Q-POETS
Skye Loneragan
Skye Loneragan is a critically-acclaimed playwright & performer who has toured her performance poetry internationally. Skye is a Sydney Poetry Prize winner, and published performance poet. Her project Q-Poetics has grown from her work within spaces & places of waiting – starting with Glasgow’s New Victoria Hospital (Making a Map of My Mistakes), & her work in live art and theatre . Her long form poems include The Line We Draw (Flint & Pitch Storytellers Centre, Edinburgh and The Arches). Skye is passionate about the arousal of curiosity and activiating public spaces and how curiosity can functio as a kind of currency – both in terms of value and exchange. She has worked extensively as a poet with diverse communities and a wide array of contexts which include schools, prisons, health centres and queues. Skye’s published contributions include Melbourne Books (Award Winning Australian Writing 2012), Abridged Magazine, (UK), Grist Anthology (editor, Simon Armitage) and Sotto (Australian Poetry) and Causeway Magazine (Scotland). Her to-camera poems can be seen on vimeo, including ‘I’ll do a Budget‘ and the response to Les Murray’s beautiful poem Performance, called ‘I, WON- ONE’ for the Q-Poetics project in the Commonwealth Games Cultural Programme. She has toured and worked in collaboration with the Australian Poetry movement, Word Travels, and founder Miles Merrill, supported Kae Tempest on their Spoken Word Sydney Writers Festival gig, and performed alongside Holly McNish with Word Travels, Marrickville Writers Festival. Skye’s work is currently exploring how we might need to re-imagine who we are in relationshp to eco-emergency. For that, she has begun a collection called You May Lose Your Fingerprint, an experimental collection including a film-poem with Adam Sebire, shared as part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s GreenPlanet COP26 day.
Stewart Ennis
Stewart has been a writer, performer and photographer for 25 years. He was a founder member of the acclaimed Benchtours Theatre Co. His work has taken him all over Scotland, Malawi, India, Cuba, USA and throughout mainland Europe. He is a creative writing tutor in Prison and his current show ‘Fantoosh’ is currently playing in Edinburgh to happy holiday-makers from around the globe.
Tawona Sithole
Tawona is a poet/playwright/musician who enjoys creativity as a way of self expression and making a connection. From a family with a tradition in storytelling and music, his ancestral name, Ganyamatope is a reminder of this rich heritage grounded in humility and the natural outlook to learn. He is co-founder of Seeds of Thought, an arts group dedicated to supporting and facilitating access to the creative arts.
Eleanor Jackson
Eleanor Jackson is a poet, performer, arts producer, and radio announcer. Two-time winner of the Midsumma Poetry Out Loud slam, Eleanor Jackson has featured at many writing festivals around Australia, and is the producer of the Melbourne Poetry Map, a series of audio poetry walks supported by the City of Melbourne. Eleanor curates the spoken word program for the Brisbane Emerging Arts Festival; and is currently the poetry editor for Peril magazine.
Scott Sandwich
Scott Sandwich is a performance poet who tells stories about dates, death and the apocalypse. He envisages a world where academia can live peacefully alongside horrific puns. He was a finalist in the Australia Poetry Slam in 2010, won the 2011 Woodford Slam Competition, and was a finalist at the Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup in 2011 and 2012. His work has been exhibited around Australia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Africa and Lithuania, and was recently featured in These Arms of Mine for the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
CJ Bowerbird
CJ Bowerbird is a performance poet and the Australian Poetry Slam Champion for 2013. He explores what it is to be human, writing about things we have lost, things we never had and things that are slipping through our fingers. Humour is a key feature of much of CJ’s poetry. He occasionally makes witty social observations but most enjoys making fun of himself. CJ’s poetry has been called ‘earnest’. Others have commented on his ‘deceptively common language’ and ‘musicality’.
Jo Sri
Brisbane writer Jo Sri spends his spare time philosophising about what to do with his spare time. His poetry is often political, frequently confusing and places a strong emphasis on rhythm, internal rhyme and ridiculous hand gestures. In 2012 he won the Queensland Poetry Slam and Woodford Festival’s National Slam and came second in the Australian Poetry Slam. He has just released an EP with his band, Rivermouth. Some people saw his Brisbane Writers Festival performance and said it was good.