Spirit of Punk Live storytelling

The final part of our two-part series of live stories we recorded in conjunction with the Spirit of Punk at the end of last year at Buck Mulligan's bar in Melbourne. The principle of Spirit of Punk is simple. All you need to do is show up and read a piece of your work no longer than the duration of a Ramones song. How easy is that?

The recordings are live so there are some little mic disturbances here and there. But more than anything there is the unmistakeable courage of writers taking to the stage to read their non-fiction stories.

Writers in this episode  Confessions of a Boarder by Lacey Smith

I came to write this piece to answer the main questions everybody asks me when I mention that I endured boarding school. Many people have an idealistic view of boarding house life: beautiful buildings, a good education, working air conditioning etc.; I felt the need to set the record straight.

Lacey Smith is an Australian-Canadian writer and podcaster, currently working on her first novel. At 14 she was selling merchandise for a satanic metal band but has now put those wild days behind her. She lives in Melbourne with her long-suffering husband and their Westie, Maisie.

Hell Bent by Noeleen Ginnane

End 2019, nearly a wrap on my Diploma Writing/Editing, Swinburne. I’d relocated on 15 November, before which 15 June. Exhausted. Broke as a freak. ‘Provide 500 words, memoir,’ teach said, as if you could whip that up with a thought, pause and muse. I panicked, pulled out past sufferances; re-felt, altered, submitted it.

‘I’ve written since forever,’ Noeleen Ginnane tells us. ‘It kept me sane, teen years. If I hadn’t wagged school so much to write, I’d never have failed it as well as I did.’ Modestly published in Australia, and (erotica) in the U.K. and U.S., Noeleen’s ‘only recently confessed to/begun living the writer I am.’

She has been published in: I can’t Breathe - Fremantle Arts Review, The TV - Western Word, Mother In Top Gear - Perth Child Magazine, Quiet – Oz Poetic Society,  Sweet Selection, Army Style, Blossoms Full Bloom, Sweatbox, Aunty Said - In The Buff (UK), Aunty Said - Best Women's Erotica (USA), Batman and The Fisherman, My Mother's Torment - Reader's Digest

The Stink by Laura Wild

I have terrible taste in romantic partners. This memory always makes me laugh and it’s a story I tell friends when we get bogged down. At least our pillows are clean, mate.

Poorly navigating the internet one LiveLeak video at a time, Laura Wild is an Australian writer currently studying at Swinburne University of Technology. She lives in Melbourne, Victoria with her partner and the four houseplants that have managed to survive her ineffectual care. She has been published in Backstory Journal and Other Terrain Journal. 

Acknowledgements:

Memoria is written,  produced, edited and presented by Natalie V.

Special thanks go to Jen Farrow for her recording tech on the night and Nic Brasch for letting us record his event.

Thank you to the writers who took part in this episode:

Lacey Smith, Noeleen Ginnane and Laura Wild.

The stories in this episode are sound edited by Natalie Vella.

Music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions,   Sage the Hunter, When in the West and The Envelope.

Illustrations by Peta Manning. Her book, See Me Doodle, is out now.