Caroline Reid Writes

NOTE: This post is a bit longer than usual & contains a 10 minute presentation.   I recently had the enormous privilege of presenting poetry at the 2024 Palliative Care Summit: 'Navigating the Crossroads: Building the intersection between Palliative Care & Neurodegenerative Disease'. The summit was hosted by Palliative Care WA in the Pan Pacific hotel in Perth. I mention this because it's the place I was held in quarantine while my mother died in a nursing home just a few kilometres away. Perth's hard border control at the time was brutal. While many people have understandably just wanted to move on and forget about the pandemic, it's taken me a bit longer to do that. For a long time, the sorrow and grief seemed knitted into my skin.    Of course, I could have said no to the summit. But I sensed that this occassion was bigger than me, that these poems might serve others, that performing them might also help me work through residual grief, resentment, and an...

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...

To celebrate Poetry Month in Australia, I am sharing video poems and performances of some of my poems. I'll also include a synopsis, a bit of history about how the poem came about, and the full text of the poem. Here's the first one: LOST, a video poem. Enjoy!   In 2017, I won my first poetry slam hosted by Draw Your (S)words. As part of that prize I got to work with emerging film-maker Pamela Boutros to make short film or video poem of one of my poems. We spent a day shooting in Port Adelaide (Yertabulti) and made LOST. SYNOPSIS & CONTEXT: LOST is a fusion of poetry, visual art, humour; it's a blend of the personal, political, cultural, spiritual, & performative confessional. I'd written a few terrible poems, and thought I'd never write a good poem again. Not being able to write became my starting point: 'Most days   I am not a poet'. Instead of pushing away my thoughts, I began paying attention to them, my worries and regrets. I wrote them all down...

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...

"Reid's delivery is masterful. This is poetry of the best kind."  Alice Gorman, Adelaide Fringe Review I am so freaking pleased to announce that SIARAD, my one-woman spoken word theatre event, will enjoy a Comeback Season in September at Studio 166, Goodwood Theatre & Studios. With the brilliant assistance and support of theatre-maker Emma Beech, Goodwood Theatre & Studios, Spineless Wonders and Andy Hunt, I'll present 5 shows across 3 days: Friday, September 17th - Sunday, September 19th 2021. Tickets have just been made available through Try Booking. SIARAD pulses with images of stars and stray dogs, highways with no horizon and mothers with fading memories, a blend of poetry and storytelling with a consistent element of humour and surprise.  Here are some responses from those who came to SIARAD at Adelaide Fringe Festival: Such a brilliant show! I loved it!!  I forgot I was even in the theatre. Thank you. If you love words and writing, this is just the pe...

  Junk Journals - covers A whole month of poetry! How sweet is that? An initiative of Red Room Poetry, you can head over to their website and check out all the wonderfully poetic things that are happening between August 1-31.   I'll also be releasing details very soon of how you can sign up for my newsletter. Yeah, I've been dreaming about setting up a newsletter for loyal followers for quite some time now, and Poetry Month is just the right motivation to make it happen. The first newsletter will offer discounts to my upcoming (return) season of SIARAD in September, plus specials on the print and audio book. I'll also have more information about my hand-made Poetry Prompt Journals.     Junk Journal - interior I learnt how to make Junk Journals recently, at a great place called The Adelaide Remakery. What fun! So, I've added my twist to them, and have been busy making Punk As Fuq Poetry Prompt Junk Journals (I know, it's a mouthful) - a fun resource to help inspire ...

 In February 2021, I was awarded second place in the Tom Collins Poetry Prize with my poem 'DEVOUR'. The Prize is presented by the Fellowship of Australian Writers (WA) and was judged by Caitlin Malin.   I wrote the poem in response to the Australia's catastrophic bushfires in 2019-2020. I spent a week in January 2021 in Cape Jervis with a view of Kangaroo Island but some days the smoke from fires was so thick it obscured the island. It was a weird, fretful time, and our Prime Minister's response did not ease the country's anxiety. my dog and I looking toward Kangaroo Island, which is on fire     I challenged myself to write DEVOUR like a collage, a form I'm experimenting with more and more. I used multiple motifs, weaving together references to literary heavyweight Patrick White, sanitary napkins, peri-menopause, Australia's Prime Minister and blue cheese. I love working this way. It's intuitive, which means you have to be led by the poem, trusting tha...

 Heeeey, thanks for dropping by. Things have been rumbling along since March. My Adelaide Fringe show came and went. The audiences were lovely and the studio space was so intimate it felt like I was performing to friends in my lounge room. I did 3 shows, with a splash of heckling on opening night, which I loved! The wonderful Alice Gorman (otherwise knows as Dr Space Junk ) had this to say in her review: "Reid's delivery of her words is masterful It's no wonder she has twice been a finalist in the Australian Poetry Slam. She blends cadence with a conversational style that hits just the right balance. Music, sound effects and props augment the words and emotions as Reid moves from verse to verse. This is not a chronological narrative, but you feel you have taken a journey with Reid to some place of stillness and acceptance at the end ... This is poetry of the best kind, that engages you and makes you want to be BFFs with the poet."  If you didn't get to the show, ...

When I was planning SIARAD, my debut collection of poetry and prose , I wanted two things: a book that crossed boundaries and a beautiful work of art. Luckily for me, I found the people who made that happen. Bettina Kaiser art+design and the Spineless Wonders crew created a gorgeous work of art with a beautiful aesthetic. Kerryn Goldsworthy noted in the Sydney Morning Herald that "the design and illustrations are a precise fit with both the form and content of Reid's text."   And what of crossing boundaries? When the book went to print I had a vague notion that I’d like to record SIARAD as an Audiobook , and ‘wouldn’t mind’ doing it as a show. Possibly at Adelaide Fringe in 2022, I thought. Then Covid-19 invaded our world. A stressful time, to say the least. However, during lockdown I was able to use a Covid Support Grant from the South Australian government to make the Audiobook I’d been dreaming of. This is great! I thought. My book has crossed over from print into au...