Spoken Word

Kabir was a 16th century Indian mystical poet and a weaver. Peter Friedlander talks to Di Cousens about his new book of translations of Kabir's poems, 'Kabir In Transformation'. Peter is an Associate Professor of South Asian Studies and a Reader in Hindi at the Australian National University in Canberra.

In this episode of Spoken Word, Carmen Main talks with Charaf Tartoussi and Parminder Kaur about the upcoming Melbourne Fringe Show, Aza: stories of grief in diaspora.

Caroline Williamson is a poet and editor. She was born in London, and worked there and in Beijing as a teacher, before turning her hand to editing academic books, museum publications, and a campaigning anti-nuclear magazine. She moved to Melbourne with her Australian partner, where she has worked at Lonely Planet, Museum Victoria and Melbourne University Publishing. Her poems have been published in journals, including Overland, Meanjin, Heat, Rabbit and Cordite, in several Newcastle Prize anthologies, and in Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry (ed. Bonnie Cassidy and Jessica Wilkinson). Her essay, 'Working Methods: Painting, Poetry and the difficulty of Barbara Guest', based on her masters minor thesis, was published in Jacket magazine #36. Her PhD in creative writing (Monash 2016) examined some of the ways that poets have attempted to deal with climate change in their work, and included a verse narrative dealing with the lives of her coal-mining ancestors in Wales, in the context of what we now know about the damage done by burning fossil fuels. She won the 2014 A. D. Hope prize for the best postgraduate essay presented at the conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, for 'Beyond Generation Green: Jill Jones and the Ecopoetic Process'. Her debut collection of poetry, Time Machines, is published by Vagabond Press.   Picture: Di CousensProduced & Presented by Tina Giannoukos

Waffle Irongirl speaks with Izzy Roberts-Orr about Red Room Poetry and Poetry Month, with poetry readings from Lulu Houdini, Stuart Barnes, Andrea Goldsmith  and Barrina South.

Waffle Irongirl is on location at the National Museum in Canberra, speaking with poet, Sarah St Vincent Welch. Sarah is a Canberra based writer and image maker who’s known for chalking her poetry on footpaths at arts festivals, which you can see on social media under the handle “litchalk”. Her poetry can be read in Chalk Borders by Flying Islands Pocket Poetry, and Open, published by Rochford press, as well as various anthologies and magazines.She’s the founder of Kindred Trees, a project that asks Canberra poets to respond to a local tree, and aims to encourage a love of trees through poetry. This episode of Spoken Word has a trigger warning on the topic of suicide. If you do find yourself needing support we urge you to reach out to Lifeline on 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 22 46 36 or The Suicide Callback Service on 1300 659 467.

Haibun is a Japanese form of poetry which combines prose and poetry. In this program Di Cousens talks to Alice Wanderer about writing and understanding haibun.

In honour of the much-loved and respected poet, editor, publisher and teacher, Ron Pretty AM (1940-2023), 3CR Spoken Word runs a program from its archive from 2022 in which friends of Ron Pretty and fellow poets Kevin Brophy AM and Alex Skovron discuss the poetry of and read poems from Ron Pretty's last collection of poetry, 101 POEMS. The collection contains poems from Ron Pretty's earlier collections and chapbooks, plus a selection of new poems, and is published by Pitt Street Poetry. Friend and poet Peter Frankis, who launched 101 POEMS in 2022, reads Ron Pretty's reflections on his life in poetry provided by Ron especially for Spoken Word.A biography of Ron Pretty is available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_PrettyVale Ron Pretty from Rochford Street Review is available here: https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2023/07/05/vale-ron-pretty/Peter Frankis's launch speech of Ron Pretty's 101 POEMS can be found here: https://peterfrankiswrites.blog/2023/07/22/vale-ron-pretty-am/The podcast of the original show can be found here: https://www.3cr.org.au/spoken-word/episode/friends-read-ron-pretty-podcast-air-showAn extended podcast of the original show can be found here: https://www.3cr.org.au/spoken-word/episode/friends-read-ron-pretty-extended-podcast-air-show-0Ron Pretty's 101 POEMS is available online from Pitt Street poetry: https://pittstreetpoetry.com/poet_category/101-poems/ Production and Interviews: Tina Giannoukos

In this episode, we present a live recording of Simone Spittle performing at Cherry Poets on 1st July 2023.Having recently moved back to Naarm/Melbourne, Simone is returning to the spotlight after an extended hiatus to record her album, fall in love, adopt a few fur babies and heal intergenerational trauma. Simone has toured nationally several times, most recently with her one-woman cabaret show Beauty In The Beast for a residency at the Butterfly Club theatre in Melbourne.We also hear from performer, playwright and poet, Lily Thomson. Lily's poems have been published with Poet’s Choice, Bus Stop Zine, Gems Zine and will soon appear in Pure Slush and Truth Serum. Regular contributor, Steven Atkinson, also reads a poem called Hero Rats.

A live recording of John McKelvie at Cherry Poets, 24th June 2023.John was born in Scotland, moved to Melbourne in the 1980s, and has been writing poems, songs and stories for over 50 years. He is a very familiar and friendly face at poetry gigs, and a generous supporter of poets and writers. His work has been published in a number of anthologies including Best Australian Poems. He has also produced a poetry volume, Hopscotch, edited by Tom Kent.** This podcast is an extended version of the program that was broadcast on 3CR on 13 July 2023. It contains some mild course language.

Justin Clemens and Thomas Ford talk to Di Cousens about their new book, Barron Field in New South Wales, the Poetics of Terra Nullius.