Poets' Corner with Avalanche (Ivan Rehorek)

Avalanche, why Avalanche? It’s a name I chose for myself in the style of the old Apache chiefs I read about as a kid – some are given, some you give yourself. My own people, the Czechs, were always performers and musicians and scientists and disturbers of the peace…it’s the road not taken the moonlight sonata composed on an overcast night, always wrangling with authority, right from age six… I was born on an island in the middle of a river in the middle of the medieval town of Prague, in the middle of the week in the middle of the last century. We are not afraid of the devil, having met him so many times: Genghis, Suleiman, Barbarossa, Napoleon, that Schickelgruber chappie, never mind the dead dread Djugashvilli. In my life I’ve been many things - a wild child in the forests of the old country, part of a planeload of political refugees, member of my family theatre, troublemaker art student, on staff at the Aboriginal college in Port Adelaide...sometime horn player, in a band with a belly-dancer, relief teacher, Santa (believe it) but always, always dancing with the words, always the words. Let’s go! AV You are in for a night to remember! Come along and hear Avalanche, and maybe take the opportunity to read out a poem of your own during our open mic session.