Tag: podcast

Recommended: Poetry for Troubled Times

~ Thom Sullivan ~ 1 Comment

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‘Poetry for Troubled Times’, the latest episode of The ABR Podcast, features readings of 18 poems that speak to our present malady, even as news of the coronavirus (Corvid-19) pandemic worsens by the hour. As ABR’s editor Peter Rose says in his introduction, ‘These are such rattling and ominous times, as we all hunker down hoping for a cure, some cessation. Perhaps only poetry really offers true insight and consolation, if we lean on it, as we’ve always done in past crises.’

Among the 18 poems featured in the podcast, we find Sarah Holland-Batt reading Geoffrey Hill, Stephen Edgar reading Seamus Heaney, Peter Goldsworthy reading Jane Hirschfield, JM Coetzee reading Zbigniew Herbert, John Kinsella reading Christopher Brennan, David McCooey reading Tomas Tranströmer, and Peter Rose reading Wallace Stevens. A full list of the readers, poets and poems is published on the podcast’s webpage.

Perhaps the most resonant poems for me were Rose’s reading of Stevens’ ‘The Plain Sense of Things’ (‘It is difficult to choose the adjective / For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. / The great structure has become a minor house…’) and McCooey’s reading of Tranströmer’s ‘December Evening 1972’ (‘Here I come, the invisible man, perhaps employed / by a Great Memory to live right now. And I am driving past // the locked-up white church…’).

As for me, in a moment like this I might recommend Stephen Dunn’s ‘Sweetness’ (‘Often a sweetness comes / as if on loan, stays just long enough / to make sense of what it means to be alive…’), or Adam Zagajewski’s ‘Try to Praise the Mutilated World’ (‘You should praise the mutilated world. / Remember the moments when we were together / in a white room and the curtain fluttered…’).

New episodes of the podcast are released by ABR (Australian Book Review) fortnightly on Wednesdays. iTunes Google Spotify

Recommended: Poetry in Process – Interview with Alison Whittaker

~ Thom Sullivan ~ 1 Comment

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Owen Bullock’s latest Poetry in Process podcast is an interview with Alison Whittaker, author of Lemons in the Chicken Wire (Magabala, 2016) and Blakwork (Magabala, 2018), which was shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry.

It’s a wide-ranging conversation. I had particular pause for thought as they discussed the connection between poetry, language, and the law; writing under constraint – and an explanation of Whittaker’s use of trigrams (used in search engine optimisation); and a workshop exercise Whittaker has used to create a state of ‘controlled panic’ to induce participants to produce a chapbook of poems within 3 hours.

You can find the podcast on the Poetry in Process website, and on Spotify.

Recommended: Writing the long poem

~ Thom Sullivan ~ Leave a comment

There seem to be those who regard the craft of poetry as an engaging and useful topic for discussion, and those who regard it as a somewhat contemptible and self-indulgent one. I’m among those who often find something insightful or useful in discussions about the practicalities of writing poetry, whether it’s via a writers’ festival, a radio interview, or a podcast. And the more practical the discussion is the better.

I recently watched a number of videos by poets.org, including a video in which American poet Ron Padgett talks about writing long poems. In particular, he suggests the following writing strategy:

‘I just made a dumb rule. I said, I’m going to write every day. I’m going to sit down at my desk every day and I’m going to write ten pages. And I don’t care if it’s good or bad, or indifferent, or if it’s notational or whatever. I’m going to write ten pages every day. And I did that for five or six days … I came up with about fifty or sixty pages of material and I put it away for a while. And I went and looked at it again later and a lot of it was dreck … But some of it was pretty good. I was surprised. So I did the obvious thing: I took out all the dreck and I stuck the other pieces together … It all fit together and made this long poem.’

The full video is available here:

Those familiar with Jim Jarmusch’s 2016 film Paterson may be aware that Padgett is the author of several of the poems supposedly written by the eponymous main character, played by Adam Driver:

Recommended: ‘Poetry Says’ podcasts

~ Thom Sullivan ~ 1 Comment

By and large, our experience of poetry is an active affair. Reading a poem well generally demands diligence and attention, which partially explains poetry’s neglect when compared to other artforms that are often experienced somewhat passively – from film to the visual arts, to music, to audiobooks, and even the novel, which generally relies less on an actively constructed meaning.

