Caroline Reid Writes

I'm super-pleased to be a part of this excellent line-up of spoken word performers in this year's Adelaide Fringe! Fandango is a showcase of spoken word artists and their fandoms and obsessions. WHAT: FANDANGO, spoken word poetry WHERE: Laneway Garden Stage at Mixed Creative, Port Adelaide WHEN: Friday, March 1st, 8pm TIX: $10 Click Here to Book Fringe Tix   Hosted by Pam Makin and Tracey O’Callaghan Featuring Aubrey, Avalanche, Jazz, Caroline Reid, Tegan Sabine, Kerryn Tredrea, and Todd Alan Wight I'm performing a set Breaking Up With Bob Dylan: “When I listened to Dylan all through the nineties, he was already as old as my parents. I didn’t care. It was his 1960s stuff I was listening to, that became the lyrical soundtrack to my fuqd-up 20s. I lined up for concert tix, read the books, learned the lyrics & played his songs with gusto on the guitar. Thirty years later, when he played Bonython Park, I tried to break up with him. But he wasn’t having a bar of it ....

Between 2018-2021 I worked with 3 emerging film makers to create 6 video poems.  To Touch and Taste a Comet was the second of those video poems. SYNOPSIS & CONTEXT: The poem To Touch & Taste a Comet speaks to being a late bloomer & not giving up on your dreams/ambition despite living in a world that values youth, early (visible) success and a particular kind of beauty (perfect/smooth). It's a world that values & rewards a particular kind of filming making too... not too complex, clear narrative, crisp focus with a young, pretty, sexy, cool protagonist. Much of what I love about this video poem is how film maker Patrick Zoerner weaves imagery that emphasises texture, pattern & mood with images of the not-so-young/not-so-cool poet (me).  When I first re-visited the video so that I could write this blog, I have to admit I cringed a little. It's tempting to apologise for my double-chin & jowls, thick torso, my awkwardness and kind of arty-posiness. But...

To celebrate Poetry Month in Australia, I am dipping into the archives to share a series of video poems & recorded performances of my poetry. Here's the second in the series, Murder Girl gets wired.   SYNOPSIS & CONTEXT Writing really is a long game. I wrote Murder Gets gets wired in 2007 after I'd relocated from Perth to Adelaide and was still elbow-deep in writing for theatre. I didn't know about prose poems. I thought I was just writing little sketches (were they poems? were they stories?) with a view to heightening ordinary fuckd-up urban and suburban folk to a kind-of mythological status. I didn't really know what I was doing. I'd give my characters names like Murder Girl, Violet Sweets, Beef Boy and they'd always drink too much & have low self-esteem. Auto-bio much? Now I can hear rhythms & a smattering of rhyme in this poem, which were the precursors to me writing and performing my first spoken word poem in 2016.   In 2020, when I receive...

Each August in South Australia you will find thousands of artworks exhibited across the state as part of the South Australia Living Artists Festival (SALA).   This year I am part of a group exhibition titled 'The Pursuit of Happiness' along with artists Donna Gordge and Bernadette Woods. Why happiness? After Covid and some recent rough personal times, all three of us felt we needed to make work that lifted us, made us feel a little lighter.    We met once to discuss how we might approach exploring 'happiness' visually, and came up with lists of things that made us happy including stone fruit, lime-green linen, poached eggs and birds. We talked about the materials & methods we might use - family photographs, paint, posca pens, wallpaper & collage - and then we just got on and made stuff. We checked in with each other a few times online. Then, before we knew it, we were in the West Torrens Gallery hanging the works. We open on Thursday 3rd August, and the exhibit...

This year I was accepted into Vaulting Ambitions , a 5 month incubator program “designed to arm creatives to tackle the business side of their craft.”  It’s run by Libby Trainor-Parker and Matthew Trainor at Prompt Creative under a strategic partnership with City of Adelaide. There’s so much learning going on! I realised I was hungry for this kind of learning, from digital literacy to how to write a pitch letter, it's hands-on, with practical application, and we're getting to meet all kinds of industry professionals. One of the program's great strengths is the regular check-ins and mentoring sessions. A regular space that holds you accountable can seriously help with ticking off those list and bigger goals. I think what I'm saying is that the real gift here is community. Being in contact with other creative folk has made me feel less alone, more connected. I’m reminded that everyone experiences challenges when running a solo arts business; and that talking about i...

Rabbit is an Australian journal that publishes nonfiction poetry, and their most recent issue #37 COLLABORATIONS is out in the world. It's full of juicy work, including a piece by myself and visual artist Donna Gordge. 'Tips for Dealing with Grief' is a tongue-in-cheek guide for how you might 'deal' with grief. Let me be clear: I don't believe that grief is something we deal with but rather something that we must go through. Grief turns everything on its head; the reason and logic of language can fall short. This poem doesn't make logical sense because grief doesn't make sense. It has to be felt, not reasoned with, and we need to make adjustments to include loss & grief in our lives. Hence the repetition of the word 'adjust' in the poem.   I approached the making of this work by Googling 'tips for dealing with grief' and included some words from my searches. I also reference the ritual of tea making, punning on the phrase 'adjus...

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