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Rhys Rodgers is a multi award winning Performance Poet based in Melbourne Australia. He explores political themes of sexuality, youth and belonging from a humorous gen Y perspective. He is touring his new spoken word album What We Think We Know About Dinosaurs, through Europe and the UK in May and early June.

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Rhys Rodgers

(a brief history)

Festivals he has performed in:

Queensland Poetry Festival (2009)

National Young Writers Festival (2008/09/10)

Melbourne Writers Festival  (2010)

Melbourne Fringe Festival (2010)

Tropical Fruits (2011)

Midsumma Festival (2011/12)

Burning Man USA (2011)

Everything else that has happened (in chronological order):

2008 

Rhys performed poetry for the first time at the Love Poetry Hate Racism open mic at the Globe Theatre in Brisbane. He won. The same year he also won the Speed Poets Championships and was a finalist in the Nimbin Performance Poetry World cup.

2009 

Rhys launched his first poetry album, Just Enough Dangerous and toured it through five Australian states and territories in a tiny car called Persephone. By the end of it he hated poets and hated his album.

Then he moved to Melbourne.

2010

Things he did there include:

- Flew to Adelaide to participate in a collaborative arts project, Adhocracy by vitalsatistix.

- Threw Cant Touch This, an exhibition of interactive installations.

- Performed for poetry students at Homesglen Tafe.

- Won Poetry Idol, the closing event for Melbourne Writers Festival.

- Became a founding member of Awkward/Amazing, a thriving Melbourne based artist collective that creates Happenings at festivals, in bars and on the streets of Melbourne.

- Wrote, directed, produced and acted in (along with three other performers) Friends of Dorothy, a spoken word cabaret show about queer gen Y culture. It had a sell out season at The Butterfly Club and a positive review in The Age, and was welcomed back for another sell out season in early 2011.

Then he went round the world.

2011

- Employed by Footscray Community Art Centre as a curator of regular poetry nights along with Alia Gabres and Luka Lesson (members of the Centre for poetics and Justice)

- Performed at Bar Wotever in London

- Completed a one-week apprenticeship under Hunter Reynolds at Easton Mountain, NY, USA.

- Performed in Centre Camp at Burning Man USA the most radical gathering of humans on the planet.

2012

Since returning to Melbourne Rhys has started his own business teaching poetry workshops for children, adults and people with learning disabilities through the NEIS program. This year he plans to launch his second album and create a one-man show. He has been invited to perform in Berlin this may at Escape: International Performance Art Festival.