Of course, recordings of poems abound, and a recording of a poem can be experienced just as passively as an audiobook or piece of music. But there’s something to be said for Philip Larkin’s argument that ‘[h]earing a poem, as opposed to reading it on the page, means you miss so much – the shape, the punctuation, the italics, even knowing how far you are from the end.’

As someone who prefers to experience poems from the page, it’s a delight to have access to Alice Allan’s regular Poetry Says podcasts, a series of lively and engaging conversations about poetry. The podcasts are perfect for those moments in which reading poems from a book is impractical.

Over 100 episodes of Poetry Says are available, including episodes on Gertrude Stein, Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Jack Gilbert, Ted Berrigan, Judith Wright, Jorie Graham, and contemporary Australian poets, such as Michael Farrell and Jill Jones. The episode on Plath’s bee poems is highly recommended. Invariably, an episode sends me back to a poet and their work with fresh insight and new regard.

Poetry Says website : Poetry Says on Twitter : Poetry Says on Facebook

Notes: August 2017

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Winter in Adelaide – Griffith Review’s State of Hope edition – Launch of Jill Jones’ Brink – Winter reading recommendations – Poetry reading at Halifax Café – Puncher & Wattmann’s Contemporary Australian Poetry, & the airbrushing of bush poetry – Poetry & the philosophy of wineIMG_20170909_005224

Winter’s on the wane in Adelaide, despite a dogged run of achingly cold days. Still, the daily drive to work has been sweetened in recent weeks by roadsides lined with early blossoms, particularly those of Manchurian pear trees (Pyrus ussuriensis), which have something distinctly bridal about them.

Early August was replete with opportunities to break the winter hibernation, including a night of readings from the Griffith Review’s South-Australian themed ‘State of Hope’ edition, at Matilda Bookshop, Stirling. The event, hosted by Patrick Allington, featured readings by Anna Goldsworthy, Jill Jones and Rebekah Clarkson, and an interview with photographer Annette Willis. It was a great complement to the session at Adelaide Writers Week this year, but in a more intimate setting. The following night, Jill Jones’ new book of poems, Brink (Five Islands Press, 2017), was launched at The Wheatsheaf Hotel. It’s an eagerly anticipated follow up to Jill’s highly regarded recent collections.

An ill-timed, mid-month head-cold gave me the chance to catch up on a few recent books of poetry, including Brink, Lachlan Brown’s Lunar Inheritance (Giramondo, 2017) and Afloat in Light (UWAP, 2017) by Adelaide poet David Adès. Apart from that, the two pieces of writing that’ve stayed with me are essays by South Australian writers: Shannon Burns’ personal and incisive ‘In Defence of the Bad, White Working Class’, also discussed on ABC Radio National’s Religion and Ethics Report, and Kathryn Hummel’s in-turns-familiar-and-exotic ‘Scented Memento’, both published in Meanjin, and both having some grounding in Adelaide’s western suburbs.

I shared a poetry reading with Peter Goldsworthy at the Halifax Café, Adelaide, on 30 August. The reading was well-attended and it was great to debut half-a-dozen or so new poems for a generous and attentive audience. The September reading will feature Ken Bolton and Cath Keneally.

David Campbell’s review of Contemporary Australian Poetry (Puncher & Wattmann, 2017), published in The Australian, provided some food for thought – in particular, his complaint that the anthology omits (“airbrush[es]”) “[t]raditional rhyming verse, often misleadingly referred to as “bush poetry””. Robert Wood’s response (Overland) also provoked debate (witness the comments section), proving there’s still plenty of fervour to the arguments about poetry, good poetry and good Australian poetry. I’ve had plenty to say about the issue in private, but my summary point is that the anthology has its omissions (individual poets), but is an accessible, well-considered and well-produced book, and an excellent starting point for anyone wanting a survey of (as the title suggests) contemporary Australian poetry. For a fuller consideration of the anthology, see Robert’s review in Westerly.

