Ep 96. Eddie Paterson: The trashy and the profound

…I kind of wish I’d written Eddie Paterson’s Redactor. There. Now you know.

In this episode I get to hear about how Eddie made this hilarious and moving collection of found poetry, who he was writing to and why, and about his artistic influences. Billy Collins and Carly Rae Jepsen are also mentioned.

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Ep 94. Claire Albrecht: Boosh at the End of the World

This didn’t feel like my first conversation with Newcastle poet Claire Albrecht. We started out with The Mighty Boosh and Atwood, moved on to Claire’s chapbook pinky swear, covered guilt and the writing life, the enduring comfort of Dawson’s Creek and Claudia Rankine. Somewhere in there, I remembered to introduce myself.

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Ep 93. David Brooks: Insomnia and wild ducks

David Brooks’ The Balcony was one of the first poetry books I truly connected with. In this episode I look closer at two of his poems and draw some parallels with another of my favourites, Jane Kenyon.

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Ep 92. Adam Ford: ‘And are you proud of me?’

‘Fuck you Adam Ford’ is a tough way to introduce yourself to your favourite poet. But that’s what my cousin, Bridget Mackey, ended up doing.

This is the story of a Canberra girl who fell in love with a poetry book – and accidentally ended up living inside it.

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Ep 91. Kate Lilley’s anti-pastoral

To kick off Poetry Says for 2019 I take a look at Kate Lilley’s ‘Pastoral’ – a funny, biting poem about maths class, movies and refusing to write about the seasons. ‘Pastoral’ is from Kate’s 2018 book Tilt, which just took out the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for poetry.

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Ep 90. A poem for broken friendships

I’ve been looking for John Russell McCarthy’s Friendship Broken for a while now. It reads more like Luke Davies that something published in 1938. I hope it speaks to you as much as it does me.

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Ep 89. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a List Poem

  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.

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Ep 88. Joel Deane on writing, not writing, and life after breaking point

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.

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Ep 87. Sylvia Plath, beekeeper

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:

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