in my notes app and then in my writing process, I'll change it up so that I protect the people that I'm close to because I'd hate for my friends to think, oh, watch out. And that's here. Be careful what you say, otherwise you'll put it in a poem. You know, it's important to protect the people that we are close to, especially if you're leaning towards like biographical writing. And so that to me is what the editing process is. It's funny because having a twin means having a built in editor as well. So actually, like I'm realizing now a religious part of my writing process, my final draft will always go to Bella.

1:23:30 I'll send her both the document and the audio recording and I'll be like, what do you think? And vice versa. So that's yeah, yeah. So. That's my my writing process. Wow, so so wise. So wholesome. I feel like you called us all out there saying, you know, hey, you have to live your life. You can't just philosophize on, you know, lying in bed all day. And it's like, Yep, Yep, you're absolutely right. I love that you had so many things that you're doing collaboratively to help yourselves individually in, in your own individual work or whatever you're you're working on. Yeah, love, love what you said about music as well. I would love to like collaboratively build like a writing playlist with the I think therefore I slam community.

1:24:16 So, dear listener, let me know in the the comments of the episode if you want to get involved. I I think that'd be really cool, you know, Yeah. Boy genius, just me and my dog and an incredible view. That's yeah, yeah. And. Even like I don't. Think it has to be? Like super experimental writing. I've taken a lot of inspiration from the smooth FM songs that our dad listens to. It's like, do you know the song Making Love Out of Nothing at All by Air Supply? I actually don't. I know Air Supply, but I don't know. That particular song? Sing it, Sing it. I can't now I'm not going. To sing it, you can listen to them sing it. I won't sully your associate.

1:24:59 I don't want to turn you off the song, but I just like it's. It's the music that you grew up with that you come back and you interrogate their lyrics and it's such a well written song. Yeah. Can. Can I just like? Quickly tell you about it. Sure. So the way that it's the verse is structured is this anafra of I know, I know just how to whisper. I know how to lie. I know how to scheme. And it keeps going to culminate into like these two lines at the end of the course. But I don't know how you do it. Making love out of nothing at all. And that's just like, that just blew my mind because I associate it with my dad as well.

1:25:40 And I think it comes back to the idea of fetishizing the expert. Like, yeah, at this age, we we know some things we're going through our formal education, but there's some things, I don't know where it counts, you know, there's some things where I can't behind, can't hide behind theories or ideology and some, some areas in life where I just have to learn from people wiser than me, such as my parents. Yeah. Wow. Fantastic reflections. I want to know, and this is a this is a big question, what impact do you hope your work has on people who hear it and experience it for me like lately?

1:26:21 As we're going up, I see that sometimes we've like we've hardened ourselves, our exteriors and our lives move so fast sometimes that we forget to slow down and do things with more intention, say things with more intention. You know, I've seen how increasingly people get really hard on themselves as expectations start to build as you get older. And when you're hard on yourself, it means you're hard on other people as well. And so I want my poetry, hopefully it's doing this to give nuance to emotions and experiences that we've overlooked. And then so within that complexity, I hope people find find that compassion that we need to soften our exteriors and soften the way we treat ourselves as well. And it has a great phrase that is in, I think her bio where she says I want to locate the global in the local. So she's also, yeah, I'll let I'll let her elaborate on that. For a recent work that I wrote for Fairfield Gallery, I was paired with a visual artist, her name is Linda Sock. And I was reading her artist bio and she said something really cool.

1:27:35 She was like, she wants to position. So memory, historical or personal stories, speculations, imaginations, historical fact, all as and I quote equally reliable archives, which I think is so important. I think poetry is should be democratic and not esoteric in that way. Like because, you know, we we come from backgrounds where our parents homes don't exist anymore in a certain way and their histories have been overridden in certain ways. And So what we have to rely on to go back is storytelling. And sometimes it's fictional, sometimes it's not. We don't know. That line is blurred. Yeah. And so I think that coupled with the things that and then I might be studying. In.

1:28:20 Uting out all of these bigger terms and isms and systems, I think they need to be put side by side and treated with equal value. I guess in the same way that we need to treat, you know, the pathos of poetry equally with the logos and ethos of poetry. And I think also, like, I was an adult workshop led by Sara Monsoon, and she said that, you know, your role as poet is to make life bearable by bearing witness to the truth, the great, the mundane, everything in between that. Yeah. Amazing. Thanks. Thanks, Bella. What about you, Annette? Yeah, I think that increasingly I've wanted to. Adopt like an egalitarian practice in my poetry just because again, when you when you are educated in the works of classic writers, when you come across someone like TS Eliot, who I actually, I do find pretty cool now that I'm thinking about here, he's taking a bit of a beating in this conversation, but. He has no I accept for itself.