Another pause for thought was a program on ABC Radio National’s The Philosopher’s Zone, featuring Professor Barry Smith, philosopher and Director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London. The program (downloadable as a podcast) takes “the philosophy of wine” as its subject matter, but its thoughts on subjectivity and objectivity, personal preference, judgments of quality, developing critical competence, and experts are transferrable enough to an appreciation of poetry, and the arts more broadly.

In terms of “forthcomings”, I’m looking forward to new books of poems by Michael Farrell and Fiona Wright, which will be released by Giramondo on 1 November.

Finally, I’ve been on Twitter for a while, but you can now also find me on Facebook.

3 more South Australian poets, part 3/3

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Well, this is Part 3 of my three part series on South Australian poets who (I think) should be known, or better known, beyond the streets and suburbs of our State. Again, for each poet I’ve included details for recent publications, and references to poems that can be found online or in readily available anthologies.

And there are at least half a dozen poets I’ve kept in reserve for a later post or posts.

For those looking for a further entrée of South Australian poetry, the Adelaide Writers’ Week poetry reading on Monday, 6 March 2017, 5:00-6:00 pm, will feature a range of South Australian poets, from the established to the emerging: Steve Brock, Cath Kenneally, Jules Leigh Koch, Louise Nicholas, Jan Owen and Dominic Symes.

Writers’ Week will also feature well-known South Australian poets Ken Bolton and Mike Ladd, as well as Adam Aitken (NSW) and Adam Fitzgerald (USA).

Louise Nicholas, poet

‘The List of Last Remaining proves Louise Nicholas to be a poet of generosity, wit and wisdom. […] The pervasive humour and leaps of imagination are tempered by Louise’s emotional and verbal precision and her poised acknowledgment of loss as well as grace.’ – Jan Owen on The List of Last Remaining

Heather Taylor Johnson, poet and novelist

‘We’re drawn into an ecology where people really do give a damn about each other and the world their friends, lovers, children and animals inhabit.’ – Michael Sharkey on Meanwhile, the Oak

  • Letters to My Lover from a Small Mountain Town (Interactive Press, 2012) review
  • Meanwhile, the Oak (Five Island Press, 2016)
  • Jean Harley was Here (novel) (University of Queensland Press, forthcoming 2017)
  • Poetry editor for Transnational Literature
  • Poem: ‘Two Trees’ (Transnational Literature)
  • Poem: ‘Shovelling Snow’ (Mascara Literary Review)

Ian Gibbins, poet and neuroscientist

‘More than thirty years of experience in zoology, pharmacology and the human body spill out onto the pages of this focused and often quirky collection. Ian challenges his readers to open and expand their minds while delighting in new words, new creatures and new rhythms.’ – Heather Taylor Johnson on Urban Biology

3 more South Australian poets, part 2/3

~ Thom Sullivan ~ 1 Comment

As promised, this is Part 2 of my offering of South Australian poets who (I think) should be known, or better known, interstate. For each poet, I’ve included details for a couple of recent publications, as well as references to poems that can be found online or in readily available anthologies.

Part 3 will follow soon.

Kathryn Hummel, poet and ethnographer

‘Each poem lingers in the liminal spaces between the erotic and the exotic, the eclectic and the electric, the enigmatic and the energetic. These poems are from here, but they tirelessly interrogate the location of here…’ – Carl Leggo, Professor at the University of British Columbia, on Poems from Here

Rachael Mead, poet

‘Empathetic without sentimentality, Mead has found all the material she needs for poetry in her own vicinity: the mutability of life, the histories that have made us, and the responsibility we bear for what we’ve done to our places.’ – Jill Jones on The Sixth Creek

David Mortimer, poet

‘Reading Magic Logic is to listen to a musical mind at work. It is a journey of cadences, the everyday and the metaphysical, smaller soundscapes as valued as larger ones.’ – Patricia Sykes on Magic Logic