so there’s this

We all know the formula for love, right?

Boy meets girl, they fall in love, conflict occurs, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again, true love triumphs and they all live happily ever after.

But what do you do if it’s girl meets girl? How will they know who’s meant to sweep whom off their feet? What if both parties are troubled by a dark secret? And can one be a lady sheikh?

Betsy Turcot and Eleanor Jackson blend popular romance, slam poetry and the occasional dirty limerick to create a poetic narrative about love in a modern age. Launched in 2011 at the Queensland Poetry Festival as “A Mills & Boon Swoon”, the show has since been performed at several poetry events in Brisbane, in Melbourne as a part of the Overload Poetry Festival, in Canberra as a part of the Global Poetics Tour and performed at the wonderful Woodford Festival in December 2011. Currently under redevelopment to stage as a poetic play, the show will be featured at the Anywhere Festival in Brisbane in May 2012.

The narrative builds from a sequence of both solo and joint poems and showcases queer performance poetry, young female voices and the tantalising premise that political poetry can also be sexy. Both poets are comfortable performers who are able to engage audiences with vernacular poetry yet are also mindful that rich, thoughtful language is worth savouring and worth sharing.

The contrasting, but complimentary, styles of the two performers also present an opportunity for audiences to share in the diversity of female spoken word performance, which often competes for space with the bombast of hip-hop.

As Australia wrestles with the community debate around marriage equality,  “She Stole My Every Rock and Roll” tosses aside the conventions of gender, to trade poems that are part elegy to clichéd love poetry, part cumulative tale, part SMS shout out and part call to arms, embracing the only convention of the genre that holds true – that we are all looking for love.

If you’d like to find love in a place of your choosing, why not get in touch and see if we can’t help you out. We’re available for weddings, parties, anything – even the odd break up party.

Try us via eleanorjjackson at gmail dot com