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Our midwinter poetry reading at Compass Pizza featuring a fantastic bunch of poems from Carmen Main, Robbie Coburn and Amanda Anastasi.

In an episode that spans countries, languages and histories, Melbourne poet Gemma Mahadeo shares the poem Calypso History Lesson from Fred D’Aguiar’s book The Rose of Toulouse. We start off with some thoughts on Ted Hughes’ Crow before D’Aguiar’s poem takes us in all sorts of directions, from Hansonism to urban foxes to West Indian cricket commentary.

Show notes

• The Vulture Goddess from Fred D’Aguiar’s American Vulture.
• The Story in History: interview with D’Aguiar on the place of history in his work.
• ‘There is no sophistry in my body: / My manners are tearing off heads – ’ is from Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes.

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Benjamin Solah can recite a calendar of upcoming spoken word gigs from memory. We talk about what spoken word actually is (or might be), whether there’s a particular slam style, how politics plays into this kind of poetry and why you should just get up there and perform at the next open mic.

Show notes

• Melbourne Speaks Poetry – Ep 00
• Melbourne Spoken Word
• Slamadamadingdong! Poetry Slam
• Button Poetry
• Write About Now
• Alan Wearne on why ‘all poetry is spoken word’
• Paper Waves
• ‘Salt’ by Bill Moran

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Can poems really be ‘dictated’ from somewhere outside the poet? Or is this just a slice of California woo? In his 1965 lecture series Jack Spicer had opinions, and plenty of ’em.

Show notes

• The House that Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer edited by Peter Gizzi (Wesleyan University Press)
• My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan University Press)
• Ten Poems for DownBeat – For Huntz

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Louise Carter and I get real about feeling like frauds. Why do poets sometimes end up with what’s known as ‘imposter syndrome’? And can we get past it enough to enjoy our accomplishments? Whether you’re new to writing poetry or a widely published poet, I think there’ll be something in this one for you.

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Listen in to hear Melinda Bufton and Ali Alizadeh reading at Compass Pizza on June 4th, 2017.

 

I check back in with Eleanor 24 hours after we finished our recording about Emily Berry’s The End. What did she learn? How did she feel?

We chat about getting back into reading poetry after a break, feeling like being an outsider/insider and feeling like you may have got it ‘wrong’.

Shout out to Jen Campbell for her fantastic YouTube review of Emily Berry’s Stranger, Baby!

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