In March, I participated in the ABC Australian TV series Bush Slam, an arts/travel/poetry program, hosted by HG Nelson, which follows poets to various small Australian towns and asks them to write a poem about the people and place over three days. I went to Corryong in Victoria, a town set near the Snowy Mountains, one of my favorite parts of Australia.
I hadn’t been back to Australia in eight months at the time and flew straight in from the UK. While I was overwhelmed to be back in my heartland, writing a poem in three days with cameras following me was an unexpectedly daunting task and I nearly failed, having jet-lag, insomnia and a good deal of writers’ block. Nevertheless, I managed to write a poem in those three days that I am proud of.
The program launched on Dec 29th, 2009 and continues. My episode screened on January 12th, 2010 and can be downloaded free from the ABC TV website for anybody in Australia, for the next 27 days or so. The entire series can be watched this way and if you are quick, you can still download the first two episodes for another couple of weeks I think.
16/01/2010 at 6:57 am Permalink
i luved yr poetry Emily
17/01/2010 at 7:27 pm Permalink
thank you so much. That’s nice of you to say.
01/02/2010 at 9:35 pm Permalink
This poem, Emily, is wonderfully evocative. I read it often. I find all your poetry sparkling with freshness and clarity, as though it has come quickly to you – I guess it’s because you have an exceptional skill at capturing or creating small moments. How long do you usually spend with a poem before you consider it coompleted? If you had taken longer over this poem, would it have been very different, do you think?
01/02/2010 at 9:36 pm Permalink
This poem, Emily, is wonderfully evocative. I read it often. I find all your poetry sparkling with freshness and clarity, as though it has come quickly to you – I guess it’s because you have an exceptional skill at capturing or creating small moments. How long do you usually spend with a poem before you consider it completed? If you had taken longer over this poem, would it have been very different, do you think?
05/02/2010 at 10:24 am Permalink
Thanks Penny, it’s lovely to know people connect to it! It was a bit of a whirlwind, trying to write with such pressure and so quickly. But you are right, I try not to spend too long on poems, which doesn’t mean I don’t do several drafts but I like the drafts to come quickly, one after the other, over a few days and then I tend to leave it. Some poems I return to and, finding them incomplete, I attempt to fiddly, much to the poem’s detriment. Somehow I can’t get back in, whether it’s finished or not, or could be better, it is finished for me. So, yes, if I’d spent much longer on this poem, it might have gotten worse. By the way, the poem as read on the show was edited by a third, so I do think it’s better than it was. I might post the entire poem, actually…
05/02/2010 at 8:18 pm Permalink
The abc website does have the entire poem as a pdf file so I’ve been reading that.
05/02/2010 at 9:00 pm Permalink
Thanks for letting me know Penny; that’s good to hear!