In a time long, long ago, before reality television, people turned to poetry for their sordid tales of illicit sex, debauchery and murder most foul.
The bard boys of the Renaissance return to the Fringe tonight to scowl, lick angry fingers, tear pages and revisit the bad old days.
You will never view Shakespeare, Spenser and Marlowe in quite the same way again.
"Sex*Death*Magic: Renaissance Poetry Unbound" opens at the Vertical Aerial Dance Studio at 8.30pm.
Dunedin marks World Poetry Day tomorrow with a performance by English punk poet John Cooper Clarke at Sammy's.
Now that would have some of the old bards choking on their absinthe.
After being spurned as a prospective lover by former prime minister Helen Clark, 2011 Bruce Mason Award winner Arthur Meek returns to Dunedin tonight with the sequel to his 2008 Fringe hit, On The Conditions and Possibilities of Helen Clark Taking Me As Her Young Lover.
This time, Meek knocks the latte china flying in Richard Meros Salutes the Southern Man.
"The southern man is the hero of our times. This is the person to lead us to the top of the OECD," Meek told me from Auckland yesterday, where he was sipping his last "proper latte" before heading south.
"It's a highly educational, thought-provoking and brutally logical show about New Zealand's founding myths and a confused generation of over-educated hyperspecialists," he said.
"The only thing that can save the country is the spirit of the southern man. Anyone can be a southern man.
"People who think you have to be from the South Island and a man to be a southern man, probably think you have to be a Jewish carpenter to be Christian."
Richard Meros Salutes the Southern Man is on at 7pm in the Fortune Theatre Studio.
There are plenty of free sights on the fringes of town, including the "Party Up Large" installation at the corner of Vogel and Jetty Sts, "Performative Painting" at Studio2 Gallery, "Botanica Banners" in the Dunedin Botanic Garden, Concrete Chimera at Bunker Under Salisbury Boutique, the "None DNA" group show at None Gallery and the Blue Oyster Performance Series.
