Sean M Whelan & Isnod play Renaissance

Myself and Isnod are playing the Renaissance Festival today!
We're on about 1:30.

For more details of the festival check out their Myspace page.

http://www.myspace.com/renaissance_festival

Two Gigs this weekend with new collaborator Isnod

Very excited to have a two gig weekend with Isnod.
Tonight we're performing at a benefit for Japan called Concert for Sendai. We're on between 8-9pm.
Tomorrow, Sunday the 10th April, we're special guests of White Minus Reds April residency at the Builders Arms in Fitzroy.
Here's the blurb for the show.

Melbourne duo White Minus Red blend analogue and digital sounds to create a unique flavour of liquid dream-pop / folktronica. Having played at a multitude of festivals and venues around Melbourne, they have refined their approach and have an arsenal of fresh material and are set to stun.
They have a residency at The Builders Arms on Sunday evenings throughout April and each week will be joined by an interesting array of local talent.
On Sunday the tenth of April they will be joined by the fresh new collaborative project of the amazing producer, Isnod who has been performing in various outfits in Melbourne and around the world and Sean M. Whelan, renowned writer and performance poet who has simillarly been around the creative traps in a multitude of projects. The pair are combining spoken word poetry and sensitively arranged beats and soundscapes to create an immersive experience of arresting beauty.
Also joining us will be Encyclical, brainchild of Dani Kirby, whose classical training filters through her contemporary, new media sensibilities, creating delicate melodic, multidimensional gorgeousness.
You should definitely come and treat yourself to some of Melbourne's freshest and finest.
$7/5
Doors open at 7:30 and show finishes at 11pm so it's civillised for a school night ;)

Hope to see you at one or both of these shows!
x.
smw.

Tattooing the Lane: Eltham

As part of the Australian Poetry Cafe Poet program I'll be performing two half hour sets at The Lane in Eltham tonight. I'll also be talking about the processes behind my poetry and performance.
This event will take place on the 4th March at St Laurence Lane, Eltham, VIC, Australia, 3095. 7pm. $5 entry. Bookings can be made on 03 9431 5263.

Dream Machines Launch

Tomorrow night I'm participating in a very exciting event that is the culmination of 5 years work for an amazing artist by the name of Mish Cahill. Her works called 'Dream Machines' will be on display and I've been asked to write and perform a poem especially for this event. There's going to be all manner of other surprises too, with a big turnout. I recommend getting there on time so you don't miss a thing.

6:30 pm.
Victorian Artists Society.
430 Albert Street, East Melbourne Victoria, 3002

Lavender

Walking down a suburban street I crush lavender leaves in my hand as I pass and raise it to my nose and I remember that time you saved my life in mexico I was so sick from something couldn't keep anything down not even water and you kept bringing lavender oil to my nose to try and keep me calm and I'll always be grateful for that. always.

Dawn Conspiracy HERoe event today.

BREAKING NEWS: FEMINISM NOT DEAD
Are you tired of hearing that “feminism has failed”? Are you curious to know more about the vibrant, exciting culture of feminism alive and kicking in your very own city? Did you know 2011 marks the centenary of International Women’s Day?

The Dawn Conspiracy takes you inside Australian Feminist Culture in the lead up to IWD 2011 (March 8th), bringing together performers, writers, poets, musicians, comedians and other thinkers, taking the pulse of feminist culture in our city and finding it in fine form.

HERoes
Inspired by the 22 year old Grace Darling who saved a group of ship-wrecked sailors in
1838, a series of panellists will introduce their female heroes and explore the issues around heroism and the feminine. An exhibition of video art will further expand the narrative, and the evening will celebrate female heroes through music and performance.
Saturday 5 March, Grace Darling Hotel, Smith St Collingwood, 2pm-1am

I'll be speaking at this event today at 2pm about one of the few female beat writers, Diane Di Prima.

Tattooing the Surface of the Moon performed live at Willow Bar

Andrew Watson and Sean M Whelan perform live at Willow Bar tonight!

pic by Michael Reynolds.

My co-conspirator Andrew Watson is performing a rare solo set at Willow Bar tonight. The first set will be just Andrew and for the second set I'll be joining him for a few poems.
7:30pm.
free entry.
222 High Street, Northcote.

See ya there.

Debut performance with Isnod tonight! Horse Bazaar.

