indigo eli
poetry | performance | art
indigo eli is a wordplayer based on Kaurna Country, Adelaide, South Australia.
A multi-form poet, indigo eli’s work stems from the urge to document intangibilities and speak the unspoken. She is intrigued by the personal and universal, and often creates as a means to communicate and connect.
Working with a broad definition of poetry, readjusting her tuning has been a consistent pattern. Like scrolling through radio stations, she finds herself at spoken word … written word … visual art … installation … the digital … and the tangible … trying to find the right frequency for each effort at using voice. Her word-playing creations are published, performed, encountered and exhibited.
indigo has presented at numerous festivals and received a variety of awards for her works on page, stage, and beyond. She is a three-time Australian Poetry Slam national finalist and co-founder of two literary initiatives the nameless project and Spoken Word SA.
Awarded an Australia Council JUMP mentorship, in 2011, indigo worked with ‘national treasure’ performance artist, director and writer Margaret Cameron. This saw her refine definitions of the words ‘poem’ and ‘perform’ and led to her first solo visual arts exhibition ‘The Poetry of Object 0.1’.
Her creative documentation, a mix between written and visual collage, has landed in letterboxes around the world through her ‘postal projects’.
Poems have been published in a variety of anthologies and literary journals, including Cordite, Rochford Street Review, Writ Poetry Review and Australian Poetry Journal. indigo’s first small poetry collection ‘writing love songs to the moon’ won a publishing prize and is now only available on the black market.
indigo has an Advanced Diploma of Art in Professional Writing and is currently studying Auslan. Wanting to play with sound, but not exclude a deaf audience, she has started experimenting with audio and video with hopes to create poems that will cater for deaf, hard of hearing and hearing audiences alike.
indigo likes strong coffee and fluffy clouds.
“poetry speaks
the unspoken, seeks
to make the intangible tangible”
…
‘By inverting the natural order of things, and in reconfiguring the mundane, she invokes the need to continually question how we inscribe meaning, how we can each defy or redefine, and how art can mould, cast and reinvent everyday experiences.
Her pieces signpost the limitations of language and media forms in the creation of meaning and identity; in moving beyond the constrictive nature of words and syntax. Eli creates her own unique language, a ‘poetry of the object’. In their ‘silence’ these pieces speak volumes…’
– Glam Adelaide on The Poetry Of Object 0.1
…
“a raw poem is mist at the most distant point from words”
My work stems from the urge to document intangibilities and speak the unspoken.
I am intrigued by the personal and universal, by the things we discard and those we hold dear.
I’ve been exploring human connection, textile, objects, legalities, language, embodiment and knowledge, exploring the question: where are the boundaries between one form and another?
Favourite words currently include: oology, unknowing, flapdoodle … and of course, sandwich.
…
audiences are saying:
“sublimely evocative”
Jordana Lennox, GLAM Adelaide on The Poetry of Object 0.1
“as carefully structured as an egg shell”
Gretchen Miller, ABC Radio National
“her work is uncommonly thoughtful.”
Lucy Nelson, Noted Festival on I Noted this for you
“Great idea and real connecting.”
Caroline Reid on enveloping (the human) connection (in 36.5 letters)
“transgressive yet hypnotic”
Scott-Patrick Mitchell on (with(in)side) out
“exceeds the traditional limits of poetry…a true entertainer”
Tom Cassidy, Night Voices
“Indigo was awesome … I felt challenged by the poem but it was great!”
audience feedback, Body Image and Eating Disorders Forum
Women’s Health Statewide
“At last the veil was off … a fascinating insight … intriguing work!”
Sue Flemming, Professional Writing Co-ordinator, AC Arts
on ‘Indigo Eli: a process in development a development in process’
JUMP Mentorship showing, SPOKE Festival SA
[your poetry] “clogged … the vacuum cleaner ”
Flinders University
… everything is transient …
I acknowledge the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which I live, learn and create. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living today. Sovereignty was never ceded.
indigo eli 