In late June I attended the 2024 ACT Literary Awards which were held in the Canberra Contemporary Art Space. In my post on those awards, I shared the MCs’ acknowledgement of CCAS’s ongoing sponsorship. They made the point that this space is an appropriate venue because there are links between all artists, including the fact that many have interdisciplinary practices. At the end of that week, on 29 June, a work was launched that epitomises that idea.

The work is called The Wreck Event, and it is a spoken-word-and-music album, produced by the Hell Herons. While I had gradually become aware of it through my various social media channels, it was an email from one of the creators, Nigel Featherstone, which filled me in on the details. The Hell Herrons are, he said, a “new ACT-based (mostly!) spoken-word/music collective”.

This collective comprises four inspiring creators:

• Melinda Smith (ACT): won the 2014 Prime Minister’s Prize for poetry with her collection, Drag down to unlock or place an emergency call (still on my TBR); author of multiple poetry collections
• CJ Bowerbird (ACT): won the 2012 Australian Poetry Slam, in addition to performances at literary, poetry and folk festivals in Australia and internationally
• Stuart Barnes (QLD): won the 2015 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, was shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, among several prizes and commendations for his poetry including his most recent shortlisting for Like to the lark published by Upswell.
• Nigel Featherstone (regional NSW, neighbouring the ACT): shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Award, and ACT Artist of the Year 2022; author of several novellas/novels, many of which I have loved. (See my posts.)

I described them as inspiring, not only because of the impressive body of work they have all produced over years of commitment to their practice, but because of their willingness to take risks and push boundaries, including this latest project.

Nigel wrote that over the last two and a half years, the Hell Herons worked “more or less in secret, combining spoken-word poetry with original music”, their aim being “to play, experiment, and test the limits of what’s possible with the way recorded spoken-word interplays with music, specifically the electronic kind”. For Nigel, this project has been “one of the most exciting, surprising and exhilarating projects” he’s ever worked on. It’s the first for which he has been responsible for all the music. (The closest he has come before was being librettist for The weight of light, which I reviewed back in 2018.)

All four wrote and performed the words, while Nigel wrote, performed and recorded all the music. Then, with funding from artsACT, the final 16-song album was mixed and mastered by Kimmo Vennonen of kv productions. Kimmo re-recorded all the vocals and added elements of noise manipulation to round out the sound.

More about Hell Herons’ story and detailed artist bios can be found at their website. But, I’m not sure that the site explains their strange name, Hell Herons. Apparently, it comes from the nickname for a dinosaur whose fossilised remains were found on the Isle of Wight some years go. The scientific name given to it, Ceratosuchops inferodios, translates to “horned crocodile-faced hell heron”. Project-supervisor Neil Gostling of the University of Southampton is quoted in the The Guardian as saying “This is a really exciting piece of news for the dinosaur world as these are some of the most charismatic and enigmatic predators.” I don’t think our four Aussie Hell Herons see themselves as predators, but they can lay claim to being both “charismatic and enigmatic”.

The Wreck Event is available on 40 music-streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Deezer. It can also be download through Bandcamp. Singles from the album are planned, with “Nocturnal” featuring Melinda Smith, already released. This will be followed soon by “Bitumen Stitches” featuring CJ Bowerbird, then “Off-World Ghazal” with Stuart Barnes, and Nigel’s “The Literaries” later in the year. It is categorised in AppleMusic as Electronica.

My thoughts

Some of you, I know, are like me and enjoy poetry but don’t always find the time to put in the effort it often needs to truly appreciate. I have enjoyed poetry since I was a child, but it hit me recently that it was introduced to me orally, via my parents reading it to me. And that, I think, is the best way to experience and understand poetry – read it out loud, or hear it spoken. In this blog, I have talked about spoken poetry before, including posts on an interactive app for TS Eliot’s The wasteland, with its compelling spoken performance by Fiona Shaw.

Now, I am speaking about spoken poetry again, this time set to music. I can imagine what an exciting, fun, demanding, uplifting – and yes probably also challenging – time the Hell Herons had putting this work together, but the end result is something beautiful and mesmerising. Interestingly, the tracks list and liner notes do not identify which poet is responsible for which. Because it’s a collective? If you know them you can work it out.

There is a trajectory, or arc, to the order of the pieces, starting with a wake-up poem, “Wake into you”, which commences,

Here it comes:
the first breath
of a new day

And ending with the beautiful and almost elegiac, “Be this your peace”, which closes on us going to bed,

A nap on the couch in the afternoon, another 
the next day if you need, nine 
novels piled high beside your bed,
light out before dark comes on,
dreams that lift you up, silence. 
when the moon lies beside you

Be this your peace. 

These have both narrative and symbolic value to the whole. Between them are poems that express things in the poet’s lives or of concern to them, some personal (like “Nocturnal”, and “True shelter, for Robyn”), some political (like “Off-World Ghazal, for Judith Wright”), and some of course both (like “Little Gods”). As this was a project which started during the pandemic, its impact is felt, indirectly, but also directly in poems like “Lockdown Week 9 (show me)”. Nature, which was probably more dear to us than ever during the pandemic, features strongly, but especially in poems like “Paperdaisies”.

The whole album is worth listening to, but of course, some poems and performances stand out. I can’t name them all, and anyhow, for each of us it will be different. Poetry, and music, are personal. I will close on one that I found both powerful, and interesting, “Off-World Ghazal, for Judith Wright”. This poem was inspired by Judith Wright who, at the end of her career, wrote a series of poems in an Arabic/Persian form called Ghazal. Ghazals, says Wikipedia, “often deal with topics of spiritual and romantic love and may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation from the beloved and the beauty of love in spite of that pain”. They have a strict form, and must not exceed 15 rhyming couplets. Wikipedia also says that some argue that, traditionally, the poem is “addressed to a beloved by the narrator”. Stuart Barnes’ ghazal seems to encompass this, with the beloved being the “World”. It is cheeky, angry and sad all at once about what is happening to the World, and the separation or loss which feels imminent. The distorted voice, and Nigel’s insistent music, further enhance the poem’s power.

Do check out The Wreck Event on your preferred music streaming service. It’s an inspired project, and I’d love to hear what you think.