After setting the scene over February at Horse Bazaar, on Feb 23rd DIALECTIC goes live with some guests!!!

featuring: ISNOD meets SEAN M WHELAN in person, in their first ever live onstage spoken word / music collaboration...

plus FOLCORE COLLECTIVO AUDIOVISUAL members DJ El Timbe & VJ O'Video stream in from BARCELONA... 10pm

and of course DIALECTIC residents LAPKAT and 555.

Japanese fare is served up from 5pm and the DIALECTIC sounds and visuals kick off from 8pm. Gold coin donation during live performance.

ARTIST BIOS:

ISNOD: Music composer Isnod has been performing solo and collaboratively for nearly six years. He has done a variety of things on his musical path, including support for artists as diverse as Mike Patton, Luke Vibert and Squarepusher. Damian has also proven a dab hand at remixing tunes for a variety of folk and at being commissioned for soundscape-y soundtrack work. He has created several soundtracks for contemporary dance pieces; composed sonics for several short films; and created a soundscape for the Melbourne Fringe Fashion Festival made entirely from sounds recorded backstage on the night of the parade. When DJing, he has been known to set the dancefloor alight. Literally.

SEAN M WHELAN: Sean M Whelan writes for performance, paper and pixels. He has published two books of poetry, Love is the New Hate and Tattooing the Surface of the Moon. He programs Babble, a long running spoken word event in Melbourne and is one of the co-coordinators of Liner Notes, a series of readings that are spoken word tributes to iconic albums. Sean also performs his poetry and stories with a band called The Interim Lovers. An album by the Interim Lovers called ‘Softly & Suddenly’ was released in October 2010. He has just begun working with Isnod, recording a commissioned piece for Red Leaves, a joint Japanese/Australian literary journal.

Folcore Colectivo Audiovisual

EL TIMBE: DJ, El Timbe, currently residing in Barcelona, is a great exponent of the new, international tropical sound, and forms part of the audiovisual collective folCORE. His sets represent an injection of clean, fresh energy. The technique for his sessions is very precise and based on his infinite collection of music, the tastiest and newest styles that spring up daily all over the world. Nu Cumbia, Kuduro, Baile Funk, Kwaito, or Dumbia, are just some of the styles that fight it out in his sets. TIMBERISM is his new series of mixtapes edited by GENERATION BASS, and they are turning out to be a storming success. At the moment he is working from his studio in the Raval, in Barcelona on new sonic crossovers, the most bastard sounds, in search of a new alchemy in tropical rhythms.

VJ O'VIDEO: VJ O'video y su Opendesktop” is a digital artistic performance. It's collage of fixed and moving images with digital brushes. It's the result of an investigation over the possibilities to unify different applications to manifest an idea or an artistic creation translated to a V-jing realm. The manipulation of this open system, the fusion of static images and in movement works as a live act and opens the possibilities to a digital gestural expression. One of the objective of the project is to open the act of creation trough art and technology to people. Showing a different format to rise the interests towards the use of new tools for the artistic creation and raise the creativity. It's important to underline the simplicity and functionality of the interface. During the investigation I realized how the possibilities are much more opened then I thought at first.
___

DIALECTIC : weekly wednesdays in February at Horse Bazaar in Melbourne

global exploratory beats meet multi-lingual spoken word

featuring LAPKAT (Lisa Greenaway) & 555 (Brendan Palmer)

8.30pm onwards (8pm in LIVE nights) ... free entry

LAPKAT is Lisa Greenaway, a spoken word specialist, for the last five years editor of global literary / spoken word journal "Going Down Swinging". Her LAPKAT DJ tangent explores the intersection of music and other sounds with the human voice. Voices speaking in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, French, Dutch (and beyond) feature, as well as found voices and atmospheres, sound artists and atmospheric moods.

555 (cinco cinco cinco) is Brendan Palmer, the brains behind Uber Lingua, a trans-cultural DJ and host of nationally syndicated Dialectic Radio. For 5 months in 2010 Brendan toured Europe, absorbing, performing, gathering sounds, conducting interviews, and sending Dialectic episodes back to Australia from Berlin, Cologne, Southern Poland, Vienna, Budapest, London, Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Lisbon and Istanbul. He has returned to reveal a massive stock pile of sounds.

In collaboration and performing solo, these two will reveal audible freestyle interactions of language, culture and musicology. Come early for Horse Bazaar's now renowned Japanese menu, complimented by minimal sonic textures. Later on the energy will build.

