Caroline Reid Writes

The pointy end of the year is here. So soon? I say this every year at about this time. Time. I think about it more and more as my mother fades, as I move closer to menopause with each month that passes sans menses. Yesterday I listened to this poem 'Dearly' by Margaret Atwood . You might enjoy it. Enjoy may not be the right word but then again it might, if you like your poetry slightly melancholy with a touch of black humour.       "So hard to describe the smallest details ... of how we used to live/We wrapped garbage in newspaper tied with string/What is newspaper?/You see what I mean?" I reference Atwood in my biography of SIARAD. She and my mother share the same Christian names - Margaret Eleanor. Atwood's husband, like my mother, was diagnosed with dementia. He died a few years ago.      "Don't think this is morbid. It's just reality." writes Atwood in her poem. Totally. Audiobook Release: 10th December 2020 I mention this because time is pas

HOME-MADE SOUND BOOTH The South Australian government may have been the first state government in Australia to come to the financial aid of artists by providing quick response grants for Innovating Practice. What a privilege to be the recipient of one of these grants. With the funds granted to me I bought sound and video recording equipment, paid for the hire of a sound studio, paid other creative artists for their services and had some funds left over for living costs. My primary project has been recording SIARAD as Audiobook. I decided to record the longer (prose) pieces in a professional studio. A local radio station PBA FM offered a very reasonable hourly rate and over 4 sessions I came away some very clean, crisp recordings. Perfect for the prose. At first I was disheartened that I didn’t have the funds to record the whole book in a professional setting but, as things turned out, it was actually a good thing.   By researching on the internet, and with the help of my partner, I m

Oh yeah, a second print run! It’s been almost six months since the release of my first book of poetry and prose, SIARAD, and it’s an understatement to say that since then there has been a lot of uncertainty and sorrow in the world. For many authors, the resultant cancellation of book launches, tours and presentations has been a big disappointment. But disappointment is not the end of the story. Human creativity and invention has come to the fore, yet again, in troubled times. As a performance poet, my world has been opened up by online events in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Queensland. I know of many other poets who have participated in international poetry events too. Last night I competed in a Slam Final hosted by The Bunker Spoken Word that took place in Queensland . As well as live performers, there was a bunch of us performing via Zoom in W.A., N.S.W., Victoria, S.A. And in the Zoom room with us for the whole event was Holly McNish, drinking tea and eating toast on a Saturday mo

WHAT IS A MEMORY POD? When my Mum’s dementia developed to the stage where she needed to move into a care home, I struggled to know what to do with the small things she no longer wanted or needed. House keys, library card, guitar picks, jewellery and other knick-knacks, even bras that she found uncomfortable and didn’t want to wear. These were the symbols of her life. They were of no value to anyone else but I didn’t want to throw them away or donate them to charity shops. How might I preserve the symbols of her life while also coping with the ongoing grief that dementia brings? As I so often do when I struggle to cope with challenging life events or times, I make things. This time I turned to art. THE PROCESS OF MAKING A MEMORY POD The process of making a memory pod is more important than the end result. During the making, I reflect on Mum’s life and our relationship. As I choose the objects, as I choose the texture and colour of

SIARAD was released last month. My longtime friend, the artist, illustrator , writer and art historian Georgina Coburn has penned a review: " Having seen her performances as a finalist in the 2018 and 2019 Australian Poetry Slam competitions online, I was looking forward to reading Caroline Reid’s debut collection of poetry and prose, Siarad . Based in Adelaide, Australia, Reid’s work has been published in literary journals such as Verity La, Red Room Poetry, Cordite and her poem Lost was shortlisted for the 2019 Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film competition. In Siarad, Reid’s ferocious honesty, sensitivity and acuity leaps off the page as it does on stage, fuelled by personal experience and acute social observation. Siarad, a Welsh word meaning to talk or speak, reflects Reid’s family history and this collection, drawn from over a decade’s work, is testament to finding your voice as an artist. In form and content this is a gift of a book, raw, lyrical and

I'm so pleased to announce my first live author event! And it's FREE. Hosted by Underground Writers , it will be broadcast on Underground Writers YouTube channel this Sunday May 31st at 3.30pm - 4.30pm local Adelaide time. (That's 4pm for the east coast, and 2pm for the west coast of Australia) During the event you can ask questions about SIARAD, my new collection of poetry and prose. If you'd like to send me questions prior to the event, you can do that over at EVENTBRITE, where you can also RSVP for the event. I'll read stories and poems from the book, and talk about what inspired me to write them. I'll also take requests for reading. Have I made it sound oh-so formal? It won't be. I might even wear my pjamas. baha. Full disclosure: I'll be broadcasting from my bedroom. There will be book giveaways, and if you fancy some audience poetry writing there will definitely be an opportunity for that! I've got some fun & daggy writing prompts p

