Haunting Festival Venues
Kate Deller-Evans (Flinders University, Australia)
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We find ourselves outside the Theatre Royal.
‘Prose Free Zone’ its movie title banner proclaims.
We enter and order three waffle cone ice creams:
Bubble gum, Liquorice and Old English Toffee.
I film the children eating their way through
one scoop each as large as a man’s fist.
This small town place and all around seem thriving
Rufus Wainwright airs here, even as it did yesterday
when the high school girl busker sang the song
on the pavement outside the newsagency
and we ching-ed coins into her cloth cap.
Here we deliberate the exact name of the colour
of the boy’s tongue – emerald, we decide
(whoever heard of bubble gum like that?)
and my purse mirror is retrieved
so they can all see their coloured tongues and teeth.
I spot a famous poet through the windowpane
fear we might be sprung, so check the program
note this venue’s not in use til later
and we are safe in our anonymity.
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Kate Deller-Evans is completing her PhD in Creative Writing at Flinders University on the topic of verse novels for young adults and her ambition is to convert publishers to the form. Her earlier manuscript was read on Radio Adelaide. Long-time reader at Friendly Street, along with Steve Evans she co-edited the poetry organisation’s 30-year history: Best of Friends (Wakefield Press 2008).
