AustLit

'A journalist searches for the king of slam poetry, L. Chapman, whose followers swallow his grandiose ideas after they swallow his trademark drug, Blank. L. Chapman takes their money and causes social and syntactic chaos — but will he meet with poetic justice?'

Source: ABC Radio National.

'Recently, Wilson, a Chinese-Australian writer, asked to hang out with me. He wanted to collaborate on a work that explored class, race and toxic masculinity in Western Sydney. We agreed to meet at Volcano's Steakhouse in Parramatta. I'd seen him around online and, because he was Asian, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. When I met him in person, he was wearing Nike TNs and an Off White-brand bum bag slung over his shoulder. His outfit was riffing on lads, a Western Sydney subculture made up of young men from low socio-economic backgrounds. Lads draw inspiration from Black American hip-hop, British chav and Dutch gabber cultures, with interests in rap, hardstyle, graffiti and sneakers. An Australian sense of irony ties these together - in the early days, they dressed in Nautica polos tucked into tracksuit pants, bent-brim dad hats balanced precariously on the crowns of their heads. Lad-speak includes words like 'shank' (stabbing) and 'eshays' (Pig Latin for a pot-smoking 'sesh'), and thus lads as a subculture are associated with criminality.' (Publication abstract)

'When those in the literary scene talk about what may be wrong with modern Australian literature, we start and end at diversity. There's talk about how hard it is to change the space, a recognition of the lack of prominent representative bodies. There is no conversation around access, and who has access to this space. Instead, we suggest it's simply the addition of those bodies that will counter the reasons they weren't able to exist in the literary space to begin with.' (Publication abstract)