Performance
Jacqui has featured at poetry events and festivals including the Poetry Month National Gala 2022, La Mama Poetica (VIC), Mother Tongue #Women Speak (VIC), Poetry on the Move (ACT), the National Folk Festival (ACT), Woodford Folk Festival (QLD), Unspoken Words Festival (Sydney) and many more.
She has won awards and been a finalist, including:
Canberra Critic’s Circle Award 2018 for ‘Cavorting with Time’ poetry performance and facilitation of Mother Tongue Multilingual Poetry Events.
Finalist – Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup, 2-3 September 2017
Best walk-up poet - Woodford Folk Festival 2015
Finalist - 2015 Australian Poetry Slam, Opera House, Sydney
Performing in the finals of the Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup, 2017.
Matter of Life
‘Matter of Life’ debuted at Poetry on the Move in November 2022. Combining poetry, performance and projection, Matter of Life happens at the place where science, story and wonder collide. What is it to be human and alive? How have our explanations for the unseen and mysterious, and our own existence and life evolved?
Poetography booth
Immortalise your special memory in the form of a poem! This intimate performance involves the co-creation of a poem with customers during a brief 5-10 minute conversation - a moment of focus, deep listening and paying respect to our lives’ experience. The ‘client’ takes away the handwritten copy of their poem. The Poetography Booth debuted in 2019, and is mounted on an occasional basis at festivals, markets and other events.
investigations into rhythm lecture series - being moved
Jacqui was one of four poets in this lecture series curated by WaffleIrongirl for the Melbourne Spoken Word Festival, online in 2020. Investigations into Rhythm was created to expand the spoken word community’s capacity and opportunity for robust engagement with ideas, to discuss and debate spoken word through the lens of both disciplined research and personal practice. Emilie Collyer, Sam Ferrante and Melizarani T Selva were the other three presenters.
Jacqui considered the way spoken word performance, is not on a flat page but in our voices and bodies in pitch, tone, movement and rhythm, working in the space between performer and audience. Jacqui explored emotional affect at the intersection of mind and body, thought and sensation, guiding participants through an experience of how rhythm can connect performer and audience.
CON/FORM
Con/Form combines poetic speech, movement, video and sound. Jacqui began developing during her Spoken Word Residency 2019 at the Banff Centre for Creativity and the Arts in Canada, and debuted the finished work on 18 October 2019 at Poetry On The Move, the annual poetry festival hosted by the University of Canberra’s International Poetry Studies Institute.
Words in Flight
Words in Flight is a 30 minute solo spoken word/theatre performance written and performed by Jacqui Malins and directed by Ruth Pieloor. It debuted at the Woodford Folk Festival 2018-19, with more performances to come. This show is currently available to book/tour.
Words in Flight takes you up, up, up. Soar with sea eagles and aeroplanes, float in balloons and parachutes, ride with witches and play with gravity. Themes include courage, freedom, growth, resilience and the big forces that surround us.
Enjoy this brief showreel. Close and secure for take off and landing!
Cavorting with Time
Cavorting with TIme is a 25 minute spoken word poetry performance written and performed by Jacqui Malins, with original music created and performed by cellist Julia Horvath. It debuted at the National Folk Festival, Canberra in 2018 and subsequent performances included Unspoken Words Festival opening night in Sydney, That Poetry Thing, Sound and Fury and Slamboree in Canberra and Girls on Key poetry evenings in Newcastle and Wollongong,
Cavorting with Time is a dance with time, exploring growth, ageing and mortality from a feminist perspective. By turns poignant, reflective, dry and triumphant, experience time as lover, sister, tattooist, operator of a cosmic crankshaft and ultimately a friend.
A book of the text and other related poems is available through Recent Work Press - see Publications.
L: National Folk Festival, photo credit Caren Florance
R: Unspoken Words Festival, photo credit Bakri Mahmoud
Receiving a 2018 Canberra Critics’ Circle Award for Cavorting with Time
Jacqui Malins with Julia Horvath
The breath catcher
The Breath Catcher is a site-specific poetic monologue and sculpture installation performed in Haig Park, Canberra for the You Are Here festival on 6 April 2017.
Through the character of the ‘breath catcher’, it explored the life of Haig Park, both present and past, through the breathing of the wind, creatures and people who move through it. It was subsequently performed at Smith’s Alternative as part a variety show alongside a video slideshow of images of the park, and back in-situ at the part for the Floriade Fringe Festival 2017.
Photo credit: Annaperture Photography
Australian Poetry Slam 2015
Jacqui was a finalist in the Australian Poetry Slam 2015. Watch her performance here: