Author: PoetrySays
Ep 42. Alan Wearne on Frank Stanford
Talking with Alan Wearne felt like taking a poetry masterclass. The poet Alan chose was Arkansas land surveyor and prolific writer Frank Stanford, who may well enchant you if you’re not careful. We look at his work from all sorts of angles and cover just about everyone from Ted Berrigan to Benjamin Frater, Gig Ryan, Joyce, Browning, the term ‘spoken word’ and when to bow out of poetry competitions.
Show notes
- Circle of Lorca by Frank Stanford
- What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press)
- Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford Archives (Third Man Books)
- Theme music: Dead Letter Blues by Eddie ‘Son’ House
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Ep 41. The unknown poet of Malvern
Even the editors of poetry anthologies feel uncomfortable about the format at times. I’ve now discovered there’s at least one poet, maybe still living somewhere in Melbourne, who’s happy to take matters into their own hands.
Show notes
- Black Inc’s Best Australian Poems 2013 edited by Lisa Gorton
- Post It by Gig Ryan published in Cordite
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Ep 40. Ellen O’Brien’s poem for late night Google searches
As a First Nations poet, Ellen O’Brien says Alison Whittaker’s poem ‘Willi Willi Will I’ from Lemons in the Chicken Wire speaks directly to her experience of doing late night research into family history. We take a close look at the poem before getting into questions about making compromises in writing, finding your primary motivation, accepting rejection and whether ‘bad’ poetry exists.
Keep an eye out for Ellen’s work in the upcoming Indigenous issue of Rabbit.
Show notes
- Alison Whittaker’s On ‘bad poetry’ for Meanjin and Acknowledgement for Overland
- O, Eureka! and an interview with Alison on Tincture Journal
- Invasion Day by Elizabeth Jarrett on Australasian Muslim Times
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Ep 39. Rhea Bhagat on Dubai and Robin Coste Lewis
I had a lot of fun talking with Melbourne-based writer and spoken word artist Rhea Bhagat for this episode on Robin Coste Lewis’s poem On the Road to Sri Bhuvaneshwari. We covered plenty of ground…
Show notes
- Rhea’s article Daba (excerpt) from The Lifted Brow’s Capital issue
- Rhea’s Overland piece Cashmere and the politics of the brown body
- Typecast as a terrorist by Riz Ahmed
- Azai Ansari’s Master of None
- Nas’s Illmatic
- Beyonce’s Lemonade
- Kendrick Lamar’s Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe
- The Moth
- We Run with Wolves – Melbourne Spoken Word
- Robin Coste Lewis in The New Yorker
- The Sable Venus. An Ode
- Trevor Noah on Trump as ‘the perfect African president’
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Ep 38. To get the news from poems
‘It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die every day for lack of what is found there.’ A few thoughts on poetry and the news along with a must-listen poetry podcast.
Show notes
- Episode 18 of Commonplace
- Talk by Terrance Hayes
- Asphodel, That Greeny Flower by William Carlos Williams
- Williams’s “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”
by Ann Fisher-Wirth - If You Are Over Staying Woke by Morgan Parker
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