1:29:24 Yeah, no way I do. I do find. Him really cool he's actually he would be like around our age when he wrote his poems, which is kind of crazy but I do think that it was it was hard to get and even studying, you know people like the the Beat Generation who was so experimental. I Love Actually, I love their work, but I, I wonder sometimes like if the idea of being experimental is afforded to certain communities and not afforded to other communities. The Tanya, when is this professor in America, Vietnamese professor. He has this principle in creative writing of show and tell. So not just show, don't tell, but I think he, he specified that principle to diasporic writing in a way. Because sometimes if some people don't have the privilege of just showing and not putting things plainly and simply because like their, their existence is so complicated and not made visible already that sometimes they do have to put things simply. Sometimes they do have to tell.

1:30:37 You know, it's got me thinking sometimes like is it a privilege to be super experimental? You know, everyone, everyone listened. I think everyone listened or now listened to the Beat Generation when they were experimental. But if, say, a refugee was trying to communicate something in an esoteric, unfathomable way. Would anyone? Listen, you know, I hope so. I hope so. But I'm trying to adopt this practice of show and tell, trying to strike that balance between being understandable but also challenging, not didactic, not esoteric, and the impact, you know, I hope it inspires someone else to write to. I also want to leave the impression, again, like poetry is lived before it is written, you know, it's not just an art form, but it's like, it's a means in which at least I have been able to live my life more fully and see the people in my life differently.

1:31:39 And it's helped me become more self aware about my culture as well. Like it's a means. That's what poetry has done for me, and that's what I want my poetry to do for other people as well. There you go. What a what an inspiring. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. What an inspiring vision, you know, for from both of you. I, I can tell that you've done, you've really done the work in, in thinking through this and feeling and feeling through all of this and being like, hey, what do I, what do I want to do with, with, with what I do here? Now moving through to the overarching analogy that we have for season 2 of I think therefore I slam, I want to know if your creative work was an instrument in an orchestra, a creative orchestra, what instrument do you think it would be?

1:32:26 We've already mentioned the instrument before so that your mum's playing. So I'm interested to see whether that might come up or maybe something else else. So what are you thinking? It's so funny. Like when I was with my Grand Slam group. They also use so many musical metaphors. You know, saxophone solo here, flip solo. We're like a band. I think that at the moment my poetry kind of functions as a piano, which is in a way like. It's sort. Of your staple instrument, one that a lot of Asian kids grow up having to learn. And I think that it's, it's, it's like a bit of a quieter instrument, but it also has the capacity to house so many different styles as well. And so many different like tambas. And so I think like, especially when I started out in slam, my style was sort of very quiet.

1:33:21 But I've, I'm trying to learn to find the range within that more quiet style. Hence like a piano, it can be piano, it can be Forte, it can be staccato, it can be smooth with the smooth pedal. And yeah, I think maybe the piano, you're so lucky in it that I was going to say that and then I changed my answer. Yeah. OK, so I was, yeah, I was watching a song by Tricosi called The Nutcracker Party that I learned from Barbie growing up. And within that there's this beautiful harpist that sustains the, the sort of melody. And I wanted to say that, you know, I, I wish my work was like the harpist. I wish, but I don't think in reality it is. There is a poet that is also a harpist here in Sydney. Her name is Ying at on Instagram. She's the harp poet Anyways, but I think I'm more like the guy. There's this guy in the back of the orchestra which is like really big symbols and he only comes in at like select times. And the timing has to be just right for him to go. And then when he hits the cymbals, he holds them up like this so that the sound reverberates through the the thing.

1:34:33 And so I think I'm realistically more like that guy where I'm happy to come in sort of at the right time and make my, my, my little impact. And, you know, maybe put the poem online or NVIDIA and let it sort of reverberate in, in the back. But then other than that, I'm happy to just sit in the background and observe the, the, the musicians in front of me and then, you know, do my and then settle back in to the back. Yeah, do the. Yeah, yeah, 'cause I think. About the symbols, which is like, I don't know, it's like a hype. Person in the crowd just like it's it's kind of like I don't know if you've. Seen a live version of Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, but there's a small performance online where there's a guy on stage who doesn't do anything except run around shirtless and just Just Dance and just vibe.

1:35:27 He doesn't. He doesn't play an instrument, he doesn't like sing or anything. It's just a hype man or the OR the music video to I alone by live. Where they've they've got their drummer in there, but he has no drums, so he's just kind of there jumping in the background. It's bizarre. So we've. Got a, a piano and we've got some symbols. Excellent. There's going to be some very interesting piano arrangements in this orchestra because I think you're the third pianist to kind of sign up. So there's going to be there's, there's going to be some, some interesting stuff going on there, some layering, but that's fine. We'll, we'll fit you all in. We'll make space on the stage. It's going to be it's going to be glorious. Now moving to the segments shamelessly ripped from Diary of a CEO. I'm calling it Diary of a POET.

