We talk to two spoken word performers, Lian Low and Eleanor Jackson, about writing for the page and for performance, and how they support other writers – especially through Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine, Peril.

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Our guests

Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet, performer, arts producer and radio broadcaster. She is chair of the board of Peril Magazine and its former editor in chief, and is also a board member of the Stella Prize, Australia’s largest writing prize for women.

Her poetry is published in Overland Journal, Arc Poetry Magazine, Going Down Swinging, Peril Magazine, Scum Magazine and the Cordite Poetry Review, FBI’s “All the Best“, RRR’s “Aural Text”, 3CR’s “Spoken Word”, ABC Radio National’s “Night Air” and the online poetry channel, “IndieFeed: Performance Poetry”.

Her radio play, Agent Ion, was featured as a part of Radiotonic for ABC Radio National, and her short fiction, The Transfer, appeared in Review of Australian Fiction.

In 2014-2015, she was Artist in Residence at La Boite Theatre in Brisbane.

Here’s Eleanor performing  ‘Shave and a Haircut’, one of the pieces she mentions in our conversation.

Lian Low is a writer, editor and spoken word artist.

She is a former chair of the board, and editor-in-chief, of Peril.

Lian worked on the performance text for the sold-out Do you speak Chinese? which was part of the Dance Massive program, held at the Malthouse Theatre in 2015.  

Her work has been published in When Our Children Come Out: How to Support Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Young People, Growing Up Asian in Australia, ArtsHub, Kill Your Darlings, Chart Collective and various queer street press.

In 2013 and 2014 she was a festival artist at the Melaka Art and Performance Festival in Malaysia, one of the world’s largest site-specific art and performance festivals held on a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

Watch some of Lian’s community performance work as part of Melaka here.

In 2014, she was a selected playwright for Lotus: Asian Australian Playwriting Melbourne program and for the Kultour Artists Gathering in Melbourne.

PS: Accidental interview background music was provided by a nearby choir practice, loud enough to penetrate our soundproof studio. Think of it as community engagement.