A Tennant Creek teacher has become a national poetry celebrity after winning the Australian Poetry Slam competition for 2022. Jo Lang performed her poem titled A Broken System at the Sydney Opera House last Sunday and was received with a standing ovation and a score of 10 from all three judges.

The piece describes her feelings about the “huge incongruence with what the education system is offering and what students and teachers have to deal with.”

The 24-year-old first-year teacher is studying her masters while teaching English and Science at the Tennant High School.

She attended a workshop as part of the Red Dirt Poetry Festival and Barkly Regional Arts’ Desert Harmony Festival earlier this year and found a love for writing.

After becoming a finalist in the Northern Territory Poetry Slam, Jo was selected to represent the Territory in the national finals in Sydney.

Now with her new poetry crown, Jo will be attending writer’s festivals across the globe and will compete in the World Poetry Slam championships in Rio de Janeiro next year.

To add icing to the cake, Jo will also receive a publishing deal. “I found writing poetry a great outlet to share and reflect on feelings,” she said.

“I won the Tennant Creek section of the Territory Slam and then that led me compete in Alice, then Sydney which has led me to win.

“It’s been such a crazy but good experience.”

Red Dirt Poetry Festival and NT representative for the Australian Poetry Slam Laurie May said Laurie took to writing poetry like a fish to water.

“Jo really nailed the performance and it is always wonderful when someone from the Northern Territory takes out the festival,” she said. “We have proved again we punch above our weight on a national level which is awesome!”

The Broken System
by
Jo Lang

When I left school at the age of 18,
I knew more about the curriculum than I knew about myself.
Led by perfectionism and the fragrance of an A,
I was swept up in its promise that I would be an adult when I left.
But this industrialist model is numbed efficiency,
where working in factories had our activities broken up by bells…
That I was lulled into the routine of rote memorisation,
so as I walk into a job interview they ask
“What are your strengths?” and I say
“I can recite the first 13 numbers of pi.”

Education… feels misunderstood.
School tells us that all the answers to our questions can be found in the back of a textbook,
but to save our burning questions for after class.
And it seems ironic that at 18 I couldn’t finish an essay on time, equated poetry to old white men,
couldn’t find the right rhymes,
couldn’t feel the music underneath so…
naturally, I became a teacher.

I realise unsustainable in its existence,
teaching through standardisation trying to fit diamonds into square blocks.
Where we all work against a system,
shepherding students like cattle,
some sprinting to keep up or others slowing down with a yawn …
A system that decided mastery of knowledge is overrated and to move onto walking when we haven’t even learnt how to crawl.
It seems school is indoctrination where knowledge is standardised regurgitation,
and sure we have creativity,
but under the chains of an HSC.

Our goal should not be to make conformists but creators,
fuelled by critical thinking, lateral thinkers…
So to the outcasts, misfits, who didn’t fit into the mould,
the system should see your unrestricted potential,
that difference is brilliance and that, be education.

This article appeared in Tennant & District Times, 28 October 2022.