Poetry Says

Grab yourself a beverage, pull up a chair and listen in as I ask Toby Fitch to help me understand Rimbaud, figure out where the keys to poetry are hiding and keep my sense of humour about me along the way. Toby reads us a new, very funny poem during this chat and talks a little bit about his latest manuscript-in-progress, along with how he finds ways to make writing happen alongside everything els...

For my 50th episode I wanted to talk about how I got started with this podcast, which took me back to a pretty painful decision point in my life. These are the poems (and quotes) that helped me stop being so busy, sit down and actually make something. Show notes Sonya Tsakalakis on Charlotte Mew Exultation is the going by Emily Dickinson Robert Montgomery Jane Kenyon’s advice on the writing...

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 Th...

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 Butto...

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...

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.

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!

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...

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 f...

Did studying poetry at school spark your interest or leave you cold? In this episode I chat with my sister-in-law Terri – a Leading Teacher in a K-12 school who’s a passionate advocate of poetry in the classroom. We hear about what connects, what’s challenging and how she matches poetry with curriculum demands. Show notes Caged Bird by Maya Angelou The ABC Book of Australian Poetry by...

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 o...

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

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 &#82...

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 terroris...

‘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 Ov...

Compulsive reader  (and ModPo classmate) Magdalena Ball chats with me about the event that stopped her latest novel in its tracks and resulted in her new collection of poetry – Unmaking Atoms . We also take a close look at Samuel Wagan Watson’s intriguing poem A one ended boomerang . Show notes The Newcastle Writers Festival More about Samuel Wagan Watson Poetic mothers Adrienne Rich , Eliza...

People have complicated feelings about rhyme. Today I’m looking at seven types of rhyme based on Poetry Foundation’s glossary  to see how cringeworthy it really is. Show notes Marionette by Jessica Wilkinson (Vagabond Press, 2012) Broken/Open by Jill Jones (Salt, 2005) Revolving Days by David Malouf (UQP, 2008) Free Will and the Clouds by Rob Wilson (Grand Parade Poets, 2014) The Balco...

Two larrikins asking what you’re into, Merlions toasting at your table, a pig showing off – Australia is pretty hilarious when you think about it… I’m so grateful to Corey Wakeling for walking me through the fantastic Michael Farrell poem ‘An Australian Comedy’ in this episode, which you can find in his 2015 collection Cocky’s Joy . We also talk about another Fa...

When my friend asked me to explain how rhythm works in poetry I thought I’d have no trouble…until I opened my poetry encyclopedia. Show notes The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics Looking at rhythm and meter in poetry – Poetry for Dummies The Violence of Work – Geoff Goodfellow Observation – Dorothy Parker Mending Wall – Robert Frost Another definition of blank ver...

How do you tell a life story through a poem? For Jessica Wilkinson , poetry can go much further than straightforward biography. In this interview she talks about discovering Susan Howe , working with (not against) a self-confessed short attention span, and founding the fantastic Rabbit poetry journal. Show notes Beyond Facts and Accuracies in Axon Marionette and Suite for Percy Grainger  (Vagabond...

Cid Corman isn’t afraid to ask unanswerable questions or to leave most of a page blank. In today’s episode he’s asking the question straight up: ‘Is this a poem?’ Show notes Join us for SlowPo 2017 Recordings of Cid’s reading group at CC’s in Kyoto It isn’t / what you think… It always / comes down and / back to this… Nothing / Doing from...

Robin Wallace-Crabbe describes himself as ‘a dear little old man’ but I’m sure you won’t be fooled by that for long. Welcome back to Poetry Says for 2017 and welcome to the world of Hartmann Wallis, poet and white lightning enthusiast. Show notes Who said what, exactly by Hartmann Wallis (Finlay Lloyd, 2016) and Peter Keneally’s review Story of Australia’s Peopl...

In my final episode before taking a Christmas break I invite you to be part of the show in 2017 and to check out this close reading of Charles Bernstein’s In a Restless World Like This is , recorded with the wonderful Eleanor Smagarinsky.

A little more Maggie Nelson for you today to follow on from my chat with Tricia Dearborn . Molly Silverstein brings us The Mute Story of November , another beautiful  poem from Something Bright, Then Holes (listen to Maggie reading the poem here ).  We chat about Buddhist and Whitmanian angles on the poem (yep, Molly is a new ModPo recruit!) and why November might be mute. Then we discuss the diff...

In today’s episode you get to hear how Judi Dench says the word ‘poetry’, Kelsey Grammer butchering Tennyson, everyone piling on e e cummings, William Carols Williams quoted by hackers and Eileen Myles being…Eileen Myles. Today’s links: Ulysses by Tennyson anyone lived in a pretty how town by e e cummings The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams I always put my...