Author: PoetrySays

1. I love a good list poem.
2. I can’t define them.
3. Stevens is probably a bad example.
4. But I’m going to start there anyway.

Show notes

• Wallace Stevens: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a List Poem
• Auden’s Funeral Blues
• Eloise Grills: Reading a list of celebrities who own islands as self-care
• James Waters: Impossible Images or; a list of things i cant describe
• Morgan Parker: 13 Ways of Looking at a Blk Girl
• Alex Selenitsch: 13 ways of looking at a magpie

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Joel Deane writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction. In this conversation, Joel and I talk honestly about the place of poetry in between the commitments of daily life. We discuss honouring the compulsion to write without becoming ‘an absolute arsehole’, taking care of oneself in order to be able to do the work, the feeling of not fitting in, and working in cycles.

Our outro for this episode is the beautiful track ‘Peculiar’ from the album ‘Up here’ by Joel’s sister Camille Dean.

Show notes

• Joel’s book Year of the Wasp
• Maggie Ball’s interview with Joel on The Compulsive Reader
• More on imposter syndrome
• My chat with Lisa Gorton

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Five months before her death, Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother that her bee sequence included ‘the best poems of my life’. But these aren’t the poems we remember her for. These are my thoughts on Plath’s long shadow (and my unsolicited beekeeping tips).

As promised, here’s the person-sized swarm that inspired this episode:

Show notes

• Ep 11. Stuart Barnes on Plath
• Ep 80. Louise Carter on Luke Davies
• Karen Ford’s notes on Plath’s Bee Poems
• Terrence Hayes’ American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

I suspect this chat with A.J. Carruthers about experimental poetry in Australia will kick start your next poem. We cover a lot of ground, from defining sound poetry to whether experimental work needs more recognition. But my favourite moment is when A.J. says: ‘Poetry is not a profession. It doesn’t profess, but it does. It’s about doing and about being with.’

Show notes

• A.J’s Southerly blog post My ‘Avant-Garde Card’: Five Aesthetic Categories
• Catherine Vidler’s Lost Sonnets
• Poems by Nick Whittock
• A.J. on Twitter re: Corey Wakeling’s review and experimentalism in OzPo.
• Kurt Schwitter’s sound poem Cigarren
• Jackson Mac Low
• Ania Walwicz

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

My incredibly late take on the movie Paterson and a look at Paterson, the poem. Does it matter that William Carlos Williams’ women are often merely decorative? That one of his most famous poems is about stealing his wife’s breakfast? And should Jim Jarmusch have done better by his female lead?

Show notes

• Ep 38. To get the news from poems
• Glenn Kenny’s review of Paterson
• This is just to say
• Flossie’s reply

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

I spoke with Petra White as she was preparing to leave Melbourne for London about her books Reading for a Quiet Morning (GloriaSMH Press, 2017) and A Hunger (John Leonard Press, 2014). We also covered whether it’s interesting to write about motherhood, the impossibility of writing at the office, and that one time I met Petra at Collected Works (and couldn’t remember the title of that poem of hers I liked).

Show notes

• Maggie Smith’s Good Bones
• Stevie Smith on the Poetry Foundation
• Alice Oswald reading her work

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s some overlap between Ashbery’s Some Trees David Herd’s 3 notes towards a love song (from his book All Just). Both are something like love poems that also allow for things ‘to be difficult between us’.

Another shoutout here to Al Filries and the ModPo gang for introducing me to Some Trees all those years ago. (And check out David Herd’s John Ashbery’s Humane Abstractions for a better explanation of his ideas on ‘dislocated space’.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

I’ve been on Grant Caldwell’s trail since I came across his poem ‘I am not the trick of the flower’ over a decade ago. In this episode I track him down at the University of Melbourne to finally ask him about this poem along with things like writing from the position of the ‘privileged white male’ and whether it matters if our work ever sees the light of day.

Show notes

• Grant’s new and selected Reflections of a Temporary Self published by Collective Effort Press (which includes ‘I am not the trick of the flower’)
• Intention and Unintention or the Hyperconscious in Contemporary Lyric Impulse published by Arcadia
• Ian McBryde
• Myron Lysenko
• Grant’s review of Unusual Work 18

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Writing poetry shouldn’t be a ‘solitary pursuit’. Here’s how I finally found a poetry mentor, why the mentor-mentee relationship is valuable (and troubled) and why you should be sending drafts (and poems you love) to your friends.

Show notes

• Australian Society of Authors mentorship program
• This Condensery: Poets on Mentorship
• Interview with Jennifer Firestone and Eileen Myles
• Grandfather advised me by Lorine Niedecker

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

I first spoke to Sydney poet Louise Carter about Luke Davies two years ago. Since then we’ve talked imposter syndrome and had many a cathartic poetry-related chat away from the mic. This time around, we dive deeper into Davies’ work, looking at Totem and Interferon Psalms from new angles.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS