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Lou Steer is a visual artist, performance poet and art gallery director. Lou exhibits widely in public art events including: Sculpture in the Vineyards, Riverworks Cooks River Festival the ANL National Maritime Prize, and Marrickville Contemporary Art Prize. She regularly exhibits at At the Vanishing Point Gallery, ESP Gallery, and PolyGallery and held her first solo exhibition at ESP Gallery in 2010. As a performance poet, she has appeared in the short films Ioway and Gas Coin by Peter McGuiness and live at Caravan Slam, Word in Hand and City Wears 11. She is a director of ESP Gallery, an artist run initiative in Marrickville and is a co-founder of Edith Artists Inc, a community based artists group in Sydney.
Lou’s Poem
PHONES. ART. SEX. AND YOU
This is a poem about desire. I ain’t dead yet and I still feel the fire.
It’s a blessing. It’s a curse. Knowing you makes it worse.
Things change.
Things can be strange. Dance with a stranger and what you get is danger.
Danger with a stranger. Danger Danger. Stranger Danger.
You’re not really a stranger
But you’re a danger.
I know you like the same things as me
But I don’t know how you feel about slam poetry.
So you text me and we talk about phones.
Phones and change. Phones and age. The years go by and nothing is the same.
String, wind up, bakelite, dial, touch, wireless, skype, voip, satellite. Now I have a piece of the Galaxy. Space age, space junk.
Phone sex, sex text, sexting.
Is it art?
Is it smart?
Does anyone give a fart?
2AM and the messages still flying
I know what you want, I know what I want
I want danger. Not with a stranger. With you.
I want. I want. I want. I want.
I know what I want and what I want
Is Phones. Art. Sex. And You.
You know what you want too.
You want me to give up my beautiful life.
Stop being a wife
And get into strife.
Tempting me to plunge into the depths of the ocean
Where the mermaids sing and you’ll never hear a phone ring.
I hear those mermaids singing each to each
While you float gently, just out of reach.
Are your trousers rolled? Let them unfold.
I will unfurl my seaweed hair.
Beneath the sea as in space, no one will hear us scream.
Are you worth it?
Are we worth it?
What I know is worth it is
Phones. Art. Sex.
And you?
