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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.
ISBN: 9780645702705Release date: May 17, 2023Format: Paperback
“What do you get when you cross three strange people with the streets of Melbourne? This.” — Jaidyn Luke Attard
Jay, the restless wanderer, rocks the lives of two strangers by introducing them to the strange world he has stumbled across—the streets of Melbourne. Rick, the bookworm, is torn away from his mundane academic life. Johnny, the paranoid poet, is released from his small-town worries.
When they hit the streets together, twisted tales rise from the gutters. The bathing man. The cardboard preacher. The mute who isn't a mute. The trio cast aside everything they know, embarking on a journey to meet the city's neglected souls.
There's a Tale to This City is an offbeat portrait of Melbourne that combines poetry, narrative prose and toilet paper diary entries, recollecting the strange experiences of three writers, who came together to learn the art of listening.
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