Poetry Says

For the past five weeks I’ve had the pleasure of studying the sonnet with a fabulous group of poets, led by Joshua Mehigan, in a weekly workshop through Brooklyn Poets. Here are some thoughts on the benefits (and challenges) of diving into a poetry workshop.

Show notes

• Poetry and Performance: Writing for the Stage and the Page through Writers Victoria
• ACT Writers masterclasses
• Writing Poetry through Writers NSW
• The 92Y events calendar
• Southbank Poetry’s online writing classes

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Where to begin summarising the work of Christian Bök? He’s a Canadian poet, the author of the bestselling experimental poetry collection Eunoia, a founder of the poetic school of Conceptualism, and most recently, Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne. In this interview Christian talks about what it’s been like to move between poetry worlds over the years, where he’s at with his mammoth project The Xenotext, elements of playfulness versus priestliness in poetry, work he’s envious of, and the moon landing.

Show notes

• The ModPo gang discuss Eunoia
• Erica Baum’s Dog Ear
• For those who want to dig further into the creation of and ideas behind The Xenotext, I recommend Michael Leung’s American Scientist article Poetry for the Apocalypse and the accompanying piece The Making of a Xenotext.

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Open Bella Li’s collections Argosy or Lost Lake and you’ll immediately be struck by the beauty of her imagery. In this chat, recorded on a rainy Melbourne afternoon, I check in with Bella after the year that was. We discuss how and why she works with the materials she does, her relationships to both poetry and genre, and get a sneak preview of her new collection.

Show notes

• The Witch: A New England Folktale
• Pascalle Burton
• The Dickinsonian Dash
• Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
• Don Mee Choi
• Michael Ondaatje’s Long Poem Anthology, with Roy Kiyooka

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Thoughts on a workshop I got to do with Brooklyn Poets, led by the amazing Jay Deshpande, on prosody and the decolonisation thereof. Also on Emily Dickinson and her poem Because I could not stop for Death.

Show notes

• Terrance Hayes on Commonplace
• The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry
• A Quiet Passion

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I got to speak with Justin Clemens—Melbourne poet and academic—in person in mid-February 2021. Melbourne had just come out of a five-day hard lockdown, Facebook had recently wiped news in Australia, the tennis was still happening…what a time to be alive! We go everywhere in this conversation, from Justin’s book The Mundiad to the work of contemporary poets, then all the way back to 15th century France.

Show notes

• Attachment Theory from the Sydney Review of Books
• Picasso’s Desire Caught by the Tail
• Matthew Abbott reviews The Mundiad in Cordite
• Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb
• Brief Treatise on Molecular Logology in Cordite
• Jacques Lacan: Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
• Christian Bök’s Eunoia
• My interviews with A. J. Carruthers, Stuart Barnes and Laurie Duggan
• The Idea Takes Place As Place Itself, Expanded and Revised Edition with a New Foreword by the Author in Cordite
• A Journal of the Plague Year in Meanjin
• Andrew Rutherford
• Laurie Duggan’s The Epigram’s of Martial
• Barry Hill’s Kind Fire published by Australian Scholarly Publishing
• Mary Karr’s Tropic of Squalor published by Harper
• Lucy Van’s The Open published by Cordite Books
• November 2015 Paris attacks
• François Villon‘s poems Le Testement and Ballade des dames du temps jadis
• Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats
• Lycidas by John Milton
• Five Bells by Kenneth Slessor

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Describing Michael Aiken as a ‘poet’ only tells a tiny part of his story—Michael’s creative interests span everything from fiction writing to video games. Last year, all those interests came together in Sydney’s Newtown, where Michael now runs Garden Lounge Creative Space. We talk about what it’s been like to get Garden Lounge up and running (and to keep it going during 2020), along with the bigger issues surrounding this kind of work when it comes to gatekeeping, inclusivity and diversity.

Show notes

• Garden Lounge on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram
• Mez Breeze
• Heidi by Π.O.

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If you haven’t yet come across Anne-Marie Te Whiu‘s writing, you’ve definitely felt the ripple effects of her work in poetry. She co-edited UQP’s Solid Air, Australia and New Zealand Spoken Word, co-directed the Queensland Poetry Festival from 2015-17, and this year we’ll see the publication of Whisper Songs by Tony Birch, which Annie also edited. In this episode we talk creative side-hustles, building genuine relationships, the value of the slow burn, becoming a ‘no’ person, and hear about an exciting new project coming mid-2021.

Show notes

• Joy Harjo
• Ali Cobby Eckermann
• Eve L. Ewing
• Natalie Harkin
• Charmaine Papertalk Green
• Anahera Gildea
• Nadine Hura
• Cassandra Barnett
• Michaela Keeble 
• ‘Superposition’ by Grace Lucas-Pennington

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Fiona Wright’s work resists classification in the best way. Through some magic combination of essay and poetry—by both zeroing in and staying open—she reveals the beauty, grief and absurdity that makes up our lives. In this episode we talk about her latest project, the recurring themes in her work, how she thinks about narrative, and the fact that she’s actually hilarious.

Show notes

• Fiona’s books Knuckled, Small Acts of Disappearance, Domestic Interior and The World Was Whole, all from Giramondo.
• Anne Boyer’s The Undying and my episode about it.
• James Bradley’s essay An Ocean and an Instant.
• Fiona’s reading of Crisis Poem as part of the States of Poetry.

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Mid-October, 2020. Some more thoughts on energy, writing, not writing and the lesser poems of Anne Sexton.

Show notes

• Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way
• Nine Days in Wuhan by Peter Hessler
• Wuhan poet Xiaoyin on writing during the pandemic
• The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton
• Anne’s Letter Written During a January Northeaster

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My first full-length poetry collection, The Empty Show, is now officially launched. What a crazy thing to be able to say!

I’m so grateful to everyone who helped me bring this book into the world. You can see what the launch looked like below, and check out three reimagined poems from the book at theemptyshow.com.

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