Podcast on the Value of Poetry
 

A podcast interview featuring David Mason, made a couple of months ago at Melbourne University, has just come online. If you have half an hour to sit quietly and reflect, I think you'll enjoy this. Beautiful, timely things are discussed.

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/podca...age-for-living

Thanks,

Cally

That was lovely Cally. I just ordered 'The Sound'. I think it's about time.

Glad you listened, Sharkey! Davey is lovely--he has a liquid-love heart.

I'll tell you a little story about the podcast, something that happened during the recording. Remember when Davey reads his poem 'Fathers and Sons'? (Synchronicity with Matt's current poem). Well, the moment after he finished reading, Andy, the interviewer, began to shake and cry so utterly that the producer stopped recording and we burst through the door into the studio to apply emergency cuddles and emergency poems and emergency tissues. It was raw and beautiful, what happened in those few minutes. In time, she said she could go on, so we left them to it again. You can hear her say later that she's going through exactly the same thing right now with her own parents.

It was a true life demonstration of the value of poetry, of everything Davey talks about in the podcast. The feeling in the room was akin to holiness.

Yes, thanks for that, Cally and David.

For most of this year I've been writing dry, drab, didactic verse that doesn't do any of the things that make poetry poetry, ambiguously and emotionally and sonically and image-wise.

It's good to be reminded of where I'm trying to go, as I keep trudging along.

Cally, it doesn't surprise me. The host's reaction was understandable and pretty much my own. David is a very good articulator of the need for poetry's heart to balance its head. When you popped in and reminded him of the Macbeth quote it made me think of whenever I have to read that scene with students. I have to be very careful to think about something else when I'm reading 'all my pretty chickens' aloud — a weeping teacher is not a good look.

Ahhh, Macbeth. I often try to articulate to myself why it is that Macbeth is the play closest to my heart. It simply shatters me. Still. After all these years.

But as far as crying goes, Sharkey -- what you say reminded me instantly of this, one of my fave poems of all time. My best teacher was the one, a man, who cried in front of us when reading out loud. No drama, just tears falling. Sometimes, just moist eyes. I learnt soooo much from that. I remember the effect it had on me. Anyway, it's this poem:

http://www.lesmurray.org/pm_aor.htm


Julie, hi! Glad to know you liked it, and I love your four descriptive pillars for what makes poetry poetry.

Cally

I’m glad I stopped by and saw this thread. Beautiful interview, true soul food. At this particular moment and for various reasons, it was a huge relief to hear it. Thank you, Dave and Cally.

Oh Andrew, I'm so glad you found this, and that it did you good! This is why I always encourage Davey to do these things, because he does it so well, without notes, extemporaneously, in any situation, no matter who the interlocutor. As you say, we need soul food.

Best wishes to you from us, Andrew.

Cally

I know that poem, Cally, I love it! I have it in an anthology somewhere. I didn't know it was Les Murray. Weirdly, I was listening to him on an old edition of Desert Island Discs the other day. Funny old world.

Ha! I'm pretty sure it was an old Desert Island Discs where he said those things I quoted on your poem thread the other week.

Weep, and then smile. As Rumi says in my fave Rumi poem . . .