Bush Slam (ATOM Study Guide)

Bush Slam: three days, two poets, one town ... finding the heartbeat of the nation in verse.

Our host H.G. Nelson (Greig Pickhaver) is at the helm of the Bush Slam bus, each episode taking two very different artists to explore a rural community and meet its people. Each is given just three days to capture the heart of the town in verse – and then the tricky bit, to perform their work before the locals in a live head-to-head poetry slam for a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down!

Bush Slam features Australia's leading poets and songwriters, including John Kinsella, Geoff Goodfellow, Sam Wagan Watson, Emily Ballou, Joel Ma, Melinda Schneider and James Blundell. Together, their writing covers a vast spectrum of styles, from bush poetry, to country, to hip hop.

Part travelogue, Bush Slam visits six quintessential Australian towns – Stanley in Tasmania, Blinman in South Australia, Corryong in Victoria, Yarrabah in Queensland and Cowra and Lightning Ridge in New South Wales.

They're all locations that in some way resonate with the Australian story – our relationship with the land, the treasures that lay beneath it, of fire and flood, of colonisation and Indigenous life and beliefs. By meeting the towns' inhabitants and exploring their heritage, we come to understand a little more about Australia and ourselves.

Bush Slam is also about the creative process of writing and it's H.G.'s job to rummage through the poet's toolbox and drill into a world that's often secretive and hidden. Our poets are under the pump and there's precious little time for writer's block! What is it that inspires our leading wordsmiths?

How do they transform their experiences into lines on a page? And what makes a good poem, anyway? The results are not always what you may imagine.