Poetry Says

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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Are poets who write ‘difficult’ poems being intentionally obtuse? Are they trying to hide something? How on earth do you approach poems like these for the first time?

Today I chat with ModPo classmate and friend Eleanor about Emily Berry’s The End, just out in Poetry magazine. We make our way through a totally unprepared first reading of the poem’s first few lines.

Ready for more? Here’s a bonus follow-up with Eleanor’s thoughts on this poem after doing some further research. And you can also check out Jacket2’s First Readings.

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Anne Carson’s shapeshifting long poem The Glass Essay exists somewhere between lyric, confessional and narrative. The deeper we get into it, the less useful these terms seem to be. They also bring up questions of what we expect from our female poets…

Show notes

• The Glass Essay
• Anne Carson (as ‘notoriously reticent’)
• For more on Carson and the pressures/expectations around female (especially female lyric) poets, listen to my chat with Sophie Mayer

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