In collaboration with Wagga Wagga City Council, Booranga Writers Centre and Wagga Wagga Multicultural Council, Red Room Poetry appeared at Fusion Multicultural Street Festival 2017, a celebration of the 112 countries of origin, 107 language groups and 62 faiths that make up the community of Wagga Wagga.

The Poet Exchange combines commissioning of new poetry, poet-in-residency at Booranga-Writers Centre, performance with AUSLAN (sign language) support and projection on the Wagga Wagga NightLight Wall as part of FUSION on 21 October.
Renowned spoken word poet and Wagga Wagga local, Zohab Zee Khan and emerging Sudanese/Australian poet, Jackline Okot (mentored by Zohab) are creating new poems exploring ideas of language, culture and rhyme. These poems are inspired by the inclusivity of the Wagga Wagga community which celebrates its diversity of countries of origin, language groups and faiths.

Events

Poems created during The Poet Exchange are embedded into the Fusion 2017 Multicultural Festival with performances on the main stage and projected onto the NightLight projection screen in Wagga. The projection was created by Wagga Wagga based artist Andrew Hagan.

The projections are available from Friday 20 October through to Wednesday 08 November, nightly from 7.30pm – 11.59pm.

Workshops

The workshops with the community and at Shepherds Park Education and Training Unit explored spoken-word poetry, performance, self-expression and multiculturalism. From the workshops, poems were created and embedded into the Fusion 2017 Multicultural Festival with performances on the main stage and projected onto the NightLight projection screen in Wagga on 21 October.