Compulsive Reader Talks

Michelle Cahill, author of Daisy & Woolf, joins me at Woollahra Gallery to read from and talk about her new book, writing through Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, the burden of the canon, giving a voice to marginalised characters, literary decolonisation, the complex relationship between real life and fiction, intertextuality, the conjunction of place against time, and lots more. The full video version is on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/WUA1TQ7Fw78 Visit Michelle's website: https://michellecahill.com

Lorna Munro or Yilinhi is a Wiradjuri and Gamilaroi woman, multidisciplinary artist, poet, performer, radio and podcast host. She joins me today in the lead-up to the Sydney Writers' Festival to read some of her poems and talk about her work, her collaborations with Ancestress and Eric Avery as Poetribe, the power of spoken word, speaking language, decolonialisation in art, Yala Gari, the poet-in-residence program she created with Red Room for students, pushing boundaries, her new Red Room collaboration Fair Trade with January Rogers, and lots more.  The Sydney Writers Festival session is on May 21st from 2-3pm at Carriageworks Track 8 - details here: https://www.swf.org.au/festivals/festival-2022/how-to-write-a-river-a-sky-a-seed/ You can hear tracks from Poetribe here: https://soundcloud.com/poetribe At the same Soundcloud link first song on the Sovereign Trax March is Yilinhi's collaboration with Ancestress "Speak the Truth" More about Eric Avery: https://ericavery.com.au More about Red Room's Fair Tr

Kristina Darling interviews Nick Courtright about his new book The Proofs, the Figures: Walt Whitman and the Meaning of Poems. In “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman wryly remarks about one’s being “proud to get at the meaning of poems,” a comment highlighting the long-fraught problem of poetic interpretation and the pride-worthy intellectual labor required to elucidate the meaning of a text. Using Whitman’s own “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” an eight-line poem published in 1865, as its case study, The Proofs, the Figures: Walt Whitman and the Meaning of Poems  investigates the chief methods available to readers when they embark on literary meaning-making, while also highlighting the challenges innate to such a task. With examples ranging from the critical and scholarly to the popular-cultural and survey-based, investigating interpretive prospects for “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” confirms that “to get at the meaning of poems” is a project of infinite opportunity both rewarded by and afflicted

Jessica Au’s first novel, Cargo, was published by Picador in 2011 and was highly commended in the Kathleen Mitchell Award for a writer under 30. She is the former deputy editor of Meanjin, and is currently an associate editor at Aeon. Her new book Cold Enough for Snow won the inaugural Novel Prize and was published by Giramondo, New Directions and Fitzcarraldo Editions in February 2022, and translated into fifteen languages. She joined us today to read from and talk about Cold Enough for Snow. During the interview we talked about such things as the way she conveys interiority, about the mother-daughter relationship in her book and the philosophic tension between the way they see the world combined with the tenderness that exists between them, on elegy, perception, ekphrasis, memory, migration and many other key themes that this beautiful book encompasses.   Cold Enough for Snow (and more information about the book) can be found here: https://giramondopublishing.com/jessica-au-a-note-on-cold-enough-for-sn

Charles Freyberg reads from and talks about his latest book of poetry The Crumbling Mansion and chats with me about performance and the power of memorisation, bringing characters to life, Kings Cross and its importance in his work, on nostalgia and ecological loss, on breaking binaries, his new work-in-progress and much more.  You can find some excerpts from Charles' latest show in the links below: Trickster Spirits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIrN39Voqfk Vanessa Up the rickety darkened stairs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djopxXq434w

KA Rees is a writer of poetry and short fiction. She has been published by Margaret River Press, Cordite, Australian Poetry, Overland, Review of Australian Fiction, Spineless Wonders and Yalobusha Review, among others. She received a Varuna fellowship for her manuscript of short stories, she was shortlisted for the 2016 Judith Wright Poetry Award, was the recipient of the 2017 Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction and runner-up in the 2018 Peter Cowan Short Story Award, and the national winner of the 2019 joanne burns Microlit Award. Her debut poetry collection, Come the Bones was published late last year as a Flying Island Pocket Book, and is the subject of today’s conversation.  KA reads a number of poems in the collection and talks about how the book came together as a collection, the relationship between the individual poems and the book, her current Sydney Observatory residency and much more.   Find out more about KA Rees and connect with her (and message her to get an autographed copy of Come the Bone