I've heard many people say (definitely one person, maybe even two) that poetry soothes them in strange and troubled times. Maybe you are looking for some poetry right now? If you don't know where to start, this could be a good place:   In Your Hands, an e-book of contemporary Australian poetry you can download for free.   In Your Hands is published by Red Room Poetry . A brilliant, generous initiative In Your Hands was commissioned and published by Red Room Poetry & Oranges and Sardines. It contains 80 poems by Australian poets who have had a collection published recently, and whose opportunities for performance & promotion have been affected by COVID-19. There are some excellent poets represented in the collection including Jill Jones, Michael Farrell, Ellen van Neerven, Ali Whitelock, Mark Tredennick. I am very grateful and excited that 'Talking Bob Dylan Blues', one of my poems from my collection SIARAD has been included in In Your Hands. Ev

it's a strange time, this time of corona. language, for me, has broken down. often when i speak i'm struggling to find the words, or nouns wind up in the wrong place. and increased hours in front of a screen is making my brain feel overheated. it's exhausting. last week i watched a couple of short videos of my mum that i shot on my phone in February. she is swimming in the deep waters of dementia. i listened to the way she used language, the misplacement of identifiers and objects, the mis-interpretation of words like 'wave' which has more than one meaning. i noticed how she was seeing things that, arguably, weren't there. like little girls in the pattern of a blanket. i wrote down her sentences, weaving two conversations together. here's the poem: a message home from all that place of getting i don't find it dirty but you can get that red coming you can get that red coming that nearly redding redding red when it's been properly red type of th

Sometimes reading nice things about me and my work can be challenging. I often blush when receiving compliments, do a foot shuffle, stare at a spot on the floor. It's taken me a week to be able to revisit the SIARAD launch speech that Rachael Mead delivered in Adelaide. I cried a little while listening to Rachael, partly because I didn't quite recognise myself in her words, and partly because I did. Rachael is such a brilliant, generous writer and I'd like to share a slice of what she articu lated so well, echoing my feelings of what the team at Spineless Wonder/ES-Press publishing achieved in the making of this book, SIARAD. "Look at this book. It may not be a garlic press but it is a metaphor. (You’ll get that when you read the first poem). This book is a piece of art in the way that Caroline Reid is an artist. The art resides not just in the poetry and prose. There is art in every detail of its being. The cover, the dimensions, the visual art

SIARAD - Bio One of the  most difficult things I had to write for SIARAD was the biography. The first draft was a dry linear account of where I'm from, what I've published etc. But it felt dull and I wanted something a little different, something that was a little more in line with the flavour of the work. Then serendipity stepped in: I discovered that Margaret Atwood and my mother (who I'm dedicating the book to) share the same names and that gave me a way in to a different kind of tone. So, I have succeeded in writing one of my literary heroes into the bio of my debut collection. I think that qualifies me as some kind of genius. Oh, and the font is Artegra Slab, in case you were wondering (of course you were ). Sexy, huh? C x

Back in 2018. Pamela Boutros and I worked together create my first video poem LOST . I've been working with Pamela again, only this time we turned our attention to Australia's Aged Care Industry. 600, 000 is the result. We went for a completely different feel and look in 600, 000. We wanted it to be more static (less distracting for the viewer), and thought black and white would work better to tell this story. Patrick Zoerner also used black and white when filming TO TOUCH AND TASTE A COMET . It's partly an aesthetic thing, and partly vanity because I reckon I look better in black and white! What do you think? I performed 600, 000 in the Sydney Opera House in 2019 where I qualified for the final round of 5 poets. From the feedback I got it seems that a lot of people relate to this story. Please fee free to share. The full text for 600, 000 appears in SIARAD , which will be launched in Adelaide on March 2nd . C x

There are boxes in my hallway where there shouldn't be boxes. I sleep with my bedroom door open and the cardboard boxes are the first thing I see when I wake up. Sometimes, before I am fully awake, I mistake them for my dog or a statue. But no, they are definitely boxes and inside them are books. My books. All with the same title, SIARAD; published by ES-Press, an imprint of Spineless Wonders . This part of the process of book writing and publishing feels strange. It's the part where ownership of what's inside the books, the poems and stories, no longer feel like they belong to me. Perhaps they never did. It's a little strange and also a little nice. It helps with the slight worry over what people will think of the book. I'm pretty sure this worry is normal and I'm trying to pay it no mind. A debut collection of prose and poetry is not exactly The Da Vinci Code so there aren't hundreds of boxes in my hallway. There are three boxes, actually. It's

book cover design and illustration by Bettina Kaiser I've been consumed by a new project these past few months. It's long been a goal of mine to gather together some of the shorter works I've written over the past decade or so and put them in a collection; and finally, it's happened. The name of the collection is SIARAD, a Welsh word meaning to talk, to speak. It was the first word I chose. Then I went off on a tangent of worry about how non-Welsh speakers might pronounce the word and if it might put them off reading the thing. So I set myself a deadline and trod a long journey to find a different word. Turned out to be a circular loop that took me back to the start: SIARAD. None of the English words I found were as satisfying in sound or look; nor did they have the weight of Welsh culture behind them and that was important to me (my Mum is Welsh and the book is dedicated to her). The 's' is pronounced 'sh', the same as Sinead or Seana. I really l