David Stavanger a.k.a. Ghostboy - Won the prestigious Performance Poetry World Cup in 2005 and operates as QLD’s unofficial “slammaster”.
His poems have been published in various magazines, newspapers and anthologies including the upcoming American anthology showcasing the best of the worlds spoken word artists The Spoken Word Revolution (2nd Ed).
Following being offered an Arts QLD Grant, his first book Station to Station and
CD If I was a Rock'N'Roll Girlfriend were both released in June 2006 (ouTsideR Press).
Ghostboy also created and is the ongoing ringmaster for ouTsideRs which is now Queensland's premier performance poetry & slam event.
In recent years he has performed as a featured guest at a wide range of festivals and venues in Australia including the Brisbane Writers Festival, Broken Hill Poetry Festival, Montselvat Poetry Festival, Noosa Long Weekend Arts Festival, Poetry After Dark, QLD Poetry Festival, QLD Writers Centre Wordpool series, the Sydney Writers Festival as well as being invited by the Woodford Folk Festival 2006/7 to perform a highly successful 6 night residency with Golden Virtues as part of the WordFood stage that he co-created with acclaimed spoken word artist Miles Merrill.
2007 will see David launch a new independent poetry press with renowned QLD poet Graham Nunn. Small Change Press will launch 4 titles in 2007, a year in which David will also be coordinating the QLD leg of Australia’s first National Slam run by the State Library of QLD. David is also a key member of the QLD Poetry Festival management committee.
Links:
Kites
tonight is a Mexican moon
blood orange, tequila red
a time for teenage ghouls
to run the midnight sun ragged
on the beach
craving a joint
to light the night
flaming dancers & kites
call the flamenco tide
a gay man with small gay dog
gives me a 3am sideway smile
though it is only 8pm
the family witching hour
of fireworks and candy
ten teenage girls form a coven
nine red parachutes bloom
eight ice creams running
seven XXXX beers
six children are lost presumed happy
five lovers kiss for the first & last time
four middle age mermaids
three small boys light cigarettes
two Asian kites build a ladder to the sky
while one grown man
is looking at the sand
running though his hands
running
out into the liquid night
five steps to the right
of a salted gin glass
red lights
full of anticipation
smashed faces light the space
between midnight and dawn
takeaway, everything is taken away
$2 pizza and we only have one
the clubs empty except for
corpses with coins propping up bars
skeletal woman in bike pants
stroking pussy’s on metal poles
shotgun exhaust blows the plain clothes
hands to their hips / hairy men in leather
kiss each other’s eyeballs, groins dance and I grab
your hand and trace the moment we met
mapped in skin, oceans in your fingertips
we step into the liquid night
without cover
for the rain
is yet to come
Ballad of a thin man
this morning
a
t
h
i
n
m
a
n
fell off a cliff
landed skinny slap back
to the face
of a still black
sea
the black tea
waves
wash
away his skin
reveal a thin man
not long for the water
a t h i n m a n
bones
snapped
well before
he
hit
the
surface
a thin man
not long
who
couldn’t
make a
fist
for fear
of hitting
himself
a thin man
who
never
smiled
unless
he was
paid
athinman
whose
final
thin
words
were
eaten
by
a
fat
seagull