On its one-year anniversary, we've re-aired, with permission, James Bradley's wonderful conversation with Beth Spencer from Climactic's ArtBreaker.  James and Beth Spencer spoke about James' new book Clade, about climate fiction, and about the imperative for art and the conversation is even more relevant today and deserves a replay.  Original publication is here: https://www.climactic.fm/show/art-breaker/james-bradley-author-of-clade-on-climate-fiction/ And do please check out the Climactic network - they do terrific work. Artbreaker's main page is here: https://www.climactic.fm/show/art-breaker/ James Bradley's website is: https://cityoftongues.com Beth Spencer's website is: http://bethspencer.com/blog/

Beth Spencer in conversation with Kit Kelen about his creative practice as poet, artist, publisher, collaborator, academic, mentor, musician and blogger. Kit reads selections from some of his many books intercut with original guitar tracks. They discuss Holden cars, bushfires, coal-addiction, and the role of place in his work -- as a writer who uses a lot of Australian idiom, colloquialisms and reference to landscape in his poetry, and who has also been widely translated. The process and benefits of translation, the role of habits and doodling, the disruptive power of humour in creative and political practice, and the importance of community and friendship. Links: The Daily Kit blog - www.thedailykitkelen.blogspot.com www.kitkelen.com - art and writing Originally premiered on Climactic's Artbreaker: https://www.climactic.fm/show/art-breaker/beth-spencer-on-artbreaker-kit-kelen-on-creativity-habit-and-disruption/ (republished with permission)

Lillian Avedian is an Armenian American journalist and poet from Los Angeles. In this episode she reads from and talks about her debut book of poetry, Journey to Tatev.  We talk about many of the key themes in the book - the many journeys: physical, metaphorical, about the uneasy alliance between grandmother, mother, daughter, on coming out, the rejection of shame and the acceptance of the richness of desire, on the sensual evocativeness of food (especially Nazouk), on writing a duel language book and the power of the mother-tongue, and lots more.  Find more about Lillian on Twitter: https://www.instagram.com/lillian_avedian/?hl=en Lillian's work at The Armenian Weekly: https://armenianweekly.com/author/lillian-avedian/ To buy a copy of Journey to Tatev visit: https://www.girlsonkey.com/poetryportalshop/Journey-to-Tatev-Lillian-Avedian-p307875338

Adam Aitken reads from and talks about his memoir One Hundred Letters Home.  We talk about the book's multi-genres structure, the limits of memory, artefacts and perception, "fluid subject positions" and the shifting nature of identity, his poetry book Archipelago and the ongoing appeal of France, his new book due out later in the year, and lots more.  Find out more about Adam and his books at his blog: https://adamaitken.blog

Australian academic, writer, and poet, Michael J. Leach reads from and talks about his latest poetry book Chronicity.  We talk about such things as the relationship between the visual/concrete poems on the page and their sonic qualities in live readings, the sensual, visceral nature of the work, how he chooses and works with constraints, his use of humour and the way he plays scientific precision against emotion, the way poetry enables him, as a scientist, to work better with the complexities of the real world, and lots more.  You can find out more about Michael and Chronicity at his website: https://mleach11.wixsite.com/writing/chronicity Chronicity was published by Melbourne Poets Union (ISBN: 9780648967910) and a copy can be purchased by emailing Hamish Danks Brown danksster@gmail.com cc: melbournepoetsunion@gmail.com

Australian writer Emily Maguire's new novel is a clear-eyed and compassionate novel about love and family, betrayal and forgiveness, and the things we do to fill our empty spaces. In this interview, created for The Newcastle Writers' Festival's Stories to You series https://www.newcastlewritersfestival.org.au/news/#podcasts, Emily reads from and talks about Love Objects.  Find out more about Emily here: https://www.emilymaguire.com.au

