Author(s): Jaidyn Luke Attard

Poetry

Poetry on the walls. Needles in the gutters. Preachers on the corners. Protesters on the roads. People begging on the streets. This is 21st century Melbourne. Johnny Lock - young and fragile, purposeless and paranoid - meets Jay Khan, a wanderer who writes letters to strangers while trapped in Melbourne during the pandemic. Thus begins Johnny's metamorphosis. He brands himself a 'street poet' and begins roaming the city in search of stories, finding inspiration in the strangers and places Jay teaches him to notice. Johnny's world grows larger as he learns to heed the forgotten stories, entangling his own in the tales of the streets. Over a tumultuous eighteen-month period, he confronts his own delusions, exposes universally existential truths, and unveils the secrets of the city. The result is a dystopian rendering of modern Australian life from the eyes of a paranoid poet: the author's literary alter ego.

This collection archives the transcriptions of Johnny's wanderings as a street poet. His recorded observations and encounters are preserved in typewritten diary entries, street-inspired poetry and various other media forms. From drunken train rides and anti-vax protests to eavesdropped conversations and interactions with strangers, this is Johnny's Melbourne: a city flashing between hot and cold, welcoming and discordant. Romanticism and disillusionment are seamlessly braided into a raw, honest story about a young man navigating a turbulent world.