I’ve just done a radio interview with Maggie Ball. Go to this link at Compulsive Reader.com to hear it. I read a couple of poems as well: ‘The Donkey, August, 1817′ and ‘Handel, January 1836′.
There’s also an upcoming ABC radio program (ABC’s The Book Show) recorded during the Melbourne Writers’ Festival of a session I participated in along with Bernhard Schlink, Anne Michaels (she of the wonderous books), Christos Tsiolkas, Andrea Goldsmith and Ian Buruma. The session was called “Pain, Pleasure, Poetry and The Body.” I read three Emily Dickinson poems (‘I felt a funeral in my brain’ and I’ve been feeling it ever since; in fact, I can’t seem to get rid of the ‘beating’ beating’ of Dickinson’s verse) and a few days later, I had a chat with the radio presenter Sarah L’Estrange, about how poetry inhabits the body and we talked a bit about Darwin too, of course!
I loved hearing Anne Michaels read Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Plums’, Andrea Goldsmith read an Anne Sexton poem, Christos Tsiolkas read some Nina Cassian and Ian Buruma read Auden. Then we all closed with a short excerpt from Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’. It was a gorgeous session.
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