A night with Roomers

Philippa Armstrong recaps a recent event at our St Kilda shop featuring spoken word from


Much as I love spring rain, when the heavens opened at 6pm, half an hour before the Roomers spoken word event at the Readings St Kilda shop on Thursday night, it wasn’t thrilling. But what can you do? For the brave punters who endured a good soaking it was a great night of spoken word.

We heard a beautiful set of poems from Wendy Butler a long time resident of the Gatwick Private Hotel in Fitzroy St. One poem in particular, ‘He’s a bad bad man’, was created almost entirely out of lines delivered to various residents of the hotel by St Kilda police officers. Another spoke of the perils of trying to read a book on the steps of the Gatwick - while another was a tender and reflective eulogy to Big Mama who was a well known Fitzroy street identity and much loved elder in the local Koorie community.

MaryGrace Levakis read a poem ‘nobody loves a pigeon’ a whimsical piece that asked why do we only love the brightly plumed and sweet singing birds; why not love the unloved? Coincidentally there were a few poems on the night about birds. Chiara Scarabicchi read a piece on the anticipation and build up to a clandestine dinner date and Jack Chadwick recited his perfectly honed sentence.

Paul South read a sad and gentle poem about one of his rats being frightened to death at Footscray Train Station. Paul Harper who uses techniques borrowed from Da Da, Surrealism & L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E Poetry read his image rich piece ‘The night of the four ton rice cake’.

Roomers has been going for seventeen years with very little recurrent funding. We rely on grants and donations to survive and are grateful to the Readings Foundation for funding the weekly writing workshops in 2013.

Here are some great photos of the event courtesy of Amelia Ducker, the photographer for St Kilda Village StripFest…


Roomers