In this guest episode, author and podcaster Alison Treat interviews Leslie K Barry about her book Newark Minutemen. Note that this is a re-pod from Alison's excellent podcast Historical Fiction: Unpacked. In this interview, author Leslie K. Barry talks Newark Minutemen, and its historical 1938 setting, including the little known history behind the book around a shadow Nazi party called the German-American Bund led by an American Fuhrer and inspired by Leslie's own uncle's role in fighting this party.  More on Newark Minutemen can be found at the book's website and Facebook page. Leslie K Barry's Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20201224.Leslie_K_Barry Find out more about Alison Treat at her website: http://alisontreat.com Watch another interview with Leslie about the book conducted by her sister here: https://youtu.be/K96g5GXBNT4

Chris Mansell is one of Australia’s notable powerhouses in the poetry world.  Chris was one of the founders of Five Islands Press and now runs PressPress, an independent publishing house she founded in 2002.  Chris has had over a dozen of her own books of poetry published as well as artist books, CDs, a collection of short fiction and even a children’s book. Her extensive body of work has been translated into many languages, and won many prizes including the Queensland Premier's Literary Award (poetry) the Meanjin Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize. Chris joins us to read from and talk about her poetry book Foxline, published in 2020 by Flying Island Books.  Find out more about Chris at her website: http://www.chrismansell.com

Does being vegan mean having to miss out on burgers, jalapeno peppers and deep-fried banana fritters? No way, according to Melbourne writer and vegan recipe developer Zacchary Bird. In this episode that aired for the Newcastle Writers Festival's Stories to You series, Zacchary spills the tea on his first book Vegan Junk Food.

Paul Rabinowitz talks to Tinfoil Crowns author Erin Jones about his novella The Clay Urn. They talk about the inspiration for his story, on working with a real situation--the Arab/Isreali conflict--in a fictional context, his evocative setting, his own experiences in the Isreali army, the complexity of war and the impact of that on young people, on seeing both sides of any conflict, key themes and takeaways from The Clay Urn, and much more.  Find out more about Paul Rabinowitz at his website here: https://www.paulrabinowitz.com Find out more about Erin Jones at her website: http://www.betterpeaches.com/erin-jones

The author of Black Rabbit and co-owner of Sappho Books reads from and talks about his latest novel and its quirky characters, about the impact of 2020, about themes and his writing style, the inherent beauty of writing for oneself, the value of small publishers, his work-in-progress, the book he's reading and loving (Janet Frame's An Autobiography), and lots more.   Angus' website: https://www.angusgaunt.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/angus.gaunt Sappho Books: https://www.sapphobooks.com.au/

Denise O'Hagan reads from and talks about her new poetry book The Beating Heart.  We cover such things as how the book came about, the relationship between memoir, poetry, and meaning making, on the use of sensual stimulus and poetry is everywhere, on time, and the way our pasts are ever present, on the 'heart' of and in the book, on editing for The Blue Nib, and lots more.  Connect with Denise O'Hagan at her website here: https://denise-ohagan.com and on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/DeniseOHagan3 Visit The Blue Nib: https://thebluenib.com

Author, mentor, writing teacher and speaker Lee Kofman reads from about talks about her memoir Imperfect.  In this brief but far-reaching conversation, we talk about some of Lee's key themes such as body surface and how it shapes us, the power of creative nonfiction, combining memoir and research and the connection for her, how she chose the people who were profiled in the book, the anthology she edited, Split, and lots more.  Find out more about Lee at her website: https://leekofman.com.au/

Nicola Redhouse reads from her book Unlike the Heart and talks about the way her research grew from her own postnatal anxiety to something much bigger, about the relevance of the literary perspective on scientific inquiry, her readership, the genetic links that drive us, on the way in which her book helped her family, her works in progress and lots more. Find out more about Nicola at her website: https://www.nicolaredhouse.com/