1:36:13 So you've been left a question from my previous guest. This question comes from Taylor Richardson. And the question is, do you think a story or poem can ever be timeless? Or does it inevitably belong to a specific time, culture, or set of experiences in which it is written? Big one, it's a good. Question you know I. Think like a poet, a poem. It can be timeless. I think the study of poetry in school actively tries to make you. See the timelessness in. It you know the universal truth, but I often find that ignoring the context in which it was written actually takes away its power sometimes.

1:36:57 Or sometimes reducing a work to its universal truths can sometimes whitewash it in a way. Like this was my struggle with the study of English in school. To me, the more specific you are contextually, the more universal the poem becomes. I think it's like it's the cultural specificity is the thing that can make it timeless or more insightful. So, yeah, I think a poem, it can be timeless and but I think that analyzing it in its context and bring so much more to it. Same as like what a dad said, it's that it's that writing principle. The more specific you are, the more universal residence your work has.

1:37:42 Yeah, I think you should never. Aim to sit down and write something and say, OK, I'm going to write something that's timeless. I'm going to write something that's going to echo throughout context. Yeah, I think that the what makes the study, I can accept the study of poetry timeless is when a work is contextually specific because that's what makes it powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Big question. Cool, Wonderful, wonderful answers there. You. Now have the responsibility of leaving a question for my next guest not knowing who they are. Oh, OK. So my question is. What is the main technique that you like to play with? Because for me, like we mentioned earlier, it's like hermit crab forms.

1:38:31 So what is the main technique that you like to play with? And I'm hoping this answer is generated for listeners as well. Yeah, yeah. Like it, Like it. But if you're listening. Let us know. Let us know what's your your trick or technique is Bella Annette. If people want to find out more about you, follow the work that you're doing. Where's the best place that they should head? Instagram. Instagram. Instagram. Yeah, my Instagram is. At. Bella luu So BELLALUU under score art. Yeah, and my Instagram is at Annette. Annette under score Lu under score art. I've actually got Bella's Instagram in my buyer as well, in case you mistaken us or if you, you know, if you didn't catch hers.

1:39:22 So generous. So generous just to make sure you you catch them. And we'll have links to all those pages in the episode description. Now, Bella, you're going to bring us home with your last piece before we we wrap everything up. Actually, I might perform like a. Really old. One This is the first poem I ever performed at Banks 10 Poetry Slim and it's called Nosebleed. I want to tell you about one of my friends. He had a lot of Nosebleed as a kid. And there were a few. Reasons the first being that he got bored and bore a torn. Nail a little too deep and before it could breach the hippocampus, the blood blinded his finger and congealed over his lips before he could say, hey brain, what's with all the noise? Because his brain was screaming that the Nosebleed was an allergic reaction to cherries.

1:40:16 Since there were too many coincidences. Like the night his. Dad staggered into the bedroom and dropped a glass of cherry coloured wine on his face. When he shattered awake, he was confused about the difference between blood and beverage, and all he could see was Rothko Red swallowed in black, like the time he knocked his first tooth loose by chomping. On a cherry. Seed, he crushed it like a champ to excavate a hole in his gum wide enough for the words I hate you to shove their way through because his nose bled true, thicker than wood around that mean blue fairy who said he he looked like shit after a casual jog at 2:00 AM, but the jog was really a swim where a blood vessel burst because he tried to dive too far down in open water.

1:40:58 Because the air at home was even saltier. Because he never mentioned that yesterday a kid called him a girl for crying in detention and so he punched the kid like an insurgent because his body couldn't sink this surge in anger. It's hereditary, like the time his dad threw a flower vase and it detonated. On. His face and it tasted metallic, like the sound of his voice when it dropped two Optus by the. Time. He moved out, then moved back in to liquidate his assets to pay off dad's debts, only to end up in a one way hallway at 2:00 in the morning alone. His nose bled because his. Face didn't know how to. Cry. In the face of death of a terribly good riddance. And how do you get rid of a Nosebleed? Well, you can sit straight, pinch your nose firmly. Gasp for air.

1:41:49 Through the mouth bleed. Profusely. For 5 minutes, then you clean it up. These things heal. Quick, no traces. No smudges. Only a blood clot swallowed. Wow. What a debut piece that that would have been. It's got her second place. Yeah, there you go. Thunderous applause and 2nd place. Well, well deserved. Well, Annabella and Antoinette Lou, this has been an absolute pleasure finding out more about the two of you and what's kind of happening up there on the East Coast. Thank you so much for thinking with us and for slamming with us. Thank you so much, Andrew.

1:42:35 Thank you, Andrew.