Recorded for broadcast on Dialectic Radio, syndicated across Australia and NZ on the Community Radio Network Satellite, and over the net on http://www.dialecticradio.net/

A two hour weekly program, since 2005 Dialectic has featured contributors from places such as Mexico, Argentina, Scotland, India, South Africa, Botswana, Costa Rica, Reunion Island, Bulgaria, Brasil, France, Russia, Portugal, Switzerland, Macedonia, Indonesia, Spain, Argentina, Greece, Turkey, Sierra Leone, Israel, Kenya, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Chile, Colombia, Angola, England, Ireland, USA & Wales…

The Dialectic event seeks to extend these radio based interactions into an live club context. Though February 2011, LAPKAT and 555 will set the foundations for further conceptual expansion.

Stood on the street corner in the early evening
and stopped to watched a jet plane leaving a temporary scar
on a permanent sky.
Its belly shone with the last of the sun.
We used to write our names in the sky with vapour trails.
And soon you'll do it again.
But you'll do it alone.

Fight For Love

I really do.

I'm so sorry
the love letter I wrote you
was eaten by the sky.
I didn't know
the future
could eat that much.

Softly & Suddenly Reviewed.

My recently released album with The Interim Lovers, 'Softly & Suddenly' has just received a great review written by Tully Hansen and hosted on Page Seventeen's Blog.

Here's an excerpt...
"Softly and Suddenly is a charming tale, a bedtime story of sorts for the lovelorn and poetic. The sentiment which lingers after the last bars have died away is one of hopefulness, if not happiness – a sense that there may yet be a little wonder left in the world."

To read the whole review please visit Page Seventeen's Blog by clicking below.

Page Seventeen.

Launch of the EWF Reader

This Tuesday night I'm performing at the launch of the Reader.
What is the Reader?
I'll let them explain...

The Reader brings together ideas and insights into the craft, philosophy and politics of being a writer. It’s about writing and everything that comes with that: editing and publishing, motivation and distraction, the missed opportunities and the poetics of failure. With articles, essays, poems, fiction and artworks, The Reader blurs the lines between the creative and the critical, ultimately asking, what is it to be a writer?

The Reader is edited by the wonderful Aden Rolfe, who kindly asked me to be a part of it.

I have a piece in there on public speaking, which I shall be sharing with the room on Tuesday night.
Come along to Horse Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale St, 6pm.

As Much.

As much as an owl can carry on its back.
As many books as a fox can learn to read.
As many spokes on a wheel.
We go on and on and on.
As much as our hearts can stand.

Softly & Suddenly at the Brisbane Festival

Sean M Whelan & The Interim Lovers played our first show of Softly & Suddenly at the Metro Arts Studio last night. The show went very well! Very happy with the venue, we were all so relieved to discover we wouldn't have to bump in and out every day and we could leave the stage setup as we're the only ones using the venue during that period.
We have three more shows of the festival to come and I have a feeling each one will get better and better. We're also heavily documenting this with two camera footage and desk recordings so hopefully you'll be able to view some of the show online before too long. Melbourne lauch details of Softly & Suddenly coming soon!

The Confession Files

Tonight as part of the Crime and Justice Literary Festival I will be performing in a show called The Confession Files. Some might recall I have done this show once before at La Mama under the steady directing hand of Kieran Carroll. But this is a little different, a changed lineup, Emilie Zoey Baker out, Michelle Dabrowski in. Also we have Andrew Watson writing and performing music with this one.

The Confession Files.
What does it feel like to witness a crime and not say something? How can you suddenly snap one day and hurt the person you love? How do you ruin everything you have desperately worked so hard to keep? Can there ever be absolution or atonement? Can there be true forgiveness?

A night of monologues, poetry, passion and lyrical confession of crimes.
288 Albert Street, Brunswick.
$10/$7.


Hope to see you there.

Performing at the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe tonight!

Very excited to announce that I'll be performing at New York's famous Nuyorican Poetry Cafe tonight.
I have read there once before, but it was a long time ago, way back in 2002 and I'm quite a different performer now.
Not sure what they'll make of me this time but i do know they always get big enthusiastic crowds so it should be a hoot.
If you're in NYC come on down. Show starts at 8.30.
Wish me luck!

You want me to do WHAT?

I'm one of the members of this panel at the Emerging Writers Festival today.

You want me to do WHAT?
So you’re published and now you’re expected to give readings, go on radio, appear in public, sign books and talk about your work. But you’re a WRITER! These writers talk about the promotional side to their work – tips they have picked up about speaking in public, how to perform your work well and the art of the soundbite.
With — Natasha Campo, Katherine Charles, Declan Fay and Sean M. Whelan. Hosted by Daniel Ducrou.

Yarra Room.
Melbourne Town Hall.
